Starlink-branded hardware reportedly found amid wreckage of downed Russian drone A Russian drone shot down over Ukraine appears to have been fitted with equipment made by Elon Musk's space broadband service Starlink, according to Ukrainian media. The claims – including pictures of wreckage that bears a Starlink logo – emerged in a report by Ukrainian outlet Defence Express and on a Telegram channel. The …
The equipment appears on or close to a Ukrainian border, and is moving at high speed... that's an instant request to turn it off.
The equipment appears in Ukraine, and is stationary, and then starts moving at high speed... that's probably the Ukranians.
Neil Barnes,
That's assuming Russian forces aren't launching their Starlink-equipped drones from inside Ukraine.
Even if not, they could easily program the drone to fly in slow, tight circles while it turns on its starlink antenna once inside Ukraine's borders. Which I suspect would be much harder to distinguish from stationary from a constellation of moving satellites.
Neil Barnes,
Surely the MAC address has to be linked to the account - and therefore the payment method. Which I guess means Russia would have to set up one account for every drone? But maybe not. As Shahed / Geran is a one-way attack drone - you could register a bunch together - and by the time Starlink have worked out what's going on - all those units have been blown up.
I'm sure Russian state-sponsored hackers can generate sufficient stolen credit card details and addresses to set these accounts up.
Or just buy the stuff in Ukraine, on Ukrainian credit cards - which would make it even harder to distinguish from Ukrainian operated drones.
Starlink could have provided a list of all drone serial numbers or MAC addresses and their locations within Ukraine and Russia to Ukraine and give Ukraine the power to enable or disable them at will over two years ago.
It hasn't because Musk didn't want to then and still doesn't want to now even while Russian drones attack Ukraine using Starlink hardware. If there were any justice in the world he should have already lost a court case for sanctions busting.
Starlink could have provided a list of all drone serial numbers or MAC addresses and their locations within Ukraine
Dan55,
As I've said several times on this thread - the Ukrainian drone-effort is too decentralised - there are way too many BYO devices in this war for either side's military bureaucracy to have total control of the situation. The amount of crowd-funding going on is huge. The Czech public crowd-funded a modernised T-72 called Thomas the Tank - in their "Gift for Putin" campaign. There are loads of foreign groups funding drones, medical supplies, mortars, PPE and other supplies for Ukrainian front line units.
Part of the reason the evolution of drone warfare in Ukraine is so fast, is because it's so chaotic. The guy who 3D printed a rotating grenade dispenser to go on quadcopters couldn't make them fast enough, as more units found out and bought them. But it was entirely done by an amateur guy with a 3D printer and a good idea. Some version is probably standard kit now.
Some of the first grenade dropping FPV drones in 2022 seem to have come about because a Ukrainian unit captured a bunch of Russian mortar ammo but Ukraine didn't have the right sized tubes to use them. But they had this ammo, and really wanted to throw it at the Russians - so they improvised. One bit of string and a radio controlled hook later - and Kaboom! from the skies.
Grenade dropping was one of the first things tried from WW1 aircraft - they also had metal flechette darts which they dropped over the side into trenches. Later they started fitting purpose built bomb racks etc and things got larger & more kinetic as the technology got better.
Soon we'll have pallet drones dropping 50-100kg bombs from a few hundred feet
This ^^^
What Ain't Spartacus said. First thought that crossed my mind.
Actually - the first thought that crossed my mind was who in their right mind would downvote an informative, well-written and non-conflictual post, but then I remembered it's the internet.
To quote the greatest comedienne: "...I got in and asked for an avocado sandwich, they told me 'Mam, we sell insurance', and I didn't like at all how I felt...one star..."
Beats the hell out of me how you can think Trump wants Putin to lose. Trump is the greatest weapon that Putin has today. His only hope is that Trump wins and stops the weapons and basically forces tge rest of NATO to abadon UKR.
I think you misunderstood my wording. I was stating that yes Starlink can tell if its equipment is being used on drones (by the fact it is entering Ukraine from Russia) and could turn them off as a result - but would only do so if Musk wanted Ukraine to win. Which I do not believe he does, just like Trump obviously wants Putin to prevail.
The only question is whether Trump admires Putin because he's the dictator Trump wishes to be, or because Putin owns him due to some extremely compromising intel he has on him.
Trumps political opinion has nothing to do with whether he admires Putin or not. The real reason is two fold
- Hubris Trump actually believes he is that wonderful that everyone obeys him because he is wonderful no matter what stupidities or self harm he shares. Just look at the Republican half of America, the vast majority of his suprorters are the target of Trump and his rich mates exploitation etc and yet they believe he is helping them.
- THe other half is he has calculated that his stupid suporters, the same ones he wants to lower wages, worker more hours with less rights actually believe he is helping them with this idea of helping putin.
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The problem is that the areas where Russians and Ukranians have effective control of the territory are not the same as the legal borders.
If it is launched from Crimea, which is legally Ukranian territory, it is probably Russians. If it is launched from Kursk, which is legally Russian territory, it could be Ukranians.
And if it is going from Kursk to a position on the front line within Ukraine's borders? Ukrainian and Russian targets might only be about 100 metres apart, the actual target will be programmed into the drone and not necessarily obvious from the trajectory; and not being obvious might be an intentional militatry tactic.
And if it is going from Kursk to a position on the front line within Ukraine's borders?
Or for Ukraine, relying on Starlink for drones, either air or sea attacking targets inside the undisputed Russian territory, eg the naval drones being used to attack Russian ships. Or just relying on Starlink full stop given their frequencies are well known and it would seem relatively simple to just jam those. It's a very strange and modern war. Yesterday Ukraine claimed successful drone attacks on a Russian airfield and an ammunition dump. Today, people have been posting satellite images showing those undamaged.
Why would a drone flying 100m need starlink ?You obviously have no idea of the range of video and radio links for the most basic of commercial or hobby drones.
The range on most commercial/hobby drones isn't sufficient, or is more prone to jamming, or direction finding. Russia has their Orlan drones that are kind of flying versions of this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
So those fly around Ukraine looking for mobile & WiFi signals and could then pass the locations back to artillery units for servicing. They may also be able to detect Starlink terminals, if they fly close enough to the beam path, or the operators are foolish enough to have WiFi active on their terminals.
But it is known that Ukraine is using Starlink on both flying and naval drones. Advantage is obviously range, and Ukraine doesn't have the kinds of satellites and systems that allow NATO to fly drones from thousands of kilometers away. Russia does. But Ukraine can launch drones into Russian (ie 1991 borders) from the comfort and relative safety of Odessa or Kiev. But this is also the problem with Starlink. So they can attempt to geofence terminals to Ukraine's borders, or prevent them operating inside Russian borders.
But then Ukraine wouldn't be able to control drones and strike into Russian territory, unless Starlink knew the device IDs Ukraine was using for those strikes. Which then gets a bit political because if Starlink is enabling strikes on Russia, it becomes party to the conflict and Russia has threatened to disable their satellites. If they did, that would then leave gaps in coverage in other territories covered by those satellites orbits. Plus there's other potential nastiness, ie if any of the satellites Russia has launched since the start of the SMO can detect & locate transmissions from Starlink terminals operating inside either Ukraine or Russia.
Not so sure about that. The Starlink satellites are travelling at about 17,000 mph. The drones are travelling at maybe 1% of that speed, in an arbitrary direction relative to the satellite it's currently talking to. Determining whether or not it's "moving at high speed" is non-trivial, and there's probably no engineering or commercial justification to even try it.
I don't know anything about Starlink but, even if the terminals have GPS receivers in them and transmit their position to the satellite, it would be trivial to forge that position. The Russians do that on a daily basis; just ask anyone travelling near Kaliningrad, for example.
Maybe its me, but i would have thought the uplink from the starlink receivers is encrypted because we all know Musk doesnt trust big government.
But big goverment issues the licences, and parts of those licences conditions are almost always some element of permitting lawful interception. Plus as an Internet (or just IP) service, you can't encrypt the headers or it just won't work.
You don't need access to anything which is potentially encrypted. You interfere with the radio signals from the GPS satellites; either jam them or, if you're very clever, provide your own local ones. It's well-known that the Russians already jam GPS over the Baltic/Black Sea/Eastern Med/etc. It's hard to see how anyone in or around the Ukrainian border could get a GPS fix.
Dragon capsules are not doing 20000/hr when they transit.
Theres a blackout period in reentry for example, there are many examples of this radio silence period both from the Apollo Era all the way down to the shuttle and more. Nothing can transmit during this time even "magic".
Depends on what it was used for, we're assuming it was connected to the Starlink network...but it could just as easily been reflashed and used for a different purpose...Starlink routers are just Mediatek SOCs and bog standard network controllers...they aren't that sophisticated and could be repurposed for anything...they already run some custom fork of OpenWRT.
