I've done three posts on Ukraine's Maidan Color revolution & aftermath, in this one I get into how Ukrainians are wired in dealing with dishonorable enemies.
"Ukraine is returning to its cultural roots from the Kievan Rus/Viking period, the Cossack period being an extension of that. Community is everything.
These people are at heart Viking berserkers – and we have seen it over and over again on the battlefield 3/
...over the last 9 months. Cornered Ukrainian officers, wounded, surrounded by Russian Spetsnaz, pulling the pins on a string of grenades, to take the enemy with them, which they did on multiple occasions."
I've been expecting the full Viking Berserkergang...and seeing it.
The Russian 247th Guards VDV Air Assault Brigade was pivotal to the Ukrainian loss at Ilovaysk in the 2014-15 fighting.
Thus it was likely involved in the Ilovaysk murder of Ukrainian wounded and POWs. 4/
The Ukrainian annihilation of that unit in this invasion was preordained.
A Ukrainian reading friend says he sees the phrase "revenge for ..." popping up all of the time in Ukrainian social media.
Then, when it was reported a Su-27s killed two Russian CANDIDs carrying VDV, 5/
...it was "revenge for the Luhansk Il-76 ambush".
Whatever else happens, Putin will not be able to conquer the entire Ukraine and may not even get to keep the Donbass.
Putin has created a Ukrainian nationalist monster that will hate Russians for both the great famine of 6/
...the 1930’s under Stalin and now the very raw territorial wound of detached Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
Ukrainians will work for a 100 years to get all that back, minus anyone who is visibly, culturally, Russian.
The Ukrainians are now fighting a national people's war. 7/
The Russians are fighting as a classic Oriental despotism whose chief objective is to keep Putin in power, whatever effect this has on Russia’s long term interests.
This Ukrainian Viking Revival will be the defining event of the early 21st Century.
8/End
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I did an interview yesterday (Friday 8 Nov 2024) with @esherifftv on the lawfare going on between the Biden Administration and @elonmusk SpaceX over the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
1/
Being a old DoD Quality staffer, I brought powerpoint slides.🤣
This 1st slide shows how the ITAR law defines what a "US person" is, versus the Dept. of Justice discrimination lawsuit claims under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
2/
The second slide shows how "illegal exports" under ITAR includes 'foreign persons' - everyone not a 'US person' - seeing a ITAr controlled technical data package inside the USA counts as a 'export' to the nation an asylee or a refugee comes from.
Western media & political commentary are dominated by "doomers" predicting short & long term outcomes on the 'inexhaustibility' of Russia's personnel & equipment pools, despite overwhelming evidence that Russia is struggling badly.
Reality:
Russia is in a crisis of loss. 🧵 1/
The following are the things I've been tracking for some time:
1. The Russians are losing an infantry division every week to 10 days in terms of soldiers at a rate of between with a 1,100 to 1,700 and associated equipment.
2. The Russian artillery is getting shorter ranged over time from losing the ability to make barrels and liners for 152mm guns. We are seeing literal WW2 122mm artillery pieces, presumably from North Korean stocks, in the Donbas.
3/
...procurement programs and the MLRS artillery rocket system in the late 1970's-to-early 1980's.
The post 1973 Arab Israeli War US Army understood the idea of "the logistical costs of a stowed kill." 2/
The US Army kept the 105mm on the M1 in production so long because the depleted uranium (DU) 105mm "Long Rod" APFSDS could kill a early T-72 and you could carry 55 rounds versus 40 rounds for a 120mm gun firing a tungsten APDS or early DU APFSDS round.
What killed Imperial Japanese soldiers in WW2 "without a mark" inside bunkers was carbon monoxide poisoning, not a lack of O2.
Once you get enough CO in the lungs on the O2 chemical bonds.
No further O2 can get into the bloodstream and you suffocate.
2/
I ran across that fact in a trip report of a US Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) medical doctor sent to Leyte to take blood samples from IJA corpses that died from flame weapons.
It didn't work out and the CWS used goats in bunkers hit with flamethrower weapons to get the CO poisoning medical data.