Dear Readers:
Today we resort to the gossip columns for content and speculation. Some people have noticed that Ukrainian General Valery Zaluzhny has not been seen for a while.
Other people are saying that he has been arrested. By “other people”, in this case, people like Oleg Tsarev, who, as Readers will recall, was the target of an assassination attempt not that long ago.
As an ex-Deputy of the Ukrainian Rada and just general all-about gadfly, Tsarev continues to be in touch with various sources in Ukraine and writes on his Telegram channel: “There is information coming in from Ukraine, according to which, after his refusal to take the post as Ukrainian Ambassador to Great Britain, Zaluzhny was detained by the SBU. This allegedly happened around a month ago. Since then, the former Commander-in-Chief is being held under constant guard.” This guard could be, and probably is, of the nature of house arrest. Tsarev believes that Zelensky would love to get rid of Zaluzhny. This is why he tried to palm him off to England. Zelensky is allegedly worried about Zaluzhny’s Presidential ambitions: “One cannot say for sure, but it is a fact that Zaluzhny has not been seen in public for quite some time. Nor has London seen the arrival of a new Ambassador.”
Who Needs A Pickle Jar?
Does everybody remember that story, right at the start of the Russian Special Military Operation? How a Ukrainian grandma leaned over her balcony and downed a Russian drone by tossing a pickle jar at it? A lot of people laughed at the story, but it sounded semi-plausible to me, even at the time.
Now we have a similar story, from the Russian side, with video proof. I can’t link the video here, because it’s Telegram, but you can click on the Telegram link and see for yourself, it’s only 23 seconds long. Well, it’s not a pickle jar here, it’s a soldier’s backpack.
The soldier is an ordinary infantryman, his name is Khatamov, he is from Uzbekistan, serving in the Third Battalion of the 91st Rifle Regiment of the Russian Armed Forces.
This particular battalion was operating in Nikolske, a rural settlement in the Donetsk Oblast. [The article isn’t specific about the geography, I am just assuming it is this particular Nikolskoe or Nikolske, although the bit about them being “evacuated” doesn’t make sense, unless this was just a routine rotation, since this particular Nikolskoe has been firmly under Russian control since May 2022, and in fact the Russians renamed it back to Volodarskoe.]
But anyhow… Khamatov’s unit was being evacuated from the town when they came under fire. One of the soldiers was wounded. Rank-and-file infantryman Khamatov returned to collect his wounded comrade and suddenly found himself targeted by a Ukrainian FPV kamikaze drone.
Displaying admirable courage and soldierly resourcefulness, Khamatov quickly grabbed his backpack and hurled it at the low-flying drone just as it approached him. [You can see on the video.] He was able to damage the blades of the drone, so it lost control and crashed. Khamatov was able to evacuate both himself and his wounded comrade, receiving just a light injury himself, in the process.
[yalensis: Under the Russian bounty system, Khamatov should be able to collect a cash reward for destroying the drone.]
Awful Avalanche 
At a squad level weapon:
I’m thinking a reliable 20 gauge [more rounds per mag] magazine fed semi-auto->full-auto tactical shotgun. Off the shelf, bird-shot would be the choice but…
1] I would look into layers of thin brittle rods [think tiny finish nails] packed onto a plastic dunnage carrier that was designed to travel ~10-15 meters before separating the rods into a tumbling trajectory.
2] A mix of same size bird shot composed of different material might help the infantryman “lead” the target better as the shot pellets arrival at the target area will be at different time intervals.
In the end, the Russians will have an armament that ought to be a big seller after the war for the legions of Drone-Hunters® that are sure to arise in the aftermath of this war.
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BTW, where is the Russian Navy hiding in all of this? Is Colonel Macgregor right, only submarines are useful or, does Putin need to clean out another stable?
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The latter. Putin is busy arresting generals even as we speak, but I don’t think he arrested enough admirals yet.
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Are they being arrested for corruption or incompetence?
