The end?

HolgateCorner said:
I notice there is not exactly a glowing report for NATO in the middle of all that…
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Indeed. He has a pretty low opinion of Jake Sullivan and the USA's dragging of feet. I should add, I had no idea this was coming. I knew that the two countries had agreed greater cooperation but to be officially allies with mutual protection .... wow. This has the fingerprints of a certain Swedish family all over it.
 
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borolad259 said:
And if you go on a tour in Kyiv you will end up at a place that is called the Golden Gate in English. But in both Ukrainian and Swedish it is called the Swedish Gate (Svenskporten).
It is the specific location where Kyiv was founded by the Rurikids.
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Very interesting. My timings for being there are a bit sketchy to say the least, but if I have time I will try look for this. I had a full day in Lviv last time (beautiful small city)
 
Really, really smart move by Sweden. The rebuild alone will be billions over a long time.... fantastic for their long term economy.

Pretty big two fingers towards NATO - very interesting comments.

Wonder what the USA / UK are thinking about all of this?
 
h_m_boro said:
Really, really smart move by Sweden. The rebuild alone will be billions over a long time.... fantastic for their long term economy.

Pretty big two fingers towards NATO - very interesting comments.

Wonder what the USA / UK are thinking about all of this?
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I wonder what Russia is thinking. There are already Gripens flying in support of the 21st. I think Russian fighter pilots will soon be very circumspect about flying anywhere near the front. The Norrland brigade is based up near my place. I woner if my other recently unretired special forces friend up there is off to to Ukraine. I'll message him.

In addition, if Ukraine can now use long range missiles into Russian territory, I wonder what they will go for. I reckon that Lake Bridge he was talkig about the other day.
 
Why does your friend feel that NATO membership is so far away, given the rapprochement with Turkey. Is this purely logistical, as he explained in an earlier lost, or are there political considerations too?
Thx.
 
The Ruthsayer said:
Why does your friend feel that NATO membership is so far away, given the rapprochement with Turkey. Is this purely logistical, as he explained in an earlier lost, or are there political considerations too?
Thx.
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It's because there would need to be a huge change in the way Sweden's armed forces are set up in order to be integrated into NATO. The command structure is quite different. The way the various elements of the armed froces are coordinated is different. The tech is really different (Sweden is far more advanced than most NATO countries). I think I posted a youtube video upthread somewhere about how the Swedish airforce operates and why it is so different from NATO. I'll see if I can find it. The main discussion comes in the second half but the first half is good context.


Here
 
borolad259 said:
It's because there would need to be a huge change in the way Sweden's armed forces are set up in order to be integrated into NATO. The command structure is quite different. The way the various elements of the armed froces are coordinated is different. The tech is really different (Sweden is far more advanced than most NATO countries). I think I posted a youtube video upthread somewhere about how the Swedish airforce operates and why it is so different from NATO. I'll see if I can find it. The main discussion comes in the second half but the first half is good context.


Here
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Thanks - Gutavus Adolphus rides again!
 
borolad259 said:
Any Ukrainian knows about our long mutual history, and all of them know that a Swede founded Ukraine a very long time ago.
This gives us an odd position in their history, especially since the same Swede followed up the good idea of founding Ukraine, with the bad idea of founding Russia.
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With regards to this the meaning of Rus is 'the people of the oar' Russia means land of the people of the oar', Belarus mean 'noble people of the oar' and originally Ukraine was called Kyivan Rus.
Basically the Norsemen rowed up the rivers of Ukraine and settled there, eventually the Norsemen (which are often misleadingly called Vikings, Viking means something along the lines of raider and not a nationality) became the dominant population in the area and as it's influence spread it became 3 different kingdoms of the people of the oar. If anybody has watched the TV series Vikings you will of seen some of this and mentions of it but not much real details.
The Danes and Norsemen also conquered large parts of England and Ireland and words and places especially in northern dialects come from Norse and danish words or people. Normandy was also ruled by Norsemen and defendants of Norsemen and Sicily in the 10th and 11th century was ruled by descendants of the Norsemen. I won't go into other myths and legends of the "Vikings" which are often seen as representative of that culture as that would really derail the thread more than my current post 🤣
 
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

"Why is punditry dangerous?

