Yes, I have seen video of an Ukrainian interceptor blow up a Shahed strike drone above a city where people speak Arabic (and I’ve seen an US fighter plane fail the same task).

Ukraine needs missile defense. Missile defense is hard to come by and slow to develop.

However, Ukraine has the most advanced antidrone defense in the world, thanks to endless practise… in part due to Iran supplying Russia with blueprints for Shahed-136 production about 3 years ago (Russia has since surpassed Iran in both volume and skill, again due to endless practise against Ukraine).

Thus, Ukraine tries to bargain with Arab countries to get whatevever remains of available Patriot PAC-3 supplies. In return, it offers cheap interceptors, advise about how to use and make them, how to jam navigation and communication, how to use PAC-3 more efficiently, etc.

I am not aware of any Ukrainian attack on Iran.

Overall, Iran should have absolutely no reason to complain about Ukrainian involvement, since they have supplied Russia. And besides, Ukrainian involvement is not limitless - so far Ukrainians have been helping defend third countries (which made the mistake of hosting US bases, but regardless have reasons to defend their airspace).

Yes, it’s a mess. I hope it ends, as there is no positive outcome from continuing. Currently the best way of ending it seems like the US ceasing its campaign (not happening, a third aircraft carrier is moving towards the Middle East) and Arab countries negotiating with Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz for traffic. But all of this involves the orange person admitting a big mistake. He is currently doubling down instead.

Ukraine has its own interests (get missile defense supplies from anywhere) and will pursue them anyway. Can’t buy from China or South Korea, supply from Japan is tiny, supply from Germany is of the wrong type or not yet started up, supply from France and Italy is very limited - they will find any missile defense anywhere and try to see if it can be bought (while rushing to make their own based on the Soviet S-300).

Writing from Estonia, Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk (on the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea), whereby they export at least 30% of their oil, but perhaps even 40% in recent times - have indeed been very intense during the past week.

Day after day, large swarms go and many hit their targets despite heavy-handed air defense. The smoke of burning oil is visible to 70 km distance and some confused “birds” end up landing here (one hit a concrete smokestack, another fell in an empty field). The traffic jam of cargo ships and oil / gas tankers on the Gulf of Finland is considerable, sailors describe it “like a new city appearing on water”.

If this is what it takes to force Putin to end his war, I have no complaints.

But we should be aware that due to Trump’s simultaneous adventure in the Persian Gulf, which was entirely avoidable, and has entirely predictable results, a global economic recession is currently a realistic outcome.

If I were in the shoes of Zelensky, I would advise Trump: “please, do save the global economy by ending your adventure in the Persian Gulf, we cannot have a pillow fight with Russia, they are extremely serious and not easily dissuaded (have been attacking 4 years)”.

Meanwhile, his statemement does offer a pathway to somewhere…

“If Russia is ready not to strike Ukraine’s energy, then we’ll respond by not attacking theirs.”

…it’s merely that Russia has shown willingness to cause a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine by destroying their energy infrastructure in the winter that passed, and Ukrainians now have very little reason to believe mere words that it won’t repeat next winter. There will have to be at least ink on paper to assure it won’t happen again.

PrSM is not mysterious. It’s a boring old (boring new) ballistic missile.

But both of them missed the obvious target in the area by several buildings’ distance. :(

It’s not unprecedented, a KMT leader has visited the mainland at least once before, about 10 years ago.

But the sad reality under this move currently seems to be: Trump has shown that the current US administration is not only unwilling to defend allies based on principle (mostly dumping Ukraine), but also fairly incapable of defending allies (Arab countries), and certainly not capable of defending a place on the doorstep of the PRC, against the PRC.

Taiwan has poor options: dependence on imported energy (vulnerability to blockade), limited distance from China (within drone swarm reach), no strategic deterrent (no nuclear weapons).

In these conditions, Taiwanese politicians will likely view it as reasonable to start up diplomacy with the PRC to reduce tensions and also buy time to adapt - in the hope that their strategic ally gets a sane president and reliable foreign policy.

If the US does not get over Trump and develop sane administration practises soon, Taiwan may find itself negotiating favourable terms of surrender. Currently, it’s not so bad yet - they will be negotiating to normalize relations.

It’s really sad. The US population was manipulated to elect an insane president, and this individual has already caused irreversible global damage to long-standing alliances and partnerships.

They did, but the ship… well, its crew painted a Russian flag on the hull, lacking one in their inventory. That’s not how a flag change is supposed to happen even in the wildest case.

The current one is called Anatoly Kolodkin and has been Russian for a while according to Ukrainian sources.

It’t practically in Cuba now, they let it through - 4 hours ago, it reported position tangential to Bahia de Moa (outside the island Cayo Moa Grande), practically in territorial waters.

