The end?

Would be a damn sight quicker for him to count them vs counting his own loses the utter spunkbubble

NOELREPORTS (@noelreports.bsky.social)

Russia is ready to consider any peace agreements on Ukraine based on the realities on the ground, Putin said. He added it's better to negotiate than to count Ukraine’s losses on the battlefield, saying the ball is in their court.
bsky.app bsky.app
 
Was unsure whether to post this one. But I will, with some redaction, as it gives an insight into what has to go on in the head of a new CinC (acting) in a rapidly shifting geo-political environment, when other people are responsible for policy. Rather him than me.

"North Korea & Rules of Engagement Pt 2
As John Kirby stopped consuming oxygen during a press conference explaining why there was no need to respond to the North Korean escalation beyond “Thoughts & Prayers”, North Korea decided to take a literal massive dump on South Korea and the US.
It all began with the litteral (littoral, litterel?) dumping on South Korea. North Korea somehow sent a massive balloon filled with garbage across the border into South Korea, where it promptly exploded above the Presidential Palace in Seoul, spreading refuse (refusal?) and pamphlets over the grounds.
There’s so many puns and questions hiding here that my head is spinning gigglingly. How do you first of all aim a garbage balloon? As a trolling prank it is epic if nothing else. It does though put the finger on the need to increase border air defence security.
Apparently Kim Yo-jong found that to be enough of an escalatory response towards its southern neighbour. Not so much towards the US.
A bit of a backdrop here, last week Kim Yo-jong ordered the two main roads between North and South to be blown up. The South Koreans opened fire on the North Korean soldiers that did the blowing up part, so much so that they mostly got blown apart.
The US sent thoughts & prayers. South Korea is also planning a response on North Korea sending troops to aid Russia, something that the US is resoundingly sending thoughts & prayers in regards of. We are still waiting for what South Korea decided upon, they only told it would be a palpable response.
You see a trend here, South Korea respond by blowing **** up, US by blowing hot air. Big difference, and North Korea seems to listen to that difference. Hence they are pranking South Korea to not get a missile back.
The US? Well, apparently North Korea does not believe in Thoughts & Prayers in return for hot air. They torched the US Gwangju Airforce Base. Those Thoughts & Prayers are sure working nicely for the US.
I now expect an elite team of preachers to lead a thoughts & prayers attack in the next few hours. Oh lord how tired I am of escalation management.

Rules of Engagement Part Two
While EU is debating the sending of a “non-Nuclear Deterrence Force” into Ukraine to free up Ukrainian soldiers for fighting the North Koreans, I am wrestling with the question of who the heck can order what in EU.
It is not entirely clear, mostly because nobody had even pondered us ending up in this situation of debating sending troops like this into harm’s way (potentially).
And the first thing in any Rules of Engagement is the Chain of Command. Who can order what and where in other words.
Currently things range from crystal clear to muddy swamp water. Let us start with something simple, like Russia attacking an EU-member.
Who can order a response to that? Surprisingly enough I found out that the answer to that is me. If attacked, it is the CinC Eurocorps that shouts “boof that ****”. And yeah, I had to rename it again, turned out that there was already a 5 men strong EUEDF – EU Expeditionary Defence Fund. So, for now it is Eurocorps, until someone tells us we can’t be named that.
If I feel that the best defence is to attack the invaders it states that I must “consult with the commission”. That is EU lingo for me having to listen to them at their leisure, but I can do as I wish somehow after the listening part. At least according to Momsie, and she should know I hope.
Threats? I have to receive approval from the Commission to respond prior to the threat having been enacted upon. If there’s something acute the President can make the decision to pre- emptively attack. Only decide, how we go about it would be my prerogative to decide.
Defending an applicant state? Now things get muddy fast. There’s not a single mention of that anywhere. There is though a mention about “if requested by a sovereign state under the UN Charter” we can send troops. If so, it is the Commission that decides. This is what we are doing in Armenia.
Now, Ukraine has not (yet) requested Eurocorps to intervene in any way, sort, or form, inside of Ukraine. So, what would it take to unilaterally decide to send in troops to Ukraine? Answer is that nobody knows. It sounds like it would take simple majorities in the Parliament, Commission and a Signature of Momsie.
And since it is not clearcut I fear that all sorts of politicos will try to get involved with “ideas and suggestions”. Heaven forfends…
But, if we instead state that EU is under direct threat from the escalation of North Korea entering into the fight? This is a bit problematic from a legal standpoint, after all Ukraine is not a member state yet.
Personally, I buy that it is a legit threat to our security within the European Unit, but things must be legal. If there just was something saying that it is legal to boof North Koreans…

