Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country, Part II

[Labster]

It's springtime for Putin, which means that it's once again time for a Ukrainian counteroffensive.  Is it starting today?  Will it start next week?  Did it start two weeks ago?  Russians are publicly unsure about this, with leadership fighting in public, and mobiks already panicking.

-- Ukraine shoots three SuperCum drones out of the sky - these little swimmers are just for observation
-- Four Russian combat aircraft with people in them downed in one day
-- Prigozin says it was probably an error in Russian Air Defense.  Three memes going on here:
---- (1) Ukraine cannot possibly be effective because they're not Russians or Americans, so it's better to blame themselves because let's face it everyone knows how shitty things are in Russia
---- (2) Prigozin is trying to show his Wagner force is competent by making the Russian Army look awful by comparison.
---- (3) What air defense doing?
-- The re-enactment of the Battle of the Somme in Bahkmut continues.  (And I thought it was oVerdun the first time.)  Wagner has been running out of bullet sponges recruited from prisons, which means that they are no longer gaining ground.
-- And have recently lost ground in a week that took three months to take.  Why?  How?  How to prevent it?  Russians have a more important question:  Who is responsible?  Both the Army and the Wagners have said that they are holding their ground in Bakhmut while the other guys ran away like cowards.
-- Meanwhile: Ukrainian artillery still picking their targets by looking for piles of trash in satellite photos.
-- Russia tried to claim that a consumer drone carrying what appeared to be a bottle rocket, which took out a flagpole atop the Kremlin, was an assassination attempt.  Blamed Ukraine, then blamed the United States.  If only there was a word for false claim about a flag.
-- Patriot missiles have been extremely effective, now that they're up and running.  In automatic mode, a Patriot battery took out one of Russia's finest hypersonic missiles.
-- 1990s American tech beats 2020s Russian state of the art.  Kinzhal missiles go very fast but are bad at evading.
-- In unrelated news, Three Russian hypersonic missile scientists are arrested on treason charges.  They should have watched more Robotech.
-- Patriot missile shoots down Russian bomber
-- Zelensky is doing a world tour, currently in Japan for G7.  Leaving the country last year was still unthinkable.  Now everyone knows he's not going to run away, he can go back to presidenting.
-- Russia not attending G8 ((
-- Putin would have attended, but couldn't find a table long enough to reach Japan.
-- More sanctions on the horizon
-- Late-night television hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers now banned from entering Russia.
-- Turkey still holding up NATO approval for Sweden.  Presumably waiting for the election to be over, no matter which way it goes.
-- Accounting error frees $3 billion for Ukraine weapons assistance.  TL;DR they were getting charged the replacement cost for new weapons rather than the depreciated cost of old design weapons they were actually getting.  US military casually losing $3B like it's normal (it is).
-- America allowing allies to export F-16 fighters to Ukraine.  Even though we had said before we were definitely not sending them (until Ukrainians were trained).
-- Ukraine captures T-90 tank, takes it apart, shares report on how it was made.  Other countries cancel orders for T-90s
-- Ukraine didn't win Eurovision this time.  Eurovision organizers continue to pretend that it's apolitical.  Also, fuck the IOC.

-- Head of Ukrainian Supreme Court arrested for bribery.  He was apparently trying to split his bribes with other judges.
-- Meanwhile in America everyone knows that we've got a man on the Supreme Court taking bribes "gifts" and no one's doing anything about it.


Aussies fighting for Ukraine