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Not that it will happen

But it would be a hell of a statement wouldn’t it?

A few of those drones dropping some of those anti-tank grenades on the parade today?

56 thoughts on “Not that it will happen”

  1. @Bin4R

    In the context of this conflict, probably yes

    Russian ‘targeting’ seems pretty indiscriminate

    ISTM they are hitting genuine Ukrainian military targets more by accident than by design

  2. The West is providing targetting and other intel to the Ukraine. The US DoD is boasting about it. Isn’t that akin to an act of war?

  3. Would that be a legitimate military target?
    It’s a way of thinking inspired by European wars of the C18th & C19th. Wars about whose head would be on coins where the civilians of the territory one was trying to conquer were part of the asset. And much honoured in the breach. The sort of wars where the soldiery were dressed in pretty uniforms & lined up to shoot muskets at each other. Side with most left standing when they counted & the end of the day, won. Officers went to the dinner party paid for by the winners.
    The sensible target for any military is, of course, the civilians. They don’t shoot back. And one destroys the economic base supports the opponent’s military

  4. It’d definitely be interesting, and the wife still won’t let me build a bomb shelter in the garden for When The Wind Blows so at least I’d have told her so.

    Idk what drones might be capable of such a feat tho. The famous Turkish ones have a 2,000 mile range allegedly. But they’re also very slow (max speed is 130 mph), quite large and radar reflective. And they can’t be controlled from 2,000 miles away, communication range is line of sight.

    You’d have to launch them from Russia to have a chance of avoiding Russian air defences, but that probably means guaranteed death for the operators and it’s not likely they could sneak a drone with a 12 metre wingspan into the country in the first place. Border guards might realise it’s not a kayak.

    The Switchblade drones the US is sprinkling all over Ukraine are ideal for assassinations / terrorism, and we’ll likely see them popping up in the news in future as they find their way into the hands of our Mohammed-jihad friends. Can fit in a rucksack and do the equivalent damage of a 40mm grenade on people or light vehicles. I assume the Rookies, like everyone else, are aware of the threat of small drones, but who knows how good their countermeasures are.

    But assassinating enemy political leaders is one of them courageous decisions, minister. It was one thing to arrange the violent demise of Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam, Russia is plausibly able to retaliate.

  5. A non-lethal stunt like unfurling a Ukrainian flag banner down the side of a building, or showering the parade with yellow and blue confetti, would probably have been a more effective statement.

    Poor old Putin couldn’t even have Mariupol for his victory.

  6. Relatedly, and in line with Steve vis a vis his contretemps with PJF and others, the lefty box heads at Junge Welt have noticed odd goings-on at Der Spiegel und der Reuters:

    Mariupol: Half truth in the mirror
    On Monday, Der Spiegel published a three-minute video of the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. In it, Natalia Usmanova, who was employed in the plant before the Ukraine war and had sought protection there with her children and her husband, had a say.
    The “Azov” regiment repeatedly prevented her evacuation in two horrific months, she explained in the Spiegel video: “We tried to flee, knew about the humanitarian corridors, about the evacuation, but were not let out.”
    On Wednesday also a longer video from which the interview excerpts were taken. “They kept us in the bunker,” Usmanova said even more clearly. “They hid behind the fact that they are supposedly concerned about our safety.” They were repeatedly shouted at: “Go back to the bunker!” After the evacuation, the family decided not to return to Ukraine: “Ukraine is died for me as a state.«

    In the meantime, Der Spiegel has temporarily taken the video down “because of discrepancies in content that were subsequently discovered.” It claims to have obtained the video material from the Reuters news agency. (jW)

    Neugieriger und neugieriger.

    https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/425938.mariupol-halbe-wahrheit-im-spiegel.html

  7. JuliaM and Hallowed – “Colussus – The Forbin Project” is another movie where computers are put in charge of the nuclear arsenal. In this instance though, they don’t play games.

