Ukraine-invasion-part-16

[PestorPeston]

Warsaw Russian is letting out a lot of smoke - there has been no decision on who among them will be the next pontiff.

Biden is going there Friday

Is Boris Johnson the designated survivor?

Who the heck let me be in charge?

I went to check to vessel spec on Wikipedia and various pages had already been updated for this. News really does travel fast !!

I googled a picture of it to see what a 'large amphibious warship' looked like and got loads of articles about it being destroyed from 2 days ago.

“Currently (Ukraine's) decision is that while it is still possible, we are providing transit,” Naftogaz head Yuriy Vitrenko said in an interview by video link.

This is what Ukraine said about the gas to Reuters on the 14/03/22.

Today they say the following, placing the blame on the buyers while still providing transit.

If any EU country bows to Putin’s humiliating demands to pay for oil and gas in rubles, it will be like helping Ukraine with one hand and helping Russians kill Ukrainians with the other. I urge relevant countries to make a wise and responsible choice

I cannot reconcile the two statements.

Why do you think it will be just blaming? Wheat price is up, sunflower oil, energy is up, the sanctions bite both ways

Blaming as in 'its all to do with the war' ignoring the fact that multiple energy companies went bust, fuel, food and energy prices were all rising months before the invasion. I remember getting diesel during lockdown at 70p less a litre than I am paying now. Yes sanctions can bite both ways but the 'bite' was being felt in the UK well before the invasion.

@Wrongkindofovercoat

Why do you think it will be just blaming? Wheat price is up, sunflower oil, energy is up, the sanctions bite both ways

Blaming as in 'its all to do with the war' ignoring the fact that multiple energy companies went bust, fuel, food and energy prices were all rising months before the invasion. I remember getting diesel during lockdown at 70p less a litre than I am paying now. Yes sanctions can bite both ways but the 'bite' was being felt in the UK well before the invasion.

Yes they did because the pandemic, or perhaps starting to come out of it, impacted energy costs before the war

[quote MagicFox]Fancy some theorising? Here's a thread asking what the hell has happened to Shoigu and Gerasimov. I mean, really, where are they?! Theories range from squirrelled to safety in the big plane exodus to under house arrest. Answers on a postcard...

twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1506818821667102723?s=21[/quote]
Some of the replies on that thread are hilarious. I don't know, but I'll be veering towards under house arrest or nasty accident with a window unless we see them in the next couple of days. If I were Shoigu or Gerasimov, I'd be putting in an appearance sharpish if people were speculating that I had disappeared.

Blaming as in 'its all to do with the war' ignoring the fact that multiple energy companies went bust, fuel, food and energy prices were all rising months before the invasion. I remember getting diesel during lockdown at 70p less a litre than I am paying now. Yes sanctions can bite both ways but the 'bite' was being felt in the UK well before the invasion.

Well, yes, and the new damage is on top of that, and it's all being felt across the world.

@notimagain Fair enough (also I realised I wrote singer which is technically neither an anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapon but very useful for sewing curtains/heavy fabric. Unless you threw it hard enough). I think I was thinking of NLaws. But at the very least, spending millions on tanks/super flashy weapons has been proved completely useless if you don't also spend money on logistics, decent tyres. maintenance.

[quote namitynamechange]@notimagain Fair enough (also I realised I wrote singer which is technically neither an anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapon but very useful for sewing curtains/heavy fabric. Unless you threw it hard enough). I think I was thinking of NLaws. But at the very least, spending millions on tanks/super flashy weapons has been proved completely useless if you don't also spend money on logistics, decent tyres. maintenance.[/quote]
Yep, agreed (a singer might have been more use to the Russians in some circumstances ).

As always as you say it’s the whole package that matters and I’ve got the impression some old tankie types have been looking at some of the (sometimes fairly horrific) videos of isolated tanks or pairs thereof being picked off and thinking “WT* were they doing….even the German’s Russians, Brits, Yanks learnt not to do XXXX or YYYY almost eighty years ago.”

A lot of what has gone on has been very odd, but good news for the Ukrainians.

Darren McCaffery @darrenmccaffery
Arriving in Brussels @BorisJohnson says UK will sanction Wagner Group, paramilitary organisation seen as Vladimir Putin’s private army

UK will also provide further 6,000 missiles, £25 million for Ukraine to pay its troops and for supplies, £4.1 million for the BBC World Service

will sanction?! As in, it hasn't already?!

@RedToothBrush

Darren McCaffery *@darrenmccaffery* Arriving in Brussels *@BorisJohnson* says UK will sanction Wagner Group, paramilitary organisation seen as Vladimir Putin’s private army

UK will also provide further 6,000 missiles, £25 million for Ukraine to pay its troops and for supplies, £4.1 million for the BBC World Service

will sanction?! As in, it hasn't already?!

This is the UK where it's almost impossible to determine the truth from what politicians say. It's not hard to see where the Russians got the idea.

Usmanov managed to ditch his UK mansions before he got sanctioned.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60825983

The new sanctions include the Wagner Group, Lavrov's stepdaughter and the puppet mayor of Melitopol. I wonder if this could trigger criminal investigations into, e.g., how exactly Polina Kovaleva paid for that flat in London.

I think the situation with Rishi Sunak's father-in-law's company and his wife's shares in it is at the very least a massive conflict of interest. In fact, exactly what IT services does it provide to Russia? Potentially massively dodgy as well just plain wrong. If Sunak doesn't completely sever his connection to this company he surely has to go.

