Good article on how the Alligator has the shakes: http:// https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russias-ka-52-attack-helicopters-have-got-a-serious-vibration-problem
Have you seen Putin’s yacht and house by Sochi? ~$2+ Billion on just those two line items. I don’t know exactly how many T-72’s you could refurbish, overhaul, upgrade, etc. with $2B; but I’m pretty sure it’s “all of them”. I believe someone said Putin’s yacht cost more to build that a replacement Moskva would.
Regarding tourism and investment: Cartels : Mexico :: Kremlin : Russia It’s a wet blanket on foreign investment when the legal system doesn’t work, the cops work for the criminals, and tourists sometimes get held hostage.
I’m guessing that the orcs are in a fairly disorganized retreat/re-alignment and don’t have much air support or AA in place, so the UA pilots are getting in on the Safari.
At this point the Swiss and Austrians are “Free Riders” on NATO to use the economic description, and I think Switzerland at least is starting to recognize that and talk about maybe addressing the issue
Agree, I was just going to use Zeihan’s descriptor “FUCKED!!!111!!” to describe Russia’s economic future under Putin. The thing Zeihan doesn’t allow for much in his analysis is pivoting/adaptation/improvisation of people to their current situation. I think Russia will be miserable until Putin is gone, then maybe a few more years of one more hanger-on to KGB paranoia/lying/distopian dictator (seems like Medvedev is auditioning to resume his prior role) and then it’s mini-revolution time, at which point things could get better. The article I posted earlier today hit on this, if Russia would just be publicly contrite, own this shit, and show the world it’s never going to happen again by de-nuclearizing and downsizing their armed forces to a defensive only operation (following the Germany/Japan model) I think the world will be happy to resume extracting natural resources from them.
We straightened Turkey out: “NATO and the United States said on Sunday they were confident Turkey would not hold up membership of Finland and Sweden in the Western military alliance, as the two Nordic states took firm steps to join in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.” http:// https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-expects-turkey-not-hold-up-finland-sweden-membership-bids-2022-05-15/
Suppressed 300BLK with big subsonics would be almost unfair from ~200 meters up. You could probably drop 2-3 orcs before the rest even figured out something was going on.
Russian ambassador to US saying we’ve given them three conditions to negotiation, including “repenting for everything they’ve done”. Video in the article. Also indicates some split in the Kremlin over Ukraine https://mol.im/a/10818047