Well if Putin says so it must be true. /s

Or rather Putin is a notorious liar, and a narcissist, meaning his lies have a specific purpose, and that is to put himself in better light.

Are you sure? Russia draft from when they are 18, and it’s claimed many at the front have less than 6 months training.
Teenager = 13-19 years.

Even if Russia send most young soldiers to non combat areas, I seriously doubt that the priority is the safety of the soldiers, considering the meat wave tactics they use, and the fact that they keep pushing despite horrendous losses.

Jamen det kører de nok ud til, i den situation kan de jo komme når de har tid.

Jeg ved bare at den ene gang i mit liv jeg havde brug for politiet, så var de der ikke.
En total psykopat var i gang med at slå min hoveddør ind, og da jeg ringede til politiet var de bare så pisse ligeglade, og sagde det kunne de ikke gøre noget ved?

Hvad fanden? Det er både hærværk og forsøg på ulovlig indtrængen!!

Det lykkedes ham til sidst at bryde døren ned, og da jeg stod roligt indenfor og spurgte hvad han havde gang i, gik luften fuldstændig ud af ballonen. Han havde nok forventet jeg ville være pisse bange.

Jeg fandt senere ud af han er diagnosticeret sociopat, hvilket betyder jeg absolut var i reel fare. Og udover det var det da pisse irriterende, for det første var aftenen totalt ødelagt, for det andet skulle jeg nu bøvle med at få døren ordnet.

Jeg giver ikke en skid for politiet, og hvis jeg nogensinde kommer i en sag om selvtægt, vil jeg bare sige de kan rende mig et vist sted.
Jeg respekterer de politifolk der gør et godt arbejde, og problemet kommer i høj grad oppefra, det vil sige Christiansborg, som har sparet vore Politi til døde siden 80’erne, og kvaliteten er derefter.

Vi har jo også læst om hvordan forretningsdrivende ikke engang kan tilkalde politiet længere! Vi ender ligesom Sverige hvis vi ikke retter op.

But in this case they do.

Drilling holes for geothermal heating is not in any way like fracking.
The transport of thermal heat for the heat pumps is a closed system, and does zero harm to the environment.
At least that’s how it usually works.

Aside from the fact that these are geothermal.
IDK how it is in Austria, but AC is generally much less widespread in Europe than it is in USA.
Probably because we normally don’t have heat waves like the American south, and electricity is heavily taxed.
But to be fair heat waves have gotten worse due to climate change, so AC is becoming more common than it used to be.

If you buy heat pumps for the house, and make the electricity with gas, about half the energy making the electricity is lost, but when the heat pump heats the house, it’s 5 times more efficient.
So the net result is that it requires less than half the gas to heat the house with heat pumps, even if the electricity is made with gas.

Heat pumps are brilliant. 🥰

So why would Zelensky announce that?
It could of course be to calm Ukrainians. Or maybe a kind of praise to Trump to make him feel more friendly towards Ukraine.

But my guess is the real reason is to sour Putin on Trump, so when Trump finally meets Putin it won’t be a friendly meeting.

A Russian pension is only slightly below $200 USD. So people on a Pension in Russia, that don’t have anybody to help them are definitely suffering now, because of the high inflation.

The Russian economy is showing cracks all over the place. Declining Ruble, high inflation, locked bank accounts, frozen housing market. Officially the economy grew about 4% in 2004. But the military industrial complex and public spending on the war was way more than that, public military spending alone increased to about 30% of the federal budget, about 8% of the total economy, this alone is about equivalent to the 4% growth. But on top of that, deficits in the military industrial complex has been covered by the banks, so the actual costs are estimated to be about twice what the budget shows.

Those numbers alone indicate a 4% decrease in the civil economy for 2024. That may not sound like much, but it’s really really bad for a country to have such a huge decline in the total real economy.

All projections I’ve heard or seen expect 2025 to be worse. With possibility of real estate and financial markets cashing. If that happens in an already bad economy, it will be a serious crash of the total Russian economy, that will take more than a decade to recover from.

Russians are said to have high capacity for suffering, because they have hundreds of years of practice. So the current situation might not be considered that bad, but I doubt that most people will feel the same by the end of the year, and in 5 and 10 years.

The funding will be provided under the Danish model, which aims to purchase weapons from Ukrainian manufacturers in accordance with the proposals and needs of the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

This is the model Zelenskyj is recommending, I’m guessing it both helps financially for Ukraine to make their own weapons, and it avoids problems with restrictions on the use of weapons to defend Ukraine.

