Colin McNaught

Enterprise Cloud & Cloud Native Architect

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@general_ben Our attitude must change either with or without the USA we must make sure Ukraine wins the war, I don't want to think my grandchildren will have to fight these bastards later

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@maria_drutska Stay safe and strong. Would love to be able to wish you a peaceful and prosperous Christmas, but the ruzzis are to stupid to go home

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@GlasnostGone They will pay for it one day. Every last one of them.

[Monty @MontayBayBay]

Who wants to see the backside of this coin?

If this tweet gets 200 rt's in the next 24 hours then we will show a video reveal of the officially approved @SOF_UKR coin in its entirety.

These coins go up for auction next week.

You know you wanna see it 😏

@Official_NAFO

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

I wanted to share with you a precise metaphor by Ukrainian journalist and analyst Vitaliy Portnikov:

The war in Ukraine can be compared to a cancer in the world. If it had been treated quickly and with the proper medicine, the events of October 7 in Israel would not have happened.

But the treatment used was not surgery and chemotherapy, but observation, homeopathy and powders. And the thought that "it'll dissolve on its own".

Eventually, it has led to metastases and they're growing. The result may be that the whole world ends up in a hospice – this is the metaphor.

In July 2023, the first leader of independent Lithuania, Vytautas Landsbergis, said the same thing:

"Russia has become a cancer of Europe and the world. If it is cured, the world may survive, but if not, it may lead to the destruction of the world."

The same thing, even earlier, in May 2022, said the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki:
" 'Russkiy Mir' ('Russian world') is a cancer which is consuming not only the majority of Russian society, but also poses a deadly threat to the whole of Europe. Therefore it is not enough to support Ukraine in its military struggle with Russia. <....> Russia will not stop at Kyiv. She has set out on a long march towards the West and it’s up to us to decide where we stop her."

I hope that world leaders will realize that fact before it is too late.

[Tatarigami_UA @Tatarigami_UA]

Amid the predominant public focus on the successful ATACMS strike at Berdyansk airfield, our team has also assembled a comprehensive report on the outcomes of a similar strike at Luhansk airport, where numerous Russian attack and transport helicopters are stationed.
🧵Thread:

[Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 @maria_drutska]

I was sitting in the subway on my way back home. In front of me stood tall and unwavering soldier/officer, the very picture of discipline and valor. In his hand, he held a stick that probably bore the scars of battles. His face wore an expression that seemed to be carved from steel.

Without hesitation, I offered my seat to him. He declined with a polite shake of his head. Sitting back, my mind filled with thoughts of war and pain, like a reel playing scenes from countless battles. I heard gunshots and screens from all those videos that I watched, and felt the sadness of everyone’s loss. It all played out before me in a matter of seconds. Tears came to my eyes, and I didn’t feel comfortable sitting when a soldier with a stick was standing in front of me . So I stood up and walked aside.

Even though he may not have worn them, I envisioned him with prosthetic limbs - a symbol of the sacrifice so many like him have made. I imagined the countless funerals he had attended, the tears of a pregnant wife each time he left for the frontlines, and the desperate hope that he might leave behind a legacy before facing the uncertainties of battle.

Somehow, this stranger before me became the embodiment of the pain and suffering of the entire Ukrainian nation – both its military and civilians.

I typically keep my emotions hidden, presenting a façade of duty and service. But today, I was overwhelmed. I don’t seek your pity or sympathy. After all, I am alive, and my relatives’ dead bodies aren’t the ones lying in rows on the ground after Russian attacks.

Yet, you must know, it’s hard for us, Ukrainians. But it isn't about exhaustion. It's about resilience. Being Ukrainian is about not getting tired. Please, don’t get tired of us.

With love,

Maria

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

DUMB THINGS RUSSIA DID IN THE UKRAINE WAR

Sometimes we do not fully realize how stupid, absurd, delusional, and surreal the Russian war in Ukraine is.

