Museum tanks and trench systems enhance Ukraine training, EU commander says
... Old Soviet tanks have been borrowed from museums to help train Ukrainian troops on what a commander of the EU training mission for Kyiv says are booby-trap tactics used by Russian soldiers on the battlefield.
Instructors from 17 nations have trained some 18,000 Ukrainian troops in Germany to operate high-spec tanks or precision air defence systems and passed on their skills to snipers, engineers, paramedics and for drone warfare.
But with the Russian and Ukrainian armies blasting thousands of shells at each other every day in grinding combat that echoes the trench warfare of World War One, Ukraine has also sought training in circumstances more representative of the battlefield reality as well as on some older equipment.
So the German military has dug trench systems according to Russian standards and borrowed museum piece Soviet tanks to enhance the on-the-ground experience at some of its training sites.
"These (museum) systems are in use on the Russian side, and they sometimes plant booby traps in abandoned gear," Lieutenant-General Andreas Marlow, head of the EU's Special Training Command near Berlin, told Reuters.
"Providing such vehicles in the training makes it easier to demonstrate where to be cautious to make sure that you don't trigger an explosion if you find them on the battlefield and open the door."
The training command declined to say where the tanks were borrowed from, or how many were in use.
The command is part of a European Union military mission set up in 2022 to train Ukrainian troops to combat Russia's invasion.
On Friday, the mission was extended by another two years as Ukrainian troops face Russian forces advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the war.
Part of the training in Germany now also involves studying Russian trench systems, which Marlow said were typically built to a fixed scheme.
"It is about the shape of the trenches, where to expect shelters and weapons positions," he said.
Instructors are not only looking into the past for inspiration.
Modern simulators have been brought in to train Ukrainian units in combat shooting as well as high-tech dummies that present combat medics with more complex cases.
At the same time, drones are playing a much bigger role in training now, teaching surveillance techniques as well and raising awareness of the constant danger posed by enemy drones hovering in the sky, Marlow said.
Moscow and Kyiv have both sought to buy and develop new drones, deploy them in innovative ways, and find new ways to destroy them.
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Цитата:
Finland dismisses 'Finlandisation' model for Ukraine
... Forcing neutrality onto Ukraine will not bring about a peaceful solution to the crisis with Russia, Finland's foreign minister said on Monday, adding that Moscow could not be trusted to adhere to any agreement it signs.
Ruled by tsarist Russia for more than a century, Finland gained independence in 1917. It then desperately fended off a Soviet invasion in 1939 and for a time sided with Nazi Germany in a bid to win back lost territory.
As the war ended with Allied victory, Finland found itself compelled to spend decades maintaining friendly and accommodating relations with its eastern neighbour and treading a sometimes precarious path of neutrality to preserve independence - a tactic known as "Finlandisation".
With the prospect of U.S. president elect Donald Trump seeking to end the conflict as quickly possible and concerns from some allies that the terms could be imposed in Kyiv, one scenario could be to force a neutral status on Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly demanded Ukraine remain neutral for there to be peace, which would de facto kill its aspirations for NATO membership.
RUSSIA TRUST ISSUES
Speaking in an interview with Reuters, Finland's Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen poured cold water on using the "Finlandisation" model, pointing out that firstly Helsinki had fended off Russia in World War 2 and that despite the ensuing peace had always continued to arm itself fearing a new conflict.
"I'm against it (Finlandisation), yes. Let's face it, Ukraine was neutral before they were attacked by Russia," Valtonen, whose country has a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, said on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Forum.
"It's definitely not something I would be imposing on Ukraine. Definitely not as a first alternative," adding that it would not make the problems go away.
The Ukraine invasion led both Finland and Sweden to abandon decades of military non-alignment and seek safety in the NATO camp.
Valtonen questioned whether Russia could be trusted even if it agreed a deal and said forcing Ukraine's hand to accept terms against its will would tear down the international system.
"I really want to avoid a situation where any European country, or the United States for that matter, starts negotiating over the heads of Ukraine," she said.
"A larger power can not just grab territory, but also essentially weaken the sovereignty of another nation," she said.
Вероятно понимая, что Помпео высокооплачиваемый лоббист Украины, Трамп отказал ему в месте в своей администрации (а Помпео планировал стать министром обороны!).
Цитата:
Trump rules out Haley and Pompeo in White House administration
Помпео, для вида, отметился статьей:
Цитата:
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Trump won’t let Putin ‘roll through Ukraine’
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his view of President-elect Donald Trump's foreign policy in Ukraine would focus on ensuring the West emerged victorious from the war.
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President-elect Donald Trump will adopt a significantly more hawkish view toward the war in Ukraine once he takes office than the one he outlined on the campaign trail, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump regularly kept the Ukraine issue at arms length. He often questioned the necessity of sending military aid to Ukraine, citing the high costs associated with it. At Fortune’s Global Forum in New York, however, Pompeo — who served in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021 — believed the President-elect would adopt a more hardline position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine now that he is set to reenter the White House.
“President Trump is not going to allow Vladimir Putin to roll through Ukraine,” Pompeo said during a joint interview with former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. “Withdrawing funding from the Ukranians would result in that and he will be told that by his entire team. It’s not his M.O. to allow that to happen.”
On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social, the upstart social media platform owned by his media company the Trump Media & Technology Group, that Pompeo and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley wouldn’t be rejoining his new administration. Both Haley and Pompeo have been Ukraine hawks since the start of the war. At the conference, Pompeo acknowledged that his support of U.S. aid to Ukraine differed from those of other Republican officials.
In a show of bipartisan camaraderie Panetta said he’d hoped Pompeo would have been appointed to a role in the second Trump administration. “They need his view of the world, and I really think the Trump administration in the first term benefited from having people like Mike Pompeo there,” Panetta said.
One of Trump’s primary dissatisfactions with the U.S.’s military aid to Ukraine was the cost. As of October, the U.S. had sent $64 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the State Department.
Pompeo sought to cast the significance of the war in Ukraine as an example of a larger, global struggle between liberal democracies—represented by the U.S. and its allies in NATO—and autocracies, such as China, Iran, and North Korea. He said Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Ayatollah of Iran Ali Khamenei would be waiting to see if the West wins, or concedes to Putin. Pompeo’s counterpart on stage, Panetta, echoed those sentiments.
“In many ways Ukraine is also fighting for other democracies because the message that is sent to Putin is a very important message that has to be sent to Xi, it has to be sent the Supreme Leader [of Iran], it has to be sent to Kim Jong Un — that they cannot just have their way with sovereign democracies,” Panetta said.
Pompeo said he believes Trump would come around to that point of view. “It’s absolutely critically important that the perception is the West stood up to this thug and this horrible guy [Putin] and didn’t allow evil to triumph and that’s imperative,” Pompeo said. “I’m very hopeful President Trump will see that imperative.”
On the campaign trail Trump took a more isolationist stance on foreign policy than the traditional, hawkish Republican position. During the debate with his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump twice dodged a question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war. In his answer he highlighted the cost of the military aid and claimed reports of the death toll from the war were “fake numbers.”
Now, as a president-elect, Trump is immersing himself more fully in the Ukraine question. Last week he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin following his reelection. On the call, he reportedly told Putin not to further escalate the war in Ukraine. (Trump spoke to Putin at least seven times since he left office, according to a source cited in a book by journalist Bob Woodward).
