From moral perspective, the same entities (UAE, Qatar) who have done the most to raise the profile of the I/P conflict with funds and media campaigns are directly funding and sending weapons to the parties responsible for the genocide in Sudan.
Which has much clearer properties of "genocide" than the I/P war, and killed 3 times as many people in the same timeframe despite having far more primitive and less powerful weaponry involved.
>> In the first three days of the capture, at least 6,000 killings were documented. 4,400 inside the city. 1,600 more along escape routes. The UN writes explicitly that the actual death toll from the week-long offensive was “undoubtedly significantly higher”. The governor of Darfur spoke of 27,000 killed in the first three days alone. The Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory estimated 100,000. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab assessed that of the 250,000 civilians remaining in the city, nearly all had been killed, died, been displaced, or were in hiding.
>> RSF fighters, according to survivor testimony, said things like “Is there anyone Zaghawa here? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all” and “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur”. Men and boys under 50 were specifically targeted, killed or abducted. Women and girls of the Zaghawa and Fur communities were systematically raped, often in groups, sometimes for hours or days. Those perceived as Arab were often spared.”
> the same entities (UAE, Qatar) who have done the most to raise the profile of the I/P conflict with funds and media campaigns
Israel and its MSM media outlets in the west are the only people “raising the profile” of the colonization of Palestine. Every US politician promotes Israel to the point where they can hardly be said to represent American citizens. That is why people in the west stand against Zionism. It has nothing to do with Qatari boogeymen.
> Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35
This is completely wrong, though. It's cheaper to build an F-35 than it is to build a Eurofighter, Rafale or Gripen, which are significantly older and less capable platforms. And not even "a little" cheaper - quite a bit cheaper. Economies of scale are real
After reading your comment I did read up on the Gripen. Seems very interesting. Procurement is about the same as the F-35 but the running costs are about 1/4 so over its expected lifetime it'll be considerably cheaper. On the procurement front though Saab seems to offer factory set up as part of the deal, so you make back some of the cost into your economy. Being able to build and maintain them yourself seems like a big plus.
Capability wise the gap isn't as large as I thought either. The latest Gripen-E has similar radar, possibly better software, and they can be kitted out to fire the same air to air weapons. What they don't have is a stealthy airframe and they aren't designed for some of the same mission profiles. If you're a country that doesn't make your own aircraft then having access to both, or just the Gripen for interceptors would make some sense.
Of course it has had a significant impact. The reason Russia has repeatedly turned off fuel exports every couple of months for the past couple of years despite high global prices because Ukraine keeps disabling enough of their refining capability to cause shortages.
Ukraine does it to avoid assisting Russian damage assessment and targeting efforts. Avoiding embarrassment is not really part of the equation, especially when they need to push for more international support.
They want to make it so Iran doesn’t know if they successfully hit that Oracle data centre.
But they also want to make it so foreign investors don’t get scared off by the prospect of their data centre getting blown up. Obviously investors will avoid the area so long as missiles are flying - but by coming through the conflict "unscathed" will let them bounce back fast. Likewise with tourism.
Which of these is the bigger motivation? Hard to say. But I gather most drones have cameras, so I imagine Iran have a pretty good idea of where their drones are striking.
They are more likely to get funding from EU if they can make it look like they can win the war.
Which of these is the bigger motivation? Hard to say. But I gather most drones have cameras, so I imagine Russia has a pretty good idea of where their drones are striking.
I think the main EU fear is ex-soviet countries fearing they are next if Ukraine falls. So Ukraine should not necessary win, it should mainly bleed Russia and not loose. An eternal standstill is probably best, realpolitik-wise (To be clear, I am not happy with this analysis).
True. As far as EU BigPowers are concerned, they know Ukraine has lost the war but don't really care if Ukraine is being destroyed and Ukranians are dying, as long as they kill as many Russians too.
It astounds me that even in 2026 people are still regurgitating this standard-issue Russian propaganda canard about "Ukraine already lost the war", consciously or subconsciously. While the war is going on, you can make equally vacuous claims that "Russia already lost the war" with about as much cause.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war" without truly understanding what is happening on the ground.
The stark facts are simple - nearly 20% of Ukranian territory has been strategically captured by the Russians. Ukraine has no real chance of getting it back. Ukraine's counter-offensive has failed twice. It cannot launch any more counter-offensive because it doesn't have the men - any counter-offensive by recalling men from other parts of the frontline would weaken the defence line. So any new counter offensive launched needs to really bloody the Russians to completely back off, or the whole frontline will collapse and Ukraine will face a complete military defeat. Whatever Russian territory Ukraine had occupied has been recovered by the Russians. In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure (demilitarisation through de-industrialisation - https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/94244 ).
