Is Vlad The Bad Running Out Of Cash?
The BBC News Channel has just reported, that in a speech Vlad the Bad has said, that if you have too much money in your Russian Bank account, that can’t be supported by your salary, then he’ll seize it.
I suppose he needs to pay the gas bill on his little dacha in Sochi.
Vlad’s Childhood
Out of curiosity, I looked up Vladimir Putin’s Wikipedia entry.
This is the first paragraph, in a section entitled Early Life.
Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), the youngest of three children of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna Putina (née Shelomova; 1911–1998). His grandfather, Spiridon Putin, was a personal cook to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Putin’s birth was preceded by the deaths of two brothers, Viktor and Albert, born in the mid-1930s. Albert died in infancy and Viktor died of diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany’s forces in World War II.
In my life, I’ve known two people, who’ve had their childhood disrupted by death.
- With one, as with Putin two elder siblings died before they were born.
- With the other, their father died when they were about eight.
Both these people received therapy and now lead normal lives.
I’ve also heard many stories of similarly seriously disturbed children, from my late wife’s work as a barrister.
So I have to question, Vlad’s state of mind from his possibly disturbing childhood.
Putin’s Father
His grandfather too, probably had a similar status to say one of the Queen’s personal staff, but they would obviously have had different beliefs.
He would have probably made sure Putin’s father’s beliefs were spot-on.
This is the second paragraph in the Early Life section.
Putin’s mother was a factory worker and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. Early in World War II, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin’s maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.
The NKVD were the secret police and run by Beria.
This is an extract from Beria’s Wikipedia entry.
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin’s secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. Beria would later also orchestrate the forced upheaval of minorities from the Caucasus as head of NKVD, an act that was declared as genocidal by various scholars and, as concerning Chechens, in 2004 by the European parliament. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front during World War II. Beria administered the expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as sharashkas.
Note.
- Like Stalin, he was another Georgian.
- The Katyn massacre took place near Kharkiv in Ukraine.
I don’t think he would be my type of friend.
Did Putin’s father relate the stories of the NKVD into his son?
Conclusion
I’m no psychologist, but I hope that NATO and other nations lined up against Russia behind Ukraine are analysing the character of the dangerous Vladimir Putin.
Polish Industry Calls For ’Full And Complete’ Sanctions On Russian And Belarusian Railways
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Gazette.
This is the introductory paragraph.
Representatives of the Polish railway industry have issued a joint call for the European Commission to impose ‘full and complete’ sanctions on the Russian and Belarusian railways because of their logistical role in the invasion of Ukraine.
Sounds fine by me!
Where Is Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant?
I have been looking on Google Maps to find Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
This Google Map shows the power plant with respect to the Black Sea.
Note.
- Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is marked by the red arrow above the Black Sea., at the top of the map.
- The River Dnieper runs between the Black Sea and the power plant.
- Crimea is the piece of land with Sevastopol marked on it.
This second Google Map shows the location of the power plant.
Note the wide River is the Dnieper, with what looks to be a series of breakwaters or a port enclosing a square patch of water towards the West.
This third Google Map shows the power plant in the North-East corner of the port.
Note that each of the red dots is one 3 GW nuclear reactor, which were built in the 1980s.
It appears that at this time of year, that the prevailing wind is in the East so Moldova will get any radiation.
But luckily, at the time of writing, everything seems OK.
‘Game-Changing’ Drones Helping Ukraine In Battle For The Skies
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the introductory paragraph.
The Ukrainian military has been using “Punisher” stealth drones that can target fuel storage, ammunition supplies and electronic warfare stations up to 30 miles behind enemy lines.
Some other points from the article.
- They are a Ukrainian-built drone with a 7.5 foot wingspan an electric propulsion.
- They are from a company called UA-Dynamics.
- They have completed sixty successful mission.
- They can fly for hours at 1,300ft
This paragraph describes a mission.
He said the drone, which can carry 3kg of explosives, needs the co-ordinates of its target and then carries out its mission automatically. Onboard cameras record the impact of the blast to check the accuracy of the mission.
It can also work in combination with a reconnaissance drone.
Could this be the reason the Russians have held back the convoy?
It may not be a big enough warhead to knock out a tank, but it would do a lot of damage to a supply truck or a tanker full of diesel.
There is also this paragraph, which describes a dog-fight between Russian and Ukranian fighters.
The Ukrainian military said today that a “fierce air battle” took place overnight in the Kyiv region between a pair of MiG-29 fighters and a pair of Russian Su-35s. Both Russian jets were destroyed and one MiG-29 survived.
Note.
- The Mig-29 first flew in 1977.
- Mig-29s are a very common fighter aircraft.
- Ukraine inherited hundreds of Mig-29s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- The USAF has a few Mig-29s
The Su-35 first flew in 1988.
In addition to the Russians, they are flown by China and Egypt.
This is a paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for the Mig-29.
On 29 May 2020, Ukrainian MiG-29s took part in the Bomber Task Force in Europe with American B-1B bombers for the first time in the Black Sea region. In September 2020, B-52 bombers from the 5th Bomb Wing conducted vital integration training with Ukrainian MiG-29s and Su-27s inside Ukraine’s airspace.
