Of the 31 Abrams tanks the U.S. sent to Ukraine, six have been destroyed

Is it really that low? I was pretty sure it was at least double that many by now.

but when Iran gives Russia missiles suddenly it’s a problem

Not even that. They probably just invented it to try to use this as an excuse as there isn’t even any evidence of that.

I guess they could also do something like destroying GPS satellites or undersea cables as well, which might be a better approach if they don’t want to kill anyone in NATO countries while hurting them considerably.

I don’t see many chances of the US backing down of striking Russia by use of Ukraine, specially as they likely accept their own propaganda that Russia won’t or can’t do anything, so we unfortunatelly might know soon enough.

It’s likely, specially as from what I hear China was able to sell steel in Brazil cheaper than the local production too, so something likely changed/improved in China recently. It could be, at least in part, due to less internal demand, but cutting off the middlemen might have helped too.

The 2.5% in this case comes from all the international trade from Russia in 2023-2024, where 42% use Yuan to 39.5% the dollar.

So not globally passing the dollar yet, but it’s nice that there are examples for others to see the new opportunities.

Probably something like the smaller producers sold locally, governing their prices in part by what bigger producers set. Meanwhile, large producers could likely pay for the price discovery, individually or in a group, or they had many contacts which allowed them to have an idea of what would be fair. But it was likely the US was stealing quite a lot as middlemen, which can now be at least atenuated somewhat by having many people trading directly and perhaps even more “state help” to figure out good prices long term.

I would be interested in understanding this better as well, and nice to see that the new system is already being used. Whoever is not using the new system yet will likely do the math to see how good it will be for them.

Edit to add another point: Large producers would likely buy smaller local producers’ production as well in case the export price was good, so the smaller producers would increase their prices when they knew the bigger producers were buying a lot.

Even just a country existing independently by themselves is already enough for them to do whatever they can to demonize and attack them as such an independent country will be a symbol of hope for other countrries wanting the same.

I guess there might have been some confusion from what I said to here.

I never said the Ukrainian puppet regime would never do something like irradiating Russia and Europe by blowing up a nuclear power plant, I just said that if they were going to bomb a nuclear power plant, releasing a lot of nuclear materials, there was no reason for them to go out of their way to get more nuclear materials to throw at it as just blowing it up conventionally would already be spreading a lot of radiation and adding more would likely not even make a difference.

So, either they would be attacking the nuclear power plant with conventional weapons or they would get nuclear materials to attack a city with a dirty bomb, but there is no need to attack a nuclear power plant with a dirty bomb as it is redundant and counter productive, so it might be that the news is either really bad propaganda or mistranslated/misreported.

The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody.

Where do I even begin to talk about how dumb this is?

It’s like saying you will make nerve agent just so you can bomb a nerve agent plant. It doesn’t make sense. Not even for the Ukrainian regime.

I guess you could add extra radioatice stuff to make sure it to gets mixed with everything else at the target site, but if you just use normal shells/bombs you can at least claim it was a mistake, so I really don’t see how this makes sense as is.

If they want to bomb a nuclear power plant normal bombs, perhaps bunker busters, sufice. There is no need to do any more than that.

The only reason I can see for them to be searching for “radioactive materials” to target the plant it would be if they wanted spent uranium rounds, but that wouldn’t be used because it is radioactive but because it is “harder”.

So, either this is some dumb propaganda piece, some even dumber plan, or some dumb reporting or translation on what should be really serious.

Nice to see them doing something like this.

Now it would be nice if they could coodinate with the next two biggest producers, Russia and Tajikistan, the three of whom toghether have almsot 90% of the world’s production, to also do something similar in exchange for investment. Or perhaps it might be better to just do the same restriction to another important resource.

There were also some very uncofirmed talks about China stopping drone parts exports too, which if they really did could have a massive impact on west.

If they finally can get this done hopefully this also blocks the US from remaining in Syria as well, as I doubt Turkey will allow the US to remain in Syria using Turkish territory to maintain their bases.

Just the other day I joked about Japan joining BRICS and this could be one step in that direction.

Now I’m wondering what would be the first ex-US state to join. lol

Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens with Taiwan as the US is turning its focus on China. Although unlikely I guess we can’t rule out conflict starting not because of Taiwan being used against China but due to Taiwan going back to China and the US not liking it, even if it takes a decade.

It’s really hard to predict the future when things are so “chaotic”.

Good luck to the people of Yemen on their fight against genocide and hope their hard work can achieve even more than they already have.

And thinking about this whole situation I do wonder if key nuclear weapons infrustructure (like radars) will be hit soon, considering Ukraine has hit some of Russia’s early warning radars and Russia may have started supplying Yemen with weapons. Although I’m not sure the colonists would take that opportunity to dial things back. I guess we will see what happens.

the military spokesperson for the Yemeni group said that “the Yemeni Armed Forces declare the occupied Jaffa [Tel Aviv] region an unsafe area and will be a primary target within the range of our weapons. and will focus on targeting the Zionist enemy’s internal front and reaching the depths.”

I wonder if they will use ballistic missiles, like Iran, or if they would target nuclear power plants. Either way things will likely get very hot very fast.

It seems the US is/was using carrier and land based F/A-18s for the bombings and submarines for cruise missiles but I’m not sure about the exact extent or equipment usage of their attacks.

There’s not much reason for Russia to escalate directly since the status quo favors them already.

While I agree with the overall idead of this statement, the US and its vassals seem to want to escalate very much even if Russia does nothing so I’m not sure if Russia not escalating is the best plan. It may be but it might not.

However, arming proxies is a perfect response that can result in severe consequences for NATO without directly escalating the current crisis.

I’d say this report by western media is already part of their escalation against any acts of Russian support to their advesaries by trying to get the population on board with whatever way they choose to escalate.

Considering Russia’s meek response to the west for their involvement in Ukraine so far I wasn’t really thinking they would do this, despite them saying they would, but I guess I might have been wrong them.

Now what rests to see is what, if anything, was really sent there as I doubt they need AKs or ballistic missiles. So if such a transfer is as a response to the US them we might be seeing such things as:

Anti-ship missiles (from slow things to things that can take down US navy ships)

Cruise missiles (perhaps to attack the colonist entity directly and doing more damage than their last attack)

Anti-air (the Yemenis have taken down a couple drones but they could use better gear for dealling with fighters)

Ballistic missiles (if they want to have deniability of their use because the Yemenis already have some)

Drones (because drones are never enough)

Anything else that could be useful in their situation?

It would be really interesting if Russia were to offer the responsible for the bug some money to see if anyone else takes the opportunity. Although if they do that the other side is likely to do it too.

Anyone who knows well how China works know how hitting such a goal so soon could lead to changes of their plans to accomodate such a reality?

Tripwire soldiers or just training, I wonder…