In the days following the election Trump also spoke to Ukrainian premier Volodymyr Zelensky in a call that was joined by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. In September, Trump met with Zelensky when he made a visit to the U.S. Trump has not always seen eye-to-eye with Zelensky. During a podcast interview just a few weeks after their meeting Trump called Zelensky “the greatest salesman on Earth” for having received U.S. military aid. Trump also blamed Zelensky for starting the war.
“He should never have let that war start,” Trump said on the PBD podcast. “The war’s a loser.”
Trump has pushed for a speedy resolution to the war. He regularly touted his record as a dealmaker when he was a real estate developer in the private sector as making him uniquely suited to reaching a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. During the debate Trump said if won the election an agreement would be made before he was even inaugurated. In July, Trump said he would be able to pull it off in just “24 hours.”
When asked about that timeline, Pompeo said he saw the process taking longer.
“I’ll take the over,” Pompeo said
(выделено а.п.).
… и украинцы заныли:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Ukraine battles to shape 'starting positions' for any war talks after Trump return
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"This winter is a critical point ... I hope the war is drawing to an end. Right now we will define the positions for both sides on negotiations, the starting positions," the official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
Officials are waiting to see who Trump picks for his top security and defence jobs for clues on how he will shape Ukraine policy. He has ruled out ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, seen in Kyiv as pro-Ukrainian.
...
"If it's just fast, it means losses for Ukraine. I just don't yet understand how this could be in any other way. Maybe we do not know something, do not see," Zelenskiy said.
He also criticised talk of a ceasefire without Ukraine first receiving robust security guarantees that would prevent Russia launching an even bigger offensive later on.
"It's a very scary challenge for our citizens: first a ceasefire, then we'll see. Who are you? Are your children dying?" Zelenskiy said in comments apparently aimed at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who had proposed a ceasefire.
BLEAK MOOD
The Kyiv official said it felt "less likely" after Trump's victory that there would be a NATO invitation for Ukraine and acknowledged there was a risk Trump would scale back aid.
"I hope the Biden administration will try to avoid this risk by accelerating the speed of (its) help," the official said.
The Kremlin said on Friday that President Vladimir Putin was ready to discuss Ukraine with Trump, but that this did not mean Moscow's war demands had changed.
Putin set out his terms for an end to the war in June: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from all of the territory of four regions claimed by Russia, something Kyiv sees as akin to capitulation.
Ukraine's public is sceptical Russia is interested in talks, but its central demand if they happen is for Ukraine to receive proper security guarantees, said Anton Grushetskyi, executive director of the KIIS pollster.
Ukrainians leaned towards wanting Democrat Kamala Harris to win the election, but frustration at the reluctance of outgoing President Joe Biden's administration to increase support meant they were increasingly open to a gamble on Trump, he said.
"People are very disappointed that behind the very strong words of the Biden administration the real steps were much weaker, especially over the last year," he said.
Trying to strengthen his hand in September, Zelenskiy outlined a "victory plan" to Biden, reiterating his request for permission to strike military targets deeper in Russia, receive a NATO invitation and obtain more potent weapons.
The plan, he said, was needed to compel Russia to the negotiating table in good faith. There has been little sign of a breakthrough on any of the plan's five points.
"The mood in Ukraine is pretty bleak. You can see the increasing frustration in Zelenskiy's recent remarks," a senior Kyiv-based diplomatic source said.
The Ukrainian official voiced scepticism that Biden would supply something significant to Ukraine, such as lifting the restriction on long-range strikes.
"Who is Biden now? He lost a lot of credibility. I hope he will be brave enough to do something. But I don't have big hopes. It would be great. We are very grateful for his help. He did a lot, much more than we expected," the official said.
А.п. напоминает: социальная либеральная технология «Сhild-free» в России запрещена.
Цитата:
Russia is shrinking; the Kremlin says child-free ideology is to blame
A new bill against “child-free propaganda” criminalizes advocating for not having children. It could affect TV, movies and social media posts.
Children visit the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, also known as the Victory Museum, at Poklonnaya Hill in western Moscow. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)
In the first episode of the new season of the Russian reality television show “Mama at 16,” about teen girls facing an unwanted pregnancy, no one thinks abortion is an option. Even though Tanya doesn’t want a child with her boyfriend, Nikita, who is irresponsible, neither she nor her mother would consider it — but by episode’s end, everything is resolved, the baby is born, and they live happily ever after.
In previous seasons, when it was called “Pregnant at 16,” some characters at least broached the topic of abortion, but such a sentiment is now not just disapproved of in Russia, but it will also soon be illegal.
A new law against “child-free propaganda” criminalizing the spread of information advocating for not having children has sailed through its first reading in parliament. The nature of the “propaganda” is not explicitly defined, so the law could bar advertisers, movie and TV producers, bloggers, and writers from presenting childless people as satisfied, or large families as miserable, according to rights groups and activists.
The law comes against the backdrop of a long-standing Russian demographic crisis, where deaths often outnumber births and the population is shrinking and aging. The solution for President Vladimir Putin is the return to what the Kremlin calls “traditional Russian values,” including encouraging women to have large families.
He has said that Russia’s demographic crisis “haunts” him and frames it as a critical national security problem as the prospect of long-term population decline risks a commensurate loss of Russian power.
Ban on complaining
The ban on child-free propaganda, which analysts see as certain to pass into law, is part of a broad campaign by Russian authorities to pressure women into giving birth to many children.
Daria Serenko, co-founder of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement, who has left Russia, said it was a warning to women that their bodies, minds and actions were under the control of the state.
“This is a situation where the state wants to have monopoly on your body, on your voice, on your private life, on everything,” she said. As laws around child-free propaganda and abortion multiply, women are reluctant to defend their rights because of the risk of arrest.
“There is silence,” Serenko said. “This is taboo. Women do not talk about it. They are afraid. Women do not want to go to court because they know very well what the consequences will be.”
The ban on child-free propaganda could punish women who merely post about the hardships they have experienced as mothers, according to the Russian rights group First Department. It warned that contraception companies could face advertising restrictions.
“It will be impossible to say or write anything that is aimed at creating a ‘positive image of childlessness and a conscious desire not to have children,’” the group wrote in a legal analysis of the bill. “The ban on ‘child-free propaganda’ threatens not only those who protect the rights of women and girls … but everyone. If the bill is adopted in its current form, the phrase ‘How can you give birth when there is such poverty in Russia?’ will be punishable.”
When the bill passed its first reading, one of the largest motherhood support groups on VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, immediately disbanded. The group, ironically titled Happiness of Motherhood, had more than 148,000 members and was a forum for mothers to share their problems, fears and regrets about parenthood, without shame or fear of judgment.
Some complained about poverty, their small apartments and the high cost of having children, or about their lack of freedom, saddled with work, child-rearing and their husbands’ expectations that they do all the housework.
The demographic crisis
A child plays in the snow in Red Square in December 2023. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)
Issues like these are probably part of the reason for the consistently low birth rate that has Putin so upset. Independent Russian demographer Alexander Raksha has estimated that Russian deaths would outnumber births by 608,000 this year, with an overall population decline of around 550,000 after immigration of some 60,000.
In September, Russia’s statistical agency reported that the number of births for the first half of the year plunged to 599,600, the lowest since 1999.
The population decline “is catastrophic for the future of the nation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in July. Putin has called for the reviving of “wonderful traditions” of the past, when mothers had seven to eight children.
