NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On July 04 2026 21:33 Manit0u wrote: And I doubt they're stupid enough (...)
I doubt they aren't. I believe the warnings about armed provocation to be true. If any of this will happen, answer must be swift and brutal. If any artilery piece will attack targets in Poland from Belarus or Kaliningrad oblast, it should be destroyed without regard to consequences. We cannot afford the greenmen scenario from Lugansk to repeat, where our forces are attacked by both saboteurs and by artillery behind border.
I don't think so. Belarus has already made it clear they don't want to be dragged into this war and Kaliningrad is undefendable.
If Putin were to lose Kaliningrad oblast it would be a PR disaster for him.
On July 04 2026 21:33 Manit0u wrote: And I doubt they're stupid enough (...)
I doubt they aren't. I believe the warnings about armed provocation to be true. If any of this will happen, answer must be swift and brutal. If any artilery piece will attack targets in Poland from Belarus or Kaliningrad oblast, it should be destroyed without regard to consequences. We cannot afford the greenmen scenario from Lugansk to repeat, where our forces are attacked by both saboteurs and by artillery behind border.
I don't think so. Belarus has already made it clear they don't want to be dragged into this war and Kaliningrad is undefendable.
If Putin were to lose Kaliningrad oblast it would be a PR disaster for him.
It would be best for everyone if Kaliningrad would declare independance :D We can all dream
It wouldn't make a lot of sense from the local perspective. They're like Transnistria, but in a way better position. Their situation would be much worse without the funding from Moscow.
The region is also full of Russians and declaring independence wouldn't change the fact that the West has finally stopped trusting Russians and their Mini-Me-s like Belarus after 2022 even though this should happen before 2014. The Russian populations are rarely interested in the Western values, and that's already verifiable by their relations with the Baltic states. To a degree, it's understandable because the Balts are even more hostile to Russian than Poles, but we shouldn't forget why they became hostile in the first place.
On July 06 2026 01:31 Sent. wrote: It wouldn't make a lot of sense from the local perspective. They're like Transnistria, but in a way better position. Their situation would be much worse without the funding from Moscow.
The region is also full of Russians and declaring independence wouldn't change the fact that the West has finally stopped trusting Russians and their Mini-Me-s like Belarus after 2022 even though this should happen before 2014. The Russian populations are rarely interested in the Western values, and that's already verifiable by their relations with the Baltic states. To a degree, it's understandable because the Balts are even more hostile to Russian than Poles, but we shouldn't forget why they became hostile in the first place.
I would make an important distinction here that the baltics are not hostile towards russians. They are distrustful towards them, but they are not hostile. The russian speaking minorities in the respective countries have it fairly good and are well accepted as long as they aren't idiots. Russian state propaganda keeps spouting that nonsense, which is why especially many of the older russian speaking minorities feel that way, but as long as you don't go around claiming the soviet union was great, or questioning their right to sovereignty, you will generally have a good time living in the baltics as a russian speaker.
Source: Not russian/russian speaking, but had some extended stays in the baltics as well as knowing a fair number of russian speaker living there, or who have relatives there. The only ones to claim that the balts are hostile towards them are the older ones that watch russian TV, and the younger morons who will tell you that the soviet union and russia did great things for the country. If you are living in say estonia, born and raised there, but make no effort to learn the language yeah ofc they won't trust you.
Don't spout any russian propaganda nonsense and speak half decent estonian and they might claim you as estonian even if your passport says otherwise. Esp. estonians very much give off vibes of "don't bother me and I won't bother you". The state of russia they ofc strongly dislike, but nobody likes shitty neighbours who still refuse to acknowledge that they killed your grandparents, or that your yard really does belong to you and not them.
How wild is it that Russia is importing 13% of their domestic gasoline from India. Sell India discounted oil, India refines it and sells them it back and premium prices. The ag industry, food transport many of the things you just need to survive are raising the alarms, with the response being, don't worry government has it all under control. 3 day military operation is working as planned.
As for the Russians any where, if you got them out from under Putin and that propaganda machine they would become regular humans like all the other soviet state people did likely in the same time. Sooner is better, but I'm now firmly in the empire is dying camp. The only question is if Russia becomes influenced by Europe or a vassal of China. Or maybe even like Germany with a split.