They're just Linux boxes at the end of the day.
Considering United Airlines are rolling out Starlink to their 1000 odd airliners - yes.
SpaceX and others have tested the terminals in various aircraft and Starship.
The problem is the 'wack the mole' Starlink have to do to identify and disable the terminals which the orks are getting via third countries.
Khaptain,
The Shahed 136 drone is a loitering one-way attack munition - so can hang around waiting for a suitable target to become available. I remember reports from 2022 of them having cameras and so wondered if they were also re-usable. But a quick Google suggests my memory is wrong. Which means they must either be programmed for particular targets or there are other drones with cameras to provide targetting for them.
Some have been found with 4G modems, which allows in-flight targetting.
There's also a story from last year of one being used at sea - which suggests that one must have had a camera specially fitted - or that again there was another drone that wasn't spotted.
The Russians now manufacture them as Geran-2 - and have been modifying them. They've apparently now got electronic warfare snooper ones, that can fly ahead of a strike to avoid any EW or radars that might attack the strike drones. It would make sense to also have camera versions - and seeing as they're making one type of special, why not several?
At which point Starlink becomes a cheap and easy way to send back the video feed from your drone - which is something the Ukrainians have been doing since soon after the war started.
The only downside is that you can't get the drone (and therefore the kit) back. As they get captured, you'll lose access to those accounts - but I'm guessing they're confident they can create them faster than Starlink can play whack-a-mole?
The only downside is that you can't get the drone (and therefore the kit) back. As they get captured, you'll lose access to those accounts - but I'm guessing they're confident they can create them faster than Starlink can play whack-a-mole?
Or whack-a-Musk. But being an IT type on an IT site, first thing I've done is attempt a little verfication-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQNtZ6ztNPQ
Showing someone violating their warranty and (literally) tearing down a Starlink v3 dish. Or tray. Which doesn't seem to match the images shown in the Ukrainian story very well, other than a vague resemblance to the circuit board. That has a lot of the circuitry missing. The plastic with the Starlink logo on it also doesn't seem to match up, ie the front side of the front panel doesn't have a Starlink logo on it, the inside has the hex plastic bonded to it. The rear casing is also different, but then if you were customising a dish to mount to a drone, that could be binned anyway. There are other videos showing people doing this to mount flatter on vehicles, caravans etc. It's possible the plastic came from a router, but would be same issue as with the dish. For a drone, you'd be looking to save weight to increase range, so why include packaging you don't need?
But in the principle of moving fast and breaking things, it's not to say there aren't other versions of the dish available. Or this is propaganda and Ukraine's salted the debris field with wreckage from their own dishes and routers. Which then raises the question regarding what Ukraine wants to acheive with this claim? Starlink can't officially suppy to Russia and can't prevent grey imports. Or one of the ways it could would be to block service over both Russia and Ukraine, but that would obviously prevent Ukraine using Starlink as well.
And then the question of whether Russia would bother to use Starlinks, knowing full well that they could be detected, tracked, jammed etc by Starlink. Which is also like another bizarre story that came out of Ukraine recently. So-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20mz0l36gjo
He said he had received intelligence showing Moscow was using satellites provided by other countries to gather information about Ukraine's nuclear infrastructure.
With the Bbc being a little coy given the claim was Russia's using Chinese satellite data. Which is.. curious given Russia built Ukraine's nuclear infrastructure and has their own satellites.. Which is one of the things Russia's been launching regularly since the SMO started.
"Russia's using Chinese satellite data. Which is.. curious given Russia built Ukraine's nuclear infrastructure and has their own satellites.. Which is one of the things Russia's been launching regularly since the SMO started."
Reconsats have a predictable path and time over target.
The enemy can and will be aware of that and time movements in those windows (especially if getting such advice and data from some clever people backing your enemy)
If you can use someone else's flagged satellite you can maybe see things they thought you wouldn't...
Probably all they are using tho are one of the many commercial satellite photo sources rather than super secret Chinese military birds.
The enemy can and will be aware of that and time movements in those windows (especially if getting such advice and data from some clever people backing your enemy)
Sure, but nuclear power plants aren't exactly well known for moving very quickly. Russia has the as-builts and also built most of the ancillary equipment like transformer sites. The only time-sensitive stuff would probably be any air defences Ukraine might have defending those sites, or anything Ukraine might be storing near those sites knowing Russia won't likely attack them.
Probably all they are using tho are one of the many commercial satellite photo sources rather than super secret Chinese military birds.
Or super sekret Russia birds. Part of they hype around the 'full scale' invasion was Russia didn't start launching satellites until after the SMO began and AFAIK, there have been 20+ launches since then. No doubt Russia will be adding any data it can get from commercial sources either directly or indirectly as well.
"The only time-sensitive stuff would probably be any air defences Ukraine might have defending those sites"
Or bomb damage assessment post strike.... remember they are trying to knock out Ukrainian power supplies. They need to see what possible targets remain.... as well as air defence units.
Concealing or faking damage is a thing when you are a target of enemy bombing missions. Either using obscuring smoke during enemy recon missions or making your still functioning target look like its been killed with some set dressing (which obviously can't be actually moved into place when they are watching either)
Or bomb damage assessment post strike.... remember they are trying to knock out Ukrainian power supplies. They need to see what possible targets remain.... as well as air defence units.
Now you've got the order of operation wrong. The claim was Russia using Chinese satellites to plan a strike. Again there is no reason to do this given Russia knows exactly where those NPPs are.
Planning? So seeing if the enemy have got anything different to the last time you saw it is a good idea.
Maybe they've built some more structures? Maybe they have some point defence? Maybe some trees have grown up?
Loads of reasons why the "as built" blueprints even if you have them are not what you need for a military strike.
Its kinda important when you are lobbing long range stuff, particularly high precision weapons and not just a grad barrage.... which you probably don't want to do when its a nuclear power plant thats close to your own country (even if you are a maniac who ignores that you shouldn't risk nuclear power plants)
Although to be fair, most of the screaming from BOTH sides about the other deliberately targeting nuclear reactors is just attention seeking. Its as much a war for opinion as anything real on the ground.
eel:
Or super sekret Russia birds. Part of they hype around the 'full scale' invasion was Russia didn't start launching satellites until after the SMO began and AFAIK, there have been 20+ launches since then. No doubt Russia will be adding any data it can get from commercial sources either directly or indirectly as well.
cow: How can you possibly believe in Russia having anything super after years of shame ?
Their aircraft carrier required a fucking tug boat to help it along the way.
No Russian oligarch wants to be seen in a Russian car, no they all drive German cars.
Most Russian airlines after the fall of the USSR all bought Airbus and Boeing planes and even today they still are trying to their best to fly them.
What major technical product is Russia known for exporting ?
NONE.
No cars
No fridges
No tvs
No Tunnel machines
No Trains
No Planes
Absolutey nothing
cow: How can you possibly believe in Russia having anything super after years of shame ?
Well, it has hyper and will probably be exporting that technology now to countries we may not approve of. Or countries we mostly approve of but would much prefer to be buying weapons from us-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II
According to reports published in April 2023, India has requested Russia for the transfer of technology (ToT) for the Russian 3M22 Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, upon which the BrahMos-II (K) will be based.
But this is also where the 'years of shame' may be flipped, ie performance of Russian missile systems vs NATO air defences. Or flipping that around, Russian air defences vs NATO missiles. Russia's had success exporting S-300/400 systems already.
No Russian oligarch wants to be seen in a Russian car, no they all drive German cars.
Or Aurus Komendant, Senat. But as is often the case with sanctions, Germany loses sales, Russia and China gain them. Look for recent videos from places like Moscow and St Petersberg and a lot of Russian taxi drivers have ditched Mercs for Chinese or Russian cars instead. Plus Russia's inherited factories producing vehicles or components from Westen automakers so will probably be able to produce new models for domestic use, or export.
Most Russian airlines after the fall of the USSR all bought Airbus and Boeing planes and even today they still are trying to their best to fly them.
And Russian aerospace companies also built components like heat exchangers for Airbus.. Who can't use those any more, and is delaying Airbus production. But that's sanctions again. Oh, and BRICS. Combine Russian, Chinese, Brazilian aerospace expertise and produce aircraft that compete with Airbus and Boing. There'll still be a spot of economic warfare around certifying those aircraft to try and protect EU and US aerospace industries.
What major technical product is Russia known for exporting ?