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Russian authorities have taken an increasingly interventionist approach, curbing access to abortion and repressing what the Kremlin calls “destructive ideologies” that it claims are imported from the West. Russia has banned what it calls the LGBTQ+ “movement” as extremist. Some 11 regions have banned medical staff, partners and others from suggesting that women have abortions.
Russian ministers have called on women to start families at age 18, while others have condemned women who have pursued higher education before giving birth.
Several lawmakers and public figures have called for a tax on childlessness — much like the one imposed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The idea has also been touted by Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), now the vice president-elect, in a 2021 interview, according to ABC News.
Television and the state-controlled internet are filled with public service announcements extolling the benefits of large families and living in the country. One antiabortion ad features a young couple who receive a knock on the door at night from their future child, who introduces herself saying, “I am your happiness.” The woman lets her in despite her boyfriend objecting that “we are not planning.” She replies, “You can’t plan happiness, can you?”
In Moscow, women registered in state clinics are being emailed free fertility test referrals, which raises fears that this could lead to intrusive follow-up action or monitoring in the future.
A Russian feminist activist living in a large city who has been investigating these efforts said the tests induce anxiety. “For those who do understand what is happening in terms of politics, there’s an underlying sentiment that women should give birth regardless of circumstances, regardless of the war, regardless of everything,” she said.
She goes by the handle Aida on social media, and The Washington Post is not naming her for security reasons.
‘Duty as a woman’
Children attend a ceremony for the youth organization Young Pioneers, on Red Square in Moscow. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)
Billboards advertise hotlines for people with fears or questions about pregnancy, and those lines are staffed by antiabortion advocates. Aida phoned, posing as an 18-year-old student with no apartment, hoping to have an abortion and terrified because her boyfriend was fighting as a soldier on an indefinite contract in Ukraine. She was pressed to have the baby instead.
“They just told me things like, ‘Well, if your boyfriend does die, it’s not the worst scenario, because then you’ll get money.’ So really scary stuff to be honest,” Aida said.
She also volunteered undercover for a month to work at a state-funded antiabortion group, Women for Life. The group searched keywords such as abortion and birth on social media, then joined in group chats, offering to help women to contact them personally and pressuring them not to have an abortion.
“Sometimes they manipulate, saying, ‘Your duty as a woman is to give birth.’ Sometimes they lie, providing false medical information about how the fetus is developing,” she said.
Serenko, the feminist, described the flurry of laws and proposals to boost the population as “an imitation of activity” by officials that was unlikely to succeed — especially as Russia’s massive war and security budget, projected to reach 40 percent of spending in 2025, undermined social spending, programs for women, schools and health services.
Putin in September told the Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg, attended by women from 126 countries, that Russian women remained “guardians of the hearth and linchpins of large families with many children,” but he insisted that the government was creating the conditions for them to succeed in their jobs as well.
“We know that combining these roles is a challenge, but our women cope with it, and, despite being confronted with rigorous workloads, they manage to remain beautiful, caring and charming ladies.”
But to Aida, the government’s bans designed to increase births and to make abortions harder to obtain were signs of a regime that sees citizens as machines to be used.
“A woman is like an incubator that delivers new warriors, new people to be exploited, new people for the government,” she said. “We see that a lot in propaganda and on billboards about how you’re going to give birth to a soldier who is going to protect our land.”
Эта статья показывает, что мы все сделали правильно!
И да, как у нас обычно в ИСО>ЕСО, в предпоследний момент.
По этому, собственно, буржуи и жалуются...
_________________
С интересом и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
NATO Secretary General with the President of France 🇫🇷 Emmanuel Macron, 12 NOV 2024
Цитата:
What should Biden do with his remaining time? Get a peace deal done in Ukraine
The end to this bloody stalemate must come with negotiation, and Putin should not wait until Trump is in the White House.
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First the good news. The US is talking to Russia. Then the bad. Vladimir Putin has been phoned not by the current US president, but by a known admirer and sceptic of the US’s support for Ukraine, the president-elect, Donald Trump. Could these two facts offer a path to peace?
Two years ago, Putin made a terrible mistake. He thought he could invade Ukraine and topple its leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He failed utterly. Ukraine’s forces pushed him back to the supposedly pro-Russian territory of his 2014 invasion. At talks in Istanbul months after this failure, Putin’s representatives might have settled for a ceasefire and the acceptance of some western security guarantee for Kyiv. The talks broke down with the west encouraging Ukraine to fight on. In what amounted to a proxy war on Moscow, the west attacked Russia and its people with the severest sanctions ever seen, while donating to Ukraine huge sums of aid.
Since then the west’s strategy has lost contact with reality. The plazas of Kyiv have become theatres for western politicians to strut their machismo, demand total victory and scuttle for home. Ukraine’s cities have been devastated, while somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 young Ukrainian service personnel have died and more than 6 million of its citizens have emigrated.
Western sanctions have failed completely to alter Russian policy. They have cemented a new alliance of autocracies. Their impact on western inflation, especially energy prices, has merely undermined western governments, helping topple those in Britain, Germany and now the US since the war began. As for the west’s use of Ukraine as a proxy in a “war of deterrence” against Russia, success in such wars is provable only with the hindsight of history.
Ending the Ukraine war is a choice that lies with the US, without whose support Ukraine collapses. But the end must come with negotiation. This has to mean going back to the failed 2014 Minsk and 2022 Istanbul agreements. There is no realistic alternative. That means a border drawn somewhere between “Russian” Ukraine and Kyiv’s Ukraine. Kyiv cannot recover Crimea. Russia must accept some external guarantee of Ukraine’s future security. Kyiv must accept that this stops short of Nato membership, while Russia must accept that Ukraine will develop some deal with the EU.
The BBC’s Moscow correspondent reported on Monday that Putin is on a high after last month’s Brics summit in Kazan, attended by 36 states not aligned with the west. In view of Trump’s call, the Russian leader might now be tempted to hold off from negotiations until his friend is in the White House.
That is a risk he should not take. Trump in office will be deluged with official and allied pressure to hang tough and stay fighting. Putin currently has Ukraine on the back foot and Nato in an uncertain mood. Joe Biden must be eager to end at least one of his wars before he goes. It might be possible to get a deal done before the chaos and uncertainty of the second Trump era begins.
The US should grab this moment and give Russia the way out it needs. Putin could dress up failure as pragmatism. Who knows, he could then welcome Trump to Moscow.
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The Guardian view on Ukraine after Trump’s victory: bracing for what lies
The former president’s closeness to Vladimir Putin and isolationism bode ill for Kyiv. Accelerating US support is essential
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ven Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s extraordinary communication skills were stretched as he rushed to congratulate Donald Trump on the victory that Kyiv had been dreading. The Ukrainian president wrote that Mr Trump’s commitment to “peace through strength” was exactly the principle that could bring a just peace closer. Vladimir Putin’s riposte came almost immediately, via a massive drone attack on the capital, and the Kremlin’s call on the west to stop arming Ukraine to save its people.
For Joe Biden, supporting Ukraine was about defending the post-second-world-war order. It was a relatively cost-effective way for the US to degrade the capabilities of a key adversary with no risk to its own personnel. But Mr Trump is an isolationist who has a strikingly close relationship with the Russian president – and who, according to a former aide, made it very clear that he believed Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. Mr Trump said during his campaign that he could end the war “in a day” and blamed Mr Zelenskyy for the conflict.
