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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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:
• of course NATO is unprepared for the use of drones like the war IN (!) Ukraine,
• 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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Gripen fans continue to spam my mention with claims how fantastic Sweden's Bas 90 and Gripen combination is... and that it would work for Canada's North too...
Ok, let's quickly compare Canada's three northern territories (Yukon, Northwest, Nunavut) and Sweden... ... 1/6
Land area:
🇸🇪 450,295 km2 (173,860 sq mi)
🇨🇦 terr.: 3,593,589 km2 (173,860 sq mi)
The land area of just the three territories (without Canada's 10 provinces) is already 8 times bigger than all of Sweden...
(In total Canada's land area is 9,984,670 km2
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(3,855,100 sq mi) or 22 times Sweden).
Population:
🇸🇪 10.61 million
🇨🇦 terr.: 0.13 million
Sweden's population is 81.6 times bigger than that of the three territories... and if you look at population density:
🇸🇪 23,6/km2
🇨🇦 terr.: 0,013/km2
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Saab loooves to tout the claim that the Gripen can "operate from dispersed air bases".
They do that, because they know no one of you knows what it means. And every time I see someone regurgite "dispersed air bases" (or "road runways" or "short runways") I know I am dealing
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with someone, who knows absolutely nothing about the topic.
So allow me to take you on a deep dive into what "operating from dispersed air bases" actually means.
Let's start with Såtenäs Air Base in Southern Sweden - the most important Swedish air base. 2/n
When the Viggen entered service, Såtenäs received it first.
When the Gripen entered service, Såtenäs received it first.
When the Gripen E entered service, Såtenäs received it first.
In the 1950s Sweden developed the Bas 60 system, which would have dispersed the Swedish 3/n
The 11th Airborne Division is the least likely to be used to invade #Greenland.
The division's deputy commander is Canadian. He is responsible for Operations. The 11th would have to arrest part of their own officers, before being able to plan a Greenland invasion.
Also
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there are just 8 C-17 Globemaster aircraft at Elmendorf Air Force Base. The USAF would need to fly a dozen more up to Alaska, which of course Canada would notice. Then to reach Greenland the C-17 would have to cross Canada's North, which NORAD's Canadian officers would report
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to the Canadian and Danish governments.
It is much more likely the US will inform allies that a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg will fly to the Middle East, which means the air route will take them right over Greenland. And at Fort Bragg you also have the
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