  8. Sounds like one of those genuinely stupid idea, IMHO. Perhaps the Russians could drop a thermobaric weapon on the US troops illegally in Syria ? Or maybe arrange for a large explosion in Kiev when certain visitors are around ? About as legitimate, and in the Syrian case, have the Syrians actually do it and it would be entirely legitimate. The US would no doubt retaliate, but they would be committing further war crimes if they did.

    And it is indeed a pity that the Azov Nazi’s continue to hold out in the Nuclear Bunker beneath the plant, but I simply do not get why you would want to support perhaps the only legitimately Nazi white supremacists around, but maybe that’s just me as I don’t like fascists of any stripe, unlike some who seems are happy with any such as long as they are on “their side”.

  9. Anon, some commenter(s) will be along to post “citation needed” for your reference to the Azov Battalion being “Nazi’s” in 3, 2, 1…..

  10. The drones Tim is referring to are ordinary civil/hobby drones modified to drop anti-tank grenades. Tim has a post at the ASI discussing them. These are currently being used in Ukraine and there are videos on youtube purportedly showing them working. It’s not beyond imagination to think a Ukrainian cell in Moscow could have done something like this. Fly it to Red Square (from the suburbs, not Ukraine) by GPS, aim with a vertical camera. Not particularly easy to defend against or catch the culprits.

  11. Interested – yarp, that’s in line with what I’ve heard. It also fits with the sequence of events and unlikeliness of large numbers of civvies voluntarily choosing to stay for weeks on end in the bowels of a steel plant that’s an active combat zone. Ukies have been making a big noise about Russians “kidnapping” people, but there’s no evidence they’re doing anything untoward to refugees, tho the war itself is of course wrong.

    Azov aren’t in Mariupol because they’re the equivalent of a Home Guard unit in Walmington-on-Sea doughtily defending the local greengrocers and choristers. Given the demographics of the place this is more like if an Irish republican paramilitary took over Londonderry in advance of the British Army arriving, or a Sunni militia in Iraq claimed to be “protecting” a bunch of Shiites.

    Unfortunately, now that they’ve traded away their hostages for food, the life expectancy of the Azov boys trapped in the plant just dropped sharply. Russia seems to be treating regular Ukie army POW’s ok, but Azov are looking at a kangaroo court + years in the gulag at a minimum, so their officers have little incentive to surrender. A depressing Slav massacre is highly likely.

  12. “Isn’t that akin to an act of war?”

    A lot of things could be construed that way if it suited people. That they are not probably tells us something. Putin doesn’t want all out war with Nato or the US or the west. He wants to get away with as much as he can. Which might be less than he previously thought.

  13. Prof – Putin doesn’t want all out war with Nato or the US or the west. He wants to get away with as much as he can. Which might be less than he previously thought.

    This is illustrative of the ‘West’s’ (US government plus loyal sidekicks) attitude, the reason why this war came into being, and why it might escalate to WOPR deciding to get rid of the pesky humans.

    Only the West has legitimate interests in the “rule-based” international order. If those alleged interests seem provocative or baffling to outsiders (bombing the shit out of Yugoslavia, cutting a bloody swathe of democracy through North Africa and the Middle East, promising to fight total thermonuclear war to defend, uh, North Macedonia, openly threatening the Chinese with “Global NATO”…) it’s because Johnny Foreigner is “trying to get away” with something nefarious.

    Instead of listening to Johnny Foreigner and taking his indecipherable jibber-jabber seriously, the obvious solution is to repeatedly double down on the things that upset him in the first place, promote completely spontaneous colour coded revolutions on his doorstep, arm his enemies and simulate nuclear attacks on his country, when we’re not simply stealing his assets and trying to destroy his economy through sanctions.

    The West has solemn and vital interests and values which aren’t up for debate, especially when they involve the Biden family blatantly laundering bribe money from Ukranian oligarchs or BAE selling lots of lovely weapons to our good friends in the Gulf. The East has a very temporary collection of laughable “regimes” which are forever attempting illegitimate shenanigans.

    “Shut up,” the West argued.

    It’s a pretty convincing argument when you have overwhelming military and economic power, but has diminishing returns once Johnny F feels like he’s been backed into a corner.

