A kitten with a shovel

🇧🇾 🇷🇺 🇷🇸 ☦️ Vatnik and proud of it.

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@LTiit_ @TripppleSeven7 No unless the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant recently moved there…

[Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast]

Impossible not to laugh. Large sections of Ukrainian society are viciously attacking Syrski right now, demanding that he be sacked, and it looks as though they are winning.

The attached screenshot is from an article General Syrski published today to defend himself, and it really goes to the heart of the matter.

The criticism leveled at Syrski by the “progressive” Ukrainian milieu can be summed up in a few points:

He has the audacity to insist that war is war and not a Silicon Valley startup.

He has the audacity to insist that drones are only one part of contemporary warfare and that, besides drones, you also need everything else a modern military requires. He dares to claim that the word “drone” is not a magic formula that solves all your problems.

He is forcing people to dig trenches and fight in a real war instead of the high-tech, asymmetrical, digital Palantir war they were promised — in which they emphatically do not have to dig trenches, but can instead enjoy a matcha latte at a café in Kiev while their MacBook wins the war.

That’s really it. They blame everything — the immense casualties, the forced conscription, the loss of territory — on Syrski’s personal qualities, as though he were the only thing preventing them from having ChatGPT code a Win the War app.

The fact that this level of discourse is treated seriously by so many people is the result of two factors.

The first is that it is in the Ukrainian national character to believe in one-off miracles and fantasies that will solve all their problems. This time, it is Fedorov and his vibe-coded slide decks. You just need to do this one thing and then never do anything again — just as ousting Yanukovich supposedly turned Ukraine into Switzerland overnight. You just need to make the bad man go away, and then bussification will disappear because AI drones from America (the place where virtuous people go after they die) will save the day. It is magical thinking in its dumbest form.

The second factor is that the Americans themselves believe this too, and they set the agenda in Kiev. The Americans went into Iran believing that all they needed were their Shahed clones, Palantir, and Claude picking targets, and that everything would then magically resolve itself with the complete annihilation of Iran.

Modern war is extremely complicated, intellectually taxing, and requires immense effort at every level of industry and knowledge work. There is no magic bullet, and there is no Win the War button. This is an unpleasant fact. One can understand the Americans’ naïveté, since they have not fought in a real modern war, but the Ukrainians who ought to know better———well, during the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian nationalists under Petliura, right on the cusp of defeat, began spreading the rumor that they had received a secret directed-energy weapon from the French: the deadly “purple ray”, which would allow them to vaporize entire enemy battalions in a heartbeat.

I bet many of them believed that too!

[Olga Bazova @OlgaBazova]

Yesterday, Russia hit the Epicenter hypermarket in Sumy, which caused a spectacular fire. And of course 🇺🇦 stans, who just a day ago claimed that Wildberries was a legitimate military target because it sells FPV drones, started belching about "Russian terrorism."

Let's see what's on the shopping list in Epicenter.

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@MarioNawfal Messi’s first problem is he’s an Argentine and these people don’t do well with many in Latine America. That’s already a lot of people without any algorithm…

[Борменталь @Teskatlipoka3]

в одном из одесских портов хохлы засняли, как они квадроцикл перевозили, спрятав его в зерне

Потом они бегают с крикам «а нас за що»

[DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics]

For the “boom boom Tel Aviv” idiots:

The biggest mistake people make when looking at war is assuming the objective is to hit the enemy’s capital as quickly as possible. That’s political theater, not military strategy.

If you look at the strike map, Iran isn’t behaving like a country trying to maximize headlines but like a military attempting to shape the battlespace.

The targets are not random or insignificant. Iran is dismantling the entire American military ecosystem in the region:

Early warning radar sites.
Air defense systems.
Aviation facilities and hangars.
Logistics hubs.
Fuel and ammunition storage.
Forward operating bases.
CENTCOM support infrastructure.
Bases supporting operations in Syria and Iraq.
Naval and maritime surveillance assets.
Intelligence collection and communications nodes.

Look at jordan as an example. Most people couldn’t point to Tower 22 or Muwaffaq Salti Air Base on a map, yet they’re arguably more important militarily than firing a few missiles at downtown Tel Aviv.

Tower 22 supports operations at Al-Tanf. Muwaffaq Salti hosts American aircraft and coalition operations. Erbil supports intelligence and special operations. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters. Kuwait is a massive logistics and staging area. Qatar hosts the forward headquarters of CENTCOM and the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East. These are the eyes, ears, and connective tissue of American power projection in the region.

From a military perspective, you don’t begin by punching the strongest part of your opponent. You isolate him.

There are several principles of warfare being applied here:

1. Suppression of enemy support infrastructure.
2. Degradation of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.
3. Attrition of air defense and interceptor inventories.
4. Disruption of logistics and sustainment.
5. Political pressure on host nations.
6. Shaping the operational environment before attempting anything larger.

The United States does not fight Middle Eastern wars from Washington or even from aircraft carriers alone. It fights them from an interconnected network of bases stretching from Jordan to Qatar to Kuwait to Bahrain. If that network becomes degraded, every sortie, every intelligence feed, every resupply mission, and every interceptor launch becomes more difficult and more expensive.