We got so used to all those idiotic Kremlin statements, to Putin regressing into childhood and being not even able to explain what this war is even about (at a current moment), to mercenary armies of suicidal convicts and Russian neo-Nazis claiming to be "liberating" Ukraine from "Nazim" and at the same time denying Ukraine's very right to exist, that we often miss it out how many insanely mind-blowing things that history textbooks will be telling about this war in the future.

Here's my impromptu list of stupid things that happened to Russia or that have been done by Russia in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022.

It's far from complete, of course, given the fact that the Kremlin never ceases to amaze at hitting rock bottom.

So, over the last 19 months of this war, Russia:

- Managed to lose a submarine to a cruise missile, for the first time in human history.
- Lost its fleet flagship (for the first time since 1905), the biggest warship sunk since 1945, to a nation that has no navy.
- Lost at least 2,300 tanks by now (including some 1,000 during the February-March 2022 blitzkrieg), which is more than all tank forces of the UK, France, Germany, and Italy combined, and is comparable to the entire U.S. Army operational tank fleet.
- Exhausted its capabilities to the point of having to de-mothball T-62 and T-54/55 tanks that were of relevance around the Cuban Missile Crisis era.
- Managed to basically exhaust the gargantuan Soviet stockpile of artillery munitions (which was considered endless) due to insane over-expenditure that reached 60,000 rounds a day in Donbas in mid-2022.
- Was seriously expecting to conquer and occupy an unfriendly 40-million nation with a 150,000-strong invasion force.
- Plunged into full-swing fascism, a mass cult of territorial grabs, and militaristic hysteria under the Z-swastika while claiming to be ancestors of WWII victors.
- Had its troops digging dugouts in the highly contaminated soil of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
- Was so successful that, 6 months after the invasion day, it had to declare mobilization for the first time since 1941 and 1914.
- Failed to score air supremacy despite obvious advantage over Ukraine's air force in quality and numbers
- Simply declared a 40-million European nation "Nazi" and thus entitled itself to eradicate and occupy it in a war of aggression.
- Had a daring landing operation at a strategic airfield that was supposed to be a crushing blow upon the Ukrainian capital but nonetheless failed on day 1.
- Lost up to two battalion tactical groups (!) to Ukrainian artillery while trying to cross a river in Donbas in May 2022
- Spent a month trying to break into Kyiv and then simply left, having failed the entire war's key axis, with its most elite forces severely degraded.
- As the world's second strongest military, it became dependent on Iranian supplies of kamikaze drones (and likely ballistic missiles) and begged North Korea to provide it with artillery munitions.
- Seriously believed Putin's kin Viktor Medvedchuk, who had spent years plundering the Kremlin money and telling cool stories on how Ukrainians were just dreaming of being part of Russia again.
- Had its regular military so insanely successful that it had to hastily pump up a "private military company" led by a catering tycoon (a former street criminal) and a neo-Nazi, which recruited masses of suicidal convicts and practiced ISIS-style executions on camera.
- As the world's second strongest military power, it re-introduced the phenomenon of "meat grinder assaults" in Europe in the year 2022.
- Spent hundreds of missiles to strip a 40-million European nation of electricity and heating in the dead of winter -- and failed.
- Occupied nuclear power plants and deployed military forces at their facilities -- for the first time in human history.
- Spent a year and lost tens of thousands of men fighting for the ruins of a mid-sized provincial town of Bakhmut (which it declared the new Stalingrad), the eventual capture of which resulted in no further progress at all and was quickly forgotten.
- Had its daily acts of nuclear blackmailing so overused that everyone eventually stopped paying attention.
- Had Putin ribbon-cutting a wonder wheel in Moscow during the disastrous defeat in Kharkiv Oblast and visiting a turkey farm in Tiumen following the withdrawal from Kherson.
