Typically, if the Kremlin says something, you consider the opposite true.

• Armour: severe shortage, soldiers often attacking in unprotected vehicles.
• Personnel: being outsourced from North Korea.
• Air defense: cannot hold back a drone swarm or decent missile.
• Rapid reserves: enough to keep Bashar al-Assad ruling Syria. Oops.
• Losses: 600 000 dumbest ones dead or wounded, 2 million smartest ones in emigration, paying taxes to some other land.
• Economy: interest rates over 20%, insolvencies widespread, butter sold from locked fridges.

…I can totally see them continue for a while, but not a long while. And the breaking point isn’t linked at all to Putin’s goals.

Good riddance and hopefully Bashar al Assad is found and brought back for fair and prolonged trial (because his list of deeds is long, and he needs to testify).

I suspect he’d easily get the maximum punishment available, in any reasonably balanced justice system on the planet. A dictator on trial would also be a cautionary example for future dictators.

However, given that he’s not entirely out of resources, I think he may temporarily slip away into a country that agrees to host him.

About things in Syria: I worry that civil war isn’t over. Judging by the fighting in Manbij, one faction of the rebels (SNA) is now attemping to conquer territory from the SDF (Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria). Unlike the government, the SDF however isn’t demoralized - they aren’t fighting for dictator Assad, but democracy and autonomy, and they can be expected to mount an effective resistance.

I hope that someone reminds the parties to the conflict that they need to stop and negotiate really soon now.

If it were true (currently I don’t think so) we’d have a warm spot on FIRMS and civilian reports of a transport plane coming down, but nobody has reported one so far. (However, Syria is likely to have so many warm spots currently that a private researcher may be unable to count them and make sense.)

However, assassinating someone with an air defense complex while retreating / evacuating yourself in face of an advancing opponent - that’s unreliable. (Russians were last seen evacuating their air defense systems and flying away with what could be taken along, but rebels did get some really interesting items.)

As far as I understood, Georgescu declared zero campaign expenses and then had thousands of accounts advertising him, primarily on Telegram and TikTok (side note: who the hell does politics on TikTok?). propelling him to the run-off election.

That does sound a bit fishy indeed.

I’m not the Romanian supreme court, but if they had a look at the disclosed intel, and decided a foreign state was messing with their elections, it is within their rights to invalidate and rerun the process. A re-run is frustrating, but getting tricked is even more frustrating.

While thinking of that, it’s also advisable to think of all the schools and hospitals ruined across the world, if all dictators should realize: “if you are big and have nuclear weapons, there is no international law - take what you want, treaties and borders are mere ink on paper”.

It is also worthwhile to compare the expenses in Ukraine to the US budget.

This hard-won assistance package (it was stuck in Congress for months) totals about 60 billion. Of that, about 7 billion actually goes to Ukraine as weapons - the rest goes into other purposes like humanitarian and economic aid, purchasing new weapons to replace the donated weapons, etc. A considerable part of the money never leaves US soil.

So, the number to compare against is either 7 (pure weapons) or 60 billion (all allocations permitted by the bill).

The US budget is 6 trillion. One trillion is 1000 billion.

This means that weapons to Ukraine form about 1 / 1000 (one promille) of the US budget, and the total volume of the bill (not limited to Ukraine) forms at most about 1 / 100 (one percent) of the US government budget.

Meanwhile, to put things in perspective, Ukraine is defending itself with approximately one half (50%) of its government budget, and Russia is attempting to conquer Ukraine with approximately one third (30%) of its government budget (likely to reach 40% in the next year).

Basically, while the sums are huge, US isn’t about to fall over from supporting Ukraine, but Russia is indeed going to fall over, sooner or later, from continuing to attack Ukraine, if other countries bother to support Ukraine somewhat. Which I trust they will.

failed to end the civil war,

It’s not a civil war if “separatists” get weekly weapons, fuel and food convoys from Russia, and the whole thing was started by GRU agents, and requires thousands of Russian troops. That was the case approximately from 2014 to 2022. I have a prejudice against people who refer to the Russian-backed insurgency in Eastern Ukraine as a “civil war”. It typically tells of which information sources they prefer and consume.

A prolonged war is the absolute worst case scenario for the people living in Ukraine and former Ukrainian territories

Every war is prolonged as long as armies are willing and able to fight, and politicians don’t make peace.

