Russian dominance over the entire solar system. Woohoo. Right on.
This you @RealityReallyMatters ?
China accounts for something like 70% of economic activity amongst BRICS nations, something like 10x that of Russia and they're somehow going to be led by Russia in an economic alliance. It takes one hell of a superiority complex to buy into that shite.
China and India absolutely hate each other. China is also becoming more of an influence on far eastern Russia than Moscow is and Brazil and South Africa only in because like you said The Economist or Time or someone coined a nice acronym. The latter have far more important regional groups to deal with.
It's just the G7's Europa League/ Joe McDonagh cup.
BRICS is a group of countries with no common purpose other than not being any existing grouping of countries. Based on an article about emerging economy's in a newspaper. Can't see it being a grouping which lasts.
BRICS is only valuable as long as it is useful.
Any of India, Brazil or South Africa could be gone out of that group very easily with a change of Government or an overreach by China.
A group Russia will lead.
😂🤣
Genuinely no other response to that drivel.
Ignoring the fact that Russia is all but a vassal state of China at this point, the latest comraderie among the BRICS nations is that China have released an official map of the country laying claim to Indian territory. The idea that they will ever be any kind of coordinated communal economic alliance is fantasy.
Just imagine a few years ago we had the Russians flying these bombers into Irish airspace just to test what response they'd get from the Irish and UK authorities. We had reams of headlines produced in the papers about the bear showing it's claws to Ireland and mocking this country.
Now we have ground crews in Russia throwing car tyres on the wings and top of the aircraft like you would when covering a silage pit. Just because they're terrified of the bombers being hit by cardboard drones. Which has already happened with two bombers destroyed.
Karma.
A defeated Russia is far more likely to be given access back to European markets than one actively engaging in a partitioned Ukraine.
Once we get through this winter there will be very little appetite to roll back on the shift away from dependence on Russia. Last winter was already the death knell of Russian energy hegemony.
I think a lot of people who say "I hope Ukraine win" but also are pleading for a partitioned Ukraine are being honest.
Their motivation is not Putin or Ukraine but based on selfish goals like a return to cheap Russian gas or more availablity in Dublin hotels.
Progress is progress. I think the supporters of Ukr defence can be patient. I'm sure you're happy to see progress too.
Of course more rapid progress would be good to seen and to bring this whole desperate saga to an end.
Russia to be driven out of Ukraine inc Crimea abd given such a bloody nose, that'll it realign their thinking for many decades to come.
I'm sure most of us want this and the sooner the better, but patience is a virtue too.
Keeps the newly mobilised busy I guess and away from the vodka.
To show that what you are doing is anything other than a fishing expedition, you need to show where partition is a coming reality(improbable given F16 are coming in Winter meaning Ukraine and allies are in for the long haul) and how russia's crippled economy is somehow outproducing the west and what it supplies to Ukraine.
That you only respond when called out on the fishing is telling.
This has been the cheapest dismantling both in human and $ cost of a superpower in history (and this isn't to diminish what Ukraine have lost since the conflict began).
Though, while russian collapse is inevitable if this continues, it won't happen quickly and may take the expiry of putin to occur.
Does anyone believe the UKr. commanders when they talk about a quick end? probably not, but people understand why they're saying it, just as people understand what's happening when a poster only comes in to talk about inevitable russian victories and whenever there's telegram leaks of russian attacks.
We can only guess what the motivation was.
Targeting systems on the drone. Some half arsed thought of protection from actual strikes or some bored personnel testing satellite surveillance systems of the Ukrainians.
Or as proposed above just being told do something with whatever you have to hand but do something.
You'd imagine now Ukrainians will arm some drones with incendiary devices now to take advantage of this.
A quarter of a million casualties is mental for a war in this day and age, and that's just on the Russian side. When someone described the war as WW2 with drones, they weren't lying.
Ukraine's existence as a nation is under threat every day and night, simply keeping going requires a monumental national effort, which in itself requires high morale. The leadership have to be optimistic about their plans. They can't come out and say "hey Ukrainians, this war might last years and hundreds of thousands will die, oh and we'll probably never liberate Crimea". That's simply not a possibility in their situation.
They have defied the odds, they have also produced tempered goals, and they've also acknowledged setbacks.
It's not a political party making promises, it's a country fighting a war for it's survival. If they say they'll take Crimea in 6 months, good, I hope they do. But if they don't, I won't be holding it against them or celebrating it as a "failure".
Also people support Ukraine, which is being attacked as a nation, it's a very emotive issue, ergo people share their hopes and optimism. If someone says that Ukraine will defeat Russia in 3 months, I may not agree with it privately, but I understand why they are expressing that.
Ukraine are making gains under extreme circumstances, it's fantastic. If they weren't making gains, it'd be a setback, but I'd still understand.
