Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

Sometimes movement of military assets, often aircraft carriers, is just a type of warning. There might be no intention of using any of it.

But then again, we live in the era of Trump so who knows.

Sorry my bad - the Venezuelan oil industry was nationalised in 1976 , a generation before Chavez -

So it looks like the US is just going to hand it out to American firms -likely Exxon..

Possibly…

OSINT accounts reporting that flight trackers show a lot of C-17s headed *east* to England from Savannah and Ft Campbell—homes of the ready Ranger battalion (1/75) and the 160th SOAR (which together would constitute DOD’s on-call airfield seizure package)

There are other explanation like winter exercises, troop rotations, but it might be for more warmongering.

I hope the EU is ready for appropriate measures should the US seize Greenland. Such measures might necessarily inflict severe collateral damage on Ireland.

It would be the end of NATO, just for starters.

Some on here need to stop watching Pinky and the Brain. :)

My grasp of geography is sufficient that I am aware they wouldn't be staging from the UK, it was just an aside. The US is hardly going to stage an invasion of Greenland from Iceland.

I doubt fully stage, but support, why not? At that point their involvement in NATO is done, and Iceland will be in the situation of having to choose whether to allow movements willingly, or not (which would require external support).

Similar to how Columbia staged aircraft used in the Venezuela ops.

Anyway's, digression, back to topic.

Efforts by the armed forces of Ukraine to disarm putin's terrorists continue:

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-missile-factory-in-flames-after-ukrainian-drone-attack-media-report/

Are these drones purposely loitering around the Moscow airspace to disrupt flights and use up Russian AD missiles or are they heading directly at targets and doing the above anyway?

Seems they were probing the territory for a couple of days, then got serious last night. Targets hit north, south and east of Moscow, and a raid on distant Bashkortostan for good measure.

Backs up the comment by one of the Ukrainian defence forces recently that they're exceeding the replacement rate in casualties.

As they approach 1.5 million casualties it's probably worth revisiting their demographics. With a population of around 140m estimates of what they have to serve in the military were around 15-18 million according to this article from 2023 -

Russia’s abysmal demographics data, Its population has decreased by 1 million between 2020 and 2023, births fall on early 19th century levels | by Chris Snow | Medium. And that's when you use a broad age range of over 40 and up to 55.

You need maybe 8-15 workers (so say 10) working in the economy for every 1 soldier. So basically 10 workers for every kitted soldier.

Ukrainian Intelligence estimates 620,000 Russian troops in and bordering Ukraine. That's what Russia needs as a minimum to keep the current near stalemate situation. Simplistically, it needs a workforce of 6.2 million (just for the Ukrainian deployment) out of a total workforce of 82 million. Putin has room to mobilise more for sure but he's pulling more and more from the working population and things are clearly not going well on the economic front. Hence scenes of Indian migrants descending on Moscow.

Scenarios that might bring Russia to the peace talks -

1. Putin runs low on soldiers to throw to the grinder due to the demographics. I wouldn't make a prediction of when that might happen.
2. The delta of Russian casualties to replacements continues to move in Ukraine's favour
3. Finally that Russian economic collapse
4. Putin dies

Putin is playing a waiting game but with the European funding secured and while noting Ukraine's own manpower issues who does waiting suit best? Putin must also be aware that US midterms this year might help temper Trump somewhat. It could turn out that 2025 was the peak time for the best possible Russian outcome (which most still wouldn't have called a win).

Good analysis indeed.

Of those 4 scenarios, none of them will happen today or tomorrow but over the longer term one of them must occur.

I suppose an extension of the 1st scenario (running low on meat for the grinder) likely means Russia still make sporadic attacks to gain ground, but with much lower numbers and intensity. Both countries keep firing drones and missiles at each other.

Hopefully over time European support for Ukraine increases, and potentially US support also increases post-Trump.

For Russia, it's hard to see things improving any time soon. I agree with you that 2025 was the peak time for them to get the favourable outcome.

They already did, in 1867.

Will they intercept it or not? If they haven't by now and after being asked by Russia not to I suspect they won't. Will any of the Baltic States do it instead if it gets that far though? Changing flag and ship name mid sea. Sure what'd be wrong with that.

Route of Oil Tanker Pursued by US Being Monitored by Irish Authorities

Edit: Just an update on whereabouts it is.

I'd say that the theory that Trump is a Russian agent will be confirmed if he takes Greenland by military force - totally un-necessary from a security standpoint. It destroys NATO as a serious organization, chaos within the EU - probable closure of US bases in Europe followed by the stoping of US weapons to EU and by extension to Ukraine. Putin would be delighted. Bonus having the spotlight taken from Russia.