Please read what I wrote and don't reply stupidities.
I did and it was another hyperbole that has nothing to with reality. France is not “financially close to bankruptcy”, Russia is not collapsing, we know the exact worth of the Russian currency, etc. Hence my joke. I do not see it as worthy commenting on the “stupidity” part.
Elsewhere the front has little changed, with small Russian advances here and there in the Donbas and in Kursk.
A not so small Russian advance happened in Kupiansk and Russians are reportedly in the city. Reportedly, after breaking through the Ukrainian defence line(s), the Russian forces moved over 4 km, reaching Kupiansk and occupying some buildings and were sent reinforcements. We will see how this develops from here (could be reversed tomorrow for all we know). But this was definitely not a little change here and there.
Source:
x.com
Ukraine is planning to draft 160,000 in November till February to replenish theIr forces to the 85% of what is needed. Some say that more realistic outcome is
up to 100,000, which would still help, but probably ensure the slow bleeding until defeated.
Ukraine is planning to draft an additional 160,000 troops between November and February, which the National Security and Defence Council believes will replenish military units to only about 85 per cent of what was needed.
But military experts and one senior Kyiv official have expressed scepticism that the target will be reached, saying it was more realistic to expect up to 100,000 to be drafted. That would fill about half of the manpower gap, they said, which would still be an improvement as some units are currently staffed to about a third of what was needed.
Kyiv sends more medics to eastern frontline before Moscow’s expected onslaught
www.ft.com
Ukraine is sending signals (blackmailing) again about the “nuclear bomb” if the US cuts aid. Behind a paywall, so I will copy and paste a good chunk.
Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads.
With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich uranium, wartime Ukraine would have to rely instead on using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors.
Ukraine still controls nine operational reactors and has significant nuclear expertise despite having given up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in 1996. The report says: “The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons … A significant nuclear weapons arsenal would require much less material … the amount of material is sufficient for hundreds of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotons.”
Such a bomb would have about one tenth the power of Fat Man, the document’s authors conclude.
Of course, they catch on to their own nonsense and irrelevance:
“That would be enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistics installations. The exact nuclear yield would be unpredictable because it would use different isotopes of plutonium,” said the report’s author, Oleksii Yizhak, head of department at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government research centre that acts as an advisory body to the presidential office and the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
Common sense also suggests that it would take years for Ukraine to create even something like what they are talking about. This is in addition to the lack of means of delivering something like this to the Russian territory. The authors of the paper insists otherwise though:
Western experts believe it would take Ukraine at least five years to develop a nuclear weapon and a suitable carrier, but Badrak insists Ukraine is less than a year from building its own ballistic missiles.
They also believe that the Brits will assist them with building their “nuclear deterrent”:
Yizhak and Badrak argue that, should the US abandon Ukraine, Britain could honour its security obligation under the Budapest memorandum by helping Ukraine to develop a nuclear deterrent, given it does not have conventional means to prevent Russia from overrunning Ukraine.
Kyiv could rapidly develop a rudimentary weapon similar to that dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 to stop Russia if the US cuts military aid
www.thetimes.com
Basically, they are completely delusional. Foreign Ministry seem to understand that, at least officially:
Ukraine’s foreign ministry denied it was able to develop nuclear weapons while stressing its commitment to the NPT. “We do not possess, do not develop and do not intend to create nuclear weapons,” Heorhiy Tykhy, a spokesman for the ministry said in a statement.
Atomic Scientists also disagree with authors’ assessment:
The alternative path to the bomb is based on plutonium. There’s a good deal of plutonium in the spent fuel from Ukraine’s nuclear power reactors, but it is about one percent by weight in massive, intensely radioactive fuel assemblies. To use it in a bomb, Ukraine would need a “reprocessing” plant to chemically separate the plutonium from all the rest. Once again, that is a facility Ukraine does not have and would take years to build. The plutonium from power reactors is “reactor-grade,” with a variety of undesirable isotopes that make it less than ideal for nuclear weapons, though still usable.
Even if Ukraine had the needed nuclear material, it would not be easy to turn it into nuclear weapons. Designing nuclear weapons requires specialized expertise. Ukraine has many experts in civilian nuclear matters, but 30 years after Ukraine’s participation in the Soviet military-industrial complex, many of the weapons experts left over are no longer available. Today, Ukraine has modest remaining expertise in the many specialized technologies involved in nuclear weapons design and manufacture.
Nor does it have any of the relevant facilities for those purposes. The enriched uranium or plutonium would have to be converted into metal and fabricated into metal bomb components. Specialty conventional explosives would be needed to set off the bomb, along with detonators with precision timing and a variety of other components. Ukraine does not have facilities for these purposes, and these, too, would be expensive and time-consuming to build.
The Kremlin’s claim that Ukraine is developing nuclear weapons is dangerous nonsense. Ukraine lacks most of the crucial capabilities necessary for the development of a nuclear weapons program, and no country will help Ukraine build nuclear weapons.
thebulletin.org
So that is pretty much a nothing-burger and a whole lot of nonsense. In addition, if that were somehow miraculously to happen, Russia would carry out a preemptive strike before that were to happen, without a doubt, with weapons that can destroy entire cities rather than some
maybe “destroy an entire airbase or concentrated military installations” diy project.
A thread by Dara Massicot after her trip to Ukraine with Mike Kofman, Rob Lee, and others. Readable to everyone (or should be):
@MassDara: I've returned from a research trip to Ukraine, where I met many people in Kyiv and along the frontlines. They are brave and kind in ways that words fail to capture. The situation is serious and...…
threadreaderapp.com
I won’t provide a summary or comment too much myself (I am not sure how I am doing on character limit in this post), but supply her own words here:
A worthy mention would also be that her assessment indicates no shortage of equipment or artillery ammunition. This is, by the way, about the 3rd or 4th analyst who had recently been to Ukraine claiming the same thing that I saw. Others also claim that there is actually currently a parity in the artillery department between Ukraine and Russia on most sectors of the front. This is the opposite of what Zelensky keeps saying, of course. The biggest issue right now is a severe lack of manpower. The current aforementioned plans and expectations from these endeavours are surely not promising and, in my opinion, only ensure prolonging the slow bleeding and eventual defeat, likely complete in that scenario and likely what Russia will be going for unless their a settlement that is to their satisfaction.
Currently, I do not see any preconditions forming for Ukraine “winning” the fight even in some form. Things are evolving to quickly. Russia is able to generate manpower, even accumulate new reserves (Dara mentions in her thread that they are able to regenerate and rotate troops). Russian equipment storage is still about half full, with artillery being the biggest concern for the Russians, but we are still a long way to go:
Source:
x.com
And so on. There is nothing currently playing in Ukraine’s favour. Those who saw today’s news about additional Trump’s proposed appointments probably realize where the wind is blowing in terms of aiding Ukraine (as well as WTF and then some in general): every one of these people had either publicly stated that there should be no aid provided to Ukraine at all or straight up that Ukraine is actually Russia’s business. Some are even accused of being Russian assets by some intellectuals (but this is nonsense, of course).
I am going to wrap it up on this note.
kyivindependent.com
t.me
www.kyivpost.com
But Russians don;t use only cheap FPV drones to destroy decoys. Sometimes they use Kalibr.