Well, it's the 3 largest defence exporter. Or Rosatom has a large order book to build nuclear power plants, including SMRs while we still tilt at windmills. It also produces a lot of trucks and agricultural equipment that is cheap, easy to maintain and don't demand monthly fees for 'features', or simple servicing tasks. Then there's stuff like machine tools. But again it's a sanctions thing. Western manufacturers may have built refrigerator or <drumroll> washing machine factories inside Russia and now lost them, and could be turned to domestic or export production. Oh, and there's Turkey, which has pretty much given up on EU membership and might join BRICS instead. They produce a lot of 'white goods', either own-lable or OEM for brand management companies.
Oh, and of course a lot of your list aren't actually made in the West. We've outsourced a lot of that to China, who we're also in the process of sanctioning. Genius move, especially as BRICS already includes most of the world's population and have a long list of developing nations waiting to join. Why buy an AEG fridge or washing machine when you could buy a BRICS produced alternative for a lot less money? And given the way Germany's sanctioned itself and is in the process of de-industrialising, Germany won't be able to compete.
But then this is why this mess started. Closer co-operation and trade between the EU and Russia would be very bad for the US. Prior to the sanctions war, the EU economy was larger than the US. Now, it isn't.
eel: But this is also where the 'years of shame' may be flipped, ie performance of Russian missile systems vs NATO air defences. Or flipping that around, Russian air defences vs NATO missiles. Russia's had success exporting S-300/400 systems already.
cow:
Success ?
If you call losing half your Black sea fleet ,and over 3000 tanks to sell a few dozen S300 and S400 systems a success, sure they have been a success.
Im sure if the Russian economy loses the other half of their Black Sea Fleet and another 3000 tanks to sell another S400 to Turkey you could also call that a success....most peopl ewouldnt but you might.
" Which doesn't seem to match the images shown in the Ukrainian story very well, other than a vague resemblance to the circuit board."
I would expect Starlink has several different versions of the hardware. Things used on an aircraft must be certified for use on an aircraft which might require different configuration. Shipboard systems may need to fit in an enclosure that's constructed for shipboard use. Remote location/tower systems..... You get the picture. All of those may be different than a consumer unit somebody would stick on a table in their garden.
You get the picture. All of those may be different than a consumer unit somebody would stick on a table in their garden.
Yep, and I said as much. And you wouldn't need a standard enclosure if you were installing it on a drone. There are also images floating around of Ukrainian drones using Starlink. Earlier ones seemed to just strap a Starlink terminal to the drone, later ones show more integration. Again it's a spot of 'fact checking' I'd have expected a decent IT journalist to do first, ie have a stab at verifying the story. If the idea is to use cheap COTS stuff, it would be logical to use the stuff that's easiest to obtain like the Starlink v3 consumer unit.
Then perhaps wonder why the electronics on the board have been snapped off, parts are missing, or why the serial numbers have been obscured. If the objective is to highlight the way Starlink might be being used by Russia, there seems no good reason to redact that, and serial numbers might help the open-source community track down the origins. Another oddity is very few news sites seem to be reporting on this 'scandal' either.
"stuff that's easiest to obtain like the Starlink v3 consumer unit."
Maybe, maybe not. With high demand, those might not just be sitting around on a warehouse shelf ready for immediate shipping. Something made for installation on a remote tower might be built in batches with higher product availability. I'm just sayin' that if it looks different, it doesn't matter if it's doing the same thing or may even have extended functionality if SpaceX is playing with new configurations for specific markets.
"Some have been found with 4G modems"
More importantly some have been found with Ukrainian SIM cards in them... meaning they are leveraging Ukraines 4G network against them.
Very little I suggest you can do with any of this stuff - these things appear and get used up in a one way mission and onto the next one.
If you've ever tried to play whack-a-mole in cyber you'll appreciate how fruitless it is - or if you don't, read this and learn.
Inside "a missile" or inside a drone. Drones aren't just bombs, and the article itself pretty much spells out that this would have been used for real-time surveillance. Given that the Ukrainian forces have reportedly taken out several of Russia's very expensive surveillance aircraft, and knowing where your enemy is and what they are up to is kinda important in warfare, it doesn't take too much brain power to work out what it was being used for.
Probably slightly more brainpower than the average pro-Putin keyboard warrior, though.
Yeah, satellites are notoriously not real-time though, are they. Russia are reportedly using Chinese spy satellites, but satellites are typically in high orbits. (And Ukraine are being allowed to use images from European satellites).
With a satellite, if you want to have real-time surveillance, your options are pretty limited. Either you need to be in a geostationary orbit above your target, which means being in a high equatorial orbit, or you need to use fuel to remain above the target, which is both limited and expensive.
In reality, a satellite in an unpowered orbit (i.e. not pissing away valuable fuel that you have expended many times more fuel raising into orbit) passes over a target in a sun-synchronous orbit once a day. This also means that the pictures it takes are always taken at the same time of day, directly from above, with shadows at the same angle. This is clearly less useful than taking real-time pictures from a drone passing over a target, especially if you are trying to work out movements of troops and vehicles, which are almost certainly under cover a lot of the time. Spy satellites, on the other hand, are much more useful for pinpointing static targets, such as massive ammunition dumps, so that they can be made to make a loud noise and deprive your dear leader of three months' worth of ammunition.
In reality, a satellite in an unpowered orbit (i.e. not pissing away valuable fuel that you have expended many times more fuel raising into orbit) passes over a target in a sun-synchronous orbit once a day.
That makes a few assumptions, like Russia hasn't been launching semi-disposable satellites that might have more fuel to manouver and aren't expected to stay in orbit for long. This means they may not play nicely with others and be in well published orbits or orbital positions, but they're black birds after all.
Yes, it makes some assumptions I've also assumed that Russia isn't using Baba Yaga flying round in her teapot observing Ukraine, because that's equally a load of old horseshit.
It doesn't matter if a satellite is "semi disposable", launching something into space, into actual orbit, has a number of features, such as observability, and expense, that are unavoidable. Given that Russia has been having trouble launching even its test missiles recently (hello, a 30m wide crater where it's last test-launch of its "satan" hypersonic missile didn't go quite according to plan), and that isn't even an ICBM, which itself isn't even a launch vehicle for a satellite, then the idea that they might secretly have been launching multiple useful satellites into orbit is basically laughable.
Russia's space launches take place from Baikonur, in Kazakhstan. The idea of any launches from there not being well known about, and well-observed by the international community are sheer fantasy.
Also, the idea that someone would go to the trouble of putting something into space for it to be "semi-disposable" demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of where the costs are in an orbital launch. They're almost all in the launch vehicle, not in the payload. You only have to observe that any launch vehicle is basically 99% fuel to understand this. Russia certainly doesn't have infinite money and resources to play with, and anyone launching anything into space wants to get the absolute maximum value from the effort, and not pay for a (very) expensive launch vehicle, so that they can then throw the payload away (as well as the vehicle, since Russian rockets are not reusable and burn up on launch/re-entry, AFAIK).
I'd suggest that you have a lot to learn about physics, as well as many, many other things, tovarishch.
I love that Jellied Eel is one minute stating that he's an "IT type on an IT site, so first thing I've done is attempt a little verfication" before watching some youtube videos and declaring this is a likely Ukranian false flag operation. And yet a few posts later that "little verification" goes out the window as he suggests Russia can launch satellites into orbit without anyone noticing.
Androgynous Cupboard,
My impression is that the Eel is in fact an IT person - probably from the UK. Who often posts intelligent and interesting things. So my working theory is that all critical thinking goes out of the window when it comes to Russia and Putin - because in some way he's set Putin in his mind as the opposite to some facet of Western society that he doesn't approve of, or is angry about.
In a similar way to people talking about how brilliant the Chinese government are, that they always plan for the long term, look at all the roads and railways they've built, look how much better they are than our rubbish politicians - blah, blah, blah. Well it's much easier to get things done when you can imprison or shoot anyone who tries to stop you, and instead of having a public enquiry and doing environmental impact statements and spending 2 years in committee and legislation you can just build a railway whereever the hell you like, and send in the police or army to move anyone who doesn't like it.
All the incompetence and corruption, extra-judicial killings and labour camps are far, far away - and so can be ignored. Or dismissed as evil propaganda from those useless Western politicians.
Either that, or he's just a very consistent troll...
He's either a British IT person who is, unfortunately, very, very far down the rabbit-hole when it comes to the right-wing conspiracy theory echo-chamber, or he's a paid for Russian agitprop agent. The important thing is that, functionally, there's really very little difference. Trying to figure out which one he is has about as much point as trying to figure out whether the Copenhagen or Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is right, when they both produce the same results.
Some people take contrarianism or ultra-scepticism to a point where they believe nothing from one side of the aisle and so end up taking the other side.
It's unfortunate that human nature is such that with right triggers some go to a place where you could fill in a bingo card of biases and fallacies in short order.
Some people take contrarianism or ultra-scepticism to a point where they believe nothing from one side of the aisle and so end up taking the other side.