  14. One way to rain in Putin’s parade would be to screw up the logistics. That might even be possible remotely via cyber warfare. However the cost/benefit equation might not be too advantageous.

  15. The “Nazis” were a political party ruled Germany 1933-45. They went mythic a while ago. The Nazis co-opted a lot of the extreme nationalism & symbolism that’s ubiquitous across Central & Eastern Europe. A response to peoples & nations in territories where there are few defensible geographic features. Without it, the neighbouring peoples who don’t have your scruples conquer you. The Finnish airforce flew with swastika markings in the Winter War & following campaigns against the invading Russians.* It’s the same thing thing the communists co-opted to fight the Nazis in WW2. Rodinya..And what Putin’s currently co-opting from the Russians in his campaign against Ukraine.
    Limp wristed western liberals may not like the philosophies but the peoples of Central & Eastern Europe aren’t limp wristed western liberals. If you’re going to label the Azov Battalion Nazis, why not the Russians?

    *the Finns accepted military aid from Germany on a the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend basis. Later in WW2 they gave the German military an equal pasting.

  16. . . . unlikeliness of large numbers of civvies voluntarily choosing to stay for weeks on end in the bowels of a steel plant that’s an active combat zone.

    Unlikely, perhaps, unless the alternative was Russian care. The majority of civilians evacuated from Azovstal have gone to Ukrainian held areas, which took a lot of setting up with the UN and others. It seems likely that most people who chose to shelter with Ukrainian forces (including ~Nazis~) would have Ukrainian sympathies. It’s worth noting that Natalia Usmanova left earlier and went to Russian held territory.

    . . . this is more like if an Irish republican paramilitary took over Londonderry in advance of the British Army arriving . . .

    Lol, no, the appropriate analogy would be an official UK force defending a city of the United Kingdom against the IRA in advance of the Irish army arriving. Once again your choice of words indicates that there’s more to your position on this than just “Slavs fighting, no Britons involved”.

    Unfortunately, now that they’ve traded away their hostages for food, the life expectancy of the Azov boys trapped in the plant just dropped sharply.

    That’s quite a trade down from the boat ride to Turkey you were on about the other day; now they’ve given up their hostages for their last meals-ready-to-eat. Wouldn’t make very good bank robbers, would they? Despite the utterly preposterous logical holes, you still prefer to believe the civilians were hostages. It couldn’t be that these were nationalist soldiers protecting their own citizens until they could be assured of safe passage, and then chose to fight on, presumably to the death. That would make no sense.
    .

    I’ll add it here, since I don’t have time to address multiple comments. It’s almost certain that Azov fighters are a minority of the estimated 2000 Ukrainian forces left in the steel plant. There are regular marines, police and other groups present. There were only about a thousand active Azov fighters altogether when the war began, and there are two units defending Zaporizhzhia Oblast to the north.

  17. I think you need to grow up & live with reality, Steve. Johnny F generally wants to conquer & suppress everybody around him. He is not a limp wristed western liberal. Give him the opportunity, he’ll conquer & suppress you.JF’s are just not people you can live with because they don’t want to live with you. So the “game” is trying to ensure that they don’t. You back the side you least fear. Maybe sometimes you get it wrong. Shit happens But it’s the only game in town. Not playing it’s a guaranteed lose.

  18. PJF – Lol, no, the appropriate analogy would be an official UK force defending a city of the United Kingdom against the IRA in advance of the Irish army arriving.

    Depends on how you view the legitimacy of British colonisation and partition of Ireland, no? The IRA and the British Army might differ. Personally, I don’t care.

    Once again your choice of words indicates that there’s more to your position on this than just “Slavs fighting, no Britons involved”.

    We are deeply involved, our government has gotten us into a proxy war against Russia.

    That’s quite a trade down from the boat ride to Turkey you were on about the other day

    Spoiler: they were never going to get the good ending.