All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR (as it is the only way EU will keep funding Zelensky's government and the war), while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
>The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war"
All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
>In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure
You don't seem to be following this war very closely. Short of nukes, Russia has already done everything it possibly can, including trying to freeze old people in their flats during cold snaps, multiple times. They've been targeting industrial infrastructure since day one, but interestingly what's been changing is that Ukraine is increasingly playing that game too, focusing on demilitarizing Russia by targeting its defence industry and increasingly taking its oil exports offline. Turns out two can play this whole de-industrialisation game. It remains to be seen who succeeds, but things aren't looking as good on this front for Russia as they did in 2022 or 2023, that's for sure.
>All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR
Well and also to do things like take 46% of Russia's oil export capacity offline just when oil prices were soaring. You know, small trifles.
>while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
Slowly is doing all the heavy lifting here, to borrow a common AI slop refrain. Russia is now losing more men per month than it can recruit, somewhere in the vicinity of 30-40 thousand. Ukraine is extending the drone kill-zone to 30+ km from the so called "front line" (more of a zone). It produces millions of drones and is at the forefront of a drone revolution in warfare. In other words, its demilitarization is progressing swimmingly, but for the minus sign.
I don't think Ukraine lost. They surely did a lot better than anyone expected. Right now, I'd say it can go both ways, with Ukranian deaths vs Russian economic crash and hurt for their rich class seeming the main determinaters. If Putin drops dead, if the rich feel enough bombs exploding in Moscow, .... Then Ukraine wins
Obviously investors will avoid the area so long as missiles are flying - but by coming through the conflict "unscathed" will let them bounce back fast. Likewise with tourism.
Definitely with tourism. FOAF flew through there a week or two back and said it was very much business as normal at the airport apart from slightly longer queues, otherwise it was the same as it was before the shooting started. This in a country that had been targeted by something like 2,500 dones and 500 missiles.
It is so frustrating how every thread about Mozilla has people getting upset about contradictory things.
Half the thread impunes Mozilla for taking so much money from Google and imply that they are controlled opposition, and the other half gets upset when Mozilla doesn't implement every standard that Google tries to steamroll through the standards bodies because of objections to how they can be used for fingerprinting, or complains that the attempts at anti-fingerprinting break websites, etc.
Sometimes it's not even different people, it's the same people punching them for contradictory reasons.
Mozilla is not perfect but they get all the downsides of being methodical and privacy focused alongside none of the benefits. Everybody hates the "side projects" unless it's Rust, Servo, LetsEncrypt, Thunderbird, contributions to Opus/AVI, etc. and you can be sure they'll be criticized if they "focus" by touching investment in any of those by the same people.
> Half the thread impunes Mozilla for taking so much money from Google and imply that they are controlled opposition, and the other half gets upset when Mozilla doesn't implement every standard that Google tries to steamroll through the standards bodies because of objections to how they can be used for fingerprinting, or complains that the attempts at anti-fingerprinting break websites, etc.
> Half the thread impunes Mozilla for taking so much money from Google and imply that they are controlled opposition, and the other half gets upset when Mozilla doesn't implement every standard that Google tries to steamroll through the standards bodies because of objections to how they can be used for fingerprinting, or complains that the attempts at anti-fingerprinting break websites, etc.
Yeah, double standards at its max. Firefox inputs every privacy concerns for these APIs that Google puts 0 Vietnam Dong to care about users' privacy. And those people cry about why Firefox doesn't implement it.
Which has much clearer properties of "genocide" than the I/P war, and killed 3 times as many people in the same timeframe despite having far more primitive and less powerful weaponry involved.
>> In the first three days of the capture, at least 6,000 killings were documented. 4,400 inside the city. 1,600 more along escape routes. The UN writes explicitly that the actual death toll from the week-long offensive was “undoubtedly significantly higher”. The governor of Darfur spoke of 27,000 killed in the first three days alone. The Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory estimated 100,000. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab assessed that of the 250,000 civilians remaining in the city, nearly all had been killed, died, been displaced, or were in hiding.
>> RSF fighters, according to survivor testimony, said things like “Is there anyone Zaghawa here? If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all” and “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur”. Men and boys under 50 were specifically targeted, killed or abducted. Women and girls of the Zaghawa and Fur communities were systematically raped, often in groups, sometimes for hours or days. Those perceived as Arab were often spared.”
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