Or it's something that debating or legal training teaches you. Up to and including things like Supreme Court(s) and dissenting opinions. It is taught for a reason.
It's unfortunate that human nature is such that with right triggers some go to a place where you could fill in a bingo card of biases and fallacies in short order.
Human nature also makes it hard to be unbiased, especially when propaganda is blended in. So basic psychologiical tricks like repetition of things like 'full scale military invasion', 'illegal invasion', 'unjustified invasion'. Repeat a lie often enough and people start to believe it. Sadly it's a sign of our modern times that dogwhistles abound, and people lose the ability to think critically because they've been deafened by all the dog-whistles. El Reg has got bad at this, or good if the objective is clickbait. If they'd managed to work Trump into the article, they'd have managed the full house of current boogeymen.
I still don't think it passes the basic sniff test. Why would Russia use drones that depended on, or could be tracked by the West? Russia is, after all the nation that launched the world's first commsat in 1957..
"Russia is, after all the nation that launched the world's first commsat in 1957.."
You need to tone down your hyped up fanboy nonsense. You are just getting embarrassing now.
A satellite emitting a radio beep isn't a "commsat".
Russia is mostly known for producing crap, if anything at all. Only the space program was useful, and that only thanks to German rocket engineers. (USA had some too.)
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My impression is that the Eel is in fact an IT person - probably from the UK. Who often posts intelligent and interesting things. So my working theory is that all critical thinking goes out of the window when it comes to Russia and Putin..
Alternatively, you are simply projecting and the same applies any time you see any Ukrainian propaganda. But tell me, why are you so determined to pour billions into the most corrupt country in Europe, and prolong the killing of Ukrainians? Do you seriously believe that Ukraine's 'Victory Plan' has any chance of success, and that it's borders will somehow be restored to as they were before their civil war started in 2014?
Do you really support the philosophy of Ukraine's Banderites, or cringe any time one of our idiots chants 'Slava Ukraine', without knowing the origin and history of that phrase? Anyone who lost relatives to the OUN's massacres can never support anyone who utters that phrase, no more than they would anyone chanting 'Heil Hitler'. How quickly we've gone from 'Never Forget' to 'Lets not mention that, shall we? Look over their.. Russians!'
Jellied Eel,
You’ve just proved my point for me.
Human nature also makes it hard to be unbiased, especially when propaganda is blended in. So basic psychologiical tricks like repetition of things like 'full scale military invasion', 'illegal invasion', 'unjustified invasion'. Repeat a lie often enough and people start to believe it.
As I said above, you’re very happy to criticise the West, and/or shout about propaganda - but seem totally incapable of turning that same analysis on Russia - who you’ve chosen to support. Of your three quoted phrases above, only one is remotely arguable. You’ve said in a reply to me before that you believe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified - by the reasons the Russians gave. I think that argument is laughably stupid - but it can certainly be argued.
However Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unarguably illegal under international law - and the reason for the phrase full-scale invasion is to differentiate the 2022 invasion from the 2014 and 2015 ones. Again this is not possible to argue. We’ll let you ignore the Donbas - where the “local rebellion” just happened to be mainly led by Russian citizens who were either still members of the Russian armed forces and intelligence services or ex-members of the FSB like Igor Girkin (Strelkov) - but there genuinely were local protests and Girkin has stated that he wasn’t himself under orders, and in fact was trying to force the Russian government into the war. So it’s ambiguous and complex. However uniformed Russian forces left their leased bases in Crimea in 2014 and conquered the province and though the Russian government denied it at the time, Putin later gave them medals for it. Russia recognised the borders and territorial integrity of Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 - so again this is un-arguably an invasion of a sovereign state and annexation of its territory. Hence illegal under international law.
In 2015 Russia sent roughly an armoured division to prop up the rebellion, that wasn’t doing very well at the time.
If your claim had been propaganda, to claim Russia had no justification for its actions - then you might have a point. A rubbish one, but a point nonetheless. But you claim that stating facts, is propaganda. Which it isn’t. Russia’s actions in invading a sovereign state and annexing some of its territory were unarguably illegal. And full-scale invasion is simply clarification that 2022 was not the start of the event. Just Russia’s third invasion of Ukraine in a decade, and second in which it decided to annex Ukrainian territory that Russia itself recognised only 30 years ago.
But tell me, why are you so determined to pour billions into the most corrupt country in Europe, and prolong the killing of Ukrainians?
Actually Europe’s third most corrupt country. Europe’s most corrupt country, according to Transparency International, is Russia. Turkey is second - I’m aware lots of Turkey ain’t in Europe - quite a bit of Russia isn’t either. Interestingly Belarus is 4th, beating Ukraine by 1 point, which surprised me.
However, to address the point, we’re mostly not giving Ukraine money. We’re paying their international debts and providing them with assistance in kind - weapons, food, fuel, generators, electricity, equipment to keep repairing their power grid etc. We’re also giving them credit to spend with our defence companies - which is like giving them aid in kind - but allows them to choose what they get. And the financial value of a lot of what we give them is vastly over-stated - because in the case of US military aid is budgeted at replacement cost - even though it’s mostly old kit from storage. Congress gives that budget to the US armed forces and they spend it on new shiny kit. So where the US gives them old stuff from storage - Ukraine don’t get billions of dollars worth of kit - but old stuff that’s been well used and has very little value - and the US gets to spend more on the shinies for itself. It’s only in the case of the truly modern stuff like air defence kit that Ukraine is getting the seriously expensive Crown Jewels - Patriot batteries and ammo don’t come cheap. Also artillery ammo and guns have mostly been modern. Plus the US and UK have been buying Russian Ammo on the open market, at full market prices, in order to keep Ukraine in 152mm ammo for their old Soviet guns.
As for Ukrainians dying, that’s because Russia are killing them. I fully support giving them the kit to defend themselves. So long as they choose to fight, and not to be conquered, we should arm them. Also stopping the war is unlikely to stop the killing. We saw in Bucha and Irvin that Russia invaded with a plan to murder the civilian leadership in areas it conquered - presumably in order to make them easier to govern in future. Those murders started within days of the towns being captured, by dedicated teams from Russia intelligence, proving they were planned as part of the invasion.
Do you really support the philosophy of Ukraine's Banderites, or cringe any time one of our idiots chants 'Slava Ukraine'
I’m no expert, but a quick Google suggests that Slava Ukraine is a nationalist phrase from the 10th Century. It simply means Glory to Ukraine. It can’t be that bad, the Soviets named a cruiser Slava. Changed the name to Moskva when Ukraine left. The word means the same in Russian or Ukrainian. Glory. It might have been used by anyone since, but it’s clearly been picked up by Ukraine now, it has a pretty simple meaning, and a bit of nationalist cheerleading when you’re getting invaded is entirely understandable.
As for all the bollocks about Banderites - show me some evidence of them having any meaningful impact. In Ukraine’s last two parliamentary elections the Right Sector got under 2% of the vote - they did less well in the Presidential votes. The LIberal Democrats in Russia got 7.5% in 2021 and double that in 2016. Read the sort of stuff that Zhirinovsky was happy to say - and tell me that he was any better. And he was only allowed to do that well because United Russia are also pretty fucking hideous - so the Liberal Democrats were needed to make them look a tad more reasonable.
Also since we’re using WWII - allow me to quote you from the Russian foreign ministry last week:
“On September 17, 1939, the Red Army launched a military operation in Poland’s eastern regions, preventing the genocide of the population of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine,” Russia’s foreign ministry wrote on X.
In case you’ve forgotten - that’s Russia’s foreign ministry reminding you about when Russia made a military alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Nazis in order to jointly invade Poland in 1939. They lied, and called it a non-aggression pact, but the secret bit called for Russia to jointly invade Poland and to provide Germany with oil and vital minerals for its defence industry. In exchange Germany would give Russia a free hand to invade Romania (Bessarabia was later annexed), as well as the Baltic States and Finland. Of course the Soviets denied all this, but the allies captured the German copy of the document, and the Russian government admitted it and apologised in the 1990s. Of course Putin has since gone back to denial, and it is now illegal to talk about this in Russia under the laws protecting the memory of WWII.
Not that Putin has entirely forgotten, being ex-KGB. Whether or not they were really there to defend Ukrainians from Nazi massacre, they were definitely there to help commit genocide against Poland. Read up on the Karyn massacre - where 22,000 Polish officers, politicians, intellectuals and others were murdered by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin. Interesting parallels with the Russian government’s own actions in Irpin and Bucha don’t you think?
