re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Tigris, it sounds like we have similar interests. My bookshelves are filled with History and Military History. Wargaming interest started with a Christmas present of Avalon Hill's Panzer Leader 43 years ago.

It's really what keeps my interest in the war in Ukraine...I find that I tend to view it through that lens.

quote:

---

if we weren't too busy paying farmers to grow corn for ethanol.

---

That is a drop in the bucket to what the government is paying farmers to grow nothing.

Eh, I'm trying to draw attention to the things people might actually get pissed off about. Not about things the government does to manipulate markets to line the pockets of Congress.

Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing
May 16, 2022

On the howitzers, just two points of -- two sort of points here because, again, we're not on the ground, Nick, so we don't see where every tube is, and you know, what each tube is doing on any given day, but we can assess based on our conversations with the Ukrainians, and Secretary Austin talked to Minister Reznikov yesterday, but 74 of the 90 are actually we know based on what they've told us, that 74 of those howitzers, of the M777s are forward providing long range indirect fire capability, so 74 are actually in the fight.

Now, exactly where, you know, we couldn't give you GPS coordinates on every one of them. We know some of them are being used in the fight around Kharkiv and some of them are in the Donbas, but the breakdown, I just don't have that.

And the second point I'd make on this is, you know, Minister Reznikov made it very clear to Secretary Austin in the call yesterday that the howitzers are proving very effective and are having an impact, making a difference in their fight in the Donbas, so we got that anecdotally directly from the Minister of Defense.

DoD Transcript

quote:

---

One of the best parts about living four years in Germany was being able to go visit the house my grandmother grew up in. No longer owned by her family, but the current owners did and remembered my grandmother and her family. Even insisted I ate dinner with them that night.

---

Thats awesome. When I was backpacking across Europe we stopped in Nuremburg for a couple of days. I remember trying to find a phone I could use to call my parents to let them know I was ok. I walked into a bar fairly close to the city square, the only two people in there were the proprietor and one of his friends. I told them what I was trying to do and he offered his phone to me. That was back in the day you had to call the operator and give her the information of the phone in the states you wanted to talk to. She would put the call through then call you back to connect the call. That process could take a while. While I waited, the two guys showed me how to play some dice (maybe dominos...been too long) game. It involved drinking. By the time I got the call back to speak to my parents I was 2 sheets into the wind. I always figured those guys did it to me on purpose, but it was a fun experience and I had no hard feelings.

quote:

---

The other experience I had was sitting in a hotel bar in Stuttgart while I was spending the week at EUCOM. I thought maybe I'd see if the Bama game...

---

That would be a great story if it didn't involve Alabama. You have my upvote anyway.

Russian failures fuelled by Vladimir Putin’s meddling:
Article from The Times

quote:

---

President Putin is making low-level tactical decisions that would normally be decided by an officer in charge of as few as 700 Russian troops, western military sources say.

A military source said that Putin and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, were dictating basic movements of their forces in Ukraine.

“We think Putin and Gerasimov are involved in tactical decision-making at a level we would normally expect to be taken by a colonel or a brigadier”, the source said.

---

Ukraine's FM rules out potential concessions to Russia to achieve ceasefire

The Ukrainian foreign minister said Ukraine still aims to restore full territorial integrity. That would include areas of the eastern Donbas region controlled by Russian-backed forces before the invasion, as well as the Crimean Peninsula seized by Russia in 2014.

The foreign minister, in Brussels to meet EU counterparts, expressed confidence that Ukraine would eventually win the war against Russia."We want everything that belongs to us to be ours," he said.

Yahoo - Originally published by The New Voice of Ukraine

quote:

---

Twitter - my apologies

“In an extremely rare moment of candour on Russian state TV today, defence columnist Mikhail Khodaryonok gave a damning assessment of Russia's war in Ukraine and his country's international isolation.”

Russian TV is starting to broach reality

---

That was a fairly amazing outburst of real talk. The female moderator really didn't want him to make those points.