Reader, you probably don't know this, but in Poland the biggest scandal rn is the fact that on 16th of December a Russian missile fell 15 km from the NATO training centre in Bydgoszcz and the government decided to quiet it out of embarrassment. 1/6
We wouldn't have known all this if a random person hadn't found it in the forest late April and reported this to the police. All the govt officials and forces of order were so tight-lipped about it that media started conducting their own investigations, and it turned out that 2/6
not only was it a missile, but also the one used only by Russians these days: Ch-55 (Kh-55 in English). According to the Polish Air Force Institute of Technology had to come from the east, as there is no place in Poland that either stores or has those missiles. Apparently, as 3/6
the RMF FM radio reports, the Polish forces were observing the missile but lost it out of sight and even tried to find it, but after a couple days abandoned the search. What's even more interesting, they, according to the Ministry of Defence, haven't reported the incident 4/6
to anyone, and the entire thing came out 3 weeks ago, when a random person reported seeing parts of the missile. Like, the PM didn't know anything about that. So now in the govt there's a blaming game, and Minister of Defence is trying to put the blame on generals who deny 5/6
the wrongdoing and said that they *did* report this incident to their supervisors in MoD. I am really curious to see who is gonna end up fired, and I hope that it will be the chief of defence for covering it up. 6/6
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Two unrelated, but unpredictable in the future aspects of the Russian invasion on Ukraine that I have been thinking recently:
✓ AI usage in warfare. In yesterday's @TheEconomist podcast it has been mentioned that the UA army has been developing new technologies that make 1/4
European generals jealous. As it was the case of any war, this one will also bring rapid technological developments. It would be worth to open a discussion about the usage of AI in weapons, before the situation will get out of control for any reason. 2/4
✓ future of Belarus. As peace negotiations will have to be directed at weakening Russian army and power, the open question is going to be: what is supposed to happen with Belarus? Its civil society is much much stronger than the one in Russia, but was crushed after 3/4