Why EU?
The answer is quite literally “Who Else?”. NATO can’t do it; it is deadlocked by US and Germany and their damn “escalation management” policies. And this deadlocks all NATO member states, thankfully EU is not a NATO member, so we can do as we jolly well please.
Problem is obviously that we do not have the forces required, but we can ask for member states to volunteer to second troops and air force units into EU Command. That is now being asked for pre-emptively to not be caught out in a panic.
First country that was asked was Sweden on my urging, it is after all having resources and will to do so. And where Sweden goes the Nordics will go as a whole, and where the Nordics go the Baltics go, and that would almost certainly drag Netherlands and UK with it. And in turn other countries will follow.
Will that be enough? No, most likely it will not. But it will make a sizeable dent into the problem. And EU is not limited to EU-member states, it can jolly well ask all sorts of interesting countries if it pleases it.
If I’m truly lucky I will have 50K, plus air force, to hold and defend all of Ukraine West of Dniepro. That is enough to deter, but not to actually fight Russia and North Korea. It should though impress Belarus to play nice.
In the end the answer to the initial question is that there is nobody else interested, only EU is willing to defend the interests of EU. It sort of begs the question then what NATO is good for? But that is for another day.

United Nations
Like NATO, todays UN is a paper tiger. But, back in the day UN had rather sharp claws. Few people remember that the Korea War was fought under UN banner on a UN Resolution. Even fewer knows that the Ceasefire Agreement between the North and the South is also under a UN Resolution.
This begs the question what something so ancient has to do with the current situation in Ukraine? North Korea is the obvious answer to that. The first UN mandate prohibits North Korea to attack other nations.
The second one states that North Korea is not allowed to send troops beyond its borders, same goes for South Korea obviously. Well, North Korea has sent troops across its borders, so all should be dandy now? Nah, it is not that simple since they are not doing anything.
On top of that there is a mutual defence agreement and alliance between North Korea and Russia. It states that if either nations territory is attacked, the other party is obligated to defend the country attacked.
This is where we end up in mudfest 3 000 000 in regards of clarity.

My interpretation of things
If North Korea is continuing to take photo’s of their soldiers on the Red Square none of the UN Resolutions are applicable.
If North Korea goes and fight in Kursk on Russian territory we can’t use the UN Resolutions to go and pick a fight, after all they are invited to defend a UN member states sovereign territory. That being said, we can then see it as a threat that North Korea is about to invade Ukrainian sovereign territory and move troops accordingly into Ukraine. This means that EU can use the UN resolutions as a priori permission to enter into Ukraine in a non-Combat role. This would obviously free up Ukrainian troops to go and smack down North Koreans, and Russians.
Now we come to the 5 Ukrainian Oblasts that Russia claims to have annexed into Russia by Referendums. Russia obviously holds the position that we would not be able to use the UN Resolutions in this case.
They would obviously raise the question inside of the UN, and heck knows how that would go. My interpretation is that the Helsinki Accord trumps this, and that we can merrily start to whack North Koreans, and if Russians get in the way we have the right to whack those as aiding North Korean aggression.
Any other part of Ukraine and all Resolutions are valid per definition, and in a manner that can’t be challenged in the UN. Free whacking in other words.
Now, for the problem. EU is not a UN member state, but it is a member of the UN General Assembly without voting rights but can do everything else once a year. In other words, EU can do whatever it wishes really since it is not bound by UN Charter, nor Resolutions. It can follow it if it wishes or decide not to.
This is partially why EU can do stuff, and UN and NATO can’t. I seriously hope that EU will never become a member of either of these organisations.

