Russia - threadbanned users in OP

There was a stage where the border between Ukraine and Russia was just seen as a formality and people from both populations moved between countries for work, marriage, vacation, trade etc. The question then is how did this start? Within Russia there is an active nationalist faction, that has it's own imperialist ambitions and wants to recreate the Soviet Union, you are talking about a country where Stalin is popular among a majority of the population. Politically the nationalists have been very active and it is something the Russian ruling class i.e. the Siloviki has been willing to use. Within Ukraine there is also an extreme nationalist faction, mostly originating in the Western Ukraine. Before all this the economic power in Ukraine is split between Kiev, Dnipro and Donetsk. The Ukrainian oligarchs fell out among themselves and used politics to advance their business. The fate of the Russian speaking populations in "near Russia", has an impact on Russian domestic politics that would cost Putin if he ignored it. The power struggles in Ukraine opened the door for the Russian invasion.

On the US ending or reducing support for Ukraine in the winter...What's this "domestic leftist violence"? [Ant-eee-fah?]

How is Biden a lame duck? I thought he was doing okay given the constraints of the creaking US political system and fact that the opposing party/"loyal" opposition has left the reservation for good & don't seem to believe in maintaining democracy any longer when they don't win the votes.

edit: On a "lack of (US public) support for the war" (presume you mean a lack of support for US assistance to Ukraine) I got impression it was quite a popular policy, even in the Republican base. The efforts of some Republican "thought leaders" to push pro Russia/pro Putin messages, spread various conspiracy theories and undermine legitimacy of US support for Ukraine doesn't seem to have worked so well.

Who are the Republican "war hawks"? The only war hawks on Ukraine are of course the Russians and Putin...US is just following the standard post-WW1 onwards policy in Europe of supplying (selling or giving) military support + weapons to countries coming under threat from revisionist, aggressive dictatorships with designs on conquering lands and peoples that do not belong to them and don't want to be ruled over by them. Nothing very hawkish there IMO.

The ones trying to break the existing US foreign policy mould are some of the US Republicans who would happily leave Ukraine and Europe to swing in the wind + like you seem to have a bit of admiration for Vladimir Putin.

A source I found with google for your image was a Russian UN rep. on Twitter, https://twitter.com/dpol_un. This account was retweeting someone else who said they got it from (what looks like) another pro-Russia/pro-Putin disinfo account. Account linked has also "retweeted" our own Mick Wallace! You're really doing the lord's work posting it up here to correct a "narrative"!

Occam's razor: They received still classified drone/autonomous surface vessels from the US around May.

For sure they have underperformed, their logistics is terrible. The regular Russian army has not yet folded in Kherson, despite being in a crap situation they have held, this demonstrates they can fight. I would not could them out yet, and history shows they have colossal f!ckups before and have been able to come back with reforms and sheer numbers. This is what they will attempt to do between January and April. The expected order is that Ukraine makes as much gains as it can before mud season bogs them down, there is a long pause before the Winter war.

Ah, well that's different. Got a link? Wouldn't happen to be one of those paid traitors, by any chance?

I can't see there being the obvious high morale among the Ukrainian military if they were suffering such losses. They are positively ebullient.

Big explosion and fire reported near Yevpatoriya

Surely if Russia held territory, then tactically retreated to a position so that they could kill 5 times as many Ukrainian soldiers as they themselves take as casualties, then it would be relatively trivial for them to advance against the decimated Ukrainians and retake the territory they just retreated from?

John McCain is dead. Liz Cheney daughter of Dick Cheney of the Iraq war recently lost her seat. There is a faction in the Republican party and indeed the Democrats who see the aid to Ukraine as none or their business and they will hold more sway after the election. The Republicans are expected to take the house of representatives in November and maybe the senate too. That leaves a lame duck president that may well be impeached for whatever reson, they set the bar low with Trump. Considering the activity of the leftists while Trump was president, their current activity against the Supreme court justices, they are not likely to accept a Republican dominated house, senate and supreme court and start agitating again. Couple that with the inflation and cost of living struggles of the middle class, domestic concerns can mean support for the Ukraine is not favoured as they concentrate on the 2024 elections.

Right now in Germany and across Europe a shortage of gas molecules affects industrial production, electricity and gas heating. It will take at least 3 years before any semblance of stability is restore to the gas markets and in the interim that is a lot of supply destruction for the good produced by those processes. Politically there will be pressure from industry on politicians to bring about a resolution. That opens the appalling vista of a war economy as more money and resourcs are fed into the war machine to make up for stimulus. The domestic political environment will become very unstable, we can expect strikes, and outages and large bankruptcies in Europe.

If Medvedev had a spark of sense he'd be keeping his big gob shut and positioning himself to fill Putins boots after his inevitable demise. It seems none of them are intelligent enough to play that game. Stay onside with Putin but remain palatable to the west.

Not true, VW group and Mercedes are two of the leading companies in the electrification of cars and will eventually surpass Tesla in the coming years. The Japanese will suffer as they haven't embraced electric cars are banking on hydrogen.

German Motor industry is finished if Electric vehicles become mandatory???? Only difference between EV's and Diesel/ Petrol engined cars is the power source,,,everything else in the same. Bodys. Interiors, drive trains, brakes, steering etc. Production lines will still be the same...car bodies will still have to be manufactured, regardless of the power source, be it electric or ICE. No, I doubt German vehicle production will be affected. Probably increase if anything.

It wasn't the train because the section that blew out was on the opposite side to the train track and the road in-between is still fairly intact.

If I was to guess it was marine based. Blew out a pillar to drop a section and the shrapnel penetrated the fuel tanks on the train causing them to ignite.