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Well, the latest one (Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov) was arrested for taking a very large bribe. The embezzlement charge carries a max of 10 years in prison.
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“but…I don’t think he arrested enough admirals yet…”
Upper-class English and their American-acolytes have a phrase; “Cream rises to the top”. Anybody whose been around steel-making knows the counter to that class-aggrandizing statement; “Yeah…you know what else rises to the top…slag, you want good steel, you pour your melt from the bottom”.
🙂
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Not every soldier can be provisioned with both a rifle and shotgun; the latter serving as the anti-drone option of choice. But there is a pistol equivalent known as the Taurus Defender. It’s a revolver sidearm that can fire 420 shotshells. Easy to draw, aim, and shoot quickly; five rounds in the cylinder. Can get standard shells in 00 buck or birdshot. Typical spread at 50 feet is about 2 foot diameter. And you can practice on skeet targets and become quite accurate quickly. Works well in trench clearing too.
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Every squad’s assortment of weapons varies but, here is an illustration of the point. Not soldier has a grenade launcher and there is only one machine-gunner in this squad’s arrangement. Since drones are now ubiquitous on the battlefield; it’s time a squad-level weapon dedicated to defending against such weapons appeared.
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Ooh, the third one down is the weapon that Machine Gunner Rang slanged around in “Best In Hell”! Even though he was fighting for the Nazi side, he’s still my favourite character from that film. What a dedicated killing machine he was…
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Not to interfere with your world view Bukko but…
The reason you see the above Airborne Ruskie squad packing two grenade launchers per is because those weapons can “reach out and touch you” when there is no line of sight to the enemy or, any reasonable way to advance to such a point without taking heavy fire/causalities.
In the US Army it is [or was?] the 203 under-slung the M-16…in my time, [WARNING: Younger more sensitive readers may be triggered by the following words], I never met a soldier who didn’t love practicing with the 203…putting a big arc on a munition is just GOOD-FUN. Bukko, for your edification I will place an illustration below on why mortar fire is so effective against an enemy who has good cover and/or elevation.
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Tom, the problem I see with that approach is that it would end up killing a lot of the soldiers it’s supposed to protect. If everybody has a pistol that rapid-fires a cloud of buckshot, there will be mists of supersonic lead whenever a drone is around. I know I would be blasting away in the direction of any flying hand grenade that I thought was coming for my head. Milliseconds count in those circumstances! I might not be noticing Cpl. Ivan who’s standing over in that direction, though. I recall mentions of how the nazIsraelis had an automatic shotgun function on their tanks to protect them from drones. Sort of a “buckshot dome” instead of Iron Dome. But they had to dismantle those shortly after they began their genocide invasion of Gaza because it was shredding all sorts of their own troops. Too bad they dumped the system, because it couldn’t happen to a nastier bunch of Jewzis. But it would have worked great for the Israwehrmacht in their usual operations of smashing defenceless Palestinian villages, because the only ones getting random-shot would be innocent bystanders. And every I-SS-raeli knows those people are all terrorists.
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Or, in the case of babies, future terrorists. The Israelis kill the boy-babies because they will grow up to become fighters. They kill the girl-babies because they will grow up to breed fighters. That’s the Nutty-Yahoo line of reasoning.
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The top navy chief, Admiral Emenov, was fired a month ago. So I guess Putin still is in the slag removal phase.