As I was in bed yesterday I read that I had been killed in Kozachi Laheri in a Russian Counter-attack.
Russia had pushed the Ukrainians out into a tiny sliver of land next to the river, and then attacked them with heavy artillery causing huge losses.

This was originally issued by a Russian source, picked up by main Russian media, and then picked up by Western Media outlets, and then by Ukrainian sources as being true since the Western Media had printed it.
Weirdly, the only pushback on this news came on Russian Telegram-channels that clearly stated that they where not there due to having lost previously when they tried to approach.

Now both the DeepState Map and the ISW Map is showing a Russian Victory that never happened based on it being reported by Ukrainian sources.

Anyway, Western Media has at least in a large part defaulted into just reprinting Russian Media Outlets.
Ukrainians are definitely not media savvy enough to distinguish between trustworthy western news outlets and garbage.
Heck if there are any left, WAPO and NYT are reprinting TASS like no tomorrow, it is not only Newsweek and Daily Fail that does it.
Except that Daily Fail does not, they have reporters on the ground and may be extremely incorrect at times, but they at least get a point for trying.

Ukrainian media is on the other hand not that good, at least the english language outlets.
Anyway, the damage of Ukrainians believing they lost a key battle that never happened is palpable.

What I find interesting is how badly written the first article was.
It is exactly recapulating the initial battle where Ukraine withdrew to create a kill zone of the Russians, they just reversed who's artillery was firing on who.
So, a more than two weeks old battle that Russia lost was turned into a victory.
On top of that they mention a Russian unit that is currently fighting in Robotyne area.

While I was apparently killed by the Russians I observed a considerable amount of no russian presence in the area.
I find it sad that the only thing Russia is winning is the information war, and that is hurting the Ukrainian civilians."

Not that I can find any mention of it.

Edit, I have found mentions on twitter now.
Looks like it is being accepted as fact by many.
 
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borolad259 said:
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

"Why is punditry dangerous?

As I was in bed yesterday I read that I had been killed in Kozachi Laheri in a Russian Counter-attack.
Russia had pushed the Ukrainians out into a tiny sliver of land next to the river, and then attacked them with heavy artillery causing huge losses.

This was originally issued by a Russian source, picked up by main Russian media, and then picked up by Western Media outlets, and then by Ukrainian sources as being true since the Western Media had printed it.
Weirdly, the only pushback on this news came on Russian Telegram-channels that clearly stated that they where not there due to having lost previously when they tried to approach.

Now both the DeepState Map and the ISW Map is showing a Russian Victory that never happened based on it being reported by Ukrainian sources.

Anyway, Western Media has at least in a large part defaulted into just reprinting Russian Media Outlets.
Ukrainians are definitely not media savvy enough to distinguish between trustworthy western news outlets and garbage.
Heck if there are any left, WAPO and NYT are reprinting TASS like no tomorrow, it is not only Newsweek and Daily Fail that does it.
Except that Daily Fail does not, they have reporters on the ground and may be extremely incorrect at times, but they at least get a point for trying.

Ukrainian media is on the other hand not that good, at least the english language outlets.
Anyway, the damage of Ukrainians believing they lost a key battle that never happened is palpable.

What I find interesting is how badly written the first article was.
It is exactly recapulating the initial battle where Ukraine withdrew to create a kill zone of the Russians, they just reversed who's artillery was firing on who.
So, a more than two weeks old battle that Russia lost was turned into a victory.
On top of that they mention a Russian unit that is currently fighting in Robotyne area.

While I was apparently killed by the Russians I observed a considerable amount of no russian presence in the area.
I find it sad that the only thing Russia is winning is the information war, and that is hurting the Ukrainian civilians."

Not that I can find any mention of it.

Edit, I have found mentions on twitter now.
Looks like it is being accepted as fact by many.
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I would be more concerned if the Russian propaganda machine said I was alive! If they did I would definitely visit a doctor to make sure they where telling the truth!
 
Easy to forget, myself included, that war and intelligence is seldom black and white.
In the fog and confusion of a rapidly changing war what may appear as fact one day is not the next.
As I've said before. He is right more often that wrong and his news is often why ahead of the mainstream media.
Utterly fascinating.
 
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