No. And I will explain all the facts in this thread π§΅:
Yesterday the @nytimes published an article about the dead russians in Makiivka... and didn't bother to ask a single military expert, officer, weapons expert, or Ukrainian.
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Instead they went to an Assistant Adjunct Professor for Epidemiology at UC Berkeley, who is quoted: βIt looks like most of them were shot in the head,β Dr. Rohini Haar, medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights, said in an interview.
Wrong. And a military expert would
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have told the NY Times that this is nonsense.
First: here are the videos of the before and after of the incident. Video 2 in the linked tweet is before and Video 3 is after.
Here is a screenshot from Video 2.
There is a Ukrainian machine gunner on the ground (red circle). I added his line of fire in yellow.
We can also spot a toy car and a tree trunk. Those are important later.
There are two additional Ukrainian soldiers in this video, but they 4/n
will move before the next video so I did not mark them. Here is a video taken by a Ukrainian soldier that participated in the events.
Now let's analyze this video. 5/n
Here is the machine gunner from earlier. He uses a PKM machine gun. The machine gun is level with the heads of the dead russians later. His job is to keep the surrendering russians in check.
And again we see the toy car. 6/n
The toy car, a children's swing and to the right another Ukrainian soldier (which the NY Times forgot to count).
And this Ukrainian soldier doesn't have his rifle up. He is not expecting any resistance. 7/n
Two more Ukrainian troops. One with his foot on the aforementioned trunk, the other to the side behind the machine gunner. Both with their rifles pointing down. They too aren't ready for any shootout.
So we have five Ukrainian soldiers, with one filming, three having their 8/n
rifles down, and only the machine gunner ready to fire.
If we add those four Ukrainian soldiers to the overhead shot we see that only one had a clear shot of the russian (green circle) that came out last and attacked the Ukrainians. And that the filming soldier (blue circle) 9/n
was the attackers target (he is the injured soldier at the end of his video).
This is the approximate view of the machine gunner and his line of fire in yellow. Also note the wall section, the position of the 10th russian soldiers, & the hands of the first russian soldiers. 10/n
If we add the position of the Ukrainian troops and their lines of fire over a screenshot of the aftermath video, you can see that two Ukrainian troops and the machine gunner had the russians on the ground in their line of fire. Only one Ukrainian soldier had a clear shot of 11/n
attacking russian. Once this russian attacks, the soldier filming drops to the ground injured and the soldier, who had his foot on the trunk moves forward to engage. And you can hear the machine gun starting to fire - but more of that later. 12/n
After the shooting.
Bullet holes have appeared on the wall behind the dead russians. How did these get there if the russians were "shot in the head"?? 13/n
And if the russians were shot were they lay, how come that the 10th did move behind the wall?
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"shot in the head", but the helmets didn't move? I can show you videos from the war in Syria and the Armenia-Azerbaijan war: a headshot with a Kalashnikov at that range and the helmet flies off with half the skull and most of the brain. 15/n
These russian were hit by the much more powerful bullets of the PKM machine gun. How powerful?
Well, the first russian soldier's left hand got hit by one of the machine guns' 7.62Γ54mm bullets...
The destructive power and rate of fire of the PKM machine gun alone was enough 16/n
to kill all these russians. It was not an execution, it was not a war crime.
It was a team of 5 Ukrainian troops, four of which weren't doing their job but fooling around, who tried to take 11 russian prisoner. One russian decided to rather die than surrender, and the only
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Ukrainian soldier ready to fire did as is expected in such a situation. The soldier filming goes down = the machine gunner fires to neutralize any threat. That's it.
If the NY Times had asked a military or weapons expert instead of epidemiologists and lawyers, they wouldn't
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have provided the russian propaganda with this gift.
If you still have doubts: here is a PKM machine gun being fired, and after that I added three times the audio from the last second of the Ukrainian soldier's video.
You be the judge what we hear in that last second.