    It couldn’t be that these were nationalist soldiers protecting their own citizens until they could be assured of safe passage

    Your faith in the humanity of swastika-tattooed, Hitler-curious gunmen who’ve been terrorising their own fellow citizens for 8 years and killed 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the process would be touching if it wasn’t so badly misplaced.

    There were only about a thousand active Azov fighters altogether when the war began

    The Waffen SS was relatively tiny compared to the Heer, but served a similar role to Azov.

    When President Zelensky tried cooling down the civil war after his election in 2019, it was Azov who publicly told him to fuck off, and their kamaraden in the other far-right paramilitaries (Azov is just one of many) who threatened to murder him for his trouble. He quickly got the message and started sucking up to C14, Right Sector, Azov et al.

  19. One side uses 3D-printing and cheap commercial octocopters to turn obsolete grenades into aerial bombing devices.

    The other side jumps into a stolen SUV to escape them, but forgets to close the sunroof.

    Remind us again, Steve. Which of these two sides is the one which you assured us in February was “a retarded nation of potato farmers”?

  20. BiS – Give him the opportunity, he’ll conquer & suppress you.

    I live in fear that the Russians or the Chinese might one day steal half my income, flood my country with foreign rapists, fund the sterilisation and mutilation of children on the NHS, abolish freedom of speech, destroy the energy base of our economy to please ugly Swedish retards, ban cars and put everyone under house arrest for the best part of 2 years, etc.

    That would be mental.

  21. Paul – Remind us again, Steve. Which of these two sides is the one which you assured us in February was “a retarded nation of potato farmers”?

    They both are. But of the two, Russia is more likely to still be a viable country by the end of the war, which is unfortunately not the case with Ukraine.

  22. The Finnish airforce flew with swastika markings in the Winter War

    According to the Finnish film Tali-Ihantala 1944 (about the Continuation War, and highly recommended) the Finns used the swastika symbol long before Adolf and co. I’ve no reason to doubt the assertion.

  23. Mr Worstall has explained how the Ukrainian use of commercial drones with grenades is the very definition of economic advancement.

    “The tank is around a century old. That grenade, some 70. Those drones are two or three years old as cheap and reliable machines. The combination of two of them solves that third problem.

    This is entrepreneurialism in everything. Extant economic assets have been combined in a new manner to solve a problem.”

    https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-explosive-importance-of-that-free-part-of-free-markets

    Steve, you really need to explain to us how Ukraine is still “a retarded nation of potato farmers”.

  24. Your faith in the humanity of . . [blah-terrible-blah] . . if it wasn’t so badly misplaced.

    But it’s your notion that they’re hostage takers that is so badly misplaced. You’re scrambling to explain why scumbags have given up their hostages. For food? Are you really that stuck?

    Your whole response was extra glib and more evasive of the points than usual.

  25. Bloke in North Dorset

    “ Starfish
    May 9, 2022 at 7:48 am
    @Bin4R

    In the context of this conflict, probably yes

    Russian ‘targeting’ seems pretty indiscriminate

    ISTM they are hitting genuine Ukrainian military targets more by accident than by design”

    Certainly looks like it if this is anything to go by.

    https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1523236126919696385s=21&t=Swma9FPIXOWhsvU_LRye0Q

    Rather wasteful of limited supplies, more maybe Russian artillery doing it on purpose rather than shell civilians?

  26. Steve you’re absolutely spot on.

    Its staggering how many supposedly intelligent people just regurgitate BBC bullshit.

    Oh and for the record, the reason the Azovs et Al were in the east of Ukraine was that they were massing for a land incursion into the Donbass.

    Which in turn caused Putin to invade citing an article 51 declaration.

    So the Deep State got the war they wanted. And now a lot of Ukrainian cannon fodder are dead, and more to follow.

    All because Victoria Nuland hasn’t forgiven Stalin for booting her grandad out.

  27. Dennis, Asking For A Friend

    Steve –

    Did you get dumped by a Ukrainian girl back in the day?

    Or are you dating a Russian one now?

    I ask because you seem to be taking this round of Slav fun and games personally.