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As the witch Elphaba once said: ”These slag removal processes must be done very delicately! It’s all in the timing…” (cackle, cackle)
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Thanks for the pic of Oleg. He looks younger than I imagined. He should have enough stamina left to play an active role in the post-surrender government of Country X. As for General Deluzhny, as Yalensis once correctly spelled his name for us, I imagine he refused to go to London because that would have allowed the Z-man to run for re-election. By remaining in Ukraine, the general is preventing Z from running, because Z knows he’ll lose. By being under house arrest, his popularity will has probably even increased. If Z isn’t reelected by May 21, he will be forced to transfer his powers to the Rada. Is there any public speculation in Russia about what Z will do on May 21? At the very least, foreign countries will no longer be able to call him president, and, one assumes, he will lose his official ability to pocket large portions of tranches of US and EU monetary aid to Ukraine. As for Russia, they will no longer be able to negotiate with Z regarding the surrender after May 21. If Z does flee Ukraine in two US Air Force planes (one for his wife’s clothes), who will likely run for the job of being The Last President of Ukraine — Zaluzhny? Porky? Yermak? Only the first would seem to have any cred, but because of Zaluzhny’s close connection with the Azov Brigade, would the Russians regard him as someone to denazify rather than to negotiate with?
Btw, regarding the French soldiers in Odessa in 1919 who didn’t listen to their officers, according to Alexi Arestovich, more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have simply disappeared — vanished into thin air. According to Simplicious, the figure is more like 150,000 to 200,000. The Russian slo-mo strategy seems to be working. Eventually the Ukrainian Army will simply evaporate. The Ukrainian people will have voted for peace with their feet. Maybe there actually is some democracy in Ukraine.
I apologize for any possible typos. By some quirk of WordPress, I’m unable to see the right edge of what I’m typing.
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That’s maybe an older picture of Oleg Tsarev. Since then he has been through the wringer several times, beat up, shot, the works. So I am not even sure what he looks like now. But his spirit is still intact; and yes, I think he would make a fine President for the future Ukraine.
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Zelensky had signed a decree back in October 2022 ruling out any negotiations with Putin, so technically while Z is still Ukrainian President (and we know Putin isn’t going away any time soon) there can be no negotiations between the two nations anyway. After 21 May 2024, when the Verkhovna Rada assumes Z’s powers, that institution could theoretically rescind the October 2022 decree and negotiations for peace could be possible.
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So, we just need to wait a couple of weeks to see what happens. I’m taking bets, if anyone is interested. There might even be a point spread! [just kidding, but I would bet that Ermak is going to take over the office of President].
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Yeah, I doubt it will be Zaluzhny!! But Ermak might cause many Ukrainians to doubt the legitimacy of the presidency, don’t you think? While Zaluzhny is under house arrest, how could Ermak possibly be legitimate as far as the people are concerned? Just look at how the total mobilization of the Reich is having a hard time gaining legitimacy among ordinary Ukrainians. Btw, is the initial Y of “Yermak” actually silent? And is he any relation to a Ukrainian Big Mac? Is he McErmak?
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It’s just a spelling thing in Russian. Names that are spelled with an initial E- are actually pronounced with an initial [Y]. So “Ermak” is actually “Yermak”. I spell it both ways, I am not even sure there is a standard. I should probably be consistent and spell as Yermak.
Another example: The Russian name spelled as “Ekaterina” (Catherine) is actually pronounced “Yekaterina”.
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The White House and US Congress also need to stop having formal relations with Z after May 21. Legally they have no right to address or have relations with him as president after that date. Ditto for Otan nations. If this change in legal status is ignored, will anyone in the US point this out? It could become a major scandal. Or will the US simply spread some more democracy and declare Z to be the president they way they declared Guaido to be president of Venezuela?
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Uhm…it’s the latter.
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Drake, I’ve seen this speculation in a lot of sites about how _elensky will have to leave office after May 21, because the law says that without an election, all power goes to the Rada. But he has declared martial law. Which means that all other laws don’t matter. So I think your prognosis is over-optimistic. The only law that counts is the law of “How are you going to make me do that?!?”
Not just in Ukronazistan, either. Everywhere. We are moving into a world where “The Law” is whatever the person pointing a gun at you says it is. To be followed shortly afterward by the collapse of organised civilisation, because you can’t have a complex society based on brutality and force. Billions will die due to starvation and deprivation when all advanced functions fall apart. But the people holding the guns don’t care, because they calculate they can kill you first and take whatever you have, so it’s “all good” for them.
