wise anon
notable bun secondeded
>All wisdom comes from God
He has given you some as a gift.
Cherish it.
You speak the truth that too few know.
‘Odessa will fall’, Musk warns Ukraine
Kiev should pursue a “negotiated settlement” with Moscow before it loses all access to the Black Sea, the billionaire has argued
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has reiterated his belief that Ukraine’s position is weakening with each passing day of hostilities, warning that the “real question” is how much territory Kiev will lose and how many lives it will waste before sitting for talks with Moscow.
The entrepreneur claimed in a post on his platform X on Saturday that “any fool could have predicted” that Ukraine’s much-touted counteroffensive last year would fail, adding that even if Kiev had followed his recommendation to “entrench and apply all resources to defense,” it would be “tough to hold land that doesn’t have strong natural barriers.”
“It was a tragic waste of life for Ukraine to attack a larger army that had defense in depth, minefields and stronger artillery when Ukraine lacked armor or air superiority!,” Musk wrote.
READ MORE: Musk clarifies position on Ukraine funding
The Ukrainian army has seen over 444,000 military casualties during the course of the ongoing conflict, including more than 166,000 during last year’s counteroffensive, according to last month’s estimates from the Russian Defense Ministry. However, President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in February that only 31,000 of his country's troops had been killed since February 24, 2022.
The billionaire went on to argue that “the longer the war goes on, the more territory Russia will gain until they hit the Dnepr, which is tough to overcome.”
However, if the war lasts long enough, Odessa will fall too… Whether Ukraine loses all access to the Black Sea or not is, in my view, the real remaining question. I recommend a negotiated settlement before that happens.
Elon Musk has shifted his position on Ukraine several times since the conflict began in early 2022. He initially supplied Kiev with free Starlink internet terminals and access to the satellite-based network, but declined to activate the service near Crimea for fear that Ukraine would use it to guide drone attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. If this had happened, he explained last year, SpaceX would have been “complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Musk has also used his X account to speak extensively about the trajectory of the conflict. More than a year ago, he proposed that Kiev abandon its claim to Crimea, declare neutrality, and allow the four new Russian regions (Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye), to hold new referenda on joining the Russian Federation. This proposal is similar to the terms offered by Russia to Kiev and the Western powers before the conflict began, except Moscow initially called only for autonomy in Donetsk and Lugansk.
Moscow has stressed that it remains open to meaningful talks with Kiev and has blamed the lack of a diplomatic breakthrough on the Ukrainian authorities, who refuse to accept the “reality on the ground.”
Ukraine must take into account the fact that its borders have changed drastically since 2022, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday, commenting on Zelensky’s suggestion that a return to 1991 borders was no longer a precondition for negotiations.
https://www.rt.com/news/595173-musk-odessa-ukraine-warning/
Russian athletes ‘not welcome’ at Olympics – Paris mayor
The competitors are allowed to participate as neutrals in individual sports, but are barred from team events
The mayor of Paris has suggested that Russian and Belarusian contestants stay away from this summer’s Olympic Games in the French capital, despite being officially allowed to compete as neturals.
“I want to tell the Russian and Belarusian athletes that they are not welcome in Paris,” Anne Hidalgo told Ukrainian athletes at a training center in Kiev on Thursday, while on a visit to Ukraine.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) initially pushed for a complete ban on competitors from Russia and Belarus after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. However, last December the IOC ruled that a limited number of people from the two countries could participate as AINs (individual neutral athletes).
Earlier this month, the mayor of Paris said she would prefer for Russian and Belarusian contestants not to come at all. “We cannot act as if [the Russian military operation in Ukraine] did not exist,” she told Reuters.
When asked about Israel’s Olympic participation – in the context of the Gaza war, raging since the Hamas attack on October 7 – Hidalgo insisted there was no comparison to be made.
Sanctioning Israeli athletes is “out of the question because Israel is a democracy,” she stated.
Russia has slammed the IOC’s difference in approach to Israeli and Russian contestants. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused the Switzerland-based body of “political activism” and called its approach self-discrediting.
The maximum numbers of Russian and Belarusian athletes that can qualify for the upcoming games are 55 and 28, respectively. The IOC has noted that the teams are unlikely to actually meet the quota, with some 36 Russian and 22 Belarusian athletes expected to make it to the games, according to IOC director James Macleod.
Participants from the two nations can only compete in individual events, and not team sports, under a neutral flag, and are barred from the Olympic opening ceremony.
Commenting on the restrictions faced by Russian and Belarusian competitors, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the move “destroys Olympic ideals and discriminates against the interests of Olympians.” Such restrictions run “absolutely contrary to the entire ideology of the Olympic movement,” he insisted.
https://www.rt.com/russia/595177-olympics-athletes-unwelcome-paris/
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774094774007394548
couple of days old yet not noted
Pentagon overspent $400 million in Ukraine aid – audit
The US Navy “did not have adequate internal controls to prevent overexecution” of allocated funds, the department’s watchdog has said
The US Navy has overspent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine due to recurring accounting errors, according to a Pentagon watchdog’s report that warned the service branch may not have the funds to cover the shortfall next time.
The report released on Tuesday by the US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (OIG) stated that “the Navy overexecuted its funding three times during fiscal year 2022” when it came to Ukraine supplemental assistance.
While the US Navy appropriated around $1.7 billion in funds to Ukraine, the watchdog found that the branch “overexecuted its allotment of Ukraine assistance funds… totaling $398.9 million.” The overspending was due to the Navy’s failure to address long-standing problems with its automated accounting system.
As a result, accounting errors had to be corrected manually on several occasions, leading the OIG to stress that “the Navy did not have adequate internal controls to prevent over-execution of funds from reoccurring.” It added that the military branch also focused on identifying errors after they had already taken place, rather than preventing them.
The OIG warned that while the Navy had resources to cover the difference, “such funds may not be available in the future.”
While the US has become one of Ukraine’s most prominent donors, with Washington allocating around $113 billion to the embattled nation since the start of the conflict, major concerns have arisen about misuse of the funds.
An OIG report in January found that the Pentagon did not properly track $1 billion worth of weapons and other military equipment. This came amid the White House’s long-standing assurances that there was no evidence that weapons had been stolen, despite Ukraine’s reputation for rampant corruption.
Moreover, the Pentagon watchdog announced last month that it had opened more than 50 cases into possible “theft, fraud or corruption, and diversion” of military aid to Ukraine. One of the cases highlighted by Robert Storch, the OIG head, involved items arriving in Poland before disappearing from a shipping manifest once they were sent across the border into Ukraine.
Russia has consistently denounced the arms shipments and repeatedly warned of weapons spillover, alleging that the equipment finds its way onto the black market and into the hands of organized crime and terrorists.
https://www.rt.com/news/595151-pentagon-audit-ukraine-overspend/