Well I could certainly see Ukraine engaging in attacks on Russian soil; especially after Russia making threats against Kyiv yesterday. Assuming it wasn't some sort of military target in the village though I would seriously question the benefit to hitting civilian buildings if you're Ukraine. Even hitting a military target in a civilian area like a village seems a bit... counter-productive to me.
I suppose they could be saying to Russia "if you hit civilian targets in Kyiv; we'll just start hitting your villages in Russia". I'm just not sure that's in their best interests either.
As for a Russian false flag I guess it could be used to ramp up justification for conscription and mobilisation efforts? More palatable to them than admitting the Moskva was struck by Ukraine I suppose...
😅
All contingent on the average russian joe bloggs finding out the truth.
Unfortunately, Putin is quite adept at keeping his people in the dark
At this stage its an existential war for the current regime in Moscow I reckon.
Between the Global and individual sanctions, loss of trade, loss of access to trade routes, loss of military hardware, and cost of missiles etc this is a collosally expensive war for Russia.
The thing is once the "real" losses start to become apparent what happens. From the domestic Russian perspective this is a limited Military operation with minimal goals and small loses.
When people realise that the losses are massive and it includes quite a number of tanks, planes, helicopters and potentially a missile cruiser then his popularity could be adversely effected ;)
I'll have 'What is a false flag' for $10,000
Kyiv is definitely going to get some "freedom making" attention.
She even employs Putins tactics when it comes to protests. Can't see that being a problem in France at all. They don't really do protesting very much...
Russia claiming Ukraine attacked a village in Russia with two helicopters:
The below seems to be the result of the attack; note what appears to be the tail-end of an air-to-ground rocket in one of the images:
Wow. That's a recording I would expect from a Russia-like state, certainly not France. A sign of things to come under a le pen presidency?
I hope they do win: but as far as I'm concerned the "right" way to approach it is to assume Russia are going to have success in this phase of the war and thus ramping up Ukraine's military support is of paramount importance. It doesn't do Ukraine any good to predict or assume a Russian failure.
I would much rather Ukraine have far too many heavy weapons systems flooding the country than not enough. Also even if Russia "lose" we should do everything we can to make that "loss" hurt as much as possible.
It doesn't matter what he looks like to us. What matters is his popularity in Russia.
There was absolutely no need for this war. All these days later it still beggers belief.
A penny for mad Vlad's thoughts. He's come out of it looking like he hasn't a clue what is going on and like an idiot really.
Before he had the image of an intelligent, calculating strong man.
The damage inflicted on the Moskva sums it all up really. A disaster from the start and worsening by the day for him.
Cut your losses Vlad and take a bottle of whiskey and gun to a room in the Kremlin because there is no return.
Even more embarrassing for Russia though is the fact it also has S300/Grumble and Osa/Gecko systems on-board and the Neptune is a subsonic cruise missile.
I suppose it's also possible Ukraine fired a full launcher at it (i.e. 4 missiles) and only 2 actually hit; or potentially the CIWS did get some hits in but the missile's carcass still managed to strike the ship and cause enough damage to start a fire and ammo cook-off.
Unfortunately we may never know; since it seems that Ukraine is taking a plausible deniability kind of approach to its attacks on Russian targets outside Ukraine's sovereign land-based territory.
French media reports about the event that took place at the press conference of Marine Le Pen, a candidate in the presidential election. The woman from the audience got up and raised a cardboard heart above her head with a printout of Le Pen with Vladimir Putin. The photo was taken during a meeting in 2017 during the election campaign in France.
She was taken away immediately.
The video of the evacuation of a disruptor from the international press conference of MLP.
That's a fairly major design flaw for a warship that cost $690 million dollars. Par for the course with the Russians at this stage. Probably cost €300m to build and $390m in kickbacks. Quarter of which went to the poisonous dwarf himself.
I think Russia are going to lose this war in fact. All the momentum is with Ukraine and they are finally starting to receive the heavy armaments they have been begging for. There's not much evidence the Russians are up to inflicting a major military defeat on Ukraine. not even in the Donbass.
They only have two replacement ships of the class operational, Varyag, which is acting as the flagship of the Pacific fleet, and Marshal Ustinov, which is operating with the Northern Fleet. The incomplete fourth hull of the class is unlikely to be available anytime soon, as she's moored in Mykolaiv. Even if one were available, I doubt that Russia would be willing to commit anything larger than a frigate at the moment.
EDIT: I forgot to mention earlier, but from what it looks like, the Slava class seem to have a blind spot in their point defense system. Their CIWS systems are clustered forward of the bridge and either side of the funnel but can't fire directly aft as there's a fire control radar in the way.
Wow, huge morale boost for Ukraine.
Presumably Russia won't be permitted a replacement vessel of the same class through the Bosphorus by Turkey from the Baltic fleet as the total tonnage of warships in the Black Sea would be exceeded.
It did seem kinda weird Russia would claim something so easily verifiable; looks like the Moskva is still afloat:
Some ****ing balls on him expressing any opinion, after attempting to extort Zelenskyy and jeopardising their safety for political gain
I think it all gets down to the head of the country. Zelenskyy stayed and fought inspiring others.
Obviously, if you invade another country, your air force, ground force and navy are fair game.
The pompous, arrogant Kreminals will see this as an escalation though.
With the Ukrainian army seemingly able to stay a step ahead and with outside assistance massively ramped up, perhaps the next fortnight will be absolutely crucial, and indeed, decisive.
Huge if its accurate; a lot of expensive ordinance and equipment on that ship even ignoring the morale boost for Ukraine.
I would be a bit surprised at Russia's press release if it genuinely has sunk though: Sevastopol is a massive naval installation and is clearly visible from public areas in the city... it would be particularly dumb of them to lie about it not sinking when the lack of the Moskva in Sevastopol would be fairly obvious.
Washington DC in fact 😀
I'm guessing this is a Russian Embassy somewhere.
If the below is true it could make for a very interesting May the 9th parade....
The YouTuber in question was actually one of the few who had a pretty good read on Russia's initial invasion.
In fact the outcome he foresaw was very close what is playing out right now: that the Odessa coastline would be too much of a stretch, that Kyiv would be too optimistic (in fact he didn't even expect Russia to actively invade from Belarus at all), and that Russia would be eventually able to control the Donbass region after several weeks with significant casualties.
So I wouldn't be discounting his thoughts on how things might progress from here; and for what it's worth many others I follow also broadly agree that Russia will be more successful in this phase of the war. To what extent is still an open question.
Absolutely. The Slava class are not only powerful warships, they're also set up as task group flagships, meaning they have significant Command, Control & Communications systems in addition to their extensive sensor suite and weapons fit. The loss of such a ship, whether sunk or as a partially burned-out hulk, is going to drastically reduce the Russian warfighting ability. I'd go so far as to say that the loss of Moskva is probably the single most painful blow the Ukrainians have inflicted on Russia so far.
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