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[Il Palazzo]

I mean for god's sake he hasn't even achieved air superiority and he's just pushing in waves of half-trained infantry who are dying in droves because they don't have the knowledge or discipline to get out of their IFVs.

Major air superiority is there. What Russia doesn't have is air supremacy. Something USSR\Russia had in every war since WW2. They don't have a clue how to fight when the enemy has their own airforce.

I would be wary of painting the Russians as incompetent here. By all counts they have a vastly superior air force that they simply aren't employing in its full capacity (yet). When your enemy has 15 aircraft/helicopters for each of yours, then you don't really have an air force.

[Lord Shonus]

Remember Turkey? A military coup was ended there by civilians throwing themselves in front of tanks.
The same is happening at small scale in Ukrainian towns.

I wonder what would happen if the women and children from Kiev would go confront the troops surrounding their cities in an unarmed protest.
It would possibly end the war by mass defection because the vast majority of the Russian forces don't want to shoot their brother and sister Ukrainians even when they're armed, let alone unarmed. The Russian forces that are evil enough to do so aren't in Ukraine, they're back in Russia beating and kicking Russian protestors.
Morale for a lot of them is already near shattering point. They were told they'd be fighting nazis but they find themselves fighting teachers and nurses, and being told so by every civilian they pass in every village on the road.

There has been quite a bit of that. So far, u its haven't done much advancing through such roadblocks, though at least one has used stun grenades to blast a clear path.

[Strongpoint]

I mean for god's sake he hasn't even achieved air superiority and he's just pushing in waves of half-trained infantry who are dying in droves because they don't have the knowledge or discipline to get out of their IFVs.

Major air superiority is there. What Russia doesn't have is air supremacy. Something USSR\Russia had in every war since WW2. They don't have a clue how to fight when the enemy has their own airforce.

I would be wary of painting the Russians as incompetent here. By all counts they have a vastly superior air force that they simply aren't employing in its full capacity (yet). When your enemy has 15 aircraft/helicopters for each of yours, then you don't really have an air force.

Or their vastly superior airforce exists only on paper and the majority of aircrafts aren't combat-ready.

[da_nang]

The UN General Assembly has, through a United for Peace resolution, voted to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine with 141 votes. Russia, Belarus, Syria, Eritrea, and North Korea voted against it, 35 abstained.

[nenjin]

Wonder who the abstentions were.

[MorleyDev]

Interesting point I saw brought up is that Russia may be running into the issue that rampant corruption may keep things in a state moving, but it both isn't efficient at it and is very hard to remove or move away from once it becomes entrenched. Since military might only matters on paper, up to the point that you actually use it, I can see how it'd be a prime target for oliagarchs wanting to "skim some off the top", so it seems like a good chunk of the military budget of Russia could have been basically vanishing into the black hole of oliagrach banks accounts and properties.

Bank accounts and properties they kept outside of Russia and are having their access to restricted by the international sanctions...

[Lord Shonus]

Wonder who the abstentions were.

The two big ones are China (for a variety of obvious reasons) and Viet Nam (who has a policy of being aggressively, even militantly, neutral). The rest are lesser Russian satellites and a scattering of minor nations.

EDIT: Also Pakistan and India - somehow I had them lumped into the "nay" column

[da_nang]

Spoiler: Map of votes (click to show/hide)

[EuchreJack]

Spoiler: Map of votes (click to show/hide)

Very interesting.  I think the map shows something significant.

[Starver]

Pakistan and India have their own disputes between themselves (and seasoned with a pinch of China, to give it a slightly more spicey note), which might be just enough to make them reluctant to be judgemental in the Ukraine case.

(PPE: That map shows other 'reasons', but still some interesting greens-amidst-yellows and yellows-amidst-greens.)


Interesting news on the OneWeb launch. Sat on the launchpad, moneys will not (probably cannot) be returned. Russia demanded assurances that the satellites would never be used for military purposes against itself (not a promise that can be made) and also demanded that the UK government sell its share of the company to Russia ("No way, Dmitry!") and has been internally publicising the painting over/removal of various flags (UK, US, France) previously on the payload fairings. But will probably bring the thing back into the assembly building rather than let it launch.

Russia (as with other media-controlling states) are somewhat scared of LEO-communications satellites, and... yes... they could have additional military uses too, which would be of less concern in a world not gone quite so mad, but might even be their major concern if the Lukewarm War continues for long enough.

(And I imagine that an excuse to unload and dissect one or two of the packages, to try to recover key onboard programming/hard-wired info/etc, might be an attractive option.)

[EuchreJack]

...and now we know why Elon has backed Ukraine.  That's right, keep those Russians pissed off and not launching the competitor's stuff!

The unintended side effect, of course, is that Russia is now motivated to both create their own satellite network and continue developing their satellite destroying weapons.

[Il Palazzo]

Spoiler: Map of votes (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Not quite there yet (click to show/hide)

[Lord Shonus]

ASAT is one of the most important weapons for a peer war in an age of GPS-guided munitions. Russia didn't need any additional incentive to develop them.

[nenjin]

India and Pakistan make total sense. They would both love to invade each other, for territorial as well as cultural reasons.

[martinuzz]

Abramovitsj sells Chelsea and forgives the club all outstanding loans (worth about 1.8 billion).
He says he will use the proceedings of the sale to create a foundation to aid victims of the war in Ukraine.

It is unclear if he means to aid Ukrainian victims, or aid mothers of Russian fallen soldiers and Russians that are victim of sanctions  /s