No. And I will explain all the facts in this thread 🧵:
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: “It looks like most of them were shot in the head,” 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' 7.62×54mm 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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Please stop saying Europe should cancel weapons deals with the US.
Yes, we should not sign new weapon deals with the US; but canceling existing deals will hurt Ukraine and also Europe.
And there are 3 reasons for that. Let me explain.
1) Europe's armed forces have nearly
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0 spare equipment, as almost everything taken out of service over the last 35 years was either sold off or scrapped. Europe must continue to support Ukraine and therefore Europe needs to buy whatever weapons it can get it hands on to free up equipment to donate to Ukraine. 2/n
I.e. you can't demand that Belgium cancel its F-35A deal and demand that Belgium must donate its F-16 to Ukraine...
Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands could donate their F-16 to Ukraine, because they already received enough F-35A as replacement. 3/n
🇬🇧 @Keir_Starmer is NOT increasing defence spending this year.
🇬🇧 @Keir_Starmer is NOT increasing defence spending next year.
🇬🇧 @Keir_Starmer is increasing defence spending FROM (!) April 2027 by 0.2%.
This means that for
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the next two years the British Armed Forces get nothing. They will remain as broken as they are.
The British Army has 78,000 troops of which just 18,000 are combat capable (the remaining 60,000 (= 77%) lack the materiel, training, equipment, etc. to be useful).
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The situation is even worse for the Royal Navy.
Next year the British Armed Forces actually get even LESS money than this year (inflation is 10 times higher than GDP growth and so inflation cuts into the defence budget).
Then from April 2027 the situation will begin to
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Yesterday I posted a thread about American weapons and components in fighter aircraft and how Europe has to wean itself off them.
Today let's look at transport, tanker, maritime patrol, and airborne early warning aircraft.
(Tomorrow then trainer aircraft and drones)
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Transport aircraft come in two sizes: for strategic airlift or tactical airlift.
Simplified: strategic airlift transports materiel between continents and tactical airlift within a theater of operations.
For strategic airlift the choice for Europe is easy: A400M Atlas, because 2/n
it is the only strategic airlifter in production (C-17 Globemaster production ceased in 2015) and because the French were involved in its design the A400M Atlas comes with all key parts "Made in Europe".
Yes, it carries only half the payload of the C-17 Globemaster, but for 3/n
Let's talk about American weapons and how Europe has to wean itself off them.
Part 1 of a long thread; this one looking at fighter jets.
First and foremost: Europe has to get all American made components out of all weapon systems produced in Europe. If Trump can shut down a
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European production line by withholding a component, then that component has to replaced... and if that is impossible, then that weapon system has no future and production has to end.
As for the F-35... Europe has nothing even close in combat capability. Best course will be 2/n
to see the existing deals through and then focus on acquiring Eurofighters and Rafales, both of which are way more capable than whatever junk russia sends up in the air.
The main issue will be that the Rafale's production line is running already at full capacity, while the 3/n
The Gripen was designed by Sweden for Sweden's Bas 90 air base system and - truly - Sweden built the perfect fighter for Sweden's Bas 90 system... which resulted in a fighter no one but Sweden needs.
Bear with me as I explain a few things @Saab doesn't want you to know.
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Bas 90 was developed in the 1970s, when the Swedish Air Force was flying the Viggen (and some upgraded Draken). Bas 90 consisted of some 30+ reserve air bases with a 2,000+ metres (6,600+ ft) long main runway and 2-3 short runways of 800 metres (2,600 ft). 2/n
Here are the airbases of Kubbe (63°37'59.81"N 17°56'10.79"E) and Jokkmokk (66°29'48.43"N 20° 8'45.17") with the short runways highlighted in red.
Some of the short runways used public roads, but most were built specifically for the Bas 90 system in the 1980s. 3/n
I set out to create a table showing the reduction in British Infantry units between 1989 and 2025...
After doing Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire - I gave up.
For three reason:
a) the sheer size of it! The British Army had 100 infantry battalions in 1989 (not counting the 1/8
nine battalions of the Ulster Defence Regiment).
b) the British Army's habit of reroling battalions every four years.
c) the disbanding of volunteer regiments in the early 1990s, then the merging of volunteer battalions into new volunteer regiments in the mid 1990s, and then
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the disbanding of these new volunteer regiments some 5-6 years later, followed by the de-merging of some of the volunteer battalions.
In short: it was all very haphazard and chaotic!
So, instead here come the numbers about the British Army's infantry decline between 1989
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