Ukraine Invasion: Part 24

[MagicFox]

Welcome one and all and thanks again to everyone contributing

Interesting and perhaps unexpected. Maybe his star is falling. He might perk up if he has a shamanic ritual though.

Looking at the overview (synoptic charts and other stuff) IMHO that was a credible forecast .. (aka “guess”) for one of the two Moscow international airports.

In any event I can’t see what they’d have to gain by lying, most especially on an airport forecast that gets distributed worldwide and so is easily checked for credibility.

Certainly if they did they start tinkering with their aviation Met products it would be very obvious outside Russia and the few foreign operators that are still prepared to operate in/out would probably stop operating in/out PDQ for safety and insurance reasons…

Have they cancelled the flypasts before when there's been similar sort of weather?

Here's a translation of parts of the speech meduza.io/en/feature/2022/05/09/the-west-has-decided-to-cancel-these-centuries-old-values

No idea and without going back into archived forecasts and news reports who knows but I’d really caution everybody assuming there’s a conspiracy over this..

FWIW a couple of points from experience.

Not unusual to see showers in Russian airport forecasts at this time of year.

and..

Big formations of aircraft are very unwieldy and can’t just nip around or zig zag around areas of low visibility/low cloud base, sort of thing you get with CB (cumulonimbus) in the forecast….

I’ve been in a few flypasts many years back, and if the requirement is for a fly past along a fixed line over a fixed location and at a specific time then the weather forecast limits can be especially conservative, both for the area where the overflight is to take place, but also over the marshaling areas (where the formation gets joined up) and along the whole route of flight.

So was the forecast the only reason for the cancellation; don’t know, Inwasn’t the parade organizer or formation leader…. But IMHO it’s a credible reason in itself.

fair enough, thanks for the explanation =)

Christo Grozev AT christogrozev
Traditional parade air-show (which today was promised to paint the Z in the sky) were cancelled in Moscow and St. Petersburg due to "poor weather conditions"

And no planes left.

Just saw that Trudeau was in Kyiv yesterday, not sure how I missed it previous.

Source - Reuters. www.reuters.com/world/europe/canadas-trudeau-announces-new-weapons-ukraine-visit-kyiv-2022-05-08/

I wouldn’t be complacent about his neutral speech. His words mean nothing or the opposite.

He doesn’t do truth - only self serving gaslighting, manipulation or threats.

More importantly, during that meeting Zelensky presented a medal to a bomb-sniffing dog, which brings me actual joy.

I know there's nothing funny about this situation, and it's as nothing compared to the rest of the hypocrisy we've seen from him and his ilk, but accusations of decadence in the West from a man with his own £700m yacht always make me laugh in a disbelieving, black humour kind of way.

Like them or loathe them, I can't think of many Western leaders with their own personal yachts.

@Natsku · 09/05/2022 10:56
Thank you for the translation of Putin’s Victory Day speech.

Forgive my ignorance but I was not paying any attention last December. Please would someone say what really happened, as opposed to what Putin says happened? (In the opening section below.)

In December of last year, we proposed signing a new treaty on security guarantees. Russia called on the West to have an honest dialogue; to search for reasonable solutions and compromises; and to take each other’s interests into account. All of it was in vain. The NATO countries didn’t want to hear what we had to say — which means they had completely different plans. And we could see it.

They were openly preparing for another punitive operation in the Donbas — for an invasion of our historical lands, including Crimea. In Kyiv, they announced the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc began actively trying to assimilate the territories adjacent to us by military means.

@Igotjelly 09/05/2022 11:35

More importantly, during that meeting Zelensky presented a medal to a bomb-sniffing dog, which brings me actual joy.

It does bring joy. I hope this links the video.

Patron, Ukrainian bomb-sniffing dog, awarded medal by Zelensky - The Washington Post

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/09/patron-dog-bomb-medal-ukraine-russia-war/

Putin has that look of a guy mildly high and full of zing after the morning's 'now just bend forward for your shot of vitamins, stimulants and low dose polonium Mr President'.