People screaming “just bomb Tel Aviv” fundamentally misunderstand what modern warfare looks like. Destroying a radar site that enables coalition air operations can be militarily more valuable than causing superficial damage to a symbolic target.

There’s another aspect people are missing: INTERCEPTOR ECONOMICS.

Every Patriot interceptor fired costs millions of dollars. Air defense inventories are finite. Sustained operational tempo places enormous strain on maintenance crews, missile stockpiles, and logistics chains. If an adversary can force you to defend a dozen locations simultaneously, you’ve already begun winning the resource allocation battle.

Historically, successful military campaigns begin with degrading command-and-control, communications, air defenses, and logistics before moving to decisive operations.

Whether one agrees with Iran politically is irrelevant to the military analysis. What we’re witnessing is not random retaliation, it is a deliberate campaign aimed at systematically degrading the regional architecture that allows the United States and its allies to project military power across the Middle East.

Wars are won by destroying capabilities, not by chasing viral videos of missiles landing in capital cities and gay techno songs. The boring targets on a map are often the most important ones

[Поручик Ржевский @Z337700R2k5]

Украинская полиция случайно подтвердила хранение дронов на уничтоженном складе в Сумской области

В фотоотчете о "российском ударе по гражданской инфраструктуре" попали кадры с коробками комплектующих для БПЛА с логотипом Vyriy Drone.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

Anyone who thinks a ground invasion of Iran is a serious possibility needs to watch this...

Matt Bracken is a former Navy SEAL and spec ops veteran, and he just delivered one of the most sobering comparisons I've heard yet:

Kharg Island is the size of Iwo Jima, where the U.S. pounded the island with battleships for WEEKS before landing 70,000 Marines... and still lost 7,000 lives and had 19,000 wounded in a single month.

Qeshm Island is bigger than Okinawa, which took 3 months and cost 12,000 American lives.

Iran has had decades to tunnel these islands, study U.S. tactics, and prepare for precisely this scenario, and unlike Japan in WWII, they have precision missiles that can reach every inch of the Persian Gulf.

"If we went into Iran, I think we will lose everybody we send in, the more we send in, the more we lose, and the Iranians have been very open about saying, come on in, we welcome you."

Matt ended by saying rationality is out the window, and that this started with a February 28th sneak attack, so nothing should be considered off the table.

Great talking to you, @Matt_Bracken48

[Gabriel @GabeZZOZZ]

Over 40 missiles were launched at Kiev, and there’s only one collateral casualty. Interesting how low the casualties are when Ukraine has no Patriot missiles. I’ve always said that civilians in Ukraine are much safer without NATO’s air defense.

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@KyivIndependent URSS-born Zelensky sure does feel that way except maybe for the “many victories”…

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@vtchakarova It shouldn’t be a concern for Europeans. They have an endless supply from Russia available. Oh! Wait a minute!…

[Russia 🇷🇺 @Russia]

🎂 July 20 is #InternationalCakeDay!

Soviet/Russian confectionery classics – from flaky #Napoleon & iconic #KievCake to delicate #BirdsMilk & honey-rich #Medovik – offer a delicious slice of culinary history.

🍰 Sweet tooth? In that case 👉 #FromRussiaWithLove. Enjoy!

[Olga Bazova @OlgaBazova]

Wildberries sends its regards.

FAFO.

[DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics]

🇷🇺 Amtel logistics center, with an area of over 100,000 square meters, seems to have left the chat

It was the main distribution center that stored, assembled, and distributed components for the production of long-range drones for the whole Ukraine

[Heyman_101 @SU_57R]

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Yesterday Ukraine's 425th Skala brigade published a video from the city of Kostiantynivka claiming to have cleared it of Russsian servicemen.

As it turns out, that operation was just a small group of 4 Ukrainian soldiers sent in to create the video.

Following the creation of the video, these 4 soliders were engaged by Russian servicemen. As a result, 2 are KIA and the other 2 surrendered. The Russians then instructed the 2 Ukrainian servicemen to film a new video with the Russian flag.

The 425th is an absolute mess.

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@AnankeGroup @LLaterre “Pour l’heure”? Parce que vous croyez que ce n’est qu’un problème temporaire. Vous êtes trop intelligent pour croire cela.

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@BesaBesmira @kos_data Traveling 36 hours instead of 12 sounds like a great idea. Now tell us where the so-called “Republic of Kosovo” will find the necessary billions and how does it intend to build roads in foreign countries? Also how does one get from Croatia through Bosnia to Montenegro??… 🤔

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@jasenovac223668 @kos_data My knowledge of the Balkans is a bit limited and you can probably help me out here. Where is located the border between Bosnia and the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”??… 🤔

[SIMPLICIUS Ѱ @simpatico771]

⚡️‼️😲🇺🇦Syrsky sends his "elite" Skala troops to recapture (plant flag in) Konstantinovka.

But the Russian 4th Brigade was waiting for them🇷🇺.

[A kitten with a shovel @KittenShovel]

@kos_data And Kosovo non-recognizer Spain has succeeded in winning the World Cup….