  28. Its staggering how many supposedly intelligent people just regurgitate BBC bullshit.

    Oh and for the record, the reason the Azovs et Al were in the east of Ukraine was that they were massing for a land incursion into the Donbass.

    Man accuses some of regurgitating BBC bullshit then immediately regurgitates Russian bullshit.

  29. Dennis – I’m sure Steve is merely expressing another point of view based on the facts as he sees them.

    If we’re going to descend into personal insults, then at least be a bit more creative;

    “I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal-food-trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.”

  30. Beating in mind there’s another big parade in early June it might be prudent to avoid making any such “statements”.

  31. Given that this is a Slavic war, between factions both steeped in the art of Propaganda….

    Assume All Of The Above is true.
    Assume each side will pick and choose the bits that will benefit them for dissemination to the Media.
    Assume bald-faced denials in the face of evidence from both sides.
    Assume that given both sides have been building up to this mess for at least a decade, there are no Good Guys here.
    Stock up on salt.

    And always, always remember that any involvement of “The West” in this type or territorial pissings has FUBARed spectacularly and turned around and bit “us” in the arse for the past half-a-bloody-century-and-a-bit…

  32. Dennis, Gold Medalist In Unnecessary Snark

    If we’re going to descend into personal insults, then at least be a bit more creative;

    Karen –

    If you think that was me trying to insult someone, you haven’t been paying attention when I have insulted someone.

  33. Some people still haven’t cottoned on that Steve is a wind-up merchant par extraordinaire.

  34. The Finns used the swastika well before the Nazis. Indeed Germans are likely to have taken it from them.

    I actually think the Ukrainians were about to reclaim the Donbas. Which is why Putin went in half-cocked. Judging by their success so far, they would have won quite quickly too. Bastards deserved a war for trying to reclaim their own country! The Russians showed in Chechnya that they are much more tolerant of breakaway states, or not.

    It’s lovely to watch retarded potato farmers trained by the effete Western militaries give a lesson in humility to the allegedly second most powerful army. And it’s not the weapons we have sent, they’re only just arriving now.

    Yes, the West is fighting this by proxy. And getting a very good deal for our money too.

  35. @Chester

    What deal are we getting? I’d still like someone to explain to me why we want Russia to be our enemy? We seem to be spending tens of billions of £€$ to no real benefit (and doubtless we’ll spend hundreds of billions reconstructing Ukraine after this is all done). Yes, obviously it would be nice if Russia hadn’t started this shit, but then there was no need for Ukraine to be in NATO if we could have been on speakers with Moscow. And, yes, one might not really want to be on speakers with Moscow, but we’re on speakers with others who are at least as bad and in some cases far worse. I repeat: it all makes no fucking sense.

  36. What deal are we getting? I’d still like someone to explain to me why we want Russia to be our enemy?

    We don’t want Russia to be our enemy.

    At the end of the Cold War the West tried hard to bring the various ex-Soviet Republics into economic and political friendship. It worked with most, but not Russia nor Belarus. Other ex-enemies, like Vietnam, have also entered into sensible relationships with the democracies.

    Then Putin decided that he wanted the West to be his enemy. Someone he could be seen to oppose and, he assumed, beat. He started to do things like the cyber attacks on Estonia, so not just passive enemy either. Once he was our enemy, what do we gain by pretending otherwise?

    The deal? Teaching autocrats to keep their mitts off other countries. So Serbia will not be tempted to have another crack at Bosnia, China will think twice about Taiwan, etc. In the long run deterrence is always the cheapest strategy.

    Eventually Putin’s regime will fall. And there will be a chance that his successor might be reasoned with.

    It also has the by-product of calming those who think, against all evidence, that regime’s like Putin’s are more effective than democracy. You don’t have to look hard to find those who think that because Putin is a hard man, in sole charge, that he will run his country better than those corrupt Ukrainians.

    History shows the opposite: democracies tend to be richer, politically more stable, and militarily more effective. But some men (and it is almost always men) tend to fawn over autocrats.

