re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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So are those helicopters easy to learn to fly?

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They are Mi17s which the Ukrainians already know how to fly.

anyone else curious about how WE got the 11 Mi-17's?

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I read somewhere that they came from Afghanistan, I could be wrong.

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I guess that's possible. Makes you wonder if those were captured from Russians by the Afghans. THere's a bit of poetic irony in that.

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The U.S. State Department has approved the transfer of five Russian-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters that had belonged to the now-defunct Afghan Air Force to the Ukrainian armed forces, according to a new report from CNN.Jan 20, 2022

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anyone else curious about how WE got the 11 Mi-17's?

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In typical fashion we probably didn’t find it to costly to transport someone else’s equipment (Afghanistan), but it was too costly to transport our own far superior and more valuable equipment

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anyone else curious about how WE got the 11 Mi-17's?

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The USSR provided the communist Afghan government with Mi17s from 1979 until 1991. Some time after the fall of the Taliban, the US paid for the to be transferred to Ukraine to be repaired and modernized. Of note, these are not the new Mi17s that the USA bought for Afghanistan from Russia from 2005-2012 because those were left in Afghanistan when it fell to the Taliban. These 11 Mi17s had recently finished being rebuilt and were in storage in Arizona while the process of being transferred back to Afghanistan was being finalized when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last year.

So they went from the USSR => Afghanistan => Ukraine => Arizona => Ukraine.

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anyone else curious about how WE got the 11 Mi-17'

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The US bought a lot of Soviet military hardware from former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. Part of that was to get the technology and war-game against it. Part was to help those nations economically. And part was to accelerate the switch to US equipment.

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Ukraine says it hit Russian naval cruiser in Black Sea with missiles

Maksym Marchenko, head of the Odessa Regional Military Administration, said on Telegram that the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was hit with two Neptune anti-ship missiles.

"Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage to the Russian ship. Glory to Ukraine!" he said in his post.

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The fact that Russia hasn't dismissed this already leads to me to believe it more

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The USSR provided the communist Afghan government with Mi17s from 1979 until 1991. Some time after the fall of the Taliban, the US paid for the to be transferred to Ukraine to be repaired and modernized. Of note, these are not the new Mi17s that the USA bought for Afghanistan from Russia from 2005-2012 because those were left in Afghanistan when it fell to the Taliban. These 11 Mi17s had recently finished being rebuilt and were in storage in Arizona while the process of being transferred back to Afghanistan was being finalized when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last year.

So they went from the USSR => Afghanistan => Ukraine => Arizona => Ukraine.

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1. Thank you for the details
2. Proves my point above - we transported those sobs halfway across the globe to upfit from the 80s but thought it more efficient to leave blackhawks and the like in Afghanistan to be used by the Taliban.

"Special detonation of ammo operation" going on in the Black sea?

Russian Defense Ministry - "As a result of a fire" - wow, thank you Kaptain Obvious.

"The crew was completely evacuated." I wonder if they were singing "Always Look at the Bright Side of Life" - in Russian? And "completely evacuated" is extremely unlikely. Fine with me, though, if they lost their F'ing flagship of the Black Sea. I really don't wish deaths on anybody. But frick the Russian ruling Oligarchy, and Putin in particular.

Just Wow if true, seems to be increasingly credible.