Ukraine keeps up the pressure on Russian oil supplies.
If you freeze the video at 0:03, I think you can see in the flames the appearance of Oil Terminal Jesus.
Speaking of attacks inside Russia.
Since when is it a crime in Russia to take bribes? If Russia were to somehow wipe out bribery the whole damn economy would collapse.
The reality here is likely that he pissed off the wrong people and so they were shocked, SHOCKED* to find out that he had taken bribes. This might also be a shot across Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s bow since Ivanov was his right-hand man.
*Yes, that is a Casablanca reference.
I wonder if he also had a villa in Italy and a yacht. You don’t qualify as an oligarch in Russia unless you have at least one yacht.
Without Putin's sanction, such an arrest was impossible. Ivanov is one of Shoigu’s 12 deputies, he was responsible for buildings and structures for troops, the construction of fortifications and the "restoration" of occupied regions, as well as for medical support for the Russian Armed Forces.
Among other things, he was responsible for the creation of the Main Cathedral of the armed forces, the Patriot park, the Vostochny cosmodrome, and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for the project to restore occupied Mariupol.This is a sensitive attack against Shoygu.
Same with this guy — fraud is only a crime in Russia if you get someone higher up pissed off at you.
There seems to be a trend across Russia of military housing projects that are 80-90% completed and then abandoned. My guess is that the construction is so shoddy and so much has been skimmed off the project that it is safer to just abandon the project rather than allow people to move in and discover how bad it really is.
Z-channels pick up literally dozens of messages from all cities of Russia, in order:
- "Since we started talking about housing for the military, not far from me in Krasnodar there are 6 such houses that were built by MoD, but something went wrong and these houses have been standing for 5 years without movement, and how many military families could get long-awaited housing."
- "Good morning! Moscow Region, Khimki microdistrict. Planernaya house 11 building 3. Readiness 85-90%. Even double glazed windows are installed. In oblivion for 10 years."
So I guess his hometown won’t be erecting any monuments to his service.
The verdict against the resident of Kirov region was handed down today: he was found guilty under articles on death threats, rape and murder with particular cruelty, human rights activists report. The court also ordered the man to pay 2 million rubles of compensation in favor of the victims' family.
It is known that the convict went to war from the prison - in September 2020, he was appointed 14 years of imprisonment for murder and robbery with violence. In September 2022, the man, having been in the prison for about two years, went to Ukraine. Upon his return, he was pardoned personally by Putin.
This is a message of hope as well as defiance. The bold at the end is from me.
"This is rather an emotional pressure on Kharkiv citizens. Which, in general, causes nothing but a smirk. Who do you want to scare? Us, living twelve hours a day without electricity and twenty-four under the "threat of a missile strike"?
I have people in my apartment's building chat exchanging links to all sorts of gadgets that save the lives of fish when the air supply to the aquarium is cut off.Yeah, the city has a big energy problem.
But all the stores, pharmacies, and even beauty salons have generators out on the street, and charging devices with them. Teenagers with tablets swarm at each such generator, they have classes. Online school or college.I was out with my dog on Friday, and a kid in the entrance hall was answering a chemistry teacher's questions. He was yelling something about the valency of sodium. He was shouting because the damn generator is rumbling very loudly. I smiled.
I swear, I have never heard any talk in Kharkiv about "peace at any price" or any other such bullsh*t from the Kremlin's instructions. Not in lines, not at gas stations, not at the dog walk.Every missile strike unites us. We become friendlier, more cohesive. There's no way to break us. We can't be broken.
I miss my dad very much. The war took him. My city is being destroyed every day. But I feel nothing but fatigue and hatred for the enemy. No-thing.
You're beating the wind."
There isn’t much left of Krynky.
Let’s see how Russians like being targeted by 500-pound bombs.
France also steps up.
A robotic careless smoker?
Speaking of new and deadlier drones …
Coincidentally the Vietnam-era American gunship AC-47 — nicknamed Puff the Magic Dragon — fired 6,000 rounds per minute.
The rate of fire of the Minigun in a DAP-6 pod is 3,000 rounds per minute, according to Dillon. The combined rate of fire then of the two pods the Mojave carried during the demonstration was 6,000 rounds per minute. The DAP-6's maximum magazine capacity is also 3,000 rounds, which gives it 60 seconds of total firing time. The pod can be loaded with less ammunition to reduce its overall weight. When empty, a DAP-6 weighs 162 pounds (73.5 kilograms), but this grows to approximately 350 pounds (158.8 kilograms) when fully loaded.
….
The War Zone highlighted the challenges of integrating a gun-based weapon system onto a drone like this when GA-ASI released the first picture of Mojave with DAP-6 pods under its wings back in 2022. At the time we wrote:
"It's not immediately clear how an operator would employ a gun pod-armed Mojave remotely, to begin with. Strafing targets on the ground, especially with a 7.62x51mm gun system, requires dynamic maneuvering close to the ground and a different level of situational awareness than most man-in-the-loop unmanned platforms, like those in GA-ASI's other product lines, are generally understood to be capable of. That has been a key reason for the focus on precision-guided munitions, which have a very different basic concept of employment and are usually employed at medium altitudes."
Gun pods like the DAP-6 are just some of the weapons that Mojave could potentially carry. Unveiled to the public in 2021 and first flown that year, Mojave has three hard points under each wing. The drone has also been shown loaded with AGM-114 Hellfires and AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM) in the past. Since it was first revealed, GA-ASI has touted the uncrewed aircraft's ability to carry up to 16 Hellfires at once.
How long before Russian soldiers build personal anti-drone cages around themselves?
No, these aren’t the latest museum pieces sent to the Ukrainian front by Russia.
The higher-altitude drone appears to deploy some kind of net that takes out the other drone.
So should we now differentiate between fighter drones and bomber drones?
It would be fitting, after all the trouble they went to in order to protect this vehicle, if it ran over a mine.
Lock him up.
Meanwhile, presiding over a memorial service for Navalny got this priest suspended in Russia.
In addition to the looting, there is something unsettling about the way this woman sneers after she puts on her cap.
Do you suppose the Russian prisoners learned anything?
He got what was coming to him.
Maybe we should do for Ukraine what France did for America and send them a statue dedicated to liberty.
Flower power
Thankfully they were rescued.