I cannot really disapprove because Cuba is undergoing a humanitarian crisis due to fuel shortage.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:5090590

https://war-sanctions.gur.gov.ua/en/transport/shadow-fleet/158

My opinion: one may not like a country, one may even oppose its existence, but one should not try choking it to death.

Blockade is usually considered an “act of war”. That is, something comparable to war.

Daily, in the worst case. They have almost no oil and only 10% of their needs are covered by solar (skipping everything non-essential will reduce needs, but only so much). They are adding solar capacity fast, but have little money, so there’s a limit.

They do have some interesting advances. E.g. loitering air defense missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/358_missile

Since F-35 does not use its radar while being stealthy, it would require an early warning from an AWACS about a loitering missile. But the missile is small. It gets pointed to an area and told (typical scenario) “there be helicopters somewhere there, go and see if you can find them”. It cruises in economy mode and watches with presumbaly side-scanning sensors. If it sees a hot topic, it turns and goes from loitering mode to darting mode.

P.S. Not sure if this was the weapon involved. It’s just the strangest thing Iran has.

I’m not entirely certain (because Telegram is disrupted and it’s harder to get information from Russia), but I think this bears some relation to RosKomNadzor f**ing with Telegram and mobile internet in general, recently also in the Moscow region (arguably because the sky is full of Ukrainian drones, but perhaps for additional reasons).

Two political principles applicable to Russia:

• don’t take people’s alcohol away from them, sober people will do rational things
• don’t take Telegram, people depend on it and will be angry, possibly forgetting how to lie

Let’s hope that changes on April 13 (Hungarian general elections).

Also, it causes natural selection.

If an opponent undergoes natural selection, the product is the most careful and wily persons being in charge. If you kill every dumbass, only those smart enough to survive will survive. Chances are, they will also strike back.

And meanwhile, there’s nobody to negotiate with.

Apparently, careless smoking is not a uniquely Eastern European thing. Or perhaps someone decided to frag their ship (just a little bit, not badly).

From the article:

The U.S. military’s Central Command said two sailors received treatment for “non-life-threatening injuries.” People on the ship reported that dozens of service members suffered smoke inhalation.

And in the category of non-life-threatening, but still not ideal, many sailors have not been able to do laundry since the fire.

The ship, along with its 4,500 sailors and fighter pilots, was in the Mediterranean on Oct. 24 when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered it to steam to the Caribbean to add weight to President Trump’s pressure campaign on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader before his seizure.

From the Caribbean, the carrier rushed to the Middle East for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which is now in its third week.

Speaking to sailors on board aircraft carriers is difficult in the best of circumstances. During a war, the ships and military bases involved in operations go “dark,” limiting the ability of service members to communicate with the outside world. The officials and sailors interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The Ford is now entering its 10th month of deployment. It will break the record for longest post-Vietnam War carrier deployment if it is still at sea in mid-April. That record, at 294 days, was set by the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in 2020.

Crew members on the Ford have been told that their deployment will probably be extended into May, which would put them at an entire year at sea, twice the length of a normal aircraft carrier deployment.

I plead for journalists to actually inform themselves about the subject before they write… :o

Israel has other ways to defend against Iranian missiles during the war, including via fighter jets, but the interceptors are among the most effective defensive weapons against long-range fire. Its Iron Dome missile defense system is designed to repel more short-range fire.

They speak of Iron Dome (short range, for slow rockets from inside the atmosphere) and THAAD (high altitude, for fast missiles re-entering from space) interchangeably. And they even mention fighter aircraft, which cannot do jack in either case.

The currently relevant scenarios:

• Hezbollah shoots unguided rockets at Israel -> Iron Dome intercepts maybe 15% of them (if the trajectory looks dangerous enough), and this costs about 10 times as much as the whole rocket salvo.

• Iran shoots an IRBM at Israel -> the IRBM splits up in space into cluster munitions -> Israel can intercept the MIRV bus (cluster munition housing), but it’s empty at the time of getting intercepted. Not much point. And doing it would cost at least 10 times as much as the incoming missile did.

A missile defense system, in this case, cannot do jack either. For this type of attack, defense would have a point if one was expecting to get nuked, becuause a nuclear-armed reentry vehicle cannot be made arbitrarily small, and the cost of leaving it un-intercepted would be extremely tragic.

In case of these projectiles, which are conventional and unguided in their final stage, one has to simply absorb the hits. This is the cost of war. And try to find the other guy’s launchers, and try to prevent them from producing more.

And I’m not shedding any tears for Israel in this case. It definitely sucks to be bombed with cluster munitions, but they started this round of fighting, killed most people who they might have negotiated with, and aren’t even new to using forbidden kinds of weapons (e.g. cluster munitions made of white phosphorus).

…and they should both stop.

I’m surprised that someone still practises the ancient art of physical brick-and-mortar bank heist. I guess the bank was also surprised.