And as a consequence Vlad now lobbing missiles into Kyiv etc..
Fascinating stuff. No wonder the US were 100% certain Russia would invade. Thanks for the link
Indeed. That attack would have been a punch to the gut for Putin.
Good article. I also read somewhere (I thought it was on the RUSI website but I can't find it now), that as Russia continues to lose ground in the areas it previously occupied, expect to see an increase in cyber-warfare and on other fronts in this hybrid war.
I’ve always felt increasingly against the West too, fuelled by Putin’s bitterness. He’d love all our ATM’s, card machines and energy grid IT systems to crash.
Salty Vlad was always going to chuck some missiles back.
According to the journalist John Sweeney, Putin has been waging war on the west for more than a decade, with cyber crime, disruption, election/referendum rigging, you name it. It's just that the west didn't really 'notice' (=broadcast it). Once he invaded Ukraine, it became impossible to keep it under wraps, and since then, the world's media have got the ball and are knocking it around nicely.
Surely now Ukraine has the right and justification, not to invade Russia, but to warn her that if they continue to attack the electricity grid, Ukraine will tit-for-tat destroy their sub-stations? They could give warnings about the targets they were going for so that civilians could be evacuated from the plants so that there would be no - or minimal - loss of life that Russians could label as war.
I agree that it seems unlikely that Belarus presents much of a threat to Ukraine. Maybe Belarus presents more of a threat to Russia - I’d be worried about how Putin would react if he loses both Ukraine and Belarus from Russia’s sphere of influence - an outcome that seems possible - having already pushed Finland to NATO.
I try not to worry, it’s just a personal thing that gets me through. Putin’s an evil KGB/FSB terrorist, a murderer and mass murderer.
That interview was utterly harrowing. We must never allow ourselves to gain any sort of mental immunity to their atrocities
Hope your final para. is right.
They're having to recommission 40 or 50 year old Cold War tanks, helicopters and other hardware, sitting ducks for 21st Century US, Dutch, UK and Germany weaponry. Plus experienced crews are lost with every tank kill ... their tanks do not separate the ammunition store from the crew, the autoloader is found in the turret. The men are lost with the tank almost every time a Javelin scores a direct hit.