- Unleashed the biggest European war since WWII and, after things went south, began whining about Ukraine not willing to have a "ceasefire" and a "deal in negotiations."
- Made the West wake up and provide Ukraine with weapons ranging from artillery to tanks, air defense, missiles, and now also jet fighters.
- Faced an armed rebellion by the "private military company" which easily captured a key Russian city, a key military HQ, and then moved towards Moscow, making Putin flee and ask for a deal.
- Despite all the bravado and megalomanic plans, after 19 months of a full-scale war, Russia occupies 18% of Ukraine's territory (including Donbas and Crimea seized in 2014), and it has lost some 50% of the Ukrainian territory seized after February 24, 2022.
- Unleashed the biggest European war since WWII due to "the NATO threat" in Ukraine but couldn't care less about Finland and Sweden joining the alliance - it's all just fine.
- Saw Ukrainian drone strikes on the Kremlin and Moscow becoming a new normal.
- Had Ukrainian-backed Russian armed nationalist groups crossing the border, capturing Russian towns, killing Russian troops, and leaving unpunished.
- Annexed entire Ukrainian regions it did not even fully control by simply formally declaring them Russian regions and having a gala concert at the Red Square. And left Kherson a month later.
- After a year of the war, lost at least as many troops as the U.S. had lost within a decade in Vietnam, making this the deadliest Russian war since WWII.
- Saw Putin break his word and assassinate the "private military company's" chiefs after they had stupidly believed they could have a deal with Putin.
- Committed atrocities in Bucha, Izium, and Mariupol, with mass graves, acts of torture, and executions seen in those lands for the first time since the Nazi occupation and called this "liberation".
- Saw The Hague court issue an arrest warrant for Putin on charges of war crimes.
- Had to leave Snake Island and then relocate its Black Sea fleet from Crimea to mainland Russia due to devastating Ukrainian attacks, effectively giving up on its control over the northwest Black Sea -- to a nation that has no navy.
- Easily exchanged the Mariupol garrison leaders, including insanely demonized Azov Regiment commanders, for no one but Viktor Medvedchuk -- and continued listening to his cool stories about Ukraine.
- Triggered the worst man-made disaster since the Chornobyl blast, the Kakhovka dam destruction, leaving swathes of Ukrainian land flooded, including Russia's own military facilities on the Dnipro River banks.
- Had its strategic bombers and transport aircraft destroyed on the ground by Ukraine at airfields hundreds of kilometers deep inside Russian territory.
- Prior to the 2022 invasion, Russia got Ukraine semi-surrounded with the largest military force seen in the region since the peak of the Cold War -- and then declared that Ukraine SUDDENLY decided to attack Russia and "the Russian people in Donbas." What a coincidence!
- Saw its much-advertised winter 2023 offensive (for the sake of which it had launched a large-scale mobilization) fail without any substantial progress.
- Made its online bootlickers act as if it's actually Ukraine that has failed with its 20-month blitzkrieg into Russia -- not kinda the other way around.
- Had this insanely hyped-up General Armageddon, the hammer of the Ukrainian doomsday who ended up only ceding Kherson, being discharged two months after and exiled following the Wagner coup.
- Still struggles to choose a certain end goal for its "special military operation" -- be it "de-militarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine," or "the fight against Satanism and the collective West," or "the protection of the people of Donbas," or "saving Russia and its civilization from losing its sovereignty and collapsing."
- During the disastrous withdrawal from Kharkiv, abandoned for Ukraine an amount of munitions and military hardware comparable to the entire Western supply by that moment.
- Rendered Donbas largely uninhabitable.
- Ruined the region's once-gigantic industrial base.
- Made millions flee in terror.
- Slaughtered tens of thousands of able-bodied Donbas males forcibly mobilized and then used as cannon fodder in meat grinder assaults.
- Leveled entire cities to ashes, with those cities very unlikely to be ever revived due to astronomical amounts of resources required and due to almost complete depopulation.
- And then proudly installed its flag over the lifeless ruins and called this "de-Nazification."