Now
Ukraine is eminently holding the line, so there’s no urgent threat from Russia to EU in this respect. We can long-term solve the problem of Russia by just sending ever increasing amounts of arms to Ukraine.
We do though wish to shorten the war, and we want a non-Nuclear Deterrent against Russia using nuclear arms, or otherwise escalate the conflict, like for instance by using North Korean troops against Ukraine.
If North Korea would enter Ukraine’s sovereign territory it would constitute a direct threat towards European security, and it would then be legal to intervene as we see fit.
We can move in troops into Ukraine, especially into the Western Ukraine as defined by being West of River Dniepro. We can legally attack North Korean troops in Ukraine to counter the direct threat to Europe.
A direct intervention would also make Europe safer in regards of US falling into the hands of Trump. He is after all a coward, and having EU boofing North Koreans and Russians left and right will probably put the fear of god into him.
Trump sucks the **** of whomever is the tougher b****d on the schoolyard. Going to war on Russia is probably the only thing that would make him stay out of things. I do not in any way think he would help, but staying the **** out is good enough I guess.
Anyway, I see that moving troops into Western Ukraine as a low-risk high-reward situation since it would free up almost 200 000 Ukrainian soldiers in one go. This is prudent to do now. It is also doable.
It would also long-term give us the position needed to act fast if we need to do so in regards of defending Ukraine. But, doing this would require a solid backing by major EU-members and will take considerable time to enact safely. It is therefore something for the future. "
 
borolad259 said:
Was unsure whether to post this one. But I will, with some redaction, as it gives an insight into what has to go on in the head of a new CinC (acting) in a rapidly shifting geo-political environment, when other people are responsible for policy. Rather him than me.

"North Korea & Rules of Engagement Pt 2
As John Kirby stopped consuming oxygen during a press conference explaining why there was no need to respond to the North Korean escalation beyond “Thoughts & Prayers”, North Korea decided to take a literal massive dump on South Korea and the US.
It all began with the litteral (littoral, litterel?) dumping on South Korea. North Korea somehow sent a massive balloon filled with garbage across the border into South Korea, where it promptly exploded above the Presidential Palace in Seoul, spreading refuse (refusal?) and pamphlets over the grounds.
There’s so many puns and questions hiding here that my head is spinning gigglingly. How do you first of all aim a garbage balloon? As a trolling prank it is epic if nothing else. It does though put the finger on the need to increase border air defence security.
Apparently Kim Yo-jong found that to be enough of an escalatory response towards its southern neighbour. Not so much towards the US.
A bit of a backdrop here, last week Kim Yo-jong ordered the two main roads between North and South to be blown up. The South Koreans opened fire on the North Korean soldiers that did the blowing up part, so much so that they mostly got blown apart.
The US sent thoughts & prayers. South Korea is also planning a response on North Korea sending troops to aid Russia, something that the US is resoundingly sending thoughts & prayers in regards of. We are still waiting for what South Korea decided upon, they only told it would be a palpable response.
You see a trend here, South Korea respond by blowing **** up, US by blowing hot air. Big difference, and North Korea seems to listen to that difference. Hence they are pranking South Korea to not get a missile back.
The US? Well, apparently North Korea does not believe in Thoughts & Prayers in return for hot air. They torched the US Gwangju Airforce Base. Those Thoughts & Prayers are sure working nicely for the US.
I now expect an elite team of preachers to lead a thoughts & prayers attack in the next few hours. Oh lord how tired I am of escalation management.

