General Discussion

not to accept any deal from Putin at that stage. They'd already come to that conclusion - with very sound reasons - and Johnson just cheered them on (one of the few things he did the bulk of the UK population approved of).

Chum, you can pat yourself on the back all you want and declare yourself right - I've already told you I'm not going any further in unravelling your Gish gallops.

Oh, fuck it, just one technical point: the Ukrainians have now developed effective countermeasures against the Russians' fibre-optic FPVs and are rolling them out with some urgency. That's the way it always goes. Thrust and counter-thrust. You know, like in wargames. See, you're not the only one who keeps up with things. Maybe you're not as monomaniacal as I am.

A year or so you were declaring everything was over because the Russians had effective EW that was "making the Ukrainians' drones fall out of the sky". Well, that panned out, so please don't try to tell me you've "been right ever since".

I just never get this fixation of yours with predictions and "being right". There are few areas in life where we can give categoric predictions, and it's a pretty fruitless exercise unless you're wagering money. An area as unpredictable as war certalnly doesn't lend itself to it.

On any given day, I'll read info from people who have decades of knowledge and experience in these fields as well as some on the ground. I can't think of any of them who make cast-iron predictions about what's going to happen in Ukraine. Maybe warnings from past experience, but that's a different matter. That's about where I am in all this.