OV9

I did joke to my oncologist today that employing a similar strategy would greatly reduce patient waiting times. Made him smile

Was he in hospital after drinking some tea?

A longish update on the current state of play, and a prediction of how things might pan out, from one of the commentators I've been following

In Russia, there is no panic.

What a coincidence, I mean what are the odds of all these completely different strangers on Twitter using the exact same words? Wonders never cease!

A variation of the infinite monkeys. Eventually they will all hit the same sequence of keys at the same time. Nothing to see here.

I think it's telegram, but yeah, definitely not a propaganda push.

Although to be fair, that's fairly standard for fucking anything on social media these days - minor government policy? "Wow did you hear how the marginal tax on bulk buying of egg powder has been reduced I'll be making so many bad omelettes" x 3000 independent bots, 10% verified, 10% real for engagement.

Oh, Oh, this is magical.

If you've been following the ukraine stuff, you might have seen a video from Russia claiming that a Uktrainian amphibious assualt had failed, and they'd killed them all, with footage of the dead ukranians, with all their black sun and other nazi regalia on their uniforms, etc.

Yeah, turns out someone (presumably) didn't turn off the 'upload to my iCloud/Google Drive' option on their phone and the full vid came out.

Hallelujah, truly it's a miracle as they all come back to life!

I hadn’t seen it before, but watching it just now, even before they came back to life I was thinking there was a surprising lack of blood or obvious injuries for a bunch of soldiers killed in action.

Pretty fucking dry for an amphibious attack, too.

Things are changing rapidly now:

I'd not looked at the news today. I have now. Bloody hell. AFU troops in Donetsk Airport and Denis Pushilin has run away.

The way this is going, it's not long until we have an announcement that Putin has "died peacefully in his sleep".

You jest, but even the russian military bloggers are blaming Russia these days.


Short Thread:


Hope Putins living arrangements don't have windows above the third floor, or his bunkers don't have open elevator shafts

If I were Putin I'd be relocating to a bungalow and no longer drinking tea...

There is some totally perverse logic in that statement:

"During previous setbacks, there was the tendency to [...] blame the Ukrainians"

I mean, yeah, but also, no.

Putin has been quoted today as saying:

"I remind you that the Russian army isn't fighting in its entirety... Only the professional army is fighting."

OMG, he's going to escalate and send in the amateurs. That'll up the ante


("professional" in this context = contracted servicepeople, i.e. the ones who joined the military voluntarily and might moderately feel like fighting*, as opposed to conscripts who are generally very young with no real training and are only in the Army because the law says they have to do it for 12 months. And conscripts cannot legally be mobilised unless Russia is at war. Which the Kremlin is quite insistent it is not, it's just a "special operation". Nice catch-22 there, comrade Putin )


* although Russia hasn't mobilised like this since WWII. A large proportion of the Army are from desperately poor rural areas where joining the Army and doing gate duty at some god-forsaken base in the middle of nowhere - with zero chance of anyone ever shooting at you - in return for a steady wage & a pension is a pretty appealing career. Being on the sharp end of a HIMARS was not part of that plan.

The last time Russia wanted to sort out an 'internal problem' (not being part of a global conflict) and got tens of thousands of peasants, armed them, and said 'you're going to die for us', they turned around and massacred the ruling class.

So go on Putin. Mobilise or die and have your legacy be a joke, or mobilise and die and have your legacy be an even funnier joke.

Explosive reactive armour is pretty cool on tanks with inches of plate armour to protect the crew from the ERA detonation itself.

Less so on lightly armoured troop carriers...



They're probably empty and put there to look impressive to casual bystanders but still, who the fuck thought that was a good idea at any level?