I’ll make this short and sweet. Well, war is tragic so sweet’s perhaps an inappropriate term. However Pootie’s Russian getting it’s butt kicked is a good thing. And the fact is, Russia had themselves a very bad week. Jet’s shot down. Ships sunk. And one of their prized drones captured apparently pretty much intact which means Ukrainian (and western) engineers can learn things Pootie, aka Vlad Putin doesn’t want them to know! I don’t think it’s wrong to derive some enjoyment about Russia’s losses. And hope.

That’s the gist of this piece from Tagtik  It’s not so much an article as a series of panels illustrating Russia’s woes, with an explanation for each. The bottom line is that Russia lost two aircraft, sixteen ships and had a drone captured.  All in this past week. Everyone was focused on the negotiations between Pootie and Zelenskyy in Turkey. Those negotiations as you know didn’t happen because Putin, to no one’s surprise didn’t show up. Hell, he never intended to and everyone knew it all along. It was a PR stunt, Putin proposing said talks.  Maybe he didn’t think Zelenskyy would show up with an ‘Ok, let’s talk about how to end this war’ strategy.

One of the sticking points, for Putin at least was a cease fire for all while to you know, negotiate. Pootie wasn’t about to agree to THAT. Instead, he sent underlings to Turkey and kept up his war.  Looking back, I wonder if he now thinks maybe even if he was too scared to leave ‘Mother Russia’ (he is after all under indictment by the ICC) perhaps he should have agreed to a cease fire while his minions were in Turkey making demands he knew would never be agreed to.

Anyway, I urge you to check out the link. It’s a brutal accounting of Russia’s losses this past week. It ends with something intriguing I should note.  If you’ve followed the war in Ukraine you know Russia has been forced to bring a LOT of old USSR days stuff back into service. Tanks and armored vehicles in particular. Many weren’t properly mothballed to begin with and the expense of getting them running again is yet another burden for Russia’s military. Given how quickly Russia’s newest Top-Line equipment got chewed up you can imagine how difficult it is for this old stuff.

Anyway, what I want to highlight here is Ukraine has during the war developed it’s own pretty damned good weapons manufacturing capability. THEY have dusted off an old Soviet era missile and made some pretty impressive upgrades. Those upgrades are helping to cause major losses to Russia in fact.  Kind of ironic that Ukraine is better at updating Russia’s Cold War stuff than Russia is!  But that’s the case.  There’s only five panels in the link to Tagtik so it only takes a minute to go though them. If you need a pick-me-up about Ukraine it’s well worth a minute of your time. I told you for once I’d keep it short, and hope you’ll agree I’ve done so!

***Zoomers, we are always in need of donations. It’s been an especially rough month and my own health has not been great these past few weeks, which just adds to the frustration. Anything you can spare will be immensely appreciated. And thank you to all who have donated generously already. Ursula***

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5 COMMENTS

  1. Blow their asses to hell and back. Phuck the traitors here who support the fascist pigs running our former democracy. As Patton once quipped…you don’t win a war by dying for your country…you win by making your enemy die for his. Either stand up and fight…or resign yourself to being a victim and a slave.

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    • Europe is now spending more than the U.S. to support Ukraine. Russia can’t advance to any meaningful degree. Yes, Ukraine is taking appalling losses but more to CIVILIANS than troops. It seems Pootie is trying to get Ukrainians to give in. What he and so many Russians have never been able to grasp is the raw HATRED in Ukraine for Russia. Oh, Ukraine has had its share of collaborators, a Ukrainian version of the French Vichy during WWII but most Ukrainians hate Russia in their DNA. AND that hatred goes back, with justification for a century! I just don’t see the Ukrainian people capitulating. For all their losses, Russia has lost FAR more in both blood and treasure. Worse for Russia, the myth of them having a massive “unstoppable” war machine is broken. Hell, that happened in the first couple of weeks in the war.

      If the U.S. keeps cutting back it won’t be easy for Europe to keep Ukraine supplied to the degree needed to drive Russia out. At least entirely. But not winning is losing for Russia and they ain’t winning. Not by a long shot. Here’s what people should watch for. Trump would oppose European countries becoming more proactive. Either with more and more advanced weapons or even troops. Europe however is increasingly moving to a point where they don’t care what Trump thinks. If Russia is stupid enough to attack into a NATO country, say Poland all bets are off. Article V probably won’t be invoked as the risk of Trump blowing up NATO by refusing to take part is quite real. However, they won’t really need to. Europe will get signfificantly involved and that will be that. AND the death knell for U.S. being a major player in world affairs.

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  2. As far as Ukraine being better at updating old Soviet gear, I seem to remember Russia had a brain drain of the youngest and maybe the brightest during the first year of the war.

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    • And from what I can remember, because unfortunately it all blends together after a while, I agree! I do vividly remember the abandoned vehicles on the road into Kyiv.

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