That is about plutonium nukes, your common or garden variety nuke uses uranium with a beryllium or heavy uranium tamper and this is what is causing the system to degrade. Of course there is nothing to stop you from removing the core crushing it and making a Dirty bomb with conventional explosives.

Arm them to their teeth.

That's a rare geographical situation, possibly unique. While it will help in this case, it may be impossible to replicate.

Sievierodonetsk (elevation 80m) sits on the left bank of the Seversky Donets river, Lysychansk (elevation 160m) sits on its right bank atop a hill.

Artillery projectiles follow ballistic trajectories, that gives Ukraine's in Lysychansk increased range and a clear advantage. Plus, the elevated location may enable them (at least while not shooting) to hide behind relatively small hills that the Russian artillery can't land behind because of said ballistic trajectory. Rocket propelled artillery will use flatter trajectories (which exacerbates the problem) and mortars apparently have too short of a range.
That's indeed what Putin indirectly suggests.

His reasoning also applies to tanks, other armored vehicles, and warplanes of all kinds plus choppers.

If you don't trust any news channel and opinions, no matter how educated, why don't you follow the declarations of various leaders, as much as possible? Kremlin has its own spoke persons, as Putin is not as talkative, Biden and other leaders speak up a lot.....so you can find out straight from the horse's mouth?

Macron has declared that the West shouldn't humiliate Russia, do you think this is propaganda?

One more Russian general killed in Ukraine. Confirmed by the the Russian NTV, so, pretty much a fact.

I believe the hope for the Ukrainians is to start the counter-offensive as soon as
they possibly can and build momentum in order to keep the west "interested". With the summer holidays approaching, then elections in the US in the fall and then the scramble to secure gas in Europe, I believe the priorities of the West can shift. If the Ukrainians start to push back and re-claim territory, it will be very hard for the West to re-focus elsewhere, but if the stalemate continues, I'm afraid things will not go well.

The other thing that we tend to forget, Russia's military doctrine, since the Tzar times, has always been total disregard for human life, theirs or their enemies and winning by committing huge numbers of people on the battlefield. They can sustain huge losses and still push through and even if this takes another couple of months, they can probably sustain this longer than Ukraine can.

Lets also not forget, Ukraine is fighting with everything it's got, while Russia has not committed yet its reserves as this is a "special military operation", but they can probably mobilize hundreds of thousands of fresh troops if Putin decides to call them in and re-name this into something else.

In the meantime, while putler is hiding in bunkers in and around moscow and isn't seeing anyone, Zelensky was a few km. away from the batttlefield in Donbas. I have to say, his mastery of the PR machine to keep the morale high and to create the huge contrast between him and putler is really something!

The Russian Ministry of Defence have just issued this new enemy vehicle recognition chart to it's troops in Ukraine.

Really are taking a General licking.

Are you sure about that?
https://www.thoughtco.com/population-decline-in-russia-1435266#:~:text=The%20primary%20causes%20of%20Russ ia%27s%20population%20decrease%20and,of%20abortion s%2C%20and%20a%20low%20level%20of%20immigration

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/13/russias-population-undergoes-largest-ever-peacetime-decline

I am not sure I understand how demographic statistics challenges what I said, care to explain?

In other developments, Russia threatens wider attack over Western weapons deliveries
and I would speculate that this is meant to prepare the Russians for a wider mobilization in which they'll commit also the reserves. Hopefully I'm wrong, but it seems they are recently trying to find an excuse to do so.

I guess he means that there aren't so many young(er) males they could drag to the war.

In other news Lavrov couldn't visit Serbia and everyone else is accused of either spite, stupidity or weakness (by Kremlin).
They really don't get it.

The Russian army reserve personnel is 2,000,000 people

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces


Yes, and Sweden, Romania, Bulgaria and Montenegro were apparently threatened with a Nuclear Missile

Notice the "betrayed our common history" ... The Kremlin still sees these countries as part of a some grand Russian empire.

... over long range rockets capable of reaching Russia. Re-read the first two paragraphs.

Not sure though how that makes sense, the two countries border directly in other regions. It's as if Lavrov assumed some kind of gentleman's agreement to limit future fights to the occupied territories.

Yeh! And if they continue as they have been the Russian population will continue to decrease beyond a certain point of no return. Who wants to have babies that will have no future?

Turns out Sweden's Nato membership is far from a given in the shorter term.

The Swedish conservatives have forced a confidence vote, their coalition has 174 votes. A successful challenge requires 175 votes, it looks like the vote is to be held tomorrow Tuesday.

The PM has threatened to step down immediately if she loses, together with the entire cabinet. Obviously that would be far less than ideal. The next Swedish parliamentary vote will be held in September. A transitory government would probably, as is the custom, have only minimal powers and not be able to continue with the membership process, Nato membership would be delayed accordingly. And of course nobody knows what the next government would do.

Amineh Kakabaveh, apparently the sole independent parliament member, could be the 175th vote the conservatives need. She has Kurdish roots and is a staunch supporter of them. You may remember that Erdogan has a problem with the fact that, from his position, the Swedes support a terrorist organisation and its members. The PKK is a terrorist organisation for Turkiye, the USA, as well as the EU.

She hasn't officially decided yet how she'll vote.

The obvious assumption is that she'll abuse her unique position. However such a development would probably make Erdogan's veto only more solid. Meanwhile Stoltenberg has announced that he expects for the Turkish issues to be solved by the upcoming Nato summit in three weeks.


Stay tuned.

If Sweden votes against NATO then presumably they will continue to support the Kurds which is not what Erdogan wants, how the cookie crumbles...

Lol, yes, they love all of us these days... It would amuse me to no end if they didn't have a lethal potential, so much power to do evil things on the hands of this idiotic, grotesque clique that runs Russia today.
What did they expect, that they will be given free pass across the sky of Bulgaria etc?? The kind of declarations they make lately seem like coming from people who are under heavy drugs.

To be honest, with the "precision" of their shorter range weapons, I wouldn't be so worried about a nuke landing in Bulgaria, but if I was a Macedonian or a Serb...I'd be really worried

But Lavrov is indeed pissed off as his loyal puppy, Serbia is weaning itself off from Russian weapons purchases and is shifting towards China. On top, if the Bulgarians finally lift their ridiculous veto on Macedonia joining the EU, then Russia will all of a sudden discover it has lost a big chunk of leverage in the region.

Yeah, we live in very complicated times...I think it's the first time when I truly appreciate the existence of E.U. And of course Nato.

Indeed. It would be even better when Macron realizes that France ain't a superpower any more and stops his solo attempts to make politics on behalf of the EU. The cracks he's opening are exactly what putler needs, a point of leverage to exploit.

I'm waiting for the next stage of Brexit Opportunities to be realised by Boris, Mogg and the fundamentalist wing of the Tory party called the ERG.
Who dream of the days of a return to Britain's ( free trade ? ) trading empire, in days of yore when Queen Victoria graced the throne and Britannia ruled the waves.
Surely you might be tempted to foresake the EU for the glories to be found within Britain's ( post Brexit ) trading empire ?