Have the Ukrainian pilots been doing some combat training?
Is The Truth Getting Through To The Man Or Woman On The Moscow Tram?
I ask this question, as it appears that Russian TV is parroting, the Kremlin’s lies.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I used to work for ICI.
A couple of times, I came across fellow engineers, who had worked on the Polyspinners project.
In this Wikipedia entry for September 1964, this is said about Polyspinners.
Edward du Cann of the British Board of Trade announced the signing of the largest trade deal in the history of British relations with the Soviet Union, with the Soviet purchasing agency Techmashimport and the British conglomerate Polyspinners, Ltd. agreeing for the supply of British textile machinery to a polyester fiber plant being constructed in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. In all, the United Kingdom agreed to advanced $67 million of credit over a 15-year period.
It was a large project and ICI did well out of it.
My colleagues at ICI generally spoke well of the project and friends they had made in Russia and in those pre-mobile phone and internet days, they regularly sent each other cards and letters.
That was nearly sixty years ago, but human beings generally want to be friends with each other, so how many links are there between people living in Western Europe, North America, Australia and other countries and those living in Russia, which started as family, business or historic links or even casual meetings on say a holiday in the Mediterranean?
I should say that two of my best British friends in the UK, I met on holiday in St. Kitts and Moscow.
There must be millions of these links and they will surely allow the truth to get through to the man or woman on the Moscow tram.
Worried For Clive
On a bus on Saturday, I sat next to a lady of about my age and we got talking about Russia’s illegal attack on Ukraine.
We then started talking about BBC’s news correspondent in Ukraine; Clive Myrie.
We were both worried about Clive.
This article on the BBC is entitled Racism In Russia: Stories Of Prejudice and it details a stories of a black student and others in the country. I also remember, when I went to see Ipswich play in Moscow, that a black fan told me he had been abused on the Moscow Metro.
I do wonder that if Kyiv falls, that Clive will not have an easy time.
Let’s hope Clive was born lucky!
Ukraine Crisis: Fifa And Uefa Suspend All Russian Clubs And National Teams
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This first paragraph says it all.
Russian football clubs and national teams have been suspended from all competitions by Fifa and Uefa after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
It looks like it is a complete ban from both Fifa and Uefa.
Vlad the Invader/Mad/Poisoner (Delete as appropriate!), is reportedly not amused.
My father, who had something to do with the League of Nations, felt that we didn’t act soon enough over Hitler and Stalin and I could argue we should have acted with tough sanctions after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014.
Is This Weapon Helping The Ukranians?
In The Times today, there is an article, which gives a list of what weapons have been supplied to the Ukrainians.
Included are.
- Javelins from the US and Estonia
- Stingers from Germany and the Netherlands
- Panzerfaust 3 from the Netherlands.
But there is no mention of the MBT LAW. This is the introduction to the Wikipedia entry for the weapon.
The Main Battle Tank and Light Anti-tank Weapon (MBT LAW), also known as the NLAW, is a joint British and Swedish short-range fire-and-forget anti-tank missile system. Designed for use by infantry, the MBT LAW is shoulder fired and disposable, firing once before being disposed of. It is currently in use with the military forces of the United Kingdom, Finland, Luxembourg, Ukraine, and Sweden, among others.
There is a lot of interesting information in the Wikipedia entry.
- It is fired once and the launcher is thrown away.
- It has a soft-launch, which allows it to be fired from an enclosed space.
- It is designed to be fired at moving targets.
I also think, that it could be a weapon, where a dummy version could be built that would be a superb training simulator.
- The trainee would sit on the range with his dummy weapon and go through the process of identifying a target and pulling the trigger.
- The dummy could even simulate the forces of launching a real missile.
- The simulator would calculate the trajectory of the missile and tell the trainee and his instructor, if they had hit the target.
The missile would not be fired and there would be no damage to the target.
This is said about deliveries to Ukraine.
At least 2,000 NLAW units are known to be supplied to Ukraine by the United Kingdom by 19 January 2022 and more shipments, including by other supporters, can be assumed amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Times says this about the training of Ukrainian forces and British Army tactics.
Since 2015 about 22,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained by the British Army as part of Operation Orbital.
Price said anti-armour ambushes of the sort deployed by Ukrainian forces were pretty much the bread and butter of the British infantry, adding: “If you have a classic column of 10 to 20 tanks and you’ve got a wide field of fire then you can knock two or three of them out and then the rest are sitting ducks and they can’t reverse out. Then you finish them off,” he said.
Note that Price is Kevin Price a former British Army major.
It sounds like a few well-trained soldiers sitting in a protected bunker armed with this missile could play havoc with a tank formation.
Russian Grand Prix Cancelled Following Invasion Of Ukraine
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
Formula One has done the right thing!
How will Putin get his own back on Formula One?
He could ban Formula One for ever from Russia, but then somewhere else like Ukraine, Poland or one of the Baltic States would happily stage a Grand Prix.
The Anonymous Widower 