If genuine:

The Russian ship on fire

Wouldn’t sanctions come into effect as the legal basis was consolidated?

The lag could be due to the length of time that takes.

From listening to various people it seems legally water tight is a priority so no kick back - not just an announcement on who

@baroqueandblue Your post was really honest and thoughtful.

I think it makes a difference that Ukraine is very close to us. Hard fact, but I do. Geographically getting involved in the Chechen war would have been near impossible.

Take the point that Syria was a civil conflict. Afghanistan is and always has been a mess in war terms, right back to Alexander the Great's time.

I think there was a huge outrage over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and people did care about that.

[quote DuncinToffee]Usmanov managed to ditch his UK mansions before he got sanctioned.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60825983[/quote]
It really is possible to completely hide who are the real beneficial owners of UK property. A foreign holding company is all that is required and shares in those companies exchange hands overseas. Even the new Bill will not get around that. Boris is not going to send gunboats to the Cayman Islands to inspect the documents of lawyers that practice there. The Italians, French, Saudis, Singaporeans and Americans will not let him. Neither will some of his colleagues.

@notimagain
Many many elsewhere are of the opinion is that all that this aspect of this conflict shows is that what we now know are fairly out dated tanks by modern standards (e.g. poor top armour, poor ammunition stowage amongst other things) operated badly, for example and amongst other things without a coordinated proper infantry screen and possibly also attack helicopter coverage are vulnerable to attack from determined infantry with the current generation of light weight anti-tank weapons. There’s a worry that if the Russian eventually go home, possibly with captured western ordnance, and think this over and rebuild….. Be interested in the POV of anybody here with relevant expertise…

Necessity is the mother of invention. Successive wars highlight different needs. In Iraq it was IEDs that were needed to fight coalition armour and that armour then needed strengthening underneath to protect crew.

In the Falkland, the French Exocet was effectively used by Argentinian forces at a cost of about $60,000 per missile IIRC; the economic returns on weaponry were substantial. But it did not lead to the scrapping of warships.

What we seem to be seeing in Ukraine is the effectiveness of drones. They can swarm and they can loiter. They will evolve to be small enough to be barely detectable. Drones will be deployed to do the work of the artillery, tank corps and infantry. But they may not completely replace these conventional systems. For one thing, when warfare eventually migrates into space, what happens when the satellites are knocked out and the drones fly off into the distance? Or some Anonymous kid in a bedroom in Hull hacks into them?

Ultimately it is infantry who will hold positions and they always carry a bayonet for good reason.

Some postive news

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60850379
Ukrainian orphans arrive in Scotland after delay
A group of 52 children from orphanages in Dnipro in Ukraine have arrived at their temporary new home in Scotland.

It really is possible to completely hide who are the real beneficial owners of UK property
I know Targus and an advance warning helps.

Rolling Stone reporting multiple sources, including US intelligence, claim a wealthy Ukrainian businessmen, Pavel Fuks, was co-opted by the Russians to pay low-level thugs to engage in false flag Nazi activity in Kharkiv in the months before the invasion.

Liz Truss
The UK has already sanctioned over 1,000 individuals and businesses since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Today, I announce 65 more including the Wagner Group of mercenaries, Foreign Minister Lavrov’s step-daughter and the CEO of Russia’s largest bank.

www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-secretary-announces-65-new-russian-sanctions-to-cut-off-vital-industries-fuelling-putins-war-machine

(EUCouncil had imposed sanctions on Wagner Group last December)

@DuncinToffee

It really is possible to completely hide who are the real beneficial owners of UK property I know Targus and an advance warning helps.

Much of this is closer to home however. Both the wealthy UK based Russians (and Ukrainians) have been using the Isle of Man for years to register businesses which are holding companies for their UK properties and companies and register their jets and boats there. The government is well aware of this and it was brought up in the Paradise Papers in 2017. The Isle of Man has acted to effectively grounded some planes in the last week or so by deregistering them. Not sure if they're doing anything about the rest of their holdings there.

Apologies if this thread has already been shared

twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1506739285227147268?t=6nMQ4TQXSr_NbiqOdVP2VQ&s=19
We analyzed dozens of battlefield radio transmissions between Russian forces in Ukraine during the initial invasion of Makariv, a town outside Kyiv. They reveal an army struggling with logistical problems and communication failures:
It's not clear why some Russian units use open frequencies, but it allows ham radio hobbyists to listen to and record real-time front line chatter via web-base radio receivers, which is what @projectowlosint, Ukraine Radio Watchers, @Shortwave_Spy, @sbreakintl & others are doing.
t.co/om3U9mGLtW

@EsmaCannonball

Rolling Stone reporting multiple sources, including US intelligence, claim a wealthy Ukrainian businessmen, Pavel Fuks, was co-opted by the Russians to pay low-level thugs to engage in false flag Nazi activity in Kharkiv in the months before the invasion.

So that explains why many people might genuinely believe that Nazi-ism was a real problem, especially when reports are magnified.

He's planned this very carefully hasn't he, for some time.

(Unless it's disinformation on our side .. what a headmess).

It really is possible to completely hide who are the real beneficial owners of UK property

Private Eye has been following this for years. As I understand it there is still no central complete register of who owns what in England. And a lot of land is held in trust (which is how the landed gentry swerve inheritance tax). And just knowing the names of the trusts doesn't automatically link to the trustees or beneficiaries.

And (naturally) trusts can own trusts, and trusts can own companies, and companies can own trusts.