Not only is Filatov still here they have invited him to attend Zelensky's address to the Dail on Wednesday morning
I doubt he is going to show up but if he does TDs should use the opportunity to directly address him and the war crimes he is standing over
Austria against sanctions on Russian gas
You reckon he couldn't fly a load of Tupolev bombers over loaded with thermobaric payloads and decimate the place no? (Great news if that's the case!)
The Russian strategic bomber force isn't really that large when you look at it. 66 Tu-22 "Binder", 42 Tu-95 "Bear" and 15 Tu-160 "Blackjack". The actual operational number of aircraft at any given time is likely lower due to maintenance & repair requirements. Out of those, the Binders are basically cruise missile trucks, whilst the Bears and especially the Blackjacks are likely held back for the nuclear role.
Granted, there are still the fighter bombers, mainly the Su-34 "Fullback" and the Su-24 "Fencer", of which Russia has a whole lot. However, those are more geared towards individual targets and haven't really been deployed in large formations from all that I've seen. Given that most of the countries Russia has fought until now really haven't had much in the way of an air force to counter them, I doubt whether the institutional know-how for the types of massed air strikes you mention still exists. Just like on the ground, the attacks seem uncoordinated. A fighter sweep here, an attack by a flight of two Su-34s there, but not the kind of tightly woven bomber + SEAD + EW aircraft + fighter escort package that you'd expect in an environment where air superiority cannot be guaranteed.
Finally. Don't know why it took so long.
Air defences have made that tactic obsolete.
I hope you meant 'fortunately'?
"President Zelensky visited liberated Bucha" https://liveuamap.com/en/2022/4-april-president-zelensky-visited-liberated-bucha
Zelenskyy not sitting at the end of a 100m long table in a deep bunker somewhere.
Unfortunately he hasn't got a large amount of strategic bombers to flatten a city hence why they are using standoff weapons fired from the safety of the black sea,
I think you may have taken the blue ones instead of the pink ones this morning!
Unfortunately they could always go the WW2 type blitz approach and flatten it from the air with a load of bombers.
You also have lovely 'enhanced radiation weapons' like neutron bombs.
Small hydrogen bombs that emit neutron radiation, killing everything but leaving infrastructure intact.
Don't think he has the ability to flatten Kyiv with conventual weapons.
Ukraine have a steady resupply stream now, the Russians are running out, partly because a lot of their parts for their weaponry was manufactured in the Ukraine.
Gut Laugh.
I'm amazed Filatov and the other kgb scumbags in the embassy haven't all been sent packing at this stage, especially with all the latest evidence of mass killing of children and civilians.
I hope this is real and not just propaganda:
Russian troops robbed President Zelensky's house on the island of Biryuchy in the Kherson region, also robbing hotels in Kyrylivka" https://liveuamap.com/en/2022/4-april-russian-troops-robbed-president-zelenskys-house-on
How about Italy stop pretending they don't know that massive yacht Scheherazade is Putin's and they seize it, formally confiscate it and re-register it in Zelinskyy's name as compensation?
Did you not get enough attention from your other post?
Bless you...
Ah yes, somehow I completely missed this one on the day and didn't notice the date in the article I linked. Bowden has been doing a fantastic job.
If they drove around with swastika flags they would. What the Russians have done in Bucha is what the Nazi Einsatzgruppen (death squads) did.
I don't think Putin wants to flatten Kyiv to any great extent. Kyiv could be thought of as the cradle of Slavic civilisation, and therefore for its symbolism alone is probably a place that Putin would want relatively intact. That's why my guess is that if the Russians do decide to up the ante even further, they'll go for gas rather than ordinance. If Putin sees the Ukrainians are traitorous vermin, and vermin who are well embedded, from his perspective the sensible option is to call Rentokil.
If I'm not mistaken, the escalate to de-escalate notion is still in relation to a large scale conventional attack on Russia itself, that's why I had that 'over a land grab' part in my comment.
I'm not sure if they'd stretch that to cover another country they are invading - hopefully not!
This was reported in thread on the day it happened, which was nearly a month ago.
"There's zero reason for him to use nuclear weapons"
Don't be so sure, it is widely believed Russian policy allows an "escalate to de-escalate" policy which allows for the limited first use of nuclear weapons to attempt to end a conventional conflict on terms favorable to Russia.