On July 06 2026 02:39 Billyboy wrote: How wild is it that Russia is importing 13% of their domestic gasoline from India. Sell India discounted oil, India refines it and sells them it back and premium prices. The ag industry, food transport many of the things you just need to survive are raising the alarms, with the response being, don't worry government has it all under control. 3 day military operation is working as planned.
As for the Russians any where, if you got them out from under Putin and that propaganda machine they would become regular humans like all the other soviet state people did likely in the same time. Sooner is better, but I'm now firmly in the empire is dying camp. The only question is if Russia becomes influenced by Europe or a vassal of China. Or maybe even like Germany with a split.
History shows that smaller is more efficient at fighting corruption, but knowing Russians, it's really build in them not to divide that country.
Clearly, there would be quite quickly a European state if Saint-Petersbourg would create it's own state, it was pretty much very occidental last time I went.
On July 06 2026 02:39 Billyboy wrote: How wild is it that Russia is importing 13% of their domestic gasoline from India. Sell India discounted oil, India refines it and sells them it back and premium prices. The ag industry, food transport many of the things you just need to survive are raising the alarms, with the response being, don't worry government has it all under control. 3 day military operation is working as planned.
As for the Russians any where, if you got them out from under Putin and that propaganda machine they would become regular humans like all the other soviet state people did likely in the same time. Sooner is better, but I'm now firmly in the empire is dying camp. The only question is if Russia becomes influenced by Europe or a vassal of China. Or maybe even like Germany with a split.
History shows that smaller is more efficient at fighting corruption, but knowing Russians, it's really build in them not to divide that country.
Clearly, there would be quite quickly a European state if Saint-Petersbourg would create it's own state, it was pretty much very occidental last time I went.
Well, Poland could also welcome Królewiec back into the fold
In other news, Kremlin spokeperson Dmitrij Pieskov has changed the rhetoric. For the first time he has officially called the situation in Ukraine "war" instead of "special military operation" and is warning Poland.
This can mean that they're preparing their own public for protracted war and escalation of tension with the West.
Pretty big news today. Peskov called the SMO a war, and not a slip he said it a whole bunch of times. Most analysts believe this is setting up for full mobilization and possibly Marshall law.
This comes as Ukraine is slamming refineries. Last night they hit the last major refinery and are up to 43% of Russian refineries hit. They just knocked out a bunch of Russian air craft. They have been slamming fuel trucks, substations and other Russian logistics targets and now Russia gas lines are wild and even Russian social media is blowing up about it.
Mobilization is the only hope to turn the tides, for months they have been losing more troops than they could recruit. So it seems super likely. But more men is just going to move the much slower than a snail pace to snail pace with way greater losses. They have no answers to the drones and are getting hammered.
One thing I don't understand. Drones are slow and rely on massive numbers. They seem very effective but they can be shoot down by helicopters or basically anything.
Historically we already have a solution for them. Any succesfull single prop WWII era fighter would absolutely body drones. They are cheap to build, relativly easy to train pilots for and can land on makeshift airfields. Forget radar, just put good coms and guide them on targets like in the old days. For a fast enough turboprop you can even have a decent chance to intercept a cruise missile if you can put short range missiles on it.
Naturally you don't need to build an actual spitfire there are modern equivilants. I know they are being modified for exactly this task, I'm just surprised we haven't seem them in action yet.
One of the big factors with the drones and this conflict is how small they are and how freaking big Russia is, heck even the front lines.
I think drones that hunt other drones (which Ukraine has and making more of) will be the answer. Some of those might end up looking like spitfires as you suggest.
Side note that is sad. Ukraine has nothing to stop ballistics, they are trying to develop their own but have an extreme shortage of patriots. Crazy to see the interception stats when drone and cruise is up in the 90% and ballistics are below 20 (0 last night).
On July 07 2026 05:51 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: One thing I don't understand. Drones are slow and rely on massive numbers. They seem very effective but they can be shoot down by helicopters or basically anything.
Historically we already have a solution for them. Any succesfull single prop WWII era fighter would absolutely body drones. They are cheap to build, relativly easy to train pilots for and can land on makeshift airfields. Forget radar, just put good coms and guide them on targets like in the old days. For a fast enough turboprop you can even have a decent chance to intercept a cruise missile if you can put short range missiles on it.
