Looks like Thailand is preparing to militarily occupy parts of Cambodia and enter the country. Thai tanks amassing at the border, Thailand mobilising their sole VL MICA air defence battery in response to Cambodia's use of long range rocket artillery, and the full complement of the Thai Air Force (Gripens and F-16s) and Navy bombing Cambodia.
From Cambodia posting the war plans on Facebook to Thailand recording everything, zero OPSEC.
Give one side A-10s, and the other side Su-25s, so we can have a historically accurate Fulda gap tank battle re-enactment in the Cambodian and Taiwanese valleys.
But seriously I hope this stops before it escalates. Cambodia is not in a good position here. They have no air defence, no aircraft, and are outnumbered and outgunned on the ground. Thailand is using rocket assisted/base bleed artillery rounds while Cambodia are firing BM-21 grads in the general direction of Thailand. Unnecessary loss of life must be avoided.
And a lot of it is happening because of the recent rift in relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, which started with Russia shooting down an Azerbaijani civilian airliner on Christmas last year and issuing a non apology. Then the person in the Russian military in charge of the Pantsir S1 system that shot down the airliner sent a hand written note to the investigation team confessing it, then there was mutual police raids in Azerbaijan and Russia, and how the leader of Azerbaijan is publicly supporting Ukraine, and the Azerbaijani embassy in Ukraine got bombed. As far as geopolitical own goals go, this is a big one. Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia were never great, but now Azerbaijan has abandoned all pretenses and is fully in the pro western camp.
The president of Cambodia accidentally posted the war plans to his Facebook account, