re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

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That's not a civilian building. The amount of antennae on that roof suggest a military purpose.

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Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan tells Putin this evening why Yerevan has suspended participation in the Russian-led CSTO military alliance:

"We’ve never hidden this. Back in 2022, we had a very specific situation, and the CSTO mechanisms should have kicked in, but they didn’t. And that’s what led to where things stand now in our relationship with the CSTO.

"Right now, we’re not taking part in its work for a simple reason: we still can’t explain to our people why the organisation didn’t respond, despite the commitments in the treaty."

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Didn't help Armenia.
Didn't help Iran.
Didn't help Cuba.
Didn't help Venezuela.
Didn't help Syria.
Is Russia the worst ally in modern politics?

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Well, they wanted to go back to the days of the USSR...




Revenue up 13% but profit down by 52%. Where did it all go?



Hmmm... 746.5 billion + 163.9 billion + 138.7 billion does not equal 2.2 trillion. Not even in the same zip code. So again, where did it all go?

Oh... wait. There it is -



That's 1.151 trillion rubles for "Capital Investments"? For a retail grocery store chain?

Let's take a moment of silence in memory of the idiots that bought Kirill Dmitriev's Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) road show pitch last year.

Reuters

Exclusive-Russia's Primorsk oil terminal lost 40% of storage to drone attacks, satellite images show

Thu, April 2, 2026 at 8:48 AM CDT

April 2 (Reuters) - Russia's Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, one of country's largest export gateways, lost at least 40% of its storage facilities in Ukrainian drone attacks last month, U.S. commercial satellite images seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.

Satellite images from the end of March, supplied by U.S. spatial intelligence company Vantor, showed at least eight reservoirs with a capacity of 50,000 cubic metres each were damaged. That amounts to at least 40% of the port's total storage and may force the outlet to cut turnover accordingly, traders said.

The reservoirs play an important role in the logistics chain at the ports and their availability directly impacts the oil exports.

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Russia: deprived of mobile communications, there are now training videos on how to use rotary dial phones.

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Probably party lines with spies too Soviet style.

AMEN

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He gets basic facts wrong fairly often, glad others are noticing.

Also claims to have decades of military experience but has less knowledge of concepts like resource denial and asset opportunity cost than a kid who has played a computer military strategy game more than one time.

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I don't *claim* anything, Vol. I did those things. My DD-214, my VA card, all the joint pain and PTSD I have remind me on a regular basis. Which is why when I say things like "they don't have an NCO corps" or "they can't do Combined Arms Manuevers" I seem to be speaking a foreign language you don't understand.

I also don't just say stupid things and whine about having an opinion. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, and time will tell, but I don't take a coward's approach. Opinions are like arseholes, Vol, everyone has one and they all stink. So when I say

The Russians are going to lose this war

That's not an opinion. That's going to be proven right or wrong, and I'll live with the consequences. Seems relatively small considering what both the Ukrainians and the Russians are going through. It's also why I'm willing to give TexAg his due when he says something that's actually true, or when you do it. Because I'm actually interested in the objective reality of the world, not my own personal viewpoint of it.

Cheers.

Semantics, Vol, and self-serving at that.

I mean, sure, we can get into a petty back-and-forth over what constitutes an 'opinion', but there's a major war going on out there and this thread is supposed to be dedicated to it. So I'd like to keep it on topic, if we could.

Furthermore, the Russian's have repeatedly said publicly that it is a war against Western Civilization; that it's a war against the West, Europe, a unipolar world led by the US and all that we represent, and I take them at their word on this point, possibly the only point I do so. So I'm more concerned about the Russians losing than about arguing over someone's - anyone's - 'opinion.' I just think it's far more important that the Ukrainians win.

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who was born in Soviet-era Kaliningrad and moved to Moscow

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The Russians I referenced did not MOVE to Moscow.

Can't you read English?

As my previous post says those Russians lived in Kaliningrad were in Moscow for a temporary assignment...a three week training session.

Once again you're just making shite up again.

I ignored the rest of your post.

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Neither the Baltic States, when they became independent, nor Poland wanted that territory due overwhelmingly Russian.

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This is a misrepresentation and over simplification of what happened at the end of WWII regarding what became Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad was previously known as Konisberg, Germany, where tradition says the Teutonic Knights had their beginning and hence where the German state had its origination.

Stalin, being the vindictive person he was, declared that never again would Germany possess where their country originated and told the rest of the WWII allies that Russia would forever rule over the place where Germany got its start. And he would rename it Kaliningrad after Mikhail Kalinin, a figurehead head of the Soviet state from 1919 to 1946.

The only problem was Konisberg was still filled with Germans.

"No problem," said Stalin.

He forcibly removed all ethnic Germans (more than a million residents) and transported them to other places, some to Germany, but many of them to the Soviet Central Asia republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

I didn't know about this resettling of Germans to those republics when I worked in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan but I wondered why so many citizens of those places had German sounding surnames and why Lufthansa was the only European airline which had direct flights to Almaty, Kazakhstan out of Frankfurt, Germany.

Stalin then forcibly relocated over a million Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Poles to re-populate the new Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad also became Russia's only warm water military naval port in Europe.