Naturally you don't need to build an actual spitfire there are modern equivilants. I know they are being modified for exactly this task, I'm just surprised we haven't seem them in action yet.
I assume because these things are then really easy to shoot down, and a lot more expensive than drones. People are expensive too. My guess would be that the survival time of a WW2-style plane near the frontlines is tiny.
It's not that it is hard to shoot down drones. It is hard to reliably shoot them down with stuff that is not much more expensive than the drone.
Also, drone isn't drone. There are so many different types of drones. There are so many different types that do so many different things.
Ukraine is using WW2 style planes to shoot down some of the drones. But this only really works vs the big ones like shaheds, gerans etc. Small FPV or interceptor drones absolutely body helicopters and small aircraft.
We are kinda in the phase of this war, if it's being compared to a Starcraft game where both players are kind of out of defensive options and are starting to completely neglect the defense because they can't protect their bases effectively anymore, so they are going full on harassment offense in hope they'll fuck the others economy up and make them stop.
It's extremely dangerous and if this is a signal on how future wars will look, we are fucked.
The offensive options are simply much cheaper and more destructive then defensive, stopping a ballistic missile requires $200 million worth of launchers and radars + a par of $2 million interceptors, and the missiles are increasingly coming with counter measures, even on "cheap" $2 million Iskanders.
The more expensive ones have multiple re-entry dummy warheads and as Iran war shows there is simply no way to stop it all, even from a relatively technologically behind enemy like Iran.
Same with fielding complex and expensive ground systems, there is simply no point, why invest in armor when a precise FPV drone strike can disable even the most protected tank.
10 ships yesterday (8 tankers, a ferry and I forget) nine more tankers today! All of them were sanctioned, but transporting anyway. They are on to the next set of targets to hurt the Russian economy. This also seems like something Russia won’t be able to deal with, if they can’t protect refineries, how can they expect to defend the ocean?
This is also a double wammy because now they need the tankers to bring back gasoline from India to try to stem all their domestic shortages.
Oh and this is additional, they have not slowed down on their hit of ground logistics and refineries (2 last night)
As much as I love seeing Russia's assets blown up and their economy degraded, this, in combination with drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and complete inability of Ukraine to shoot them down (much like Russians can't do anything about their drone attacks) is making me very worried.
Russia has a very big stockpile of ballistics, they are getting increasingly desperate and it shows by the amount of crazy damage they are doing, unfortunately mostly to civilian infrastructure, but also military stuff. The one explosion in the Kyiv suburb where they blew up what looks to be a missile factory was extremely scary and it killed and injured a bunch of people.
Both sides are becoming increasingly desperate and willing to go no holds barred in hurting the civilian populations, and Russia has a few structural advantages of being much bigger and having a much more well controlled and repressed population.
I'm not sure what my conclusion of this should be but it all makes me very uneasy.
On the positive side, the actual fighting seems to have balanced out more in favor of Ukraine, so that's something to be happy about, along all the damage they are doing and finally making regular Russians feel the pain.
On July 09 2026 04:53 Billyboy wrote: Trump has announced he is giving Ukraine the license to make patriots. Huge if true, albeit not immediate, but could be a game changer.
Trump says a lot of things during a long day.
Still interesting that apparently at least someone who is pro Ukraine is close enough to his inner circle that he gets to be the last person Trump talks to before something. I guess we'll see what he says tomorrow or whenever some Putin guy talked to him again.
On July 09 2026 04:53 Billyboy wrote: Trump has announced he is giving Ukraine the license to make patriots. Huge if true, albeit not immediate, but could be a game changer.
Trump says a lot of things during a long day.
Still interesting that apparently at least someone who is pro Ukraine is close enough to his inner circle that he gets to be the last person Trump talks to before something. I guess we'll see what he says tomorrow or whenever some Putin guy talked to him again.
It’s true, it was on stage publicly. But as you point out it sucks how almost meaningless it is. He also announced he was removing the sanctions on Turkey for buying the s400s as well.
It is a lot more pleasant than when he blatantly pro Russia. Which I believe is tomorrow.
It is crazy how much this war has turned in the last few months and especially this last couple of weeks. It is now realistic that Ukraine gets back their territory. I don’t see a realistic path for Russia taking even the oblasts they have claimed as theirs.
EPT
