Day 1040 War in Ukraine

Blog post shows the extent of the many cables and pipelines crisscrossing the seabed of the Baltic Sea. Yeah, the only way to protect them from ships dragging their anchors is to immediately take on ships that drag their anchors. “Since autumn 2023 11 cables and pipes have been damaged by ships dragging their anchors in Baltic Sea.“

The off-going President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, will take the legitimacy of the office wih her. She plans to have a very active post-presidency, including meetings with other nations.

Georgian police are roughing up protesters.

In just one week, Russia launched “more than 280 KAB guided bombs, nearly 370 attack drones, and over 80 missiles” at Ukraine.

A while ago, I gave figures on Ukraine’s “Ruta” drone. Figures are more accurate here, but the basic point is the same. It costs much less to hit targets at a considerable distance with a Ruta or a Trembits than with a full-blown cruise missile. This also means that the American refusal to permit Ukraine to hit targets in Russia (a ban that was very recently mostly lifted) becomes irrelevant. Trump’s ability to tell Ukraine not to do something therefore shrinks a great deal.

Russia suffers a major loss of telecommunications equipment in occupied Ukraine.

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/29/war-for-ukraine-day-1040-a-brief-sunday-afternoon-update/

 

Day 1038 War in Ukraine

Andriy Yusov explains to a reporter how drones can fly up to 2k km into Russia.

Summary of past few nights of War in Ukraine:

For comparison, an anti-tank mine carries 5.4 to 13.6 kg of explosives. A 155 mm shell generally has about 45 kg.

The American “Switchblade” drone travels at 113 to 185 km/h and carries 15 kg of munitions.

The American “Tomahawk” cruise missile travels at 920 km/h, with 450 kg of munitions.

The Ukrainian “Ruta” travels at 700 km/h, with 100 kg of munitions.

The REALLY important point is that the Ruta costs about $300k whereas the Tomahawk costs around $2 million. You can strike the bad guys with six Rutas for the same cost as a single Tomahawk!

Blogger on the next two incidents: “It appears that we are inching closer to awareness that there is an actual world war underway.”

Russians shot down a civilian airliner with a surface-to-air missile. How do we know it was deliberate? “the damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing“

A Russian-linked oil tanker appear to have been dragging its anchor and thereby cutting an underseas cable connecting Finland with Estonia, was loaded up with spy equipment. “’They were monitoring all Nato naval ships and aircraft,’ Lloyd’s List was told. ‘They had all details on them. They were just matching their frequencies.’”

The opposition in Georgia is getting more and more together and organized. They are demanding that prisoners be released and new elections held. Different groups and professions are taking turns leading the nightly marches. The government is using a special organization called “Khareba” to violently suppress protests. Government is also firing any civil servants who criticizes them.

Russians release a video where they consciously, deliberately, with malice and forethought, shoot down Santa Claus.

Russians continue to absolutely rain down missiles and drones on Ukrainian civilians as well as on Ukraine’s power grid, so as to make heating homes very difficult.

North Korean soldiers woefully unprepared for fighting in Ukraine, running across open fields with no armor or air support. Losses are massive.

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/27/war-for-ukraine-day-1038-inching-closer-to-awareness/

 

Day 1025 War in Ukraine

 

Crowd flying both Georgia and EU flags.

Ukraine sends food to Syria in order to prevent a crisis there.

Zelenskyy announces that North Koreans are taking part in assaults in Ukraine. “The Russians include them in combined units and use them in operations in the Kursk region.” This is an obvious escalation of the war. There are roughly 10k NK troops in the Kursk region.

“Friendly fire” incident between NK troops and Kadyrov’s Chechen soldiers.

Ukraine arranges for Trump to be able to take credit for an agreement that was the result of Biden’s actions. Ukrainians “have done a key leader/operational psychological assessment of him and determined the best way forward for dealing with him.” They’ve decided they need to play on his ego.

The Georgia Dream Party (the people are against them, but they have a majority in the parliament) is conducting a presidential election without the current incumbent. Young people make fun of the fellow running for president by playing with football (soccer) balls, “saying that Kavelashvili is as much a president as they are football players.”

Crowd prevents lighting of Christmas tree. Government couldn’t assemble enough pro-government people to convince anyone they were in the majority.

A central neighborhood in Dnipro suffers an explosion.

NK troops just attack in the open. No armor, no air support.

Ukraine reinforces Pokrovsk, which was beginning to crack. “The fighting is extremely fierce. The Russian invaders are throwing all available forces forward, trying to break through the defense of our troops.” It’s a serious problem that drones provide close intelligence on supply routes and troop positions.

Ukrainian saboteurs burn an Su-30 fighter jet. Railway locomotives also hit.

Many hours later, oil depot at Oryol still burning.