P.S. Those who knowingly endorse all those things that Russia did to Ukraine should quit calling themselves sane human beings.

Support my work here: https://t.co/j4T7XvJnUN

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@visegrad24 @GlasnostGone Look at everything that russia is doing to their own children.we can't do anything else but ban russia from any international events. We must start protecting our own

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@GlasnostGone @UEFA That's one of the problems with democracy, russia keeps giving us BS information that we can accept so we feel sorry for the poor citizens. But russia today lives in a 1984 Orwell universe, there are no poor free thinking citizens just the robotic slave to the state.

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” - G.K. Chesterton, 1911

A Ukrainian soldiers fights for love of what is behind them and a Russian out of hate and conquest.

[Tatarigami_UA @Tatarigami_UA]

While global attention is primarily on the counter-offensive in the South, there has been noteworthy yet often unnoticed progress in the southernmost part of Bakhmut's defenses. In this thread, I will provide the latest information about Kurdyumivka and its significance.🧵Thread:

[🌻 Таня @tanyawoz]

Showing a map of Ukraine with its internationally recognized borders is now illegal in Russia. Share so everyone knows what map Russia doesn't want everyone to see.

[Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder]

Elon, you make great cars (and a lot of money), but that doesn’t qualify you in any way to tip the scales in an existential fight for freedom for the people of Ukraine. Russia started this war, Ukraine is defending itself. Your call for capitulation is totally inappropriate

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@oleksiireznikov @DefenceU @ZelenskyyUa @verkhovna_rada Great work and all the best to you. Hoping both you and the Ukrainian have a bright future

[Tatarigami_UA @Tatarigami_UA]

This topic is rarely discussed, but I feel it's important to briefly talk about it. There's a significant focus on advanced weapons like ATACMS or F16, which are expected to reshape the battlefield.

While I don't dispute the significance of these weapons, I believe the constant buzz around "game changers" sometimes overshadows the critical need for simpler, yet vital resources. These include medevac vehicles, basic IFVs, armored vehicles like the M113, infantry mortars, ammunition for them, artillery, medical kits, stabilization equipment, MANPADs, and drones.

The reality is that Ukrainian volunteers are tirelessly raising funds almost every day to purchase old, unarmored Toyotas in Europe just to secure one vehicle per company or even battalion for evacuating the wounded from the battlefield.

In active combat scenarios, it's entirely possible to lose multiple drones at once, which is why you often see daily fundraisers for them.

Numerous frontline units require basic armored vehicles for transportation and fire support. Acquiring these might not be as glamorous as boasting about Abrams tanks or F16s, but their importance is no less significant.

Unfortunately, Ukraine is in a serious need of a significant amount of "essential vehicles", and not only in the Southern front. Ukrainians are engaged in constant battles across the entire frontline, with particularly intense combat in areas like Bakhmut, Kreminna, and Kupiansk.

In a theater of war heavily influenced by artillery, landmines, and loitering munitions, the rate of equipment loss is far greater than many people realize. This is precisely why I've wrote this text, in an attempt to shed light on this pressing issue.

While I may not have the power to resolve this issue, I urge supporters of Ukraine not to disregard fundraisers for drones or evacuation vehicles, as they are undeniably crucial. We shouldn't forget about essential supplies while chasing bigger goals like ATACMS.

[Colin McNaught @McnaughtColin]

@FANSSNomad @McFaul No this is the situation that russia created. No one else just russia.

[Darth Putin @DarthPutinKGB]

Prigozhin did a Luna-25 tribute act.

[S. Ashton-Cirillo @AshtonCirillo]

Russian Defense is COLLAPSING in the south.

Trust ZSU.

Trust Ukrainian Command.

[Thomas C. Theiner @noclador]

Ukrainian troops I spoke to say that russia's Lancet kamikaze drones are currently the biggest problem they face on the battlefield... and that they have no solution to the problem yet.

First: No (!) NATO army has a solution to this problem, as all NATO armies lack a system
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