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Elensky: ”Try to make me leave. You and what army?”
Putin: ”er…”
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As far as martial law is concerned, I think its time limit runs out on either May 20 or 21. Z’s presidency ran out on March 31, but he’s continuing on because martial law will last until then. I’ll bet Biden wishes he could invoke martial law this September or October if he could….
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The current period of martial law in Ukraine ends on 13 May 2024, according to this Baker McKenzie guide (page 6):
guide-to-ukrainian-laws-in-wartime-v14.pdf (bakermckenzie.com)
Z is currently a caretaker President. So the issue then is whether Z (in caretaker mode) is allowed to issue new decrees that still retain legitimacy after his term effectively expires 21 May 2024.
Martial law in Ukraine apparently lasts 90 days. This means that since Russia’s SMO began in February 2022, Z has had to declare martial law every 90 days.
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I think he uses an Outlook calendar with a 15-hour reminder.
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General Sontaran — I mean, Surovikin — hasn’t been seen for a while either. Except for a photo I’ve seen this week on Twaatstreams including Imetatronik’s (Will Schryver) in which the human anti-tank pyramid had glowing eyes. Like “Dark Brandon” has, only Surovikin’s were purple in that shot. Are Our Alien Overlords finally deciding to unmask themselves?
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Didn’t Putin stuff General Sontaran away somewhere in Africa? Off on one of those “adventure holidays”, where he is wallowing around like Colonel Kurtz with his unsound methods and his Watney’s Red Barrel, looking like a beached whale, just waiting for Martin Sheen to arrive and put a bullet between his glowing purple eyes….
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You’ve got a thing about Watney’s Red Barrel, don’t you? This is the second time I’ve noticed you name-checking it recently. I had never heard of the stuff, and I’m someone who likes beers with different flavours. (There’s a bottle-o — Aussie for “liquor store — near my place that flogs off craft beer that has passed its ‘best-by’ date at 4 cans for $10. Bee-yah is expensive hee-yah, so that represents an amazing bargain. I have been able to sample some superb craft beer — my faves are the fruit-flavoured sours — for next to nothing.) A quick trip to the search engine tells me why.
British beer can be odd. I only went there once, in 1980, to visit some English friends I had met on the kibbutz that summer. The guy whose family I stayed with would have been called “bogans” in Australia. They lived in Kent, which I did not realise at the time was considered a daggy part of the UK. We went to pubs a lot, of course. I sampled as many pints of beer as I could, because I knew I’d never be able to get them in the U.S. Surprisingly for me, the brand I liked best was named Carling Black Label. Which was a crappy, low-budget beer in America. Worse than Schlitz or Bud. (This as back before the craft beer explosion, so choices were limited in the U.S.) Yet in England, the stuff — same colours on the label, same lettering — was smooth, malty and with a slight bitter edge. I made a point of searching it out when I continued my journey with a “Beatles pilgrimage” to Liverpool. I bought a six-pack of it when I returned to the States, and it was as crap as I remembered there. The trip gave me more respect for British brewing. Probably because I never ran into any Watney’s Red.
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Aha! I knew I had heard that somewhere before when I read the dialogue, but it wasn’t until Yalensis chimed in below that I remembered where. If the Pythons don’t like Red Barrel, it MUST be bad!
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The sketch, aside from being hilarious, is actually quite poignant in today’s world. It recreates a past post-war era in which English working-class families were struggling to recover from the war and raise themselves up into the middle class. Relatively cheap air flight and a boom in the hospitality business worldwide made travel holidays possible for families who didn’t have much cash. For the first time, working class families were able to holiday in Spain and other “exotic” places.
I have no doubt that Eric Idle’s description of the tourists is spot-on, nonetheless it is kind of sad that such an era is over. Very soon, only the wealthy will be able to go on holiday, they will fly on private jets and they will stay in luxury hotels. No bleeding lizard in the bidet! And they will feast on caviar and Veuve Clicquot champaign. Not Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and Watney’s Red Barrel!
