Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar
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Ah, my bad. Thanks for the correction
Still I don't think that makes much difference, does it? I don't think you can hide a submarine in 18m either.
Soldato
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Ah, my bad. Thanks for the correction
Not one that will be of any use to Ukraine! Maybe a little private one like that rich Danish bloke used to chop up a journalist. It is immaterial anyway, Turkey has to know to allow proper safety to all vessels, and you can be sure Russia is across Turkish intelligence to some degree. Other entrances are the Danube and from the Caspian Sea via the Sea of Azov. But they are useless too.
Isn't the Mi-17 a Russian helicoptor? How and why would the US be supplying them?
Man of Honour
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Probably sourced from Eastern European States that still have them like Poland and the Czech Republic
These would be helicopters they had purchased (possibly from Poland etc), captured, or otherwise acquired. The point being that Ukraine's pilots are familiar with them so will not require any training.
Until ~2016 the US DOD was purchasing Russian helicopters from a number of places including Russia to supply to Afghanistan - until things kicked off in congress and they started to replace them with US models. Dunno if they were all delivered to Afghanistan.
Soldato
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Exactly this. Even training an experienced rotary wing pilot to fly a different model of basic transport helicopter takes time (known as “type conversion” IIRC). By suppling Ukrainian pilots with Mi-17s, both flight and ground crews can have these transport helicopters in action really quickly.
Maybe they'll actually delivery a few sharp sticks by the time they've finished cutting back to what they'll actually send......
People writing off the Humvees but the ones that Ukraine has had so far, not sure if this lot are the same, are up-armoured similar to MRAP level, with a 50 cal or similar turret.
Caporegime
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Providing the vehicles is only a very small part of the puzzle, training, parts and service and quite something else. Sending this stuff could actually do more harm than good.
One of the biggest issues now seem to be lack of fuel.
Britain sending Mastiff armoured vehicles to Ukraine (ukdefencejournal.org.uk)
aha so yes its the old afghan kit
aha so yes its the old afghan kit
Training is being provided in the UK. I'd guess in the format of Train the Trainer, so these Ukrainians can go back and teach their own.
As for servicing and spares? I'd imagine there will be a limited package put together. I'm not so sure what real effect these vehicles will have but I'd imagine the ukrainian soldiers would appreciate some protective mobility, should make deploying out and moving in a combat zone a little safer, at the very least it'll give them a bit of a psychological boost. That and moving in Mine/IED resistant vehicles will make it safer moving in liberated areas, reports of landmines being left behind in large quantities.
But training takes time. Time Ukraine doesn't have. That's why equipment being supplied is either the same as the stuff they have (e.g. the MH-17) or is suitably simple to use (Javelin etc) or requires standard (or easily bodgable), non-specialist, spare parts (Mastiff etc).
The armour vehicles they are being provided dont take that long to learn, a few days to a week at most, they wont be teaching them to drive from scratch. They will likely already be capable of driving trucks, and these aint complex systems like a heli or a fighter jet. It will just be a compressed package to familiarise with the platform, its characteristics and its capabilities. This kit is going to take a bit of time to get to Ukraine by the time they have been prepared and moved across there regardless.
Think there genuine arguments for not jumping immediately to such aggressive rhetoric, but it's pretty hard not to conclude this with everything that Putin himself has said for the past decade or more of trying to delegitimise Ukrainian statehood.
The more important issue with saying it though is then it sort of requires a response commensurate with the crime and if none comes... it makes the West look like it doesn't care.
The more important issue with saying it though is then it sort of requires a response commensurate with the crime and if none comes... it makes the West look like it doesn't care.
Source appears to be an interview on 'France 2'. https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live...s-04-13-22/h_e5589f9c279f7e5568fb9aebe5dfdb8e
That is a ridiculous reason not to call it genocide - eg Serbian and Rwandan genocides were surely between brothers in the same way...
Anyway I think a better reason not to call it genocide is that it doesn't seem like that's actually what has happened. War crimes yes, but the jump from there to genocide is quite a large one, unless Biden has a lot more evidence than we've seen so far...
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