Perhaps you might want to ponder this? The current Russian government praises they actions of it’s predecessor government under Stalin - a man maybe a tiny bit less evil than Hitler - or maybe not. He probably killed more people, and probably committed more different genocides - but those were on a smaller scale. Hitler managed 6 million Jews. Estimates for the Holodomor vary wildly - although some of the higher ones go up to 7 million. So it’s possible Stalin killed more Ukrainians than Hitler killed Jews. How do you think Ukrainians might feel when the Russian government defend the crimes of Stalin?
You should re-examine your views on propaganda and reality. Cheerleading for Putin is morally disgusting. Ukraine has every moral and legal right to defend itself from Russian aggression. Russia’s conduct in the invasion of Ukraine has been barbaric, and in breach of all the laws of war which the Russian government has signed up to. In 20-30 years’ time, Putin’s reputation won’t be all that much better than Hitler’s. Once the controversy has died down and the facts are more universally accepted. Particularly when the Russian government starts opening its archives again. Just as happened to Stalin. Not that Putin is in their league of evil. He only reaches the level of a Saddam Hussein perhaps? Say a solid 7.5 out of 10 on the Evil Dictator Scale? Nah, that’s unfair. Let’s have Putin at 7, Saddam at 8 and Hitler and Stalin together on 10. Can we agree that Piers Morgan rates about a 3?
You’ve just proved my point for me
No, you're once again proving mine..
As I said above, you’re very happy to criticise the West, and/or shout about propaganda - but seem totally incapable of turning that same analysis on Russia - who you’ve chosen to support.
Logic failure #1. Just because I'm critical of Ukraine, and our policy towards Ukraine does not mean I'm supportive of Russia.
You’ve said in a reply to me before that you believe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified - by the reasons the Russians gave. I think that argument is laughably stupid - but it can certainly be argued.
Russia used almost exactly the same argument that we used to justify our invasion and destruction of Yugoslavia.
However Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unarguably illegal under international law - and the reason for the phrase full-scale invasion is to differentiate the 2022 invasion from the 2014 and 2015 ones. Again this is not possible to argue.
Sure it is. Show me where in law it's legal to invade anyone? But this is the problem of reductio ad absurdum. International law does not exist. Neither does 'international rules based order', other than as an abstract notion used to justify that might makes right. So we've used the notion of 'pre-emptive self-defence' to justify invading Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc etc. If it's lawful for us to do this, why is it unlawful when Russia does the same thing? But this is also the geopolitics problem. If we make the rules up as we go along, so will other nations.
We’ll let you ignore the Donbas - where the “local rebellion” just happened to be mainly led by Russian citizens who were either still members of the Russian armed forces
Err.. nope. You can't ignore the Donbas because that's how this conflict started. So the coup, regime change and the installation of a rabidly nationalistic regime. Who then stripped Crimea and Donbas of their autonomy to consolidate power from Kiev, and started their process of 'de-Russification'. Ukrainians naturally objected to the coup and policies, protests began, then swiftly escalated. One of the flashpoints was the massacre of protestors inside the Odessa Trade Union building. Ukraine's problem is it was always split along ethnic lines. Voting patterns show this clearly, ie East of the Dnipr was more traditionally 'Russian'. West, that's been the domain of the Banderites and their twisted ideals of Ukrainian identity.
I'm also rather curious why you think people in Donbas were "still members of the Russian armed forces". Do you have any evidence for this? Reality was that once the protests escalated, units of the UAF defected to the DPR & LPR and then recruited volunteers. The usual narrative tends to overlook this, plus the equipment located in the Donbas, which included huge stockpiles left over from the old Soviet days. Girkin is also one of those characters who's claims should be taken with a very large pinch of salt. Like the way he 'captured' Sloviansk with only 50 volunteers, then was booted out after the UAF got their act together.
However uniformed Russian forces left their leased bases in Crimea in 2014 and conquered the province and though the Russian government denied it at the time, Putin later gave them medals for it. Russia recognised the borders and territorial integrity of Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 - so again this is un-arguably an invasion of a sovereign state and annexation of its territory. Hence illegal under international law.
Nope, although it's nice to see you're not running with the 'invasion' narrative. I'm curious what you think you mean by 'conquered' though rather than 'secured'. It was a remarkably bloodless 'conquest' though. But sadly you're doing the usual and floating Budapest, which was a nuclear non-proliferation memo. The more relevant one would be this one-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Ukrainian_Friendship_Treaty
The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, signed in 1997, which fixed the principle of strategic partnership, the recognition of the inviolability of existing borders, and respect for territorial integrity and mutual commitment not to use its territory to harm the security of each other.
The coup violated Article 6-
Each High Contracting Party shall refrain from participating in, or supporting, any actions directed against the other High Contracting Party, and shall not conclude any treaties with third countries against the other Party. Neither Party shall allow its territory to be used to the detriment of the security of the other Party.
The de-Russification policies violated Article 10-
Each High Contracting Party shall guarantee nationals of the other Party rights and freedoms on the same basis and to the same extent as their own citizens, except as established by the national legislation of the Parties or their international treaties
And Article 12-
The High Contracting Parties shall protect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity of ethnic minorities in their territory and shall create conditions that encourage such diversity.
And Article 24-
The Parties shall in every way promote the strengthening and expansion of creative exchanges and interaction among groups, organizations and associations of persons in their countries who are active in the fields of literature and art, cinematography, book publishing and archives
And I could go on. But Poroshenko unilateraly cancelled that Treaty in 2018. And also declared that Crimean Ukrainians would be cowering in basements whilst Galacian Ukrainians ate candy. Paraphrasing somewhat. So by 2018, Ukraine and Russia were no longer friends, nor bound by that Treaty. Especially after Crimea exercised their right to self-determination, in accordance with this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Economic,_Social_and_Cultural_Rights
Part 1 (Article 1) recognises the right of all peoples to self-determination, including the right to "freely determine their political status", pursue their economic, social and cultural goals, and manage and dispose of their own resources. It recognises a negative right of a people not to be deprived of its means of subsistence, and imposes an obligation on those parties still responsible for non-self governing and trust territories (colonies) to encourage and respect their self-determination.
Along with Part 2. So arguably Ukraine violated 'international law' in violating UN Resolution 2200A (XXI). But then the UN's right to self-determination has always had that minor problem of what happens when the host nation says 'No'. Luckily Clauswitz has that one covered when he said war is foreign policy by other means. But Crimea voted for independence, then joining the Russian Federation and the NATO got seriously butthurt having been out-manouvered and denied their future Black Sea base. The rest is becoming history..
Jellied Eel said
"One of the flashpoints was the massacre of protestors inside the Odessa Trade Union building. Ukraine's problem is it was always split along ethnic lines. Voting patterns show this clearly, ie East of the Dnipr was more traditionally 'Russian'. West, that's been the domain of the Banderites and their twisted ideals of Ukrainian identity."
While true it's not the whole truth. Speaking Russian did not disqualify you from being Ukrainian until the coup in 2014.
Native Russian speakers are more common in the east and very common in Kiev, where the ruling elite is almost completely native Russian-speaking at home. This includes Zelensky. They only speak Ukrainian in public for political purposes. This is a byproduct of Soviet times, when Russian was the language of Government, and the Ukrainian government is in Kiev.
If you go further West there are more Ukrainian speakers, especially around Lviv. Lviv was a Polish city up until 1946 when it was annexed into Ukraine as part of the WWII settlement and the Polish population was kicked out and replaced by ethnic Ukrainians.
You end up with the main nationalistic Ukranian base living in recently captured territory. The base seeks to extend the Ukraine nation east and displace the native Russian speakers despite them being for the main part proud to be Ukranian. The Minsk accords were meant to keep the Donbas in Ukraine with some degree of autonomy. The Donbas did not want to be part of Russia. The Ukraine nationalists saw Minsk as a temporary measure till they could get enough forces to subjugate the Donbas. This has now been frustrated.
While true it's not the whole truth. Speaking Russian did not disqualify you from being Ukrainian until the coup in 2014.
Yep. Some of that has been a gradual process of de-Russification, up to the recent banning of the Russian Orthodox church, which is a clear violation of EU and UN Human Rights. But the coup, and events following it were where the troubles started, along with Zelensky and his claims that his 'Peoples Party' would work to unite Ukraine.
The early days of the new regime were pretty enlightening as examples of what not to do though. So the way protests were handled & mishandled being pretty educational. One memorable example showed how crowd (or mob) psychology worked. Protestors chanting outside a police station, one climbed onto a porch, got pushed off, so crowd surged and looted the police stations amoury. Unarmed protestors became armed, and the whole thing escalated and was repeated across Ukraine.
Native Russian speakers are more common in the east and very common in Kiev, where the ruling elite is almost completely native Russian-speaking at home. This includes Zelensky. They only speak Ukrainian in public for political purposes. This is a byproduct of Soviet times, when Russian was the language of Government, and the Ukrainian government is in Kiev.