The last Trump administration was the first to send lethal aid to Ukraine. But it also froze military funding within hours of the notorious phone call where Mr Trump pressed Mr Zelenskyy to work with the US attorney general to investigate Mr Biden. (The funding was later unfrozen.) The pair’s history further complicates matters.
Mr Trump loves to be lauded as a dealmaker and a strongman. He will not want people to believe he was steamrollered by Mr Putin. Last year he said that he would tell the Russian president: “If you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give them a lot … More than they ever got.” And Russia is losing troops at a staggeringly rapid rate, even with a boost from North Korea.
But the fiasco of Mr Trump’s dealings with Kim Jong-un demonstrates the gap between his aspirations and abilities. He has minimal patience or interest in detail. He is said to be highly susceptible to the last person to drop a word in his ear and does not want to be managed by the military establishment again. JD Vance, his vice-president-elect, has offered a prescription for peace strikingly similar to Mr Putin’s: Russia can keep what it has occupied and Ukraine stays out of Nato. In any case, Nato membership looks a lot less reassuring when Mr Trump has suggested that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to members who he felt paid too little.
US military support is similar to that from all other donors combined. Though most of the vast sums from the Biden administration have been spent in US arms factories, even sales to Ukraine are not guaranteed in future. Despite attempts to “Trump-proof” the conflict, the collapse of Germany’s government, and the emboldening of the far right by Mr Trump’s electoral triumph, will further complicate European efforts to support Kyiv. All of this is likely to exacerbate questions among exhausted Ukrainians about the feasibility of a purely military solution and increase the appetite of some for, or at least toleration of, a negotiated end to hostilities.
The Biden administration is reportedly attempting to expedite as much as $9bn worth of military aid, agreed but not yet transferred. This is far from straightforward, not least because weaponry and ammunition are still being produced and because the next president could stop agreed shipments. But it is essential.
Ukraine’s situation, already so perilous, has grown vastly more so this week. The accelerated delivery of promised aid, allowing it to maximise its position before Mr Trump takes office, is now its best hope.
Hoffnungsträger Trump: Geostratege Glenn Diesen über Putins Energie und die Genialität Amerikas
Цитата:
Виктор Орбан за одну ночь стал главным политиком Европы | Александр Песке и Руслан Сафаров
Цитата:
Цитата:
Daniel P. Welch: Trump's Victory, The EU and Ukraine in Panic, Middle East Confused
Цитата:
В украинских пабликах заметное оживление по поводу возможного назначения Марко Рубио госсекретарем. Напоминают этапы его большого антироссийского пути.
В марте 2014 года, после Крыма, Рубио призывал ввести санкции против России, включая визовые и финансовые ограничения в отношении Владимира Путина.
В январе 2022 года он представил законопроект, предусматривавший введение санкций против высшего руководства России и против российских компаний в энергетическом, финансовом, горнодобывающем и аэрокосмическом секторах . Проект также предусматривал отключение русских банков от системы SWIFT.
В марте 2022 года Рубио стал соавтором законопроекта о санкциях против всех государственных компаний России, включая «Роснефть», «Газпром», «Росатом» и «Аэрофлот».
В июле 2022 года стал соавтором законопроекта, предусматривавшего введение санкций против страховых компаний танкеров, перевозящих горючее из России в Китай.
Кстати, именно Марк Рубио был автором законопроекта о переименовании улицы в Вашингтоне, где расположено российское посольство, на «Борис Немцов Плаза».
Еще и ещё раз хочется напомнить всем российским поклонникам Трампа и фанатам республиканской парти, что никаких «наших» в Вашингтоне нет. И никогда не было. И не будет.
Цитата:
Scott Ritter | Israel on the Brink: Internal Chaos & Shocking Middle East Power Shift Unfolding!
По неизъяснимому порядку вещей, треклятый провайдер села обитания а.п., принял решение улучшить качество своей работы(что само по себе обнадёживает), для чего отвёл себе целых пять часов суточного времени – с часу ночи до шести утра, когда все нормальные люди спят, а все творческие – работают.
Соответственно, с 14 ноября сего года все публикации а.п. (в разделах «примечания и дополнения», «фанаты и жизнь», «варвар и еретик», и «дураки и дороги»), будут происходить нерегулярно, случайным, можно даже сказать, возможным образом.
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С бессмысленными и беспощадными, Dimitriy.
Последний раз редактировалось: Dimitriy (14.11.2024 19:48), всего редактировалось 1 раз
Ukraine’s European allies eye once-taboo ‘land-for-peace’ negotiations
European allies are increasingly bracing for negotiations on Russia’s war in Ukraine that could include territorial concessions in return for security guarantees for Kyiv.
A man rides a bike in front of a destroyed mail office in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Thursday. (Anton Shtuka/AP)
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BRUSSELS — Among Ukraine’s European allies, there is a quiet but growing shift toward the notion that the war with Russia will end only through negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow involving concessions of Ukrainian territory.
The conversation has taken on greater urgency with the election victory of Donald Trump, who has said he would quickly end the war, without detailing how, and has signaled he could back a deal that keeps some seized territory in Russian hands. In Europe, the closed-door discussions have also been fueled by a bleak battlefield situation, with Ukrainian forces on the defensive and fears of dwindling U.S. funding.
Interviews with 10 current and former European and NATO diplomats suggest that while declarations of enduring support persist, some of Ukraine’s allies are increasingly looking to lay the foundations for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, even as the parameters of a deal remain elusive.
European and NATO officials acknowledge that talk of territorial concessions no longer raises as many eyebrows as it once did, and diplomats frame it not as “land-for-peace” but rather as land for Ukraine’s security.
“I think everybody has more or less reached this conclusion. It’s hard to say it publicly because it would be a way of saying we are going to reward aggression,” said Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Washington.
“It’s certainly not fringe anymore,” said a Western official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
It’s unclear exactly what a deal might look like, as diplomats weigh blueprints of “peace plans” floated since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With Russian forces in control of roughly a fifth of the country — including in the eastern Donbas region and the annexed Crimean Peninsula — freezing today’s front lines or outlining a demarcation line would mean Ukraine ceding swaths of its territory.
There is now broad recognition that “negotiations might be coming earlier” than expected and that they “will entail some concessions on both sides,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary general and a distinguished policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
European leaders have “a big question mark on how the Trump team will want to play it,” he said, and while they hope the next administration would push Russia to the negotiating table, they fear it may corner Ukraine into a bad deal by cutting off aid.
Boosting aid, watching Trump
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, left, speaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO-Ukraine Council working dinner in Brussels on Oct. 17. (Olivier Matthys/Reuters)
European policymakers say they must keep reinforcing Ukraine so that it has leverage if talks eventually begin. They also want to avoid being blindsided if the incoming Trump administration pushes for a deal. Trump briefly raised the issue of land in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he advised the Russian leader not to escalate the war, several people familiar with the matter said.
Backing the Ukrainian army as long as necessary “is the only path to negotiations,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday, standing alongside NATO chief Mark Rutte. “And let me be clear,” he added, “when the moment comes, nothing must be decided on Ukraine without the Ukrainians, nor on Europe without the Europeans.”
In a 25-minute phone call with Trump, Macron made clear last week that any negotiations must involve meaningful concessions from Moscow, according to people familiar with the call.