There's zero reason for him to use nuclear weapons over what boils down to a land grab.
If NATO become involved it's another thing entirely, but until that day, it's conventional all the way. Sure he can absolutely flatten Kyiv with conventional bombs if he wants. Why use nukes?
I mean its incredible stuff - completely baffling. I mean we obviously see it as the vile fascistic nonsense that it is but its frightening to see it none the less.
Its pure unadulterated fascism
The system is not as automated as it sounds, it still requires the activation of the Cheget I believe, it certainly didn't unintentionally wipe out half the world in 1995 during the Black Brant scare - the only known incidence of a nuclear briefcase being activated.
And Putin doesn't need the excuse of Nato or US boots on the ground in Ukraine to detonate one. If he sees this war drifting away from him then I can see him setting one off over Kyiv. He'll likely concoct some reason/excuse to the Russian public for doing so. And still the West wont get involved. The carnage will continue.
These incidents are becoming systematic. From a BBC report:
The drone footage shows three cars speeding along an empty main road just outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, when they suddenly turn around and race back - all except one.
This white car turns, but then stops. A man steps out and raises his hands. Then his body falls to the ground. Moments later, Russian soldiers approach. An elderly woman and child leave the car, and a soldier walks them away.
The man on the ground was Maksim Iovenko. The 31-year-old was shot dead by Russian forces that were positioned at the roadside. His wife Ksenia, who was in the car, was also killed.
....
Then, on 7 March, they lost all power. With no electricity, heating or food, Maksim, Ksenia and other families staying in the area decided to return to Kyiv. They knew they risked running into Russian troops along the highway, but they thought they could make it through safely.
Maksim's car was third in the convoy, made up of about 50 people in total, including other children. In the windows of his car, he had put handwritten signs on white paper that read: "Children." His friend was part of the same convoy, and it was his mother who was in the car with Maksim and Ksenia, and he was able to tell Sergiy what happened.
When the shooting started, Maksim's car was hit. "The car's engine stalled," Sergiy says. "My son jumped out of the car, he raised his hands and started shouting that there was a child in the car, so that the child would be saved."
It's not clear why the rest of the convoy fell behind the first three cars, but Sergiy believes many of those driving behind turned back when they saw the cars in front turning and heard the gunshots.
After the shooting, Maksim's body was left on the highway and Ksenia's was left in the car. Maksim's son and his friend's mother were told by Russian soldiers to walk back along the road. When they got a safe distance from the Russian soldiers, she called her husband, who came to take them to safety. They returned to the dacha, and were evacuated safely to Kyiv the next day.
IMAGE SOURCE,
JEREMY BOWEN
Image caption,
A burned out car on the road where Maksim and Ksenia were killed
The boy is with his grandmother in a safe location in Ukraine but away from Kyiv, where Sergiy remains.
On Friday, Sergiy received a call informing him that the area had been re-taken by Ukrainian forces. There was more bad news.
"They burned everyone. Burned the cars as well," Sergiy says.
A team of BBC journalists taken to the same stretch of road saw many burned cars and bodies. Among them was Maksim's car, riddled with shrapnel and reduced to a shell by fire, with the burned remains of a body inside it and one on the road beside it, still wearing a wedding ring.
Full report here
It's business as usual (for now anyway) it seems as they replaced the cancelled Rio Tinto supply of bauxite with West African suppliers, whatever happens to the plant if Oleg Deripaska finds himself on the EU sanctions list is unknown, though I can't see if putting the plant at risk (it's currently the largest Aluminia plant in Europe), mind you I think the plant was only secure for another few years anyway, perhaps the future operation will be reviewed in light of the circumstances.
A total of 1,872 Nuclear Explosions to 1992
(I don't know whether Hiroshima & Nagasaki are included)
In total nuclear test megatonnage, from 1945 to 1992, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including eight underwater) were conducted with a total yield of 545 megatons, with a peak occurring in 1961–1962, when 340 megatons were detonated in the atmosphere by the United States and Soviet Union, while the estimated number of underground nuclear tests conducted in the period from 1957 to 1992 was 1,352 explosions with a total yield of 90 Mt.
Above paragraph is from a Wikipedia page
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://we.vanillicon.com/v2/e050b53be62f0ae2404c620976170938.svg)