Yep. Also one of the problems with division in Ukraine. Mariupol was given to the Azov nutjobs as their personal fiefdom and would administer punishment beatings to Ukrainians who spoke Russian. But there were also counter-protests, ie people giving the 'Slava Ukraini' challenge, and if they got a response, beating the Banderite.
Some of the de-Russification measures were kind of reasonable though. It's a bit like the situation with the Welsh and Scottish within the UK. We teach kids Welsh, Gaelic and English, provide multi-lingual services and people are mostly happy. Keeps those languages and cultures alive. If we did the Ukrainian thing, banned those languages and forced English-only, nationalists and linguists would be much less happy.
If you go further West there are more Ukrainian speakers, especially around Lviv. Lviv was a Polish city up until 1946 when it was annexed into Ukraine as part of the WWII settlement and the Polish population was kicked out and replaced by ethnic Ukrainians.
Yep, which is why I think it's important to understand the history and context that has preceded current events. Ukraine has always occupied an interesting position, straddling valuable trade routes and why Kiev is where it is. But that's also been its problem, ie being sandwiched between greater and lesser powers who've fought over it for centuries. Then came WW2, Ukraine backed the wrong side and the Allies did a spot of political cartography and divided up Europe, often with scant regard for historical or ethnic boundaries. Poles, Hungarians, Romanians etc woke up one morning and discovered they were now Ukrainians.
Then the Soviet Union happened, and their process of population management that included deliberate, and often brutal methods to turn populations into loyal Soviet citizens, which included things like de-Polanisation, Ukrainisation etc.. Not to mention a need to replace populations from the Soviet Famine (aka Holodomor), Stalin's purges or 'just' the tens of millions killed during WW2. Congratulations Ukraine, you are now the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, here are your oblasts, manage them wisely, or else. Which also created other oddities, like Ukraine being 'gifted' Sevastopol and Crimea to keep Kruschev in power. Which then left that territory in a strange position following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's independence and Treaty obligations & basing rights regarding that territory. When Ukraine and Russia signed their 'Friendship' Treaty, neither side had agreed borders.
Then 2014 happened, NATO really wanted Crimea and Sevastopol, Kiev removed their autonomy and they seceded. Naturally this upset NATO, even though it was sort of lawful on the basis of the right to self determination*.
The Minsk accords were meant to keep the Donbas in Ukraine with some degree of autonomy. The Donbas did not want to be part of Russia. The Ukraine nationalists saw Minsk as a temporary measure till they could get enough forces to subjugate the Donbas. This has now been frustrated.
Yep. And the frustrating part is it was all avoidable, if only Ukraine's nationalists hadn't been so determined to consolidate power in Kiev. There were plenty of examples Ukraine's regime could have followed, like copying Germany or the US federal system, or even the way the UK granted autonomy to their regions. Which was all the more frustrating because Ukraine was already part way there with its regional governors. It wasn't really a big ask by the DPR or LPR, and autonomy was part of the peace deal proposed in Instanbul. We helped Ukraine say 'No', now Ukraine is 20% smaller and losing more territory by the day.
And the worst part is millions dead or displaced to fuel politicians egos, and possibly bank accounts.
Jelly: Logic failure #1. Just because I'm critical of Ukraine, and our policy towards Ukraine does not mean I'm supportive of Russia.
cow: So do you constantly elevate Russia and rarely if ever criticize it, especially when there are so many gifts which you constanatly try and dishonestly turn into positives ?
Pt 2. Think this is the first time I've hit the 10,000 character post limit.. So I'm sure someone will be along to complain about 'walls of text'..
However, to address the point, we’re mostly not giving Ukraine money.
How, then are Ukraine paying their civil service wages, pensions, armed forces pay & pensions, subsidies etc etc? Which has the related question of how will those be payed, if/when this conflict ends? But you're right about this being great business for our arms dealers..
I’m no expert, but a quick Google suggests that Slava Ukraine is a nationalist phrase from the 10th Century. It simply means Glory to Ukraine. It can’t be that bad, the Soviets named a cruiser Slava.
Your Google-fu has failed you. And on this one, I'm really curious why given a simple wiki search produces this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava_Ukraini
And in the 10th Century, Ukraine didn't really exist and it's natives would have probably been speaking Old Eastern Slavic..
As for all the bollocks about Banderites - show me some evidence of them having any meaningful impact.
Ah, now I see. You are a Banderite sympathiser and apologist. You also seem confused about election performance vs actual power and influence. Or just the way that dear'ol Azov have become one of the UAF's extra-special forces, or the way people like Zaluzhny had photos of Banderas on his wall.
Read up on the Karyn massacre - where 22,000 Polish officers, politicians, intellectuals and others were murdered by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin. Interesting parallels with the Russian government’s own actions in Irpin and Bucha don’t you think?
Not really. Plus you mean the Katyn Massacre. I take that and raise you the Volhyn Massacre where Ukrainians murdered an estimated 100,000 Poles, Jews and basically anyone the OUN took a dislike to. And then there were the Lviv Pogroms where more Jews were massacred, along with smaller mass-murders around Ukraine. And then we had Justin Turdeau giving a standing ovation to a 'Ukrainian hero' who fought against Russia during WW2. Oops. A tad embarassing after people pointed out he was a Ukrainian SS volunteer. But two wrongs don't make a right, and simply explain why the history and politics in that region are complex and bloody. Soviet forces weren't very kind either when they swept through Ukraine on their way to Berlin, especially after the OUN and Ukrainian SS attrocities were known. Neither were they very gentle following WW2 and the first round of de-Nazification.
Estimates for the Holodomor vary wildly - although some of the higher ones go up to 7 million. So it’s possible Stalin killed more Ukrainians than Hitler killed Jews. How do you think Ukrainians might feel when the Russian government defend the crimes of Stalin?
Probably much the same way as Russians do when they glorify Banderas and the OUN. Never again and all that. Again it's a complex and bloody bit of history that people are attempting to redefine to suit their own agenda. Firstly, Stalin was a Georgian, not Russian. Secondly, it was the USSR, not Russia. Thirdly.. there were 2 USSRs, the Union and also the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Then possible 'climate change' implications, ie the Holodomor was part of a general famine that affected much of Soviet agriculture. So many factors involved, like collectivism, climate, resistance by the population to collectivism, Trofim Lysenko's.. strange ideas about agriculture (he was Ukrainian btw) and simple politics. Like the Ukrainian SSR lying to the politburo about production and yields, because failure to meet targets tended to be fatal. Some of the Ukrainians were questioned by Stalin because he didn't believe the figures, and were later executed.
So how much was down to incompetence vs any deliberate attempts of genocide is still heavily debated. Except in Ukraine, where it was Russia, because they just hate Russia, and use revisionism to justify their hatred.
You should re-examine your views on propaganda and reality. Cheerleading for Putin is morally disgusting.
Again I haven't been doing this. Putin is certainly a better politician (along with people like Lavrov) than most of our current shower of shite. Pointing this out isn't cheerleading, it's objective reality. But I also think that cheerleading for Banderites is far, far worse. Do you honestly support raising statues, renaming streets after a war criminal and the resurgence of the abhorent Ukrainian nationalism with the red & black flags waving again is a good thing, or compatible with Western values?
Jelly: Pt 2. Think this is the first time I've hit the 10,000 character post limit.. So I'm sure someone will be along to complain about 'walls of text'..
However, to address the point, we’re mostly not giving Ukraine money.
Jelly:
How, then are Ukraine paying their civil service wages, pensions, armed forces pay & pensions, subsidies etc etc? Which has the related question of how will those be payed, if/when this conflict ends? But you're right about this being great business for our arms dealers..
cow:
Yes the west is giving money to UKR, but you fail too see the big picture.
The money given to UKR in all its forms is better than the alternative of not giving it. The sooner the west changes the Russian system so it transforms towards a real democracy without a dictator who wants to invade other places, the sooner the west can spend less money on defense because the fear and need for defense is lowered.
Its like cancer, theres a cost to remove it today but thats better than letting it spread and kill your loved one. Both are horrible, but the first is the sensible thing even if it costs some money.
Its like cancer, theres a cost to remove it today but thats better than letting it spread and kill your loved one. Both are horrible, but the first is the sensible thing even if it costs some money.
Or it's like cutting the monkey off your back. Russia started the SMO with the objective of demilitarising Ukraine and reducing the threat on their borders. It is succeeding, and is also succeeding in demilitarising NATO. Which could be a bit of a problem given the way things are kicking off in the Middle East, and sabre rattliing towards China. Our war stocks are being depleted and there are fresh demands. So Israel's busily expending 155mm artillery in Gaza and Lebanon. Ukraine's constantly demanding more, how much can we produce to try and satisfy both customers? Israel can produce some of their own, but producing ammunition requires explosives, which often requires chemicals like ammonium nitrate.. And guess which country was one of the largest producers and exporters of that?