At a dinner of European leaders last week in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, many made the case for maintaining money and weapons support for Ukraine and discussed how to keep the funds flowing in case of a U.S. cutoff, officials said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attends a plenary session at a European Union meeting in Budapest on Friday. (Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images)
A European Union diplomat said the prospect of a future negotiated settlement was slowly gaining traction, largely behind the scenes: “Nobody in the room was going, ‘We need to give up the Donbas.’”
As they try to persuade Trump to stay the course, European countries have boosted defense spending and funding for Ukraine to contain the fallout of a possible U.S. policy shift. They face an uphill battle to maintain aid in the long run, with struggling economies and political chaos in countries including France and Germany.
Reflecting the sense of urgency after the U.S. election, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a lightning trip to Brussels on Wednesday, meeting senior NATO, E.U. and Ukrainian officials to strategize on the future. Since Trump’s victory, the U.S. focus has been on rushing as much military aid as possible to Kyiv before the incoming administration takes over, recognizing that it is likely to have a very different approach.
‘50 shades of gray’
For now, a resolution to the conflict remains out of reach, not least because Russia has not relented on its demands, the Trump administration’s policy on Ukraine has not been fully articulated, there is no consensus on security guarantees that could be acceptable for Ukraine and, as Grand put it, “there are 50 shades of gray” among European views on how negotiations should unfold.
Discussions have centered on the prospect of a cease-fire along a demarcation line in return for Western security assurances — a de facto, at least temporary concession of existing areas of control even without formal recognition.
Yet European policymakers are far from agreeing on what any security guarantees might be, with key allies, including the United States and Germany, so far rebuffing Ukraine’s request for an invitation to NATO — a big sticking point, as the Kremlin has long used the threat of the Western alliance to justify the war. Other ideas on the drawing board have included European boots on the ground or promises of more weapons — also seen as nonstarters for Russia.
Moscow has signaled it would accept nothing less than Ukrainian capitulation. Putin has maintained that Ukraine would have to accept total neutrality for any talks to succeed. He has said that “if Ukraine’s neutrality does not exist, it is hard to imagine any good neighborly relations with Russia.” He has also said that any cease-fire could not be a temporary arrangement that would merely allow Ukraine to stock up on munitions.
Russians view a U.S.-manufactured Bradley Fighting Vehicle during the recent opening of an exhibition featuring military equipment seized in Ukraine by Russian forces. (Anatoly Maltsev/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Also, before any negotiations begin, Russia wants to retake all of its Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces seized land in a cross-border attack over the summer, to keep Russian territory off the negotiating table. Kyiv had hoped its gamble with the Kursk attack would give it leverage, but Russian forces have since retaken parts of the region and made gains in Donbas.
The deterrence debate
After a failed 2014-2015 cease-fire deal dubbed the Minsk agreements, Ukrainians say they fear that a land-for-peace deal would just give Russia time to regroup for another attack.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Wednesday that pushing Ukraine to negotiate on unfavorable terms was akin to forcing “Ukraine to give up its resistance.” He wrote on X that it was absurd to discuss “peace at the expense of the victim only,” saying it encouraged further attacks and neglected “real scenarios of forcing Russia (the aggressor) to stop aggression.”
Kyiv’s official position, and what it would consider a victory, remains that Russian forces must leave all Ukrainian territory.
Public opinion polls show a majority of Ukrainians support this, though the percentage of those who could accept some loss of land in a peace deal appears to be gradually rising as the war grinds on. A survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and released Tuesday indicated that 58 percent of Ukrainians thought that “under no circumstances” should Kyiv sacrifice land, while 32 percent were open to giving up “some of [Ukraine’s] territories” to reach a deal to end the conflict — three times the percentage at the start of the invasion.
People take shelter inside a metro station during a Russian attack on Kyiv on Wednesday. (Alina Smutko/Reuters)
Like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, European leaders would also have to navigate public messaging on negotiations after more than two years of warning of an existential threat to Europe that requires sending Kyiv billions in aid.
Zelensky told reporters last week that there could be no cease-fire without guarantees that Ukraine can deter any future Russian attacks.
Earlier this year, Macron sparked backlash from some European allies for saying he would not rule out that some troops could be deployed to Ukraine as a possible deterrent.
Some countries, including Britain and Eastern European and Nordic nations, are now eyeing the idea of boots on the ground as a possible security guarantee in the event of a deal, analysts said.
“We’re not against negotiating,” a Western diplomat said, “but the moment matters, and the leverage Ukraine has and what they get in return.”
Public suggestions of land-for-peace are confined to the proposals of Moscow-friendly Hungarian leader Viktor Orban. Baltic nations and Ukrainian neighbors such as Poland are gripped by fears of Russia pushing at NATO’s borders, and they chafe at mentions of territorial concessions, especially without a clear deterrent.
Those who made land-for-peace suggestions were “practically burned at the stake” in the past, but now the idea prompts less outrage, a senior NATO official said. Ukraine’s ability to defend big cities including Kharkiv and Odessa played to its favor, he said, but “we all realize it will be difficult in the short term for Ukraine to regain sovereignty over 100 percent of their territory.”
People gather outside a school damaged by a Russian strike in Odessa on Friday. (Oleksandr Gimanov/AFP/Getty Images)
European officials maintain that any agreement should not allow Putin to declare victory in reshaping borders through war, though that’s a tall order if Russia keeps control of chunks of its neighbor.
“That is one important thing about any arrangement we make,” the official said. “It can never be seen as a victory for Russia.”
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Blinken helms last-minute rush of support to Ukraine before Trump takes office
Trump has vowed to put a quick end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Kyiv and some European capitals believe could force Ukraine to make painful concessions to the Kremlin.
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BRUSSELS — The Biden administration will rush as much military assistance as possible to Ukraine while it remains in office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday as he met a slew of European security officials in Brussels to prepare a strategy of support for Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump enters the Oval Office.
Trump has vowed to put a quick end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Kyiv and some European capitals believe could force Ukraine to make painful concessions to the Kremlin. His victory has set off a scramble among the security establishment in Europe to try to bolster support for Ukraine — and added to a weary recognition that negotiations with Russia could be on the horizon, and not on terms favorable to Kyiv.
Blinken’s day-long trip to Brussels included meetings with top NATO, European Union and Ukrainian officials, and was intended mostly as a joint effort to develop a post-election strategy rather than a moment to present a fully developed vision to the public, officials said. The current U.S. administration faces the challenge of finding strategies on Ukraine that aren’t easily reversible by Trump once he is in power, and there are few easy answers.
The Biden administration wants “to focus our efforts on ensuring that Ukraine has the money, the munitions and the mobilized forces to fight effectively in 2025 or to be able to negotiate a peace from a position of strength,” Blinken told reporters at NATO’s glassy headquarters in Brussels after meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and alliance ambassadors.
Blinken talks to the media after a North Atlantic Council meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday. (Nicolas Tucat/Pool/AFP/Getty Images/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Since the election, the Pentagon has been rushing to send Ukraine the full range of military aid that Congress approved in a $61 billion package in April, so that it is physically located inside Ukraine before Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. The Biden administration has also been the lead coordinator for non-U.S. military aid to Ukraine, but it is working to transfer some of those responsibilities to NATO and to European countries, an effort that began even before the election.
And U.S. officials are pushing Europeans and others to increase their aid for Ukraine amid doubts about how much Washington will do in the future.