The easiest way to get a sustainable peace is simple: Putin needs to withdraw troops from Ukraine. Alas, he’s not in the mood - not yet. But he regularly orders polls and reads results, and has some understanding of how Russia’s economy is doing. He could be in the mood within a year.

Compared to supporting Ukraine through another year of fighting to obtain a lasting peace at acceptable terms (ideally: internationally recognized borders), making an unstable and unjust peace by undermining Ukraine (so they’d cave in and agree to an unjust peace in the minimum amount of time) might not be the best option.

Unfortunately it looks that Trump is going to try exactly that. And there’s hardly anyone in the US who can alter the outcome. Other members of NATO can alter the outcome however, by (almost) doubling their support.

But the US has supplied more military support, more than the EU.

The US has supplied a lot of aid, and aid that cannot be obtained from elsewhere, but in terms of volume, the EU has gradually passed it by.

Sadly, it seems unlikely that the EU can ramp up weapons industries much faster. Ukrainians themselves have stated that without US assistance, they would run a serious risk of losing the war.

Update via Reuters: the president says he’ll abide by the parliament’s decision and revoke his declaration. Nobody started obeying it anyway - the military tried to do something because they had orders, but was not enthusiastic enough to achieve anything.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-president-yoon-declares-martial-law-2024-12-03/

Some analysis via the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/declaration-of-martial-law-awakens-ghosts-south-koreans-thought-were-laid-to-rest

Yoon’s declaration of martial law appears to have been a desperate gamble in the face of rock-bottom public popularity – with positive ratings barely over 10% – in the midst of a doctors’ strike and staunch political opposition, increasingly including his own People Power party, whose leader, Han Dong-hoon, said the declaration of martial law was a “wrong move”.

Yoon may have thought that his nostalgia for authoritarianism would resonate with at least some of the South Korean political spectrum, but the unanimous vote in the national assembly to overturn his declaration, including by his own party, suggests he miscalculated.

Judging by the unanimous decision of the parliament, the majority of soldiers will have no interest in going forward with a coup. A minority could have interest, but would soon notice they’re a minority.

Technically it might be, but all political power stems from the people agreeing to be governed. If they aren’t represented, they won’t agree to be governed for long.

Basically, the parliament can’t afford to let itself be suspended. It’s needed because the president is going to get dismissed after this kind of behaviour.

As far as I understand, the president’s decision might be void, since he was required to hold a session of the government before declaring martial law, but did not.

I predict that the military will consult their lawyers and stop enforcing it really soon.

I suspect the president either went insane or attempted some kind of a coup. His own party voting against his decision is a clear signal that it’s a solo performance. He has no political backing.

Actually, let’s make it interesting, drop me maybe 10-15 ft above his head.

I would predict success, martyrdom (75% chance) and impressive headlines. :D

If you could convince his bodyguards that the main computer of an alien spaceship sent you as a sick joke to prevent nuclear war, they might spare you for bargaining. Whether you’d be spared long enough for revolution to happen and get home - not sure.

As a practising anarchist, I would also volunteer, my everyday items even include several cans of pepper spray, a multitool and a heavy laptop with a detachable battery (to commit some battery).

There are use cases for this router, but please don’t get the plastic clone sold by the same Chinese company that assembles the real thing. (The plastic clone costs a third, but doesn’t have detachable antennas and doesn’t accept mainstream OpenWRT because it uses an almost unknown CPU.)

Myself, when I need a high capability router (for me “capability” typically means “range”) I turn towards a Raspberry Pi and Alfa AWUS1900 wireless card. Yes, it lacks in throughput (USB is a severe bottleneck)… but with a bit of tweaking, you can talk out to 2 kilometers if terrain allows. :)

Power corrupts. If you have the opportunity to help a family member without any blowback, eventually the opportunity will soften you up.

And then the same power goes to Trump, who’s not in need of corrupting, since he’s already fully baked.

I guess it would be better if a power to bypass the justice system wasn’t available. A creative and unethical person can do a lot of things with it. Bad things.

I don’t know the details. Wikipedia estimates Chinese losses as 26 000 killed, 37 000 wounded with 420 tanks and 66 guns lost. Vietnamese losses are estimated at 30 000 killed, 32 000 wounded, 185 tanks, 200 guns and 6 missile launchers lost - so it’s safe to assume they didn’t use butter knives.

