Thread by @JBelcourt73

As my readers know, over the weekend I went to a couple of exhibits that included sharks with the family on a mini-vacation. Apparently going to look at strange and vaguely menacing looking beasts was all the rage globally. From Arkansas to Crimea a run down...

In Kyiv the Russian armored columns finally reached the city center. The BTG there was Burned, Toasted, and Gutted and proved to be a hit. It would be kind of cool to see if they did anything about the smell.

https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1561583471247646722?s=20&t=8aMGqv_RSBFpHXYz1KCEew

A little bit farther east some Russian beach goers in Occupied Crimea found out what, "air defense doing" it was sunbathing like them. Pretty sure those shorts are a war crime btw eewww.

https://twitter.com/czeburashka/status/1561652244117966849?s=20&t=8aMGqv_RSBFpHXYz1KCEew

Heading back west a wee bit, in Germany Sholz was "treated" too a political protest over his shameful subservience to #Pedoputin by what may well be the most dangerous things in today's essay.

https://twitter.com/B70Greg/status/1561654777448128512?s=20&t=8aMGqv_RSBFpHXYz1KCEew

Speaking of dangerous things, the war is real and I keep seeing notices of Ukrainians who have fallen in battle. The war is real and the dying continues. On the Russian side they are once again forcibly conscripting Ukrainians and making them fight against their own country.

The amount of evil needed to do this is only matched by the desperation needed to consider it. There are reports that Russia is having time meeting recruitment goals and that KIA as estimated by the Ukraine MOD now top 45K

That is roughly 5x what the USSR lost in Afghanistan and will have societal impacts inside Russia. factor in the wounded, deserters, captured, missing and contract breakers and you are well over 200k. War is a numbers game because each body serves two functions. 1. to do

some military task and 2. to impart how to do that task to your replacement in a cycle of institutional memory. In Ukraine, the higher number of veterans and on going western supplied training along with at least ad hoc troop rotations means there is a lot more effort being put

into number 2. Overall losses might still be causing a reduction in Ukrainian institutional memory in some areas even as training and new systems creates it in others, but in Russia it must have absolutely cratered. The combination of western arms that our political leaders like

@JohnBoozman @SenTomCotton and @RepFrenchHill voted to provide combined with skilled training by allies such as the British, Canadian and Estonian Armies give the Ukrainian army a chance to match valor to firepower and force a Russian defeat. But the fight is not over yet and so

we need to keep up our end of things. We need to stay informed and be part of larger pro-Ukrainian communities like @MriyaReport and #WeAreNAFO, we need to donate out time and money to worthy causes like @MriyaAid or the @georgian_legion, we need to promote Ukrainian voices into

the other spaces we inhabit. Today's promotion from me is less about what she says with her voice than what the promise of tomorrow is in her footsteps, and even more about the real costs of allowing Russian aggression in the first place.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1561639094857437189?s=20&t=8aMGqv_RSBFpHXYz1KCEew

I'd like to see some #Pedoputin supporting westerner tell her that it is really her country's fault the Russians blew her legs off... Until Ukraine wins on Ukraine's terms and there are no more Yanas, Slava Ukraini! #russiaisateroriststate #GenocideOfUkrainians #UkraineWillWin

#genocide #vacation @mfa_russia <--- still losing but at least we know what air defense doing.