“The president has determined that we push every dollar out the door that we have at our disposal,” Blinken said, referring to the rush of military aid to Ukraine.
Blinken said he was convinced that “support will continue, and not only continue, I expect it to increase, and that our partners will continue to more than pick up their share of the burden.”
Despite Blinken’s effort to focus on the positive regarding continued Western support for Ukraine, many European officials believe that the conflict is rapidly entering a new phase. Nearly three years after the fighting began, Russia is making steady advances on the battlefield as Ukraine struggles to find the troops to maintain its defense. North Korean forces have also joined the conflict on Russia’s side, further increasing pressure on Kyiv.
Fueled in part by the Trump victory, some of Kyiv’s European backers increasingly think that some form of territorial concessions may be necessary in negotiations to halt the war — a view that would have been heretical a year ago — and officials say they must boost aid to Ukraine to ensure the country is in a strong position in any future talks. Their focus is increasingly turning toward the Western security guarantees for Ukraine that would help keep Russia at bay and prevent the restarting of the war.
Ukrainian leaders, while publicly welcoming Trump’s victory and declaring their bipartisan ties to Washington, have also said that strength against Russia is the best way to maintain security in Europe and around the world.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha meets with Blinken in Brussels on Wednesday. (Nicolas Tucat/Pool/AFP/Getty Images/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
“Appeasement will not work. Strength will work,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Wednesday ahead of a meeting with Blinken.
The increasing Western openness to territorial concessions has spooked the NATO nations that border Russia, which have the most at stake if Russia is emboldened to keep pushing against its western frontiers.
“The ‘peace agreements’ being floated would condemn millions of people to misery, occupation and fates worse than death,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis wrote last week on X. “Talk of ‘recovery’ is hollow if Ukraine is left vulnerable, waiting for the next attack. Investments will not flow, refugees will not return.”
On the campaign trail, Trump stoked fears about NATO when he declared he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to allies that don’t spend enough on their militaries.
European policymakers worry his bashing of NATO could undermine the Western military alliance, even if few believe he would formally withdraw the United States. Diplomats said European allies were putting a brave face on the situation and trying to make contingency plans to support Ukraine while also hoping to win Trump over.
“During President Trump’s first term, America’s military presence in Europe actually increased,” a European diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. “If he stays in NATO but he pulls troops from Europe, or if there’s a wider war and he sits on the sidelines, does it matter if the U.S. is still formally at NATO?”
At NATO headquarters, Blinken also issued a broader defense of U.S. support for the alliance, in an implicit message to Trump.
“The best way to defend our countries, to prevent wars, to have security, is through the investments we’re making in NATO and in our other alliances and partnerships,” Blinken said. NATO’s mutual defense guarantee “is the strongest possible deterrent to war. It’s the best way to prevent war in the first place.”
Blinken’s visit to Brussels is the first stop in a multi-continental tour of the post-election world. Later Wednesday he planned to fly to Peru to meet with Asian and Latin American leaders, and then he plans to travel to Brazil alongside President Joe Biden to meet leaders of Group of 20 world economies.
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Top Russian official Shoigu visits Zhuhai air show on final trade day
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SINGAPORE/ZHUHAI, China, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The trade portion of China’s largest air show in Zhuhai wrapped up on a rainy Thursday, with the secretary of Russia’s Security Council visiting days after the Russian-made Su-57 stealth jet flew in its first appearance away from home.
Military gear was on display in the exhibition hall where it was viewed by Sergei Shoigu, reported state media outlet the Global Times. The former defence minister is in the country for annual strategic security consultations.
China demonstrated its pull on the world stage by welcoming a delegation from Saudi Arabia with its first pavilion at the event, as well as its close ties with Russia even as that country is isolated from Western nations and their allies due to its invasion of Ukraine.
The air show’s commercial aviation side was much smaller than in previous years, putting military technology in the spotlight. Hardware as varied as air-defence systems, radars, missiles and aircraft packed the grounds indoors and out.
The show included the public debut of China’s [USN:L4N3MF0B5 TEXT:“J-35A stealth fighter”] while a two-seat mockup of its J-20 stealth fighter, [USN:L4N3MJ05W TEXT:“advanced helicopters”], [USN:L4N3MK0CL TEXT:“stealthy drones and missile defence systems”] also caught the spotlight.
“Clearly these developments suggest a continued broad modernisation of PLA capabilities to defeat U.S. and allied intervention capability as part of a counter-intervention strategy,” said senior analyst Malcolm Davis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, referring to the People’s Liberation Army. “They all come together to make Chinese A2AD more lethal and extend its reach.”
(выделено а.п.)
A2AD is shorthand for Anti-Access/Area Denial, a military strategy to avoid a head-on fight by making it difficult for the enemy to even enter the battlefield.
China is the world’s fourth-largest global arms exporter, showed data released in March by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, but its sales have been decreasing over the last decade amid changing geopolitical dynamics.
COMMERCIAL AVIATION
On the [USN:L4N3MJ0SU TEXT:“civilian side of the show”], state planemaker COMAC (CMAFC.UL) announced Air China (601111.SS), opens new tab as the first customer for its C929 widebody jet. It also re-branded its regional jet, previously the ARJ21, as the C909 for better branding uniformity.
COMAC did not disclose the number of C929s that flag carrier Air China would purchase or planned delivery dates. It did say Hainan Airlines (600221.SS), opens new tab had placed a firm order for 60 C919 narrowbody jets and 40 C909s.
Colorful Guizhou Airlines has also signed a purchase agreement for 30 C909 planes, 20 of which were firm and the remainder provisional, it said.
State-controlled aerospace company AVIC (SASADY.UL) unveiled a model of one the more unusual offerings: a [USN:L4N3MJ07I TEXT:“spaceplane to carry cargo”] to China’s space station.
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Nowe czołgi Wojska Polskiego trafiły nad granicę z Rosją
Do Polski sukcesywnie dociera sprzęt wojskowy, zamówiony w Korei Południowej. To czołgi K2 oraz armatohaubice samobieżne K9. Do Braniewa, gdzie stacjonuje IX Brygada Kawalerii Pancernej im. Stefana Batorego, dojechały właśnie pierwsze czołgi K2 Black Panther. To bardzo symboliczna dostawa, bo miasto jest siedzibą garnizonu, położonego zaledwie 6 kilometrów od granicy z rosyjskim obwodem królewieckim. To także raptem 60 kilometrów od samego Królewca.
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Koreańskie czołgi K2 na pograniczu z Rosją w Braniewie stanowią początek przezbrojenia tamtejszej jednostki z leciwych PT-91 "Twardy" na maszyny nowej generacji
• Polska armia używa w tej chwili pięciu rodzajów czołgów. W planie jest szybkie ujednolicenie wyposażenia
• K2 dostarczane do Polski będą obsługiwane przez polski serwis. Tylko najbardziej skomplikowane naprawy wykonają specjaliści z Korei[/b]
Czołgi K2 będą już w przyszłym roku podstawowym wyposażeniem w IX Brygadzie Kawalerii Pancernej im. Stefana Batorego, zastępując wysłużone PT-91 "Twardy".
To następstwo podpisanej 25 lipca 2022 roku umowy ramowej z południowokoreańskim koncernem zbrojeniowym Hyundai Rotem na dostawę 1000 czołgów K2 do Polski. W ślad za nią w następnym miesiącu poszła pierwsza umowa wykonawcza na dostawę 180 takich czołgów.