Then there's the longer term economics. We're busily loading debt onto Ukraine, which it has no prospect of ever repaying. This is fine, because Greeks know what happens next. If Ukraine survives as a nation and doesn't end up going the way of Yugoslavia, it'll need a lot of reconstruction money. Again this is fine, because those loans would be secured against Ukraine's assets, and our 'leaders' are quite happy to asset strip allies. Plus curious aspects to joining the EU, like there'll be an enormous landfill tax bill due, along with complying with EU environmental legislation. Millions of tons of rubble have been produced, and almost certainly a lot of asbestos waste. Plus there'll be billions needed for demining and dealing with unexploded munitions. Which could be good business, except Ukraine can't afford that, especially if it loses Donbas and their industry and resources. Poland may be happy with this because then Ukraine won't be competing with their steel and metalurgical industry. Plus Ukraine's also lost a lot of their agricultural sector, so won't be competing with Polish and French farmers.
But the longer it goes on, the more it will cost, and the more it will cost the EU and US economies, the weaker we'll be and the more likely it will be that hostile nations exploit that weakness. A pragmatic peace deal may stop the literal bleeding.
eel:
Or it's like cutting the monkey off your back. Russia started the SMO with the objective of demilitarising Ukraine and reducing the threat on their borders. It is succeeding, and is also succeeding in demilitarising NATO.
cow:
One has to wonder why you think thi sis a good thing ?
eel: Our war stocks are being depleted and there are fresh demands.
cow:
OUR ?
why are you saying OUR ?
One has to wonder why you think thi sis a good thing ?
Where do you get that idea? It should be obvious that I think this is a very bad thing, and has highlighted big weaknesses in NATO's ability to fight any peer-level conflicts, or even support and sustain a few small wars. It has hopefully shown our 'leaders' that endless rounds of defence cuts can be extremely short sighted, especially when there are gaping holes in our defence supply chains.
why are you saying OUR ?
I live in NATO-land, don't you?
@eel
cow:
You were in the middle of shall we say defending RUSSIA, it self like OUR could also mean OUR as in RUSSIA. You previously used NATO in the third person.
@eel:
I live in NATO-land, don't you?
cow:
No i live in Australia but i support NATO and our friends 100%.
Its strange for being a person in NATO land, the very place Putin wants to nuke and yet you keep defending him in countless ways.
Who the fuck wishes for their homeland to be nuked or even threatened in the first place ?
"Putin is certainly a better politician (along with people like Lavrov) than most of our current shower of shite. "
If by "clearly better" you mean murdering all your opponents, both politicians and in the media?
You are utterly deluded. There is NO democracy in Russia, so how can he be better at politics?
Spartacus: In a similar way to people talking about how brilliant the Chinese government are, that they always plan for the long term, look at all the roads and railways they've built, look how much better they are than our rubbish politicians - blah, blah, blah.
cow: and yet all these chinese and putin supporters like Eel dont actually travel and live in Russia or China.
I dont understand why they just dont pack up and migrate... its very confusing ,especially when they tell us how great and wonderful over there is.
I love that Jellied Eel is one minute stating that he's an "IT type on an IT site, so first thing I've done is attempt a little verfication" before watching some youtube videos and declaring this is a likely Ukranian false flag operation.
Again with the critical thinking failures, and Tigger-like jumping to conclusions. So I first searched for still images of what's inside an actual Starlink terminal, then videos, then picked the one I linked because it was a reasonably comprehensive view of the internals. That don't seem to match what was shown in Ukrainian claim. But I guess you still believe in the Ghost of Kiev, the Heroes of Snake Island, and little old ladies knocking down drones with well-aimed jars of pickles..
And yet a few posts later that "little verification" goes out the window as he suggests Russia can launch satellites into orbit without anyone noticing.
No, I did not. I also really hope you (along with some other commentards) don't work in IT given that usually requires some understanding of reading, comprehension and logic. I mentioned the number of launches since the start of the SMO because.. people have noticed, and reported on these. They are, after all rather hard to hide. As were a few attacks Ukraine has made against Russian satellite ground stations in & around Ukraine. Wonder why they might be doing that?
The unknown, at least to us mere mortals are what those satellites are, what orbits they're in, and what, if any ability they may have to alter their orbits.
"So I first searched for still images of what's inside an actual Starlink terminal, then videos, then picked the one I linked because it was a reasonably comprehensive view of the internals. "
So all you proved is that you can't find evidence. Doesn't prove much. I bet you also researched 9/11 in a similar way and found it's all a giant conspiracy by the CIA?
@EEL
Please stop with the one-line troll posting and insults, especially racially/ethnically motivated insults. They're against both forum rules, and EU law
cow:
Big words considering the number of times you have used the same or worst in your labels of Zelensky.
We can easily find them in your posts... so dont go deny it.
Trolls get trolled. You promote a murderous imperialist dictator, you get shot down. The acronym DAF comes to mind.
No, I do not. I simply offer my opinion, and AFAIK, Putin has never murdered anyone. Casca meanwhile regularly posts their 1-line personal attacks that often include racial/ethnic slurs which are against forum rules and 'hate speech' laws. Other posters do the same sometimes calling people like Trump, Musk, Putin etc Nazis and worse. These insults and slurs rarely add anything to the debate and just make the people that use them look like juvenile idiots, and sadly El Reg seems to tolerate the intolerant.
Hitler never murdered anyone either so what is your point?
World leaders 'murder' people all the time. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and now of course Gaza and Lebanon. The Wests interventions in other nations have resulted in millions of dead and displaced people. If it is justifiable for us to do this, why not Russia? Don't you think the double standards are a bit hypocritical?
You think vatnik is a racist slur? OK, what race? And what about your attacks and slurs on Zelenskyj? Does doesnt count?
Wiki has a page about it. But yes, given 'racist' has been expanded to include slurs or insults against nationalities. Or as wiki puts it-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United_Kingdom
In England, Wales, and Scotland, the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits, by its Part 3, expressions of racial hatred, which is defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group's colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.
And the UK has been locking people up recently for doing this kind of thing online, hence mentioning it. But that's mostly been a plea to try and make debates a bit more civil. Plus the forum rules say you shouldn't make personal attacks, which you do repeatedly.
As for the WLB in Ukraine, why is this any different to the slurs, insults and defamation posters regularly make against other public figures, like all the hate thrown against Musk? I think Zelensky deserves a lot of criticism, and much of that criticism is justifiable. He's like the agressive beggars found outside train stations, constantly demanding money. It's also dangerous for Ukraine given Zelensky-fatigue seems to be setting in, eg Trumps comments that every time he visits the US, he walks away with another few billion. He isn't exactly a great diplomat, plus also uses a lot of slurs and insults like 'orcs' or just 'bastards'. Attempting to dehumanise your opponents, or just objects of your hatred is something the Nazis did with their 'untermensch'. This is not a very good look, especially on the back of Ukraine's Banderites and extreme nationalists.
But this is also where you're often wrong. You say I 'hate Ukrainians'. I do not. I hold the Banderites in extreme contempt because they're destroying Ukraine, and are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians. They're also the main obstacle to any serious attempts at peace negotiations, and more Ukrainians will die unless there is peace. I also hold a lot of our warmongering leaders in contempt because they are also obstacles to peace. Plus the longer this conflict goes on, the more territory Ukraine will lose.
Russia may be content to claim the regions they now pretty much control, which is going to be one of those interesting things to watch for. They've almost cleared Ukraine's main defence belts in Donetsk and Luhansk, and once done, there's little to stop them advancing and claiming more territory. One possibility is they continue and then 'peace' might mean Ukraine is partitioned along the Dnipr, and maybe reclaiming Odessa as well, which would give them a land bridge to Transnistria.. And leave Ukraine landlocked, pretty much a failed state, and then Poland might offer to retake the territory it lost after WW2. The Banderites in Lviv would obviously be unhappy becoming Polish again.
In England, Wales, and Scotland, the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits, by its Part 3, expressions of racial hatred, which is defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group's colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.'
So what part of that is you? Or are JE a group of people. That would explain a lot.
> the idea that someone would go to the trouble of putting something into space for it to be "semi-disposable" demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of where the costs are in an orbital launch
In the 50s & 60s both the USA and USSR used spy satellites which contained film that needed to be recovered and processede, making them very much disposable.
I think you lack a fundamental understanding of the willingness to pay any costs at a time of war, even a Cold War.
I think you lack a fundamental understanding of the willingness to pay any costs at a time of war, even a Cold War.