Rules of Engagement Part Two
While EU is debating the sending of a “non-Nuclear Deterrence Force” into Ukraine to free up Ukrainian soldiers for fighting the North Koreans, I am wrestling with the question of who the heck can order what in EU.
It is not entirely clear, mostly because nobody had even pondered us ending up in this situation of debating sending troops like this into harm’s way (potentially).
And the first thing in any Rules of Engagement is the Chain of Command. Who can order what and where in other words.
Currently things range from crystal clear to muddy swamp water. Let us start with something simple, like Russia attacking an EU-member.
Who can order a response to that? Surprisingly enough I found out that the answer to that is me. If attacked, it is the CinC Eurocorps that shouts “boof that ****”. And yeah, I had to rename it again, turned out that there was already a 5 men strong EUEDF – EU Expeditionary Defence Fund. So, for now it is Eurocorps, until someone tells us we can’t be named that.
If I feel that the best defence is to attack the invaders it states that I must “consult with the commission”. That is EU lingo for me having to listen to them at their leisure, but I can do as I wish somehow after the listening part. At least according to Momsie, and she should know I hope.
Threats? I have to receive approval from the Commission to respond prior to the threat having been enacted upon. If there’s something acute the President can make the decision to pre- emptively attack. Only decide, how we go about it would be my prerogative to decide.
Defending an applicant state? Now things get muddy fast. There’s not a single mention of that anywhere. There is though a mention about “if requested by a sovereign state under the UN Charter” we can send troops. If so, it is the Commission that decides. This is what we are doing in Armenia.
Now, Ukraine has not (yet) requested Eurocorps to intervene in any way, sort, or form, inside of Ukraine. So, what would it take to unilaterally decide to send in troops to Ukraine? Answer is that nobody knows. It sounds like it would take simple majorities in the Parliament, Commission and a Signature of Momsie.
And since it is not clearcut I fear that all sorts of politicos will try to get involved with “ideas and suggestions”. Heaven forfends…
But, if we instead state that EU is under direct threat from the escalation of North Korea entering into the fight? This is a bit problematic from a legal standpoint, after all Ukraine is not a member state yet.
Personally, I buy that it is a legit threat to our security within the European Unit, but things must be legal. If there just was something saying that it is legal to boof North Koreans…

Why EU?
The answer is quite literally “Who Else?”. NATO can’t do it; it is deadlocked by US and Germany and their damn “escalation management” policies. And this deadlocks all NATO member states, thankfully EU is not a NATO member, so we can do as we jolly well please.
Problem is obviously that we do not have the forces required, but we can ask for member states to volunteer to second troops and air force units into EU Command. That is now being asked for pre-emptively to not be caught out in a panic.
First country that was asked was Sweden on my urging, it is after all having resources and will to do so. And where Sweden goes the Nordics will go as a whole, and where the Nordics go the Baltics go, and that would almost certainly drag Netherlands and UK with it. And in turn other countries will follow.
Will that be enough? No, most likely it will not. But it will make a sizeable dent into the problem. And EU is not limited to EU-member states, it can jolly well ask all sorts of interesting countries if it pleases it.
If I’m truly lucky I will have 50K, plus air force, to hold and defend all of Ukraine West of Dniepro. That is enough to deter, but not to actually fight Russia and North Korea. It should though impress Belarus to play nice.
In the end the answer to the initial question is that there is nobody else interested, only EU is willing to defend the interests of EU. It sort of begs the question then what NATO is good for? But that is for another day.

United Nations
Like NATO, todays UN is a paper tiger. But, back in the day UN had rather sharp claws. Few people remember that the Korea War was fought under UN banner on a UN Resolution. Even fewer knows that the Ceasefire Agreement between the North and the South is also under a UN Resolution.
This begs the question what something so ancient has to do with the current situation in Ukraine? North Korea is the obvious answer to that. The first UN mandate prohibits North Korea to attack other nations.
The second one states that North Korea is not allowed to send troops beyond its borders, same goes for South Korea obviously. Well, North Korea has sent troops across its borders, so all should be dandy now? Nah, it is not that simple since they are not doing anything.
On top of that there is a mutual defence agreement and alliance between North Korea and Russia. It states that if either nations territory is attacked, the other party is obligated to defend the country attacked.
This is where we end up in mudfest 3 000 000 in regards of clarity.