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Kolejne transporty przyjadą jeszcze w grudniu
Do końca grudnia tego roku do Braniewa ma przyjechać jeszcze kilkanaście czołgów. W przyszłym roku przezbrojenie na czołgi K2 ma się zakończyć.
Do obsługi nowego sprzętu przeszkolono już kilkanaście załóg. Czołgiści z Braniewa uczestniczyli w poligonowych strzelaniach bojowych na K2.
Odnotowano podczas tych ćwiczeń celny strzał z odległości 5 kilometrów.
Pułkownik Roman Brudło - dowódca 9 Braniewskiej Brygady Kawalerii Pancernej - przypomniał, że w tej chwili w polskiej armii jest pięć rodzajów czołgów. Abramsy, Leopardy, PT-91, T-72 oraz właśnie K2. Wedle zaleceń sztabowych, w najbliższych latach trwał będzie proces ujednolicania wyposażenia. Celem jest dojście do sytuacji, że każda dywizja posiada jeden typ uzbrojenia.
XVI dywizja, której częścią jest braniewska Brygada, miałaby czołgi K2, 18 dywizja używałaby Abramsów, a 11 dywizja kawalerii pancernej jeździłaby na Leopardach. PT-91 oraz T-72 jeszcze przez jakiś czas miałyby być żelazną rezerwą.
Czołgi K2 otrzymują także inne jednostki stacjonujące nieopodal granicy z Rosją w Bartoszycach i Morągu. Już w przyszłym roku zaś, z Łotwy (gdzie rotacyjnie służyli braniewscy pancerniacy) będą ściągane PT-91. Na ich miejsce pojadą Leopardy.
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K2 i nie tylko: Nowoczesne czołgi w całej polskiej armii
Jak stwierdził płk Roman Brudło, różnice pomiędzy nowymi typami czołgów nie w każdym obszarze są znaczące. Najbardziej zasadnicza dotyczy wielkości załogi. PT-91 oraz K2 są wyposażone w automatyczne systemy ładowania amunicji, więc wystarczy tu tylko trzy osobowa załoga. Leopardy i Abramsy są obsługiwane przez cztery osoby. Tam bowiem ładowanie armaty jest ręczne.
PT-91 waży około 45 ton, K2 55 ton, Leopard 60 ton, a Abrams nawet 65 ton.
Systemy kierowania ogniem czy same armaty są porównywalne i ujednolicone. Bazują na rozwiązaniach niemieckiej armaty 120 mm, gładkolufowej. Różni je co najwyżej długość lufy.
W K2, dzięki wydłużonej konstrukcji lufy, wystrzeliwane pociski mają większą precyzję i siłę przebicia Wszystkie te czołgi mają również silniki potrafiące "konsumować" każdy rodzaj paliwa.
Według zapewnień dowódcy brygady załoga w czołgu K2 ma komfortowe warunki pracy. Do tego bardzo proste jest sterowanie czołgiem. Pułkownik Brudło stwierdził, że jest ono porównywalne z prowadzeniem samochodu.
Wyposażone w nowoczesny system kierowania ogniem czołgi mogą wystrzeliwać do 10 pocisków na minutę, posiadają klimatyzację i elastyczny układ zawieszenia.
Wymiana wyposażenia polskich pancerniaków jest spowodowana rosyjską agresją na Ukrainę. Polskie władze zdecydowały się na wysłanie Ukraińcom używanych czołgów T-72 oraz PT-91. Maszyny dotarły na front w pierwszych miesiącach wojny. Prezydent Andrzej Duda poinformował ostatnio, że przekazaliśmy Ukraińcom prawie 400 czołgów.
(выделено а.п.)
Koreańskie czołgi maja dwuletnią gwarancję. Większość napraw ma być realizowana w Polsce
Pilotujący ostatnią dostawę czołgów do Braniewa przedstawiciel firmy Hyundai Rotem Sanghyun Park, podkreślił, że pojazdy dostarczane do Polski mają dwuletnią gwarancję. Ponadto Koreańczycy zapewniają kompleksowy serwis wraz z dużymi zapasami części zamiennych. Aktualnie koreańscy technicy szkolą polskich specjalistów do obsługi K2. Wedle założeń producenta 80 proc. jakichkolwiek późniejszych remontów będzie wykonywana przez mechaników z Polski. Tylko bardziej skomplikowane naprawy elektroniki będą wymagały dłuższego szkolenia i nadzoru specjalistów z Korei Południowej.
Warto też pamiętać, że Polska chce produkować czołgi K2 w rodzimym wariancie. Ustalenia w tej sprawie cały czas trwają, w tym momencie nie wiemy więc, co dokładnie zmieni się w polskim wydaniu Czarnej Pantery.
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Uroczystość przekazania nowych czołgów zakończył efektowny pokaz płynnego zjazdu stalowych kolosów z platform transportowych, a potem nastąpiło ich parkowanie, w przygotowanych specjalnie na tę okazję, garażach.
Lufami w kierunku pobliskiej granicy
. Tak symbolicznie.
(выделено а.п.)
Будущий МО США имел в виду не то, на что обиделось «CNN», но статья хороша…
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Trump’s defense secretary pick said women shouldn’t be in combat roles. These female veterans fear what comes next
Elizabeth Dempsey Beggs from Richmond, Virginia, is a US Army veteran.
Courtesy Elizabeth Dempsey Beggs
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When Elisa Smithers was deployed to Iraq in 2005, there was a ban on women serving in ground combat operations.
Smithers was a “female searcher” with the National Guard and was attached to an infantry unit to help with searching detained Iraqi women, among other tasks. But she returned home to find she wasn’t offered the same support by the US Department of Veterans Affairs that male combat veterans were offered, Smithers said.
Now, the 48-year-old veteran fears the progress made for women in combat since then will be reversed after President-elect Donald Trump announced Pete Hegseth this week as his pick for secretary of defense – a Fox News host and Army veteran who has criticized efforts to allow women into combat roles.
The ban on women serving in ground combat units was lifted in 2013 and, in 2016, all US military combat positions were opened to them, allowing women to fill about 220,000 jobs that were previously limited to men – including infantry, armor, reconnaissance and some special operations units. Women account for roughly 17.5% of the Defense Department’s active-duty force, according to 2022 data from the agency.
Hegseth, who has a long record serving in the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, has not announced any plans to reinstate the ban if he’s confirmed, but has previously accused the military of lowering standards to allow women into combat jobs.
Speaking about his book, “The War on Warriors,” published this year, Hegseth said in a recent podcast he was surprised “there hasn’t been more blowback” on the book, “because I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles.”
“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. … We’ve all served with women, and they’re great,” Hegseth said last week on “The Shawn Ryan Show.” “But our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where, traditionally — not traditionally, over human history — men in those positions are more capable.”
Even if a combat exclusion policy is reinstated, Smithers said women will still be pushed into such roles in an unofficial capacity like she was, just with less recognition and access to benefits like before.
“They will still need these women in these roles,” Smithers told CNN. “So, we’ll go back to this, like, pseudo attaching them to the unit. And then this perception by the men that, you know, the women are not in combat roles.”
US Army veteran Elizabeth Beggs said women in military service have already proven they’re capable.
“Let’s not get it twisted. Women have been in combat since the beginning of history,” Beggs said.
