Correct. Referendum was organised only after Istambul peace talks failure.
Till then, it was an open case.
That is what I am saying... when Russia agreed to return these regions they were still Ukrainian.
Now they are not so they are no longer on the table because now they are Russian territory... which is probably a big part of why the people in these regions voted to join the Russian Federation.
Honestly, I was kind of surprised about really modest Russian demands back in March 22.
Blinken would have us believe the plan by Putin was to trick the west into this conflict so they could absorb the Ukraine and then go for other countries like the Baltic states and Poland and then who knows, but the reality is that most of this time Russia viewed this as a Ukrainian internal problem they wanted to help to sort out... they wanted Kiev to talk to its regions and sort this all out peacefully.
Russia was not expanding, it was peace keeping on its border.
It was HATO that was expanding and creating hostility and war, but I suspect this conflict was about the only way to separate the west from Russia and to fix the Ukraine... or the bits that matter.
Then how does a heat seeking air to air missile work ? Does it home in on the Rocket motor or the Rocket plume ?
The early ones needed a very hot source... the rear view of a jet exhaust... preferably in AB or reheat, but then flares were introduced and those hot magnesium flares were hotter than engines and distracted the missiles so the missile seekers needed to become more sophisticated and so they added things like UV filters (flares give off UV light as well as heat, while engines and aircraft hot parts give off heat), or they were designed to look for heat patterns of an aircraft rather than a point heat source of a flare, so planes started launching bunches of flares.
I heard some devices are sensitive enough to tell the difference of 0.5 deg C ! What if AA or SAM could follow the plume ? The plume from an ATACMS ? Follow it to point of launch ? This one is static .
The problem there is that these IR sensors sense the heat in objects but not the air itself, so the rocket motor plume might still be very hot but wont appear on an IR sensor... even an imaging one.
It is vastly easier to detect an ATACMS by its radar signature and track it with radars already used by their SAMs in service and widely deployed... the ATACMS is a ballistic weapon which means it climbs up into the air and follows the path of a thrown stone with minor manouvers for accurately hitting its target... such weapons are not much different from shooting down a SCUD missile which they were able to do in the 1970s.
In fact the SA-12 called S-300V in its old model was designed to hit ballistic weapons including Honest John II and other types so ATACMS is easy stuff.
The export model S-300V called Antei-2500 has a range of up to 40km against ballistic targets and can hit targets with a RCS of 0.02m squared. Most importantly it can hit targets with a flight range of 2,500km with a velocity of 4.5 km per second.
The west is not going to mention ATACMS because Kiev will be trying to hit the Crimean bridge with them and Russia will be shooting them down.
5- Karl once again showing what an idiot he is by spewing Ukie propaganda.
Give it a day or two and we will find out those were Ukrainian troops and it was Russian cluster munitions.
Most of the footage I have seen that actually is Ukrainian cluster bombs the failure rate of the bomblets is incredible... a few puffs around the outside of the circle and all the rest nothing...
It ceased to be funny anymore ...
Those dragons teeth... more like chickens teeth...
It looks like the CIA is lining up its next false flag. Some airliner will go down and it will be blamed on Russian GPS spoofing.
Air traffic control in those regions should be able to direct flights to prevent collisions... let them work out their position the old fashioned way... ask the navigator...
Russia promised military techncial consequences to Finland and Sweden, so there you have it. Suck it up. NO GPS for you, EVER.
Ironically because of the satellite orbits GLONASS is actually rather better than GPS not just in northern areas but also in mountainous areas and also in built up areas with tall buildings. The elliptic path of the GLONASS satellites means they work better when your view of the sky is restricted or limited... I seem to remember Norway was actually working with Russia on GLONASS because it worked better than GPS... I guess that is over.
Why is tank vs tank combat so rare in this war?
Probably because there are so many things that can kill tanks on the battlefield they rarely get so close to the enemy armour to fire on them.
Holly molly, Odessa strike was really something...
When the target is ammo for artillery... you have HE and you have propellant... it would burn underwater...
So in all directions will be the advance, as soon as Ukrainians commit reserves, the other fronts will move, and if they force a new front to open, then it will be so
Russia will also likely target those reserves moving from place to place... long range rocket artillery with HE Frag and anti armour HEAT top attack cluster munitions are very effective for that.
Wherever they choose to commit reserves, just hit pause, use FABS, and rotate to a new front
When they commit reserves send in the glide bombs with the cluster munitions... wipe out those reserves, but I agree, hit in multiple places at once because you can because you have the forces and the ammo and they don't.
When there are no reserves left they will have to start thinning people on the front line to bolster areas they want to defend.
And keep hitting that ammo and new cargo as it arrives...