The UN should do a general assembly vote that Russia’s decision to reestablish a blockade on all Ukrainian ports is illegal & that an international peacekeeping force will be put in the Black Sea to establish corridors. Without Ukraine’s food millions around the world will die!!

A pro-Kremlin action by, it seems, one young man with well-scripted lines - with our friend Max here further specifying the key lies to propagate.
Not the 1st time they film in such a way that we hear the agit-prop lines loud & clear, the counters less so.

Italy, too, recently joined the real Champions League: Allies who deliver M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (similar to HIMARS) and self-propelled howitzers, to Ukraine. APCs, a key need, were also in the package that was decided by the previous govt.

ukrinform.net/rubric-defense…

Quality over quantity, young man, quality over quantity. That means you and your vulgar acts of propaganda on behalf of hostile foreign powers should not be welcome. It appears the management of The Hill has chosen wisely.

Not for me to work through this, but my hot take:
1: unacceptable for a foreign power to have de-facto police stations in our nations, they need to go
2: get the CCP out of our politics
3: our intel agencies must speak out & inform

Lost trade in retaliation = price worth paying

A warning for all of us.
Agree or disagree with the details of Elbridge Colby's diagnosis, no European government should dismiss the emerging threat pattern he highlights, and what it could do to our alliances and mutual dependencies.

Typical SPD.
The mental blockages preventing simple rational thought - namely, the other big powers owe us nothing and might screw us too, the only way to get Putin to behave is force - run so deep, and the associated magical thinking so strong, that they come up with this.

As always, a good quality, interesting, highly readable weekend update by Phillips P. OBrien

-but it's also possible that UK/US estimates have a small downward bias for reasons of analytical and political prudence
-at this time, there is no compelling case for assuming that Ukraine's estimates shouldn't be used
-but a compelling case for ignoring Russian claims

20-20

Bearing in mind leaks from RUS and previous UK estimates, the sensible conclusion is:
-RUS lies about its KIA by a factor of 5 to 10, making its claims unusable
-Ukraine's estimates of Russian KIA may have a small upward bias

19-20

But the notion that Ukraine exaggerates RUS KIA by a factor of 5 to 10 is completely false. As I showed in tweet 9, assuming a perfect UK estimate in late June, the exaggeration would have been 42% at that time.

18-20

With the Russian state, we actually know that they minimize their own casualties by a ridiculous factor, indeed 5 to 10. On 21 Sept. Shoigu claims 5,937 KIA at a time when the true figure is highly likely well above 25K (UK June est.), maybe 55K (Ukraine est.)

17-20

Mr. Roepcke also makes it sound as if both sides had an identical behaviour on this matter. Of course that's not true at all: the Russian state is a more unhinged liar than almost any other state in our planet's history. Ukrainians are smarter than that.

16-20

Doing so would have yielded 15K KIA as of 20 July, in fact the CIA Director's statement states that very figure, which is already higher than Mr. Roepcke's 12K estimate. And then there's over 3 full months of intense fighting to add to take us from 20 July to today.

15-20