There have not been any official Leopard1 deliveries for months now. We know for a fact, that there are a large number of Ukrainians officially being trained in Germany on them for what looks to be way too long and we also now that there are significantly more actually fully repaired and refurbished Leopard1s in Germany factories. There was no official delivery of Leopard1 for over four months now.

Chances are that the list is incomplete. It is meant to show a lot of weapons are being send to Ukraine and is a good tool to miss lead Russia.

Until they realize that only 1743 boys are born in Russia every day. Good luck fighting the next war, after killing all the fathers and let the rest flee abroad.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-security-chief-says-47-russian-spy-networks-uncovered-last-year-2024-02-25/

It is a consequence of its once divided status.

That was 35 years ago and in the mean time the Soviet Union collapsed and they are in a war with Ukraine. If I were to bet Ukraine has more Russian spies then Germany right now. Just because they are trying a lot harder.

Your “Researcher” just published something very similar on the right wing Daily Mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13155971/EDWARD-LUCAS-want-leak-secret-Kremlin-just-tell-Germans-Berlin-Natos-weakest-link.html

No, there were negotiations for the reunification of Germany and during those a few Western officals offered not to go further east. However that ended up not being part of the final treaties. In fact the 2+4 Treaty, which the Soviets signed does clearly state that ALL of Germany is part of NATO, with NATO troops being allowed to be stationed in former East Germany as well. Obviously that is just Germany, but in no other country, did the Soviets have any sort of legal reason to deny joing NATO what sort ever.

So no this is just Russian propaganda and not to be taken seriously.

It is the launcher, that is the cheapest part of the system. The expensive parts are the command center and the radars.

China is also stronger then Russia and they know they just have to bribe one of the US parties to stop aid to Taiwan.

For anybody wondering. France has a strategy of strategic ambiguity. That means they always leave all options open, so they can change their minds and also have the enemy guessing. That is why their are no red lines. It is fundamentally against French strategy. However it does not mean that France sends soldiers to Ukraine or anything like that.

A great example why it makes a lot of sense is Scholz. He was initially against sending Marder, Leopard, artillery and a lot more weapon systems, but later and not even too much later changed his mind. This did piss of countries like Poland and obviously Ukraine for no reason, create bad press and it means that Scholz saying no is somewhat of a temporary thing, which weakens his position in negotitations. If he had said that he has not decided to send those weapons to Ukraine, the entire time, then he would have had a lot less of an issue.

So please do not read too much into this. For France what matters, is if they say they are going to do something., not maybes.

Russia abadoning Armenia was really a bad call. Georgia wants to be an EU member badly and Armenia also has a somewhat democratic system. The only thing missing is Azerbijan. That would open up Central Asia to the West. With Russia threatening Kazkhastan this could really put Russia in a bad geopolitical position.

You are absolutely right they didn’t manage to break through the line, but I never thought that was the purpose of the campaign against Avdiivka.

No, but it makes perfect sense to try. Ukraine did have a lot of troops and equipment out in the open in unprotected positions and the new positions were likely to be at least partly manned by the soldiers leaving Avdiivka. So good time to try.

Avdiivka was a well protected position and the new defensive line is quite a bit further West from Avdiivka. So Russia had to take some ground to reach it and Ukraine made them pay, but without really having good terrain to really put up a strong fight. It also means Russia has no good positions to hide and logistics are stretched. So they did not manage to break through the line, but just moved it further to the West.

The decision of the Bundestag is not binding for the government. However some other parts of the decision:

• officially aknowledging that Germany made a mistake in not using significantly more force when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014
• Ukraine has to win the war, which is very different language to Russia has to loose
• using spelling of Ukranian locations in German in offical documents, rather then the still normal Russian spelling(okay not that important)
• also I read a lot about it could mean Himars missiles instead of Taurus. The passage with the “long range weapons” thanks France and the UK for supplying SCALP, so it is basically as clear as it gets without saying Taurus.

Lenin, Stalin and Putin are not Romanov’s. The Russian Empire collapsed and after a long civil war the Soviet Union was born. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and after some time Putin gained power and turned Russia into the current fascists government it is today.

The problem Russia has is that it is unpopular. So it always has to fight wars. As soon as it is too weak to do so, we see problems occur as countries try to take from Russia, what Russia has stolen. The losses Russia is having are too high for them to ignore. It is only a matter of time, that Belarus starts revolting again, Georgia and Moldova take back their land and Russia will be too weak to do something about that.

For that Russia has to at least freeze the war in Ukraine. With a war going on Russia is always going to be unstable. Loosing a thousand men a day and blowing up money is really not sustainable. At the very least when Putin dies, we will see some intressting events in Russia.

In WW1 Russia had between 1.7-2.25million military deaths from all causes. That obviously has created the Russian Revolution. That was with a fast growing population, which was about as Russias today, but obviously with much more land controlled from St Petersburg.

This is really going to hurt Russia long term. As in Russia will no longer be the most populous country in Europe badly.

There are three landing ships in the Black Sea, which have not been sunk. There a number of frigates in the Black Sea, which are of similar size, but obviously have a different role.

These landing ships are great to transport freight to Crimea. It seems like Ukraine is targeting them specifically. If they are gone, it would make it a lot harder to resupply Crimea, if somebody were to hit the Kerch bridge.

If they do not conquer Ukraine, then they lost them as friends. In 2009 in a servey 93% liked Russians. Even 2019 77% of Ukranians had a positive attitude towards Russia. That is basically the other way around today.

They lost Armenia, when they betrayed them in their fight with the Azeris.

In Europe it is 20-50% depending on the country liking Russia and the rest hating them. Not just in Eastern Europe, but also in the West.

In Central Asia a lot of countries are moving away from Russia. They hear Russian politicans talking about restoring the Soviet Union and they do not like that.

Wagner happened. It failed, but it is the kind of even, which could change Russia very quickly. Due to sanctions and massive losses in Ukraine the bases for big changes is being laid.

The problem is that defence is a massive advantage in war in general and thanks to drones in this war especially. Basically as long as Russia attacks, they are going to have massive losses. Due to the US not sending aid, it looks like Ukraine is going to remain unable to launch a large scale offensive. Russia has not been able to really break through either. So the best case for Ukraine is that Russia attacks, but fails and looses as many soldiers and material as possible until Ukraine might be able to break thorugh or Russia is giving up. If Ukraine holds out somewhat well, they are able to destroy a large part of the old Soviet stockpile. If the Democrats win the next US election, then Russia would be in a worse spot militarily and Ukraine gets the support to attack again.

So high losses are still good for Ukraine, if Russia stops attacking, they might built up enough strength to really break thorugh later.