Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

Honestly,as I was typing it out , thats what I was thinking, "first they came for the Gays "

On the subject of manpower shortages in Russia, I heard some random podcaster during the week point out that Ukraine's invasion of Kursk was an inadvertent gift for Russia albeit with a short expiry date. Insofar as Russia ever follows "the rules", it has always been the case that the twice-yearly intake of conscripts were always guaranteed not to be sent off to war in a foreign country. Those with enough money to pay the appropriate bribes were able to ensure that this still applied during the period of the SMO, which limited their availability for frontline combat.

However, when Ukraine invited itself into Kursk, Putin was immediately able to send this under-used resource to "defend the Motherland" on Russian soil. This is one of the reasons the incursion didn't alleviate pressure on other lines of combat straight away. The strategy worked for Ukraine in the end though - the conscripts are dead, and Russia had to pull forces from the contested territory of Ukraine to stabilise the situation. We're seeing the effect of that now, with Ukraine retaking pockets of land along the Donbas front line.

I also read one (single, uncorroborated) post indicating that the bould Kim isn't entirely happy with the supplementary manpower arrangement, in particular the fact that the Russians don't consider it necessary to feed anyone working for them, and rather too many officers have been killed in airstrikes without ever being in combat. If there's even a grain of truth in that, maybe we don't need to worry too much about having millions of North Koreans fueling another year of meat-waves.

Friends of Russia chipping in again -

BUDAPEST, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Hungary has asked the United States to exempt Russia's Gazprombank from sanctions when it comes to payments for natural gas as those sanctions could negatively affect some U.S. allies, Hungary's foreign minister said on Wednesday.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungary-requests-us-sanctions-exemption-gas-payments-gazprombank-2024-12-04/

Always thought it funny ,that even after the Duma had signed off on the not yet acquired territory of Ukraine now being part of russia , the russian gov still didn't send their national service conscripts directly to Ukraine,

Basically even the Gov doesn't believe their own bullshit ..

This is really crazy footage

Lavrov doesn't know it but it is actually the Klingons who are behind this. In fact the Klingons are really being used by the Borg. I can't explain it all though, it's complicated…

Big time. The chaps running were a bit lucky as they could of all been mown down.

I find that Lavrov, Peskov, Soloyuv and the female contingent are extremely reliable in their reporting, its all a question of intrepretation. Believe the opposite of what they say, and you will have the nearest thing to the truth that the Russians are capable of.

Russians really freaking out over Syria.

The drones are one thing the Chinese are supplying (defective) parts for, its a different ballgame when they are supplying aircraft parts……in one day alone recently, there were 3 emergency incidents declared in one day!!. But most days, there are incidents of one kind or another from major to minor. I was on one Russian flight, in an IL76 cargo plane, and the plane had to land. So the engineer got out to have a look, and I was holding the ladder for him while he worked on the engine. He had a look, got down off the ladder, collected a hammer and chisel from the toolbox, went back up the ladder, where he started hammering away at some part of the engine,then he came back down the ladder, closed up the engine cowling and spoke in Russian to what I understood to be " That ***** part is always giving trouble! And off we flew again, Normalno!

Yet Ukraine relies on Chinese drone components because the US drones were too unreliable.