19/end
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To give you an idea, why European militaries prefer US-made weapons to European-made weapons:
Europe militaries urgently need a ground launched cruise missile capability... the US already had such a (nuclear) capability in 1983, then dismantled all of its BGM-109G Gryphon
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ground launched cruise missiles after signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
russia of course broke this treaty after putin came to power and after 15 years of ignoring russia lying about it Trump finally ordered to withdraw from the treaty in August 2019.
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Just 16 days after withdrawing from the treaty the US Army began to test launch Tomahawk cruise missiles form land (pic) and in June 2023 (less than 4 years later) the US Army formed the first battery equipped with the Typhon missile system.
And as Raytheon has a production 3/n
These are the π¬π§ UK's HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carriers.
First, as you can see in this picture, only one actually carries aircraft. The UK barely had enough money to buy the F-35B for one. For the other the Blairites expected the US Marine Corps 1/9
to provide the required aircraft, because the two carriers were bought so the Royal Navy could fight alongside the US Navy against China in the Pacific.
But the US does NOT want the British carriers anywhere near its carrier strike groups, because the UK carriers would slow
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down a US carrier strike groups, as the UK did not have the money for nuclear propulsion.
And as the UK doesn't have the money for the ships that make up a carrier strike group (destroyers, frigates, submarines) the UK expected the US Navy to detach some of its destroyers and 3/9
π¬π§ decline: Only one SSN is operational, three are no longer fit for service and got no crews. One carrier has no air wing and has been sent to rust away. The other carrier only has an air wing when the RAF cedes a third of its fighters. Only 1 destroyer is operational. The
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frigates are falling apart. New Type 31 frigates won't get Mark 41 VLS or bow Sonar. The RAF took 48 of its Eurofighters apart, because it got no money for spares. The army has just 14 155mm howitzers. The Ajax vehicle is injuring the troops it carries. The Warrior IFVs are
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outdated and falling apart. They amphibious ships are not deployable / crewed for lack of funds. The UK has not anti-ballistic missile system (e.g.Patriot). There is only money for 12 F-35A, the smallest F-35A order on the planet. The tank force is at its smallest since 1938.
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International Law is worthless paper if you cannot and will not back it up with military power.
Dictators do not care for international law. But they fear the US Air Force. The moment the US signaled it would no longer back "international law" putin annexed Crimea and Assad
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gassed his people. International Law is what defence laggards hide behind to not have to spend for their own security (hoping the US will save them from their irresponsibility) .
European politicians like to grandstand about "international law" but NO European nation has the
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the means (nor the will) to the enforce it. European politicians grandstanding about international law always do so in the belief that the US will enforce their balderdash.
So European politicians lecturing the US about "international law" now are utter morons, because they
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All this "NATO is unprepared for the use of drones like the war in Ukraine" is ridiculous, because:
β’ of course NATO is unprepared for the use of drones like the war IN (!) Ukraine,
β’ because that is not how a NATO-russia war will be fought. NATO, even just European NATO,
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fields: 244 F-35, 403 Eurofighter, 183 Rafale, 177 modern F-16, 3 Gripen E, and 896 older fighter types.
A total of 1,906+ fighters (without the US Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force; and with more new fighters entering European service every week).
russia, when counting
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generously can't even put half that fighter strength into the field, and the 1,010 modern European NATO fighters would devastate russia's fighter force.
With NATO air supremacy comes absolute dominance of the battlefield. Every russian moving near the front would get bombed
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Gripen fans keep hyping the Gripen with fake claims & as long as they do, I will counter them:
Scandinavian Air Force officer about the Gripen E: It can either be fully fueled or fully armed or flown from short runways. Never can 2 of these things be done at the same time.
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The Gripen fans keep claiming that the Gripen has a better range than the F-35 and can fly from short runways... then admit that its max. range can only be achieved with external fuel tanks, which weigh so much that the Gripen E can no longer fly from short runways.
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External fuel tanks also mean: the Gripen becomes slower, the radar cross section increases (making detection more likely), the fuel consumption increases,... and even with all 3 external fuel tanks the Gripen E carries 1,340 kg less fuel than the F-35A carries internally.
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