Official Ukraine Thread: Putin On The Fritz

I am familiar with James Vasquez and followed him a bit on twitter. There was always something "off" about him in Ukraine. His videos were always clearly far from the front and no real danger, Uniform/equipment/hygiene too clean and perfect, no active combat videos etc... War Tourist seems like a good term. With that said, his fund raising did seem legit. Very sad to hear he is a POS and pocketed over $3,000,000 from people thinking they were helping Ukraine.

String him up on the wall

 

I mean if that’s the case he’s likely going to prison?

 

lol

 

To be fair I’ve never heard of any of these people

 

In the most corrupt country in Europe? Not likely. Probably will get a pat on the back, and a job offer if he can scale up his gift and cut the right people in on it.

 

He did it in England?

 

Oh, well then he'll definitely be arrested.

 

England is probably top 5 most corrupt, they’re just very white collar about it.

 

He did just get his ass beat on an NYC subway....

idk fraud rules when in another country

 

Thread on soup, they weren’t kidding

 

That’s an enjoyable thread

 

Thanks for sharing this. I was assuming they wanted more soup because they didn't like our food.

 

That intelligence convoy went out over the middle of the Black Sea and must have turned off their transponders. They appeared on Flightradar24 until they hit the middle (south of Sevastopol) and then disappeared. The US has been using drones over the Black Sea throughout the war, but most of the manned intelligence aircraft have stayed within allied country airspace. Maybe it happens occasionally, but I don't often see the Rivet Joint aircraft on Flightradar over the middle of the Black Sea.

Update: After about 25 min the convoy turned back on their transponders and popped back up on radar heading back towards Romanian coast

 

Eurofighter Typhoons are Wild looking air craft

 

I'm not a huge fan of them doing that. The RJs are just heavily modified 767s and so basically look exactly like a passenger jet on radar. Doing a flyby of an area with a ton of SAM systems, flashing your transponder, and then disappearing back into a commercial jet radar signature next to a country with a nasty habit of shooting down passenger planes seems like an unnecessary thing to do. Leave the transponder on, do your little fly by in international waters like the US does all the damn time, and don't invite a massive CIVCAS incident.

 

Correction, 7 OH 7s, as in one of the OLDEST jet airframes still flying

 

You're right, got the frame confused with the new KC-46.

 

Timely...this after that RJ flight this morning

 

RJs don't do targeting. They're pure SIGINT/COMINT platform.

 

Understood. Just curious they were close only a couple hours before this. Perhaps snooping if impending attack was being prepped for...or any communication anomalies?

 

Getting pounded and they keep coming.

 

World War 1 with drones.

absolutely horrifying.

 

Don't forget there's no real unified command for this (other than theoretically Ukraine's). You have Ukraine doing stuff, you have the US doing their own collections, the UK doing their "WE'RE STILL A WORLD POWERRRR" stuff, and any time you have a bunch of players and no-one coordinating everything, sometimes there's awkward timing.

 

That strike in video 2 was a fucking bullseye

 

Interesting idea.

 

We’re giving them the Alien Death Ray

 

I'd have my doubts about them getting MQ-9s; those require a lot of ancillary equipment (most notably access to the US owned satellite network required to fly them) and classified systems.

If we were going to give them something like that, I'd say it'd be mothballed MQ-1B Predators (although that carries the same satellite communication issue) or the Army's MQ-1C Grey Eagle, which is a line of sight system and is more exclusively a hunter/killer system. Biden also said he was giving Ukraine the Grey Eagle last June.

 

Agree on grey eagle. I think they may already have some.

 

I would also like to announce I will arrest Putin if I see him! Like this post if you agree!

 

Have we discussed Iran attacking us forces in Syria?

 

In the correct thread, yes

 

So they are abandoning a lot of them but still have a gold mining operation there?

 

That's how I interpreted it.

I would imagine their losses in Ukraine are straining their operations elsewhere

 

Seems like a pretty reasonable analysis in why defending bakhmut was sensible:

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-21-a-defense-of-the?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

 

this isn't exactly a new invention to be fair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_tracked_mine
(and if you read that, the French and Americans came up with remote controlled mines in world war 1)

also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletank

 

Good recap of the recent drama about some of the international "volunteers" that have been lying about experience, lying about being in ukraine, frauds, taking missive donations, and in general just lying...

https://dnyuz.com/2023/03/25/stolen-valor-the-u-s-volunteers-in-ukraine-who-lie-waste-and-bicker/

 

Seems like by the end of this month most of the western vehicles will be in Ukraine

I’m guessing May is when things get weird

 

This may be a stupid question, but does Ukraine have enough men to support an offensive campaign?

 

yes.

that was a stupid question

 

There’s no need to be condescending.

 

Bodies? Yes. Properly trained troops? Unknown but we know they have been holding nato trained troops back for the past several months to preserve them for this offensive.

 

It would be pretty cool if they took back crimea and then said “we good fam”

 

no not yet

 

Russia let’s use all our expensive and currently irreplaceable cruise missiles on civilian energy targets

Ukraine 6 months later