badgerx16

Which one ?

There seems to be more of this sort of story becoming public, and it isn't just Wagner - there are a few more PMCs getting involved, and complaining about the regular army, including one supposedly run by Sergei Shoigu the Defence Minister. As for the tanks replacing artillery, a knock on effect is that they are reported to be wearing out the barrels of the tank guns, as they are not designed for prolonged rapid firing.

A few World Cups ago, the school my wife taught in did a project on the WC. Jimmy Armfield came to the school sports day to show everybody his winners medal from 1966, and my wife had her class write to Pele to ask him about his memories of winning. I am not sure if he had any idea where Fleetwood is, but he became a pen pal to a bunch of 7 year old kids in a NorthWest Lancashire fishing town. From his writing he came across as a genuinely nice man.

There were several types of weapons launched, not just cruise missiles, ( which are relatively slow and low flying ). Also, despite being hit, the debris from missiles can still be destructive.

Ukraine claim to have shot down all of the cruise missiles that were part of today's attack. Meanwhile, Russia shoots down one of it's own Sukhoi fighter-bombers as air defence at the Engels airbase confuse it for a Ukrainian drone.

As things stand they can't. It would confer a degree of justification to Putin. What I said is that compromise might become necessary if the war stagnates into a frozen conflict, but that seems far off at present. Perhaps Ukrainian attitudes will change if they reach the conclusion that regaining the 2014 borders is unachievable, but that choice is theirs alone, and at present they at least give the public facade of thinking they can manage to do it.

One issue with a compromise is that ceding anything to Russia means they have won.

We did not "terror bomb" Iraq.

When was the last war that was won by terror bombing ? The history of the last 120 years has many examples of attempts to cow civilians by bombing, not even the allied WW2 campaigns by the RAF and USAAF acheived that, despite destroying every area of habitation in Germany with a population over 10 thousand.

Not my metric of success, it was a dig at Alexei's earlier posts on this thread. I suspect that at some point a compromise will have to be sought as the conflict stagnates with neither side having the effective manpower to achieve their espoused aims. Russia has no chance of retaining the 4 recently 'annexed' regions, particularly as they don't actually control 100% of any of them, and without much greater support from the West it is unlikely that Ukraine will find the capacity to recover the 2014 borders by force of arms.

In which case, is it justified when we do it ? ( Not quite sure how often 'we' have tried to knock out an entire national power grid and freeze out a civilian population, other than perhaps NATO in Serbia ).

But you might well "give a shit" about being taken back into the Russian sphere.

I want to know, from you as a human being, what your view is. Do you think 'weaponising winter' and directly targeting non-military targets is an acceptable tactical ploy ?

Wagner get paid regardless, Russia's prison population is greatly reduced : win win

Questions for you; How much territory has Russia gained in the last month ? ( Considering we are entering month 11 of the SMO ) Are they justified in carrying out the missile attacks ?

Beguile

A Russian tank actually manages to hit something with it's gun.....

This year's award for irony goes to.........

Just for a moment this one baffled me with it's contradiction. Look at the headlines on the right hand side for the Rugby Union stories:

If the Board are happy with the team's trajectory, who are we to argue ?

Plenty of very nice bungalows around.

Start Macca, Gavin B looks completely shot of what little confidence he might have had. At least McCarthy is used to playing behind our defence.

Half time doesn't count

Tackle, pass, move, shoot. 4 simple skills we seem to fail at.

NJ is as out of his depth as most of the squad.