[Raellus]

A lot of potentially big news coming out of Ukraine the last couple of days. We'll start with the bad news first.

Russia has backed out of the Ukraine grain deal, started targeting grain silos with missile strikes, and threatened to impose a naval blockade in the Black Sea. Putin's essentially trying to hold the world hostage by potentially causing famine. Furthermore, Putin's been laying the groundwork for framing the Ukrainian navy for the sinking of any neutral ships in the Black Sea.

Putin is rattling his saber at Poland, accusing her of preparing to attack Belarus. Check out this revisionist history from the Russian dictator:

"I would also like to remind you what Poland’s aggressive policy led to," he said during a meeting Friday of the Russian Security Council. "It led to the national tragedy of 1939, when Poland’s Western allies threw it to the German wolf, the German miliary machine. Poland actually lost its independence and statehood, which were only restored thanks in a large measure to the Soviet Union. It was also thanks to the Soviet Union and thanks to Stalin’s position that Poland acquired substantial territory in the west, German territory."

Nowhere does Putin mention the Soviet Union's complicity in Poland's "national tragedy of 1939" (i.e. the Soviet invasion and occupation of the eastern half of the country), the murder of hundreds of Polish army officers, Soviet refusal to aid the Polish Home Army's uprising in Warsaw in 1944, or the USSR's interference in Polish affairs for the next fifty years.

Ukraine has started to use US cluster artillery munitions to good effect. According to Forbes, they are properly implementing the tactic of using an HE round to determine the height of the targeted ground so that the DP-ICMs can be set to distribute the sub-munitions at the ideal height above the target. The Russians, however, are already learning what a single round of HE presages.

The US has shifted its policy on the exporting of F-16s to Ukraine from its NATO allies, saying they are going to "push as fast as possible" and that the fighters should start to arrive in Ukraine "before the end of the year".

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