He looked pretty puffy and not the same at Red Square yesterday. I was halfway expecting some big surprise... but he couldn't trust his own air force to do a flyby evidently... as they never appeared blaming 'bad weather' when you could clearly see sunny blue skies and puffy white clouds to match Putin's face.
Yes Zen matey, but as we all know,, Russia is a big place and whilst the weather in Moscow may be fine, wherever the airbase from whence the flight was due to take off, could be socked in with fog, snow, sleet, hail - whatever.
Most like been laughing too much watching NATO backtracking and dysfunctional as normal, the Croats being the worse. Hungary being another, have they forgotten our help in 1956? As for Turkey, I would not trust that lot any further than I could throw them. Portugal and Italy, do they still exist? The USA must give up in despair at Europe at times.
Turkey are a bit of an odd ball in NATO being very much on the Eastern side of things. They do however tow the "party" line . Turkey will come more into the fore later as I suspect once Russia has taken the Donbas and they will, as things stand and then a ceasefire will be called . Turkey will have the main role of mediator and be a relatively safe place for representatives from both sides to get around a table and thrash out an agreement. But I agree about Hungary ,I just dont trust them and if any country should be expelled from NATO they would be top of my list. I would say NATO is more united than ever but obviously the defence of the NATO partners takes priority over the conflict in Ukraine .Ukraine at end of the day is not part of NATO . However I can assure you the big stuff is getting through and I have a picture of a former Polish T72 thank that was in service with the Ukraine captured by the Russians . To recognise it you would need to have studied Soviet tanks in detail of which I have ,as I have an interest in military history. to add to this is also the fact that Ukraine was never an operator of the T72 ,having only previously a few captured examples within its inventory .The T64 and its derivatives along with the T80 are Ukraine's main tank types. Because of the nature of the freedom of Western media ,most of the armament movements to the Ukraine are being kept away from the gaze of the camera as much as possible so as not to stir up an Hornets nest .NATO at end of the day does not want to engage in conflict with Russia and so it is treading a very fine line and in my view a decent job in very difficult circumstances . But on saying this the West needs to speed up armament shipments otherwise the Donbas will be lost .