Or just the difference in costs. US DoD or NRO has to pay a contractor and all their subcontractors to build a satellite. Then pay Musk to launch it. All business looking to make as much fat off that juicy government pork. Russia can just tell Roscosmos to JFDI. Russia may have some private companies involved, but also has lots of windows that execs who pad contracts might fall out of. We used to shoot the occasional war profiteer during times of war, but now they write the checks to the lobbyists and politicians.
Which is also part of the 'why Starlink?' question. Russia has datalink technology on a lot of their weapon systems, including uplinking via satellite. It may not want to use this or have capacity compared to buying a few pallets of Starlink terminals. But then why would it use them in any kind of sensitive application, knowing full well that the terminals would be tracked, and any data would go via an earthstation and Internet connection that's probably in Poland.
Jelly: Russia has datalink technology on a lot of their weapon systems, including uplinking via satellite.
cow: yeh we all know about their 2400 baud data links. Nobody looking at Russian planes or space equipment thinks they are anywhere near as good as western equipment.
Let me know when Russia builds a car that is anywhere near as good as a car from Nigeria or Zimbabwe.
Either you need to be in a geostationary orbit above your target, which means being in a high equatorial orbit, or you need to use fuel to remain above the target, which is both limited and expensive
Are you genuinely suggesting that there are satellites which reverse thrust from ~18,000 mph to zero, then thrust downwards to hover, then accelerate back from zero to 18,000 mph to re-enter orbit?!
Have you seen the size of rocket you need to launch at 18,000 mph in the first place? 99% of the satellite's energy is in its forward motion, and only 1% in its potential energy for being that high above the earth.
The relevant speed would be that of mobile unit in relation to the satellite. Given the speed of the satellite relative to Earth that's the normal mode of operation
The piston-powered Gerans aren't that fast either, so <200kmh, so if Starlink works on a caravan, it'll work on a drone.
...What use ?
To pipe hi-res video and whatever other feeds they need, while not relying on cell towers (not theirs and likely to reveal the drone's location), dedicated retranslation stations (detectable, destroyable and probably way more expensive to use per unit of data transmitted), etc.
Civilian off the shelf systems are orders of magnitude less expensive (and in this case - probably better in any aspect). If they use mineral bottle caps as gas tank caps for their $90k Orlan drones, they might as well cough up for Starlink.
"several hundreds of KM/h ?"
Why do you think a propeller craft will be going that fast?
There will be an optimum speed for best fuel efficiency if that's needed, but with the look of the wings, it seems to be more of a design that will trade some speed for range. That's not to say they couldn't go fast, but it might be best to only do that where the speed will be helpful. Using Starlink to get better accuracy or to have the ability to adjust the targeting at the last minute based on what's seen on the camera can be a big advantage. It's also cheap. A top quality IMU and a 2cm accurate satnav are much more expensive.
Was wondering if it's more like Russia's repurposing parts of the kit rather than using Starlink as is. Could also be a false flag approach: Make it look like they're using Starlink kit in the drones to get Musk to turn off the Starlink system Ukraine is using.
Basically we don't really have enough information to have an informed opinion on this other than that we don't have enough information.
" So what exactly is the space Karen playing at? Whatever it is, it's usually for political gain of his mate trump."
I don't understand the point of your remark.
Would it have been acceptable for you if the technology had been built by someone on the democratic side of the balance ?
Elmo has made the classic mistakes both of conflating luck with skill, and of conflating ruthlessness with intelligence. He has been lucky, by birth, and in some of his businesses, and ruthless (which has paid fewer dividends, see the debacle that is the result of laying off the intelligent people at Twitter), but he has led himself to believe that he has some sort of god-like skill and intelligence himself. He is literally a walking embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
This, of course, makes his acolytes and sycophants all the more tragic. I notice that those claiming him to be a "genius" seem to have slunk away in the last couple of years, compared to the loud worship we once had to endure listening to. I wonder how these people will rationalise their misguided years once his inevitable downfall happens. Will they descend into the madness of claiming the whole world is conspiring against him, and go into full-on tinfoil hat flerf mode?
To be fair, neither do I. Musk already tried to shut down Starlink in Ukraine claiming that it was being used to coordinate an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and has suggested since that Ukraine should surrender. Why bring up Trump at all? He's not relevant to this discussion, and Musk evidently stans just as hard for Putin, who is extremely relevant to it.
"Whatever it is, it's usually for political gain of his mate trump."
I think Musk is like a small child at a grown-ups dinner party showing off to get attention. He has no loyalty to anything other than the spotlight and in any situation he'll say and do whatever he thinks will get him the most likes or dislikes - he doesn't care which as long as people are watching him perform.
Elon the Magnificent had a hissy fit over not being invited to some forum here and has declared that no one should go to the UK.
As Elon and the Orange Jesus are besties, perhaps that is why 'Two-faced' Starmer had dinner with the Orange Jesus yesterday?
I say ban both Trump and Musk from these shores.
anthonyhedgedus,
Given the satellites are in low, fast-moving orbits, it's probably not all that easy to exactly work out the speed of the target. The Shahed is a pretty slow drone, so it might not be all that hard to tell it from a terminal in a moving car.
But the main problem is going to be telling the Russian drones from the Ukrainian drones.
I belive there's been some sort of consolidation of Starlink accounts for Ukraine. In the early days of the war, all sorts of governments, support groups and just random people were buying Ukrainian frontline units drones and Starlink accounts. I very much doubt that's stopped, and the Ukrainian army is still suffering from a lack of central organisation - there's still an awful lot of frontline units organising their own logistics via swapping with other units, capturing stuff or just plain buying what they need.
I've read reports from Gaza of Israeli units shooting down their own drones, because even in a single army (that's a hell of a lot better organised) it's sometimes impossible to work out who's operating a drone and better safe than sorry.
Ukraine's army was tiny in 2014 - when Russia first invaded. A lof of the fighting in 2014 and 2015 was done by locally organised militias and semi-official local territorial units. I think all the militias were incorporated into the army as territorial defence units by about 2020 - but then in 2022 when the invasion went full-scale the territorial defence units all got loads of volunteers and were just handed tons of newly delivered Western weapons like NLAWs and any available small arms. Ukraine's army have done wonders with an underfunded force that was barely organised at the start of the war (their 2021 defence budget was under $6 billion) and I've read plenty of stories of even frontline units getting their drone operators by the commander phoning someone he knew from the days of 2014 working in IT and asking them to set up a drone-team.
Russia's logistics are more centralised and organised. But also historically have suffered much more from corruption - and so a bunch of Russian frontline units are also having to bodge-it-themselves if they want drone kit.
Spartacus: Given the satellites are in low, fast-moving orbits, it's probably not all that easy to exactly work out the speed of the target. The Shahed is a pretty slow drone, so it might not be all that hard to tell it from a terminal in a moving car.
cow: Of course its easy to compute. Its a simple matter of a few timings of signals from each of the connected satellites. HTis is basic stuff anyone with the most basic programming skills should be able to do this. Its been a part of GPS handheld unit software for over 20 years.
There are thousands of starlinks in use inside Ukraine by the Ukrainians. Many of them have been purchased by non-military entities interested in helping out.
Most likely the Russian employed starlinks were not recognized as such by Starlink's systems. Just wait with switching on until the weapon has crossed the border, and there you are, just another Ukrainian Drone.
Thus, in THIS case, malice must not necessarily be attributed.
On the positive side, since Starlink is controlled by the west, this opens up many paths for tomfoolery and misdirection. What exactly do we want the russians to see? Patriot systems in empty fields?
"Surprising how long it took before commentards ignored the war, people dying and the terrible threats of a dictator, degenerating the conversation into the most important thing in their lives - petty Musk bashing."
Now when Musk is part of the problem, it seems appropriate.
"Space broadband on weapons is not something Elon Musk condones"
True, but like his concept of free speech, it might turn out to be rather selective of whose flying death penises happen to contain the hardware. Isn't he a bit of a Putin fanboy?
There's a common pattern.... all of these sorts profess like self reliant people with strong opinions (whether those opinions are nonsense or dangerous or not). It all sort of gravitates to a spiral into crud in the end. The desire to praise these sort of people comes from a misguided idea that if you fanboi enough you too can be a success/CEO/dictator.... when actually you are just an idiot who sees nothing wrong with the worst people in the world.
I think you have to take these things with a pinch of salt. It may or may not be true.
There is a propaganda war ongoing and Musk's free speech and financial power is under attack. They would like to brand him a bad guy (which he may be) to justify action on free speech. Some Dems and their Oligarchs have openly spoken against free speech and the Constitution.
You may wonder why he doesn't shutdown Starlink across Russia and Ukraine but it could also be NATO and Ukraine need it. If it does get shutdown then they do not need it. If they do need it, this story will warp into better controlling user access / exports.