Their preferred method of bombing might have been artillery, though - due to the lack of high capacity bomber aircraft, and due to lack of air superiority. Despite this, Wikipedia also mentions:

“The 372nd Air Division in central Vietnam as well as the 917th, 935th and 937th Air Regiments in southern Vietnam were quickly deployed to the north.[61]”

The Vietnamese source article is here. A relevant part seems to be this:

“When the border war began, the Ministry of National Defense also decided to send part of the 372nd Air Division (Hai Van Group) to the North to perform missions. From February 18 to March 3, 1979, squadrons of the 917th Air Regiment (Dong Thap Group), 935 (Dong Nai Group) and 937 (Hau Giang Group) including 10 UH-1 helicopters, 3 U-17 reconnaissance aircraft, 10 A-37 attack aircraft, and 10 F-5 fighter-bombers were deployed at Hoa Lac, Kep, Bach Mai and Noi Bai bases, respectively.”

I’m unable to find more details or an account from the Chinese side.

Weapons of this kind are best intercepted in space. Which is, hugely expensive - and the weapons themselves are very expensive too.

They are not very useful, except as a nuclear threat - because they cannot be precisely targeted. A warhead of this sort flies blind during re-entry into atmosphere - relying on inertial navigation, because air is turning into glowing plasma around it - onboard cameras or radar are useless at this point.

The result is low precision, and with a conventional warhead, if an attack misses the target by hundreds of meters, the attack has most likely failed. This attack missed the Pivdenmash (former Yuzhmash) factory by hundreds of meters.

No, it’s not deliberate. “To bombard someone with letters” is an expression actively used in the English language.

China hasn’t dropped bombs in, what, 60 years?

Almost correct. The last war-sized conflict China took part in was the 1979 Chinese-Vietnamese war [1]. That was 45 years ago. Battle-sized events between China and Vietnam have occurred up to 1991 [2], that would be up to 23 years ago. Skirmish-sized events with India are as recent as 2021. [3]. As for what occurs in Gaza, I agree. Bad stuff has been happening there. Going by the tonnage of things blowing up, Gaza is a gang shootout compared to Ukraine, though.

Series produced, not mass produced - I sincerely hope they won’t reach mass production, that would be harmful.

Also, they have no version with a cluster warhead. Shahed 136 drones (the most common version) have unitary warheads, some with high explosive (some with enhanced shrapnel production) and some with blast (thermobaric) effect.

A hypothetical version with cluster bomblets would of course damage solar arrays on a larger area (it helps get around the inverse square law), but the cost is: less explosive and more casing material - the bomblets would make holes in panels, but most panels would remain standing and keep producing something.

For information, this is what the result of a single cluster bomblet looks like.

There is a troubling aspect, though - most of solar inverters aren’t capable of operating as an island today. Cost-cutting and dumbing-down has occurred.

However, if a village has at least one household with a hybrid inverter capable of generating a frequency for others to follow - and some people who know what they’re doing - some level of disaster preparedness is possible even with today’s tech. (If the grid fails, one disconnects everyone behind the local substation from the big grid, brings online an inverter working in island mode, and syncs other inverters to it.)

Of the things you mention, transformer stations and baseload power stations are a real problem. One can build them inside a concrete shell, but nobody can rebuild them all.

Of course, it’s a fact of life that one cannot operate a grid without baseload generation. So baseload (thermal power stations) are the typical target. Solar parks are not. If you get a drone to a fuel tank or turbine hall, you have achieved 1000% more than landing in a solar park.

I’ve seen photos of a hole left by “Iskander” in a solar park (I cannot guess what kind of a “genius” fired it). Crater radius about 10 meters, various grades of destruction out to 50 meters. That’s a 500 kg warhead. With only 50 kilograms, would expect it to take out a circle with a radius of 25 meters. That’s some 2000 square meters, containing about 1000 square meters worth of panels. At today’s prices, panels cost about 25 € per square meter. So the damage in panels (excluding frameworks and cabling and work) is about 25 000 €. The cost of the Shahed / Geran drone is probably in the same class. But not every Shahed reaches its target - in fact, most of them don’t - so firing one at a solar park would not be economical.