I don't know about the average Russian but I figure Putin would be furious.Russians must be furious Ukrainians still hold Kharkiv, from what I understand the most intense fighting has occurred there.
He and other elected officials refused to cede power to the military coup that happened in 1991. There he and others blocked Parliament with their bodies and refused to move for Russian tanks. He stood up for democracy in a dangerous time. He should be remembered for that.
There were in effect two coups in August 1991. The first began on August 18th when Gorbachev was placed under house arrest in his holiday home in Crimea. The heads of the KGB, interior ministry and armed forces, together with Gorbachev’s vice-president, prime minister and a handful of other Communist Party officials, aimed to roll back Gorbachev’s political and economic reforms, and in particular to stop the signing on August 20th of the so-called Union Treaty, transferring considerable power and property from the central authorities to the republics. They declared themselves the ‘State Committee on the State of Emergency’ (with the Russian acronym GKChP) and announced on the morning of August 19th that Gorbachev had resigned for health reasons.
The second ‘coup’ began as soon as the GKChP showed its hand on August 19th. With Gorbachev held incommunicado in Crimea, Boris Yeltsin, the charismatic but erratic president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RFSFR) – the largest of the Soviet republics – co-ordinated resistance to first coup, calling publicly for Gorbachev’s return, but was simultaneously the prime mover in the second.
Unlike Gorbachev, elected Soviet president by the Congress of People’s Deputies (the partly-democratic Soviet Parliament), Yeltsin had been elected by a popular vote in June 1991, defeating Gorbachev’s preferred candidate. Yeltsin initially responded to the GKChP coup by demanding “a return to normal constitutional development”, and calling Muscovites onto the streets. But by the time the GKChP was dissolved on August 21st, he had transferred power over the Russian economy and the Soviet security forces on Russian territory to himself, though he had no constitutional or legal power to do so, and had reduced Gorbachev to insignificance. This second coup was the one which counted.
We'd know within seconds of it was as nuke.That was an Iskander pretty sure. Could have been conventional, thermobaric, or like a 5-10 kiloton mini. No idea from that footage. Whomever was around on the receiving end is probably gone now though, or will be soon.
Please let it not have been a mini nuke. We don't need NATO scrambling and putting their hands on the big stuff because they lack the small stuff.
I don't know about the average Russian but I figure Putin would be furious.
This would have been obvious to anyone who has visited the Ukraine in the last 5 years. Maybe it would have been a viable strategy in 2014, but even then, I don't think he would have been able to pacify the western parts, and they would serve as a reservoir or resistance. Those guys were itching for a chance to fight Russia even then. Crimea and Donbass were the exceptions. He couldn't even pull off this stunt in Kharkiv and Odessa in 2014. To try it on whole country now is insane. Would need a million Russian level troops minimum and a long term occupation with corresponding losses from resistance. Russian military should be thinking very hard about taking care of the Putin problem now, before he orders them to commit war crimes on Ukrainian civilians for which even the Russian people won't forgive them.
At this point I'm not confident Russia can even hold Crimea and Donbas anymore. They stirred up one hell of a hornet's nest and even if they take new territory, they aren't going to hold it. They won't break the Ukrainian spine, so the second they get momentum back, it's going to become a bloodbath for whatever is left over of the invaders.A possible scenario is that Putin annexes either de facto or de iure the 2 breakaway republics and perhaps some stretch of land connecting them with Crimea, declares victory and returns his troops to the new frontier. It is simply much too early to make any such statements. They really seem to have some serious supply chain issues. The international response is much stronger than many would have guessed, and still gaining momentum. The Russian army has been ordered to fight Ukrainians who are regarded as family and have a similar culture and language. It seems they really do not want to be there. They did not sign up to go and shoot Grandma.
That was an Iskander pretty sure. Could have been conventional, thermobaric, or like a 5-10 kiloton mini. No idea from that footage. Whomever was around on the receiving end is probably gone now though, or will be soon.
Please let it not have been a mini nuke. We don't need NATO scrambling and putting their hands on the big stuff because they lack the small stuff.
wrong:
Canada joins with Europe in closing its airspace to Russian airliners
Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot operates multiple flights per day through Canadian airspace en route to the U.S. and beyond. It is a critical route for the…nationalpost.com
At this point I'm not confident Russia can even hold Crimea and Donbas anymore. They stirred up one hell of a hornet's nest and even if they take new territory, they aren't going to hold it. They won't break the Ukrainian spine, so the second they get momentum back, it's going to become a bloodbath for whatever is left over of the invaders.
Yeah, hard to forget what happened last time... that's the reason they eschewed building up their military since. The holocaust casts an indefinite shadow.Still makes me nervous when the Germans talk about building up their military.
Yeah he does damn. Hope he marked where he put it. EOD should have a word, he got that potential son.
Cherkasy is home to Azot one of the biggest manufacturers of nitrogen fertilizer in Ukraine Azot (Cherkasy) - Wikipedia
So it could be from that chemical plant.