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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • You have to frame everything in terms that apply to trump. His goal is to be in a room with Putin, being praised for dealing with the Ukraine problem. He wants to be acknowledged by another dictator and strong man, that’s it. He’ll definitely pressure both Ukraine and their European supporters to accept Russian conquest of Ukrainian territory so he can get a ceasefire. It’s not because he hates Ukraine, he probably doesn’t care about them at all, it’s just the pursuit of affirmation for himself. It’s up to Europe, and hopefully RoK, to push forward and give democracy a win to raise everyone’s morale.



  • An important detail is that advanced western weapons are restricted to operations near our within the recognized borders if Ukraine. The arsenals, refineries, factories, and other strategic targets inside actual Russian territory have been hit with Ukrainian weapons. Most are relatively low payload drones, with some targets being serviced by Neptune land attack variants, which is definitely more advanced than anything in the Iranian arsenal for example. But I think the point stands that relatively cheap and simple systems have provided outsized results in the Ukrainian conflict.

    The reason there are warning signs for Israel is because of the sheer economy of drone bombing. When Iran launched over a hundred drones, and only three hit, the media had a chuckle. I’m sure the IDF and the American planners supporting them looked very nervously at the estimated 2.4 billion USD worth of ordinance deployed during the defence. Why do you think Ukraine and Russia are building cheap drones to kill other cheap drones. It’ll be interesting to watch.



  • In addition to the comments already posted, they had strategic reasons to withhold support as well. While Russia doesn’t pose a serious military or economic threat to RoK directly they could cause real problems. Part of the defensive advantage they have held against the North is a decade or three of technology lead. While joking about the actual effectiveness of Russian hardware is fun, large scale tech transfer to North Korea would change the strategic balance on the peninsula, RoK has pretty clearly sought to avoid that by limiting aid to Ukraine to non lethal items.

    The more Russia barters with the North though, the less likely RoK will see it that the transfer isn’t taking place anyways. Russia is gambling for short term help and risking a major new source of munitions and hardware for their adversaries.



  • I visited Budapest this fall, there are a lot of Hungarians that don’t support this government. That said, no matter how much it sucks for those people, it’s time to start looking at removing Hungary from the EU. NATO has no removal framework since that is counter to the nature of defensive treaties, but having hostile nations within the alliance threatens it’s integrity. Perhaps new structure will be needed to allow the quarantine of compromised members. At this point I would be very concerned if Hungary has full security access to NATO intelligence and planning, not to mention equipment.