I believe that they are using wood models to act as decoys
yes that scene where he revealed the discarded hulk of the buran in the abandoned spaceport was just iconic. Really and truly the potential of Russia as a place to visit and explore is infinite and all gone to waste.
I had seen other Youtubers break into the hanger before (which I feel is part of the reason the Buran hanger has had extra security in recent years.
But seeing a Soviet-fan such as Bald finally reach the Buran and breathlessly present "A Soviet Spaceship" had more impact I feel. It was clearly an important moment for him.
Wooden HIMARS. Maybe wooden M777s as well?
That thing was just allowed to rot in a giant hangar, which is basically symbolic of the Russian attitude towards maintenance in general.
Bald and Bankrupt, though, he's really good. Probably the best 'gonzo' travel vlogger on Youtube, that I've seen. Not only does he go to places off the beaten track, but he can speak the language as well, so it's a whole other level of interaction. There are other vloggers who are very good, but usually need a local chaperone/interpreter to help them, which takes the quality down just a notch.
And his Russian videos are very good at just showing ordinary Russians, who are no different from ordinary people elsewhere, it's just they have to swallow Putin's paranoid worldview.
I wonder were the Russians trying to recruit bald to portray pro Putin stuff on his channel is that why he left? He would be invaluable as a propaganda tool with 3m plus subscribers.
Isn't he a sex tourist? Comes across as really creepy from the stuff i watched from him years ago anyway.
Well said
In meantime Space Shuttles sit in various museums lovingly preserved and inspiring new generations of kids into STEM
while the shuttle engines are about to help get back to the moon with Artemis program
aside; most Russian equipment in this war is as old or older than the Buran, there’s something to chew on
One of the things he got blowback on was that he was putting out Russian propaganda, although it was mainly on his Instagram, I think, although I never look at Instagram so I could be wrong - it was just screenshots of Insta stories that I had seen. One thing I did see, though, was him posting a comment under one of Russell Brand's videos agreeing with Brand who was regurgitating a piece of Russian propaganda about bioweapons facilities in Ukraine. Brand, if anyone has not been following his 'journey', has gone from advocating for political change on a grassroots community level to full-blown conspiracy theorist who posts videos with the cheapest sh*tty clickbait titles you can get, i.e. "You won't believe THIS".
Anyway, Bald and Bankrupt does get a bit of criticism for being too pro-Russian at times and there are other accusations that paint him as a creep, but I have seen nothing that firmly alleges anything criminal. He may be a bit of a cocky dickhead in real life, perhaps, and I may not agree with him on some things, but his travel videos are undeniably excellent, so I can separate the art from the artist.
In a very sorry state alas. Really should be cleaned up and put in a museum.
Reading that there's apparently some kind of dispute regarding ownership of Buran that might be part of why it got like this. That, or the Russians are just so crap at maintaining stuff....or both.
😂
Regarding the Buran maybe Kazakhstan (or Ukraine) should demand them back, who made Russia the successor to USSR? UN Security Council seat too imho!
After all Kazakhstan was last to leave USSR after Russia
Bald & Bankrupt's videos were great. You could tell that he just really had a passion for the country and especially its Soviet glory days. He has a great way about him as well - he really immersed himself with the locals. I'd love to hear more details of what actually happened to get him booted out. He's already been denied entry to Ukraine since the war kicked off since his passport was full of Russian stamps. It's odd that the Russians didn't just deny him entry in the same manner but instead ended up arresting and jailing him when he had been inside the country for some time.
Anyway if that was his last time in Russia then I'm glad he got to cover the Jewish Autonomous Oblast as part of it. That name always fascinated me.
Thats journalist makes assumptions on 3 pictures from a video of Ukraines counteroffensive and says its a failure.
You would expect more casualties now in the attack role regardless,but its far from over yet.
I was looking at a map around the Kherson region I see north of the city there's a canal that comes of the Dnipro river that runs right into Criema. It would be quite significant for the Ukrainians to retake this point
He has (or had) an alternate channel "Daily Bald" where he'd put up quick updates and shorter videos of where he was at any given time. Based on his feed you could tell where he was in Siberia, that he was travelling by train (he always does), and that he was on his way to a port city on the Pacific coast. I'm thinking as soon as they realized he was back in the country they aimed to boot him out and used his own feed to find him.
Would be interesting to learn what it was about Bald that got them pissed. You'd think they would like what he was doing.
That canal was constructed to supply drinking water to Crimea. Ukraine closed it after the 2014 invasion, and the Russians worked to reopen it when they took Kherson. Regaining control would certainly give them an edge.
That's one of the reasons why Kherson is so strategically important. It controls the fresh water supply to Crimea.
They'd have been able to track all of his movements via his passport and payments card. Every time he stays somewhere for the night he'd have had to give his passport details.
As he said himself "they never miss an opportunity to shoot themselves in their own foot".
Lots of reports on Twitter this morning that the Ukrainian offensive has failed and they have taken massive loses and likewise the Russians are in full retreat and the city will fall by as early as tomorrow. Just shows the utter toilet that Twitter is when it comes to "reporting" facts.
You really have to be very thick indeed to believe anything you'd read on there.
Bs and bs
Nobody on the ground it's saying either
So far the only thing I seen potentially approaching reality was NASA firms satellite pictures showing fires advancing towards Kherson day after day
tho it’s overcast now, not sure if that makes difference
oh and one tweet video from Russians that was geolocated to about half way between front and Kherson
Russian Base destroys missile
🤣
Looks like Ukraine made some gains in the last few days in their offensive,must be planning to encircle the russians in the north east
Yeah, it's a very large area - the Ukrainian attack might fail, or the Russians might run away, but none of that is going to be decided decisively in just a couple of days.
If this data is correct (could still be misinformation designed to hoodwink the Russians) and they are trying to encircle them, a dream situation would be the Russians detecting this, panicking, trying to "Bug out" and then flee down to the Dnipro river crossings. If the Russian's discipline is bad enough, a big enough bug-out might trigger a mass flight of conscripts from Kherson to south of the river.
Given that the counter offensive is expected to last for many weeks, it would be some bizarre turn of events for it to 'fail' after 2-3 days.
Exactly. I'm just pointing out how many numbskulls post "reports" from Twitter as some sort of gauge of events.
Not all reports/accounts are created equal.
I notice the anonymous Putin bots are out in force on social media this week (none ever seem to post under their real names....I guess they don't want their friends, colleagues and neighbours knowing they have a Putin supporting fanatic in their midst).
Decent take on what has probably actually been happening in the Kherson region for the last week. As he suggests, it could take many weeks in fact to establish how much the counter offensive has achieved (or not achieved).
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