I've repeatedly noticed there not much difference between your views and those celebrating Ukraine's lack of progress online.
There is an undeniable disconnect between the official Russian narrative that everything is fine, their casualties are minimal and everything is going according to plan, and the fact that last September they mobilised 300k reservists, this year obtained 280k new contract soldiers (some of whom will be conscripts who sign on after, some will be Wagner and other paralimitaries who signed up and others will be specialists etc) and there is talk of a further mobilisation after the 10th September regional elections in Russia.
While the extent of casualties can be debated, dismissed or ignored, the sheer scale of Russia's need for new manpower is the best possible evidence that they are suffering enormous casualties in Ukraine. It suggests that the 260k casualties figure is accurate, and that there are other losses due to contracts expiring (Russian stop loss being something of a legal grey area) and/or prisoners taken and soldiers deserting.
All the while Russia is, for the most part, on the back foot and losing territory and momentum.
More please
TB2 makes a return
To be fair Ukraine set it's own standard to be judged by. It was their own chief commander who claimed they would have taken Crimea by now in their counter offensive. They talked all of this up for 6 months in advance.
What we have had since is plenty of Ukraine propaganda/happy talk and very little to show for it on the battlefield. Yes, there are some small territorial gains but it's nowhere near enough and that's the issue.
It's the pattern of getting over-excited for any Russian moves whilst downplaying anything from Ukraine.
Only one army is moving forward at the moment, that's Ukraine. Which is incredible considering the defenses they are up against, and their lack of air-cover. Unfortunately some individuals compare it to the Kharkiv collapse, so anything that isn't comparable is celebrated as "failure".
There is no defending needed. The reality is what it is. Not one point I've raised has been challenged because it's true. There is nothing "contrarian" about stating the actual situation.
What some posters want is everyone to engage in fantasy hopium and ignore reality.
If Ukraine manage to turn it around I'll be first here lauding their success. It hasn't happened yet. A few fields and villages isn't the type of success that will change the outcome of the war. Don't get me wrong, everything gained back is a plus but it's not enough so far.
It can't be good for the airframe to be storing old tires on the wings and means they are worried about their strategic bombers being hit.
But it does smack of soviet style pretending to do something that really does nothing (the chemical suit for radiation protection in the K-19 film always struck me as an example of this).
I was thinking it must be either that or some attempt at creating a "dazzle ship" style effect.
Both seem pretty desperate if so.
Would the goal be to confuse the trigger mechanisms if the tires are hit instead of the body directly? i.e. a rubber/metal hit instead of metal on metal. Obviously, the drones could be adapted for that or just target the other areas (most drone hits seem to be targeted damage than setting the target fully ablaze).
I think it's fair to say Russia's anti air systems (and possibly radars) are not up to scratch along the Kherson front.
The S-400 is not really designed to hunt cheap $5 million USD Drones. It's designed to kill Jets, Helicopters and large turboprop planes.
These Drones should be getting shot down either by OSA, TOR, Pantsir, Strela systems.
Or intercepted by Jets and Helicopters.
With luck they'll forget to remove them before takeoff.
To be fair, the posters goal is to hook people into replies like this, there's 0 follow up beyond the contrarian initial posts and no defending done on any of the points made as they fall apart immediately under the slightest scrutiny.
Been far too long since we've seen the TB2's in action. One has to wonder was the recently destroyed S400 preventing them getting close to the Frontline around Kherson.
They already have, but Putin won each time. Challenging Putin one by one they were easier to subdue. That's not to say that they didn't give Putin headaches, because they did, many times, especially Chechnya. To this day, there's an anti-Kadyrov movement in Chechnya. He has never been forgiven for changing sides turning from an anti-Russian to pro Russian stance. When they killed his father Akhmad ( they placed a bomb under a stand that was being built for him for him to review the Victory Day parade.) All of Chechnya rejoiced. Ramzan Kadyrov has 6 sons ( 2 adopted) and 6 daughter's and 3 wives. And to the best of my knowledge, they are all alive and well. And only for the support Putin gave Kadyrov, he'd be long gone too. As soon as Putin goes, I'd say that there will be big changes in the Federation. In each case, Putin managed to install a pro Putin government. Even today, this is very evident in Georgia, where there has resurfaced a protest movement to remove the pro Putin Prime Minister, who is seen to lean more towards Putin than European which the majority of Georgians favor. (shades of Maiden protests in 2014) For Armenia, I'm not too sure as I haven't ever been directly involved there, but I presume that its standard Putin operation, either start a separatist movement if there isn't one, or aggravate an existing one. Ensuring that the outcome is favorable to Russia.
When you don't know how to dispose of tyres and Molloy Metals only takes scrap cars minus the tyres. What do you do?
You put them on the wings of your TU - 95 strategic bomber and hope when it's hit by a drone it takes the tyres with it in one big inferno.
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