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/14/war-for-ukraine-day-1025-a-brief-saturday-night-update/

 

 

 

 

Day 1023 War in Ukraine

Mobile air defense groups are small teams that battle drones with machine guns.

Zelenskyy visits a school built in a bomb shelter. It can hold 1k students. The frontline is only 30 km away, but students are studying.

Ukrainian lawmakers want an assessment of how Ukraine will cope if US cuts off aid.

Trump thinks the Middle East is n easier problem to solve than Ukraine-Russia. The blogger strongly disagrees. All that has to happen in Ukraine is that Russia withdraws. Boom, problem solved! Middle East is compromised by decades of failed strategies. Trump feels that for Ukraine to send missiles into Russia is “just escalating this war and making it worse.”

By using ATACMS and Storm Shadows (long-range missiles), the number of glide bomb attacks has greatly decreased as aircraft have to be moved still further away from the front line.

Biography written on Zelenskyy unlikely to be translated into other languages as it’s very heavy in Estonian references. According to the book, Zelenskyy believed that peace with Russia was possible.

In Georgia, the heat was turned off for the Presidential Palace. Lots of fighting over the legitimacy of the current president. The IT community blocks a street and makes demands.

Film om Ukrainian military medics.

Took 46 hours, but the effects of a missile strike on a medical facility are fixed.

A thread with a Ukrainian mobile air defense group.

November set a record of 83 Shaheds launched daily.

In Kherson, Russians bombed a fire truck that had arrived at a fire.

Streets of Kharkiv lit up with Christmas lights.

Ammunition depot near Mariupol targeted.

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/12/war-for-ukraine-day-1023-russia-has-unleashed-its-drone-swarms/

 

Day 1015 War in Ukraine

Great weather with which to move around in Kherson as drones can’t hunt people during bad weather.

Russia launched 2,576 kamikaze Shahed drones against Ukraine in November. Putin wants to vastly increase the number of drones that Russia produces. As drones are inexpensive, Ukraine has developed inexpensive ways to fight them. “Using both mobile fire groups and EW, Borsari says that only around 5% of the drones” make it through to Ukrainian targets.

“House Speaker rejects Biden's request for additional $24 billion in Ukraine aid.” $2 billion of that would have gone to restocking US weapons so that we could give older weapons to Ukraine.

How does Trump plan to end the war in Ukraine? Getting Ukraine into NATO is “off the table.” Pressure on Zelenskyy seems very highly likely. People are highly skeptical as to how Russia can be pressured.

US insists that Ukraine draft more people. Blogger blasts this as hypocritical.

Russia used a missile on Dnipro that’s hypersonic and is capable of using nuclear warheads. It was a great propaganda success.

Tibilisi demonstrations – seventh night in a row. Calls for national strikes. Police going after opposition figures.

Russia assembling 300 boats to try and launch an amphibious assault on Kherson.

Russia trying to empty out Kherson using drones to attack civilians. Kherson civilians move around at night and during bad weather. Civilian casualty figures are horrible. Russians enjoy posting videos of drone attacks. The drones “have ranges up to 15km, fly at low altitudes and zip around at speeds of more than 100km per hour, making them difficult to track and take down.”

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/04/war-for-ukraine-day-1015-a-brief-wednesday-night-update/

 

Neighborhood meeting on proposed 76ers arena

The meeting concerning the proposed 76ers arena was held in a neighborhood church. Lack of parking meant it pretty much just got a local crowd of people who had walked to the meeting. Mayor Cherelle Parker played a very active role in presenting information and answering questions. Very lengthy meeting. I got there around 5:30pm, left after 8:00 and there were still many questioners left. A great deal of time, maybe an hour & a half, was taken up by the city administrations presentation. At one point during the presentation, an audience member made an accusation and the administration took about five minutes to explain that everyone would get their turn and that they would stay as long as necessary to answer everyone’s questions.

During the questioning, a member of a community group complained that the mayor had never met with her group. Parker went through a list of the groups that she had met with and suggested that somehow, the questioners group had been inadvertently left off the list. One of the problems that the questioners had was that they carried on at great length, were able to ask just one question and weren’t allowed any follow-ups. This was especially aggravating to one fellow who got an answer he didn’t like, tried to clarify his question and was told that he had used up his one question.

My recommendation is that questioners write their questions down beforehand, not so much to get every point in, but to make sure that their questions are as concise and as to-the-point as possible. Yes, it would be nice to have follow-ups. Perhaps a group could arrange for member #1 to ask a question, then for member #2 to say “Y’know, a previous audience member asked (---) and I’d just like to get a clarification about your answer…”

The city administration tried very hard to make the case that the area in which the arena would be built really needed the economic boost and that as the area was at the center of city traffic and as games would end after the regular traffic had departed anyway, that it was a good investment.