But she does agree with Hegseth on one thing: “Not all women are capable – just like not all men are capable,” Beggs said.
Elisa Smithers recently retired after 21 years in the Army National Guard.
Courtesy Elisa Smithers
Vets say Hegseth is diminishing women’s accomplishments
More than 2 million female veterans live in the US – and the number is expected to continue to grow, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The combat exclusion policy was lifted shortly before 27-year-old Beggs joined the US Army. She went on to hold several roles during her four years of service, including armor officer, tank commander and platoon leader.
“I believe it’s incredibly divisive to water down and diminish the accomplishments that I and other women have made serving in these roles, not just to women, but to men who’ve gone through the same courses and hit the same standards, especially in a time where we should be unifying,” Beggs said.
Lory Manning, a 25-year Navy veteran, takes issue with Hegseth accusing the military of lowering standards to allow women into jobs with the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Army Special Forces, Marine Special Operations, and jobs such as those in infantry, armor and artillery units.
Hegseth has specifically criticized having women in roles where strength “is the differentiator,” he said on the podcast last week.
“I’m not talking about pilots… I’m talking about physical, labor-intensive type jobs,” Hegseth said. “Seals, Rangers, Green Berets, MARSOC, infantry battalions, armor, artillery.”
Manning, also the former director for the Service Women’s Action Network, said Hegseth’s assertion the military lowered their standards to accommodate women is a false, yet repeated one.
“Sometimes, it’s said to protect women who don’t need protecting,” Manning said.
In a 2013 op-ed for the American Civil Liberties Union, Manning refuted the claim that “tough combat training standards will be lowered by making them ‘equal’ for both genders.”
“Women have already been integrated into air and sea combat duties with no lowering of standards,” Manning wrote.
While the ban on women participating in ground combat operations wasn’t lifted until 2013, women have been flying in combat operations and serving aboard US combatant ships since the early ’90s.
Like Manning, veteran Smithers believes a woman should be allowed to serve if they qualify for the “physical, labor-intensive type jobs” that Hegseth has a problem with them taking on.
“At the end of the day, in order for us to be a dynamic and agile force and the great military that we are, we’ve got to have diversity. And that includes women in our force,” Smithers said. “Diversity always makes us better.”
Brandy Cottrill-Cox was stationed on the border of Kuwait and Iraq in 2004. Courtesy Brandy Cottrill-Cox
Concerns about culture of sexual assault
Another female veteran, who identifies as a military sexual assault survivor and asked not to share her name out of fear of retaliation, said she worries how Hegseth’s rhetoric as the leader of the military, if confirmed, would influence the culture in the armed services, which is already grappling with issues of sexual harassment and assault.
“Whenever a man does not see a woman as an equal, that’s where you’re going to see that kind of culture continuously get worse,” the 46-year-old disabled veteran told CNN. “It’s going to hurt the military force.”
Roughly 20% of women serving in the military reported experiencing military sexual trauma during their service as of 2021, compared to about 1% of men, according to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics.
The statistic, according to the Combat Female Veterans Families United, underscores the “prevalence and impact of gender-specific challenges faced by female veterans during and after their time in service.”
In August, findings from a Senate investigation into misconduct within the US Coast Guard were released, detailing “systemic sexual assault and harassment, including a culture of silencing, retaliation, and failed accountability.” And in 2023, a study by the US Army Special Operations Command showed how its women are facing significant discrimination including sexual harassment and sexism from their male counterparts, CNN reported.
Brandy Cottrill-Cox, a Purple Heart recipient who served in combat while stationed with the US National Guard on the border of Kuwait and Iraq in 2004, called Hegseth’s comments “dangerous rhetoric to target women.”
During her second tour in Iraq, Cottrill-Cox said she was given a rape whistle.
“There is a rape culture that is not being addressed,” Cottrill-Cox said. Women across the country who have served in the military are accessing resources for their trauma from experiencing sexual harassment and assaults while in service – many of which go unreported, she said.
‘That’s basically telling a woman she’s not good enough to serve’
US Sen. Tammy Duckworth speaks during a news conference at the US Capitol on February 27, 2024 in Washington, DC. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/File
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran, said Hegseth is “dangerously unqualified.”
Earlier this week, Duckworth wrote about her “Alive Day” anniversary on X, commemorating the day the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
As a result, she lost both her legs and partial use of one of her arms, according to her biography page. She remains proud of her service.
“By choosing to put a TV personality with little experience running much of anything in charge of the Defense Department’s almost 3 million troops and civilian employees, Donald Trump is once again proving he cares more about his MAGA base than keeping our nation safe—and our troops, our military families and our national security will pay the price,” she said in a statement.
Wendy Coop is a US Navy veteran. Courtesy Wendy Coop
Wendy Coop, a 45-year-old US Navy veteran, called Hegseth’s comments on women serving in combat roles a “very disturbing and potentially dangerous take.”
Coop, who lives in St. Augustine, Florida, graduated from the US Naval Academy in 2001 before she went on active duty on a ship doing maintenance work which included painting and working with tools.
While Coop did not serve in combat while in the force, she said Hegseth shows a “lack of understanding of the military complex,” stressing the many other military jobs that support those who engage in combat – chaplains, nurses, logistics and doctors.
“His comments open the floodgates to people who just say that women don’t belong in the military at all, as though we are too weak, as though we don’t have the personality to do the job,” she said.
She also worries any course reversal on women serving in combat will have a sweeping impact on women serving in other government jobs.
“We have to look at the individual and stop saying your gender determines your ability to serve in the military,” Coop said. “And then what happens is that people say, ‘oh, well, they don’t belong in the military?’ They also don’t belong in the police force. They also don’t belong as firefighters. They don’t belong in the Secret Service.”
The veteran who did not wish to share her name said the discourse around a potential rollback of women serving in combat roles is “very disparaging.”
“It’s a slap in the face for a lot of the women who have worked so hard to get to where they’re at,” she told CNN. “We served this country with pride, dignity and respect.”
“And when you have someone say that women are not good enough to be in combat, that’s basically telling a woman that she’s not good enough to serve.”
Непутёвая историческая линейка. Много кого и много чего не хватает. Но, как говорится «не нравится - сделай лучше».
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Все Правители России
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Записи речей глав СССР от Ленина до Горбачёва | History Lab
Интересное решение.
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EVOLUTION of Los Angeles 1542-2024 | 3D Animation
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EVOLUTION of London 43 - 2024 | 3D Animation
Что помешало любителям Москвы «прогуляться», например, вокруг Кремля или по Садовому кольцу, подобно любителям Санкт-Петербурга, «пройтись» по Невскому проспекту?
P.S.
По неизъяснимому порядку вещей, треклятый провайдер села обитания а.п., принял решение улучшить качество своей работы(что само по себе обнадёживает), для чего отвёл себе целых пять часов суточного времени – с часу ночи до шести утра, когда все нормальные люди спят, а все творческие – работают.
Соответственно, с 14 ноября сего года все публикации а.п. (в разделах «примечания и дополнения», «фанаты и жизнь», «варвар и еретик», и «дураки и дороги»), будут происходить нерегулярно, случайным, можно даже сказать возможным образом.
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С интересом и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Уровень доступа: Вы не можете начинать темы, Вы не можете отвечать на сообщения, Вы не можете редактировать свои сообщения, Вы не можете удалять свои сообщения, Вы не можете голосовать в опросах
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