My understanding is that draft proposals had been sent from Moscow to Washington (and other NATO members) but that the terms were basically a non-starter and included assurances that Ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO (and I think also that there would be rollback on NATO membership to basically remove the most recent members).

They had all the aviation for the dress rehearsal.

it’s on YouTube.

www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/12/21/russias-draft-agreements-with-nato-and-the-united-states-intended-for-rejection/

A bit about the draft agreements

TRIGGER WARNING about the Washington Post video I posted about the bomb sniffing dog getting a medal from Zelensky.

Do not watch the following video without being aware that there is upsetting footage regarding animals. I apologise as I had not realised it followed on from the medal award video.

Long time reader of all these threads, very many thanks to everyone who contributes for your knowledge and perception.

First time posting. I thought I recalled that years ago, it was common knowledge that Russia engaged in 'cloud seeding' so they never had a wet major public holiday.
Google has turned up some interesting confirmations of that, this one is a gem.

"MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg (55-lb) sack of cement on a suburban Moscow home last week while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday, Russian media said on Tuesday.
“A pack of cement used in creating ... good weather in the capital region ... failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft),” police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti.
Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture.
A spokesman for the Russian Air Force refused to comment.
June 12 was Russia Day, a patriotic holiday celebrating the country’s independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Weather specialists said the cement’s failure to turn to powder was the first hiccup in 20 years.
The homeowner was not injured, but refused an offer of 50,000 roubles ($2,100) from the air force, saying she would sue for damages and compensation for moral suffering, Interfax said."
Source www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-weather-idUKL1760049120080617
From June 2008.

Igotjelly · 09/05/2022 12:00
Thank you for your answer re Washington and Putin last December.

Anyone here slightly more concerned at the totally neutral speech and lack of bloodcurdling nuclear references?

So they can control the weather for the parade but decided not to because they don't have any planes?

This is sweet from the British ambassador to Ukraine, she's just gone back to Kyiv:

Melinda Simmons
AT MelSimmonsFCDO
I popped out for milk, went to pay for it and got a huge spontaneous hug from the man at the checkout. Thank you for all 🇬🇧 has done, he said. I said, thank you for all 🇺🇦 is doing. The queue of people behind me were dabbing their eyes. Buying milk will never be the same again.

Andrew Roth AT Andrew__Roth
Another notable omission from Putin's speech was no attempt to spin Russian victories from the war, no mention of Mariupol at all or claims that Russia had defeated Ukraine's fighting potential, nothing that could be vaguely construed as "mission accomplished."

No not overly. I think much of it was Western media working everyone up into a froth - I suspect Putin will have been quite happy with us all tying ourselves in knots.

Phillips P. OBrien AT PhillipsPOBrien
What rhetoric Putin used in his speech is immaterial. If he didn’t declare war, or a general mobilisation, that’s what important. Without concrete steps to build a new force, Russia can’t fight a long war, and the clock starts ticking on the failure of their army in Ukraine

Just read translation of Putin’s speech. Reaction—that’s it? Completely out of ideas. Either doesn’t now understand the reality of the situation in Ukraine, or wilfully ignoring it.

Other thing to take from it—no attempt to set the stage for escalation. No call for the Russian people to make great sacrifice. Nothing at all really.

I see some people have asked about a secret mobilization. Maybe a extremely efficient system could do a partial one, but can’t imagine Putin’s regime pulling it off. You have to construct new or expanded facilities to begin with, hard to hide structures from eyes in the sky.

You will also need some serious, If secret, government planning. Good luck hiding all that chatter. Then you need to call up either all the reservists/new conscripts you want. That will defintely get out as many of these will be truly angry/scared.

Then you need to train them in all your new or expanded facilities. Then you have to equip the new forces, put them on very long, easy to see trains and deploy them to Ukraine. Remember the initial invasion took months.

Putin’s Russia doing this in secret? Good luck.

Final point. A general mobilisation is the ultimate test of a logistic system, and nothing in peace time can really prepare you for it. If you struggle doing the logistics for an army in being, it will be much worse when you try to dramatically expand that army. Logistics matter.