Denmark has been a very strong proponent for lifting all limitations to only conform to international agreements like the Geneva convention.
Denmark also broke the barrier for aid with the F-16 donations together with Netherlands.

It’s very nice to see other European countries supporting these policies, if EU could agree with this, Ukraine would be much better off, and would probably be able to better handle not getting aid from USA.

Here’s a Reuters story on it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovak-protests-build-rebuke-pm-ficos-russian-tilt-2025-01-24/

Headline:

Slovak protests grow in rebuke of PM Fico’s Russian tilt

News stories are of course everywhere, but I like how this one tells the key fact that it’s because of Fico’s pro Russia policy in the headline. 👍

Go Slovakia, may you be successful restoring democratic values to your country.

PS:
For those who might not know, Fico is deeply corrupt, and disappeared for days, only to have pictures identified to be from a Vietnamese extremely expensive Luxury Hotel Suite. There is no doubt he enjoys personal benefits from Putin.

Flagship phones are crap IMO, my personal hatred for glass as a material used unnecessarily for the back is immense.
Glass sucks in every aspect, it’s slippery, it’s heavier, it’s a finger print magnet, and it’s fragile in a place where you can choose synthetics that are better in every way.
Losing the jack and SD cards suck too, and preventing replaceable batteries is so bad, it’s actually illegal in EU from 2027. I have no idea why that couldn’t have been sooner.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/22/new-eu-law-to-force-smartphone-makers-to-build-easily-replaceable-batteries

The rules will come into force in 2027.

I’m so sick of this, that I’ve decided NO WAY I’m buying a flagship next time, despite I absolutely love features like an amazing camera and screen.

But they can piss right off with their bullshit, pardon my French.
I bet a manufacturer could get sales advertising that it’s NOT a glass back, and that it HAS mini-jack.
But I also miss the notification LED, how did they figure it was a good idea to remove that too???

The weird thing is they ALL do this shit? Where’s the competition on maintaining well established functions? A mini jack doesn’t prevent use of wireless earphones, but lack of it absolutely prevents the use of wired ones.

That vehicles number is relatively low compared to what we’ve been used to the past couple of months.
Seems Russians are running out of golf carts and scooters now.

Slava Ukraini.

Just think about the fact that in any democratic country, the current economic situation in Russia would have caused the government to be thrown out long ago- even without considering all the casualties from the war.

That’s a VERY good point.

You are aware the Soviet union collapsed due to economic reasons right?
Russia is in just about the exact same position now that the Soviet Union was back then.

Putin will absolutely care when his beloved Russian federation collapses because he has been an idiot.

Nice, very worthy points. 👍 😀

This is about middle of the winter, and Russia (Putin) continues with their insane offensive, maybe an attempt to look strong before negotiations.

But with only 3 days until Trump’s inauguration, let’s have a look at what Putin is doing to Russia, aside from the horrendous human losses.

The points are numbered so it’s easier to comment on individual points:

1. Central bank interest rate at 21% an all time high.
2. Inflation even acknowledged by the central bank is more than twice the economic target. But in reality probably double that again.
3. The inflation hits ALL essentials. with steep increases in food, housing and electricity.
4. Real estate market frozen due to end of preferential treatment of real estate loans. With collapse in the near future very likely.
5. State running at a deficit, despite tax increases and pushing cost to businesses.
6. Gazprom near bankrupt, with the rest of the energy industry struggling too.
7. The industrial complex should be making money, but is running at significant deficits, because the state dictate the prices. And banks are FORCED to lend money to it to keep it running.
8. Shortage of base products like butter, eggs and vegetables.
9. Persistent rumors about frozen bank accounts, signaling an eminent collapse of the financial market.
10. Investments almost at a complete standstill, due to interest rates and most companies running at deficits, making even maintaining current productivity impossible.
11. Pensions (about $200) have become impossible to live on, due to rising cost. Causing widespread poverty.
12. Shortage of workers, in an unsustainable overheated economy, that at the same time is effectively in recession now.
13. The economic cost of the war, is estimated to be more than twice what the budget shows, with the real cost hidden using different types of economic trickery, that hides the cost, but obviously don’t change reality.

So this is Putin’s attempt at looking strong!?
Please let me know if I forgot anything.

Damned! I hoped it was to help Ukraine shoot down the missiles. 🤥