    This war will cost a lot, but the result is likely to be much better for the West than not supporting the Ukrainians. Meanwhile we waste a lot more, a lot more, on Net Zero and the like, for no gain at all.

  37. Chester:

    +1000!

    I wonder if the Russians are actually capable of turning themselves around. The long history of being ruled by autocrats makes it hard for them to think about indulging in the complexities of democratic government as we do it in the West. Much easier to let the Big Men fight it out at the top and try to get along with the consequences. Soviet Russia did function, if pretty abysmally by our standards.

  38. Chester

    We don’t want Russia to be our enemy.

    At the end of the Cold War the West tried hard to bring the various ex-Soviet Republics into economic and political friendship. It worked with most, but not Russia nor Belarus.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule

    George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.

    The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

    This is all collaborated elsewhere. And Putin’s reply (not sitting in a queue) made some sense, because if Russia had joined, NATO’s whole raison d’etre substantially shifts.

    Ie, it’s perhaps just as easy to understand from the perspective that the US military needed their Euroasia bogeyman? As someone either on here or elsewhere once linked (I haven’t still got the source and it doesn’t really even matter if it was completely accurate or not, because intuitively…):

    As a Pentagon Intelligence mandarin once put it to me:
    .
    “We can’t justify Intelligence spending or the Defense budget with ragheads (Muslims) in Toyota pickup trucks or gooks (Chinese) selling Walmart junk or Nike shoes. The Russian threat may be a strawman, but it’s a necessary fiction … Real war for the Intelligence Community and DOD is the Beltway budget battle. You could do worse than think of the Russian bear as an ally in the annual scrum over tax dollars.”

    Taiwan perhaps makes a more interesting argument for the west’s current strategy?

  39. Chester

    If we don’t want the Russians to be our enemies fighting a proxy war against them seems a bit cavalier.

    Beyond that I don’t think yours is the correct rendering of the history – not least because we gave the Russians our word in 1989 that we wouldn’t expand NATO eastwards and then promptly did so.

    I am no fan of Putin – I doubt anyone who regularly follows this blog is, we are not temperamentally the types to approve of central authority of any sort, are we? I would be perfectly happy for him to be ousted, while accepting that we don’t know by whom he would be replaced, and I think this war was and is stupid.

    But it isn’t the case that the west has behaved perfectly, or even well, and he may well have looked at that NATO expansion and the actions of the US in particular around the world and thought Fuck it.

    And I repeat the central mystery (for me): why is our media unipolar on this, why are Facebook and Twitter full of people from Bolton and Swanage with Ukrainian flags in their bios, why is Bono playing free gigs in the Ukraine tube system, why are all the world’s leaders flying off there, and why are we at the same time either ignoring the Yemen (to name but one much bigger ongoing conflict) or supplying one side with materiel?

  40. . . . not least because we gave the Russians our word in 1989 that we wouldn’t expand NATO eastwards and then promptly did so.

    Another myth stuck in peoples minds as fact. This has already been addressed in these comments threads and shown to be false (the “promise” was about nukes in East German territory, is still kept to this day, and was made when the Warsaw Pact still existed so expanding east wasn’t even an option).

    It’s stuck there because you want it stuck. You’re not interested in the truth; you’d rather have the conspiracy theory. Well, enjoy it, but don’t expect to be taken seriously.

  41. Chester

    “Another myth stuck in peoples minds as fact. This has already been addressed in these comments threads and shown to be false”

    Really? I have a funny feeling there is a lot of revisionism going on. If you search on google now you get lots of stuff from ‘fact checkers’ saying it didn’t happen, BUT if you put in a search on google with date parameters pre 2020 it’s rather a different story.

    Eg
    https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal–20160530-snap-story.html

    “[The Russians] claim the United States has failed to uphold a promise that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, a deal made during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification. In this view, Russia is being forced to forestall NATO’s eastward march as a matter of self-defense.

    The West has vigorously protested that no such deal was ever struck. However, hundreds of memos, meeting minutes and transcripts from U.S. archives indicate otherwise.”

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