My interpretation of things
If North Korea is continuing to take photo’s of their soldiers on the Red Square none of the UN Resolutions are applicable.
If North Korea goes and fight in Kursk on Russian territory we can’t use the UN Resolutions to go and pick a fight, after all they are invited to defend a UN member states sovereign territory. That being said, we can then see it as a threat that North Korea is about to invade Ukrainian sovereign territory and move troops accordingly into Ukraine. This means that EU can use the UN resolutions as a priori permission to enter into Ukraine in a non-Combat role. This would obviously free up Ukrainian troops to go and smack down North Koreans, and Russians.
Now we come to the 5 Ukrainian Oblasts that Russia claims to have annexed into Russia by Referendums. Russia obviously holds the position that we would not be able to use the UN Resolutions in this case.
They would obviously raise the question inside of the UN, and heck knows how that would go. My interpretation is that the Helsinki Accord trumps this, and that we can merrily start to whack North Koreans, and if Russians get in the way we have the right to whack those as aiding North Korean aggression.
Any other part of Ukraine and all Resolutions are valid per definition, and in a manner that can’t be challenged in the UN. Free whacking in other words.
Now, for the problem. EU is not a UN member state, but it is a member of the UN General Assembly without voting rights but can do everything else once a year. In other words, EU can do whatever it wishes really since it is not bound by UN Charter, nor Resolutions. It can follow it if it wishes or decide not to.
This is partially why EU can do stuff, and UN and NATO can’t. I seriously hope that EU will never become a member of either of these organisations.

Now
Ukraine is eminently holding the line, so there’s no urgent threat from Russia to EU in this respect. We can long-term solve the problem of Russia by just sending ever increasing amounts of arms to Ukraine.
We do though wish to shorten the war, and we want a non-Nuclear Deterrent against Russia using nuclear arms, or otherwise escalate the conflict, like for instance by using North Korean troops against Ukraine.
If North Korea would enter Ukraine’s sovereign territory it would constitute a direct threat towards European security, and it would then be legal to intervene as we see fit.
We can move in troops into Ukraine, especially into the Western Ukraine as defined by being West of River Dniepro. We can legally attack North Korean troops in Ukraine to counter the direct threat to Europe.
A direct intervention would also make Europe safer in regards of US falling into the hands of Trump. He is after all a coward, and having EU boofing North Koreans and Russians left and right will probably put the fear of god into him.
Trump sucks the **** of whomever is the tougher b****d on the schoolyard. Going to war on Russia is probably the only thing that would make him stay out of things. I do not in any way think he would help, but staying the **** out is good enough I guess.
Anyway, I see that moving troops into Western Ukraine as a low-risk high-reward situation since it would free up almost 200 000 Ukrainian soldiers in one go. This is prudent to do now. It is also doable.
It would also long-term give us the position needed to act fast if we need to do so in regards of defending Ukraine. But, doing this would require a solid backing by major EU-members and will take considerable time to enact safely. It is therefore something for the future. "
Click to expand...

Interesting.

I thought this would be a minefield to negotiate a way through.

The EU are very much a rules based organisation, but like Brexit, some things were never seriously enough envisaged to have clarity. At the same time the EU have become very adept over the years at fudges and wording that allows different interpretations.
 
Lefty said:
Interesting.

I thought this would be a minefield to negotiate a way through.

The EU are very much a rules based organisation, but like Brexit, some things were never seriously enough envisaged to have clarity. At the same time the EU have become very adept over the years at fudges and wording that allows different interpretations.
Click to expand...

He and TG are currently holed up together working through various plans and alternative scenarios.
They're in the midst of a very large and very noisy pro_Euro demo.
 
borolad259 said:
Yep. Our fella on the ground says they are turning out in large numbers, despite the rain.
Click to expand...
They can see what life under a 'democratic' Russia leads to & hopefully, more than, enough vote to join EU & for their counties & children's future.

European democracy is far from perfect, though it's always preferable to dictators & communism.
 
44.816164023302, 37.58887800894 no that's not Vlad's new party lines, it's the next big badda boom Ammo dump coordinates.. you have to applaud their effort, maybe this time the entire budget will be spent on the project & no Maybach's on order at all..

en.defence-ua.com

russians Build New Ammunition Depot Near Novorossiysk | Defense Express

Ukrainian partisans have discovered the construction of a new russian ammunition depot to disperse existing supplies
en.defence-ua.com en.defence-ua.com
 
I’d forgotten that the Korean War was the only war ever fought under the auspices of the UN. To a degree it was MacArthur’s war as he went a bit rogue but his famous quote “have a good plan, execute it violently and do it today” might be very appropriate at the moment.

Interesting fact - he called his son Arthur, I mean Arthur MacArthur FFS 🙄
 
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