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Me being a Covid alarmist, what I noticed in the dialogue that Master’s provided so kindly provided, is the mentions of gastro. (The Aussie term for “food poisoning”. America would do well to adopt that one.) I Saw this skit when I was on a Python binge during high school, which would have been the mid-70s, but that did not stand out for me then. Because I never had not come down with noro virus at that age. After years working at nursing homes, I can gush about that now! Oh yeah, there’s gushing… And e. coli poisoning too. I know when that’s coming on because it makes me start having burps that taste like popcorn, no lie. That’s a warning shot before the more prominent symptoms kick in. And spew out.
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enterovioform vs “spanish tummy” ?
And those were the good old days when antibiotics still worked!
What stands out for me is how the heck Eric Idle had the mental capacity to memorize such an excruciatingly long monologue and deliver it absolutely perfectly every time! To be sure, in the tv version he might have had a teleprompter, but I understand he also performed this skit on stage numerous times.
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Bukko: hismastersvoice gets it exactly right. Either he or some other commenter turned me on to the old Monty Python “Travel Agent” sketch, and ever since then I can’t get it out of my mind, that’s why I keep riffing on it.
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P.S. – always watch out for that bleeding lizard in the bidet!
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Re; “evacuation” — perhaps the word in Russian that you’re translating also signifies “rotation” when it’s applied to troops? As in the routine return to the rear lines so that troops aren’t always tensed up. Tense for reasons like they want to avoid annoying flying deathrobots.
I realise this would be technically infeasible because it would add weight and complexity to drones, but how ghastlycool would it be if they had sound effects on them? As they buzzed around looking for humans to slaughter, they could make scary noises to terrorise the soldiers who WEREN’T blown up by them! Imagine hearing something growling like a bear, or broadcasting in Russian “I’m going to kill you.” Soldiers huddling in their dugouts at night under blast protection, hoping that someone does not leave the exit portal open for too long lest something deadly flies in, and circling overhead is a device saying horrible things, with the power to make that horror happen. If you were an Evil Genius designing a talking terror weapon, what would you have it say? Perhaps that feature will turn up on the future terrordrones that will be unleashed in Amerika, since the aim of those things will be to frighten the population into submission, not just to murder them. There’s probably a “Black Mirror” episode that touches on that, since we’re increasingly living in a “Black Mirror” world. I watched a few episodes of that series a few years ago when I was still paying for Internet service at my flat, but I had to stop doing that since they were so scarydepressing. Great series, though! If you want to know what your world will be like a decade from now, you should watch it. Then you’ll never have to experience that sort of dystopia, because you’ll commit suicide first.
With all the focus on flying drones, which is natural because they’re so noticeable, we overlook some of the OTHER kinds of killer robots. Such as the walking flamethrowers:
https://www.rt.com/news/596484-thermonator-flamethrower-robot-dog/
Apologies for being repetitive if you saw that story already. Who says dragons aren’t real? And civilians can buy one for themselves! These don’t use air space, which is still regarded as a public property which the government has a legal right to regulate. (For the moment, until the triumph of libertarianism, when the very notion of having a government is done away with, because GOVERNMENT IS THE ENEMY OF FREEDOM!) No licence necessary. If you’re rich enough so you can afford a robot arson dog, then it’s your Second Amendment (the only amendment that matters) right to own one.
Bonus Happy-Thought Quiz Question: if you had one of these things, who would you burn first?!?
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Giving it a little thought, let me reply to myself — you’d torch the robot that follows you around at the grocery store! A man can dream, can’t he???
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But first I would lure the robot outside into the parking lot. Wouldn’t want to hurt innocent shoppers, would we? (or burn the cookie aisle by mistake).
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В ходе эвакуационных мероприятий – “in the course of the evacuation procedures…” but you’re right, it might mean just a routine rotation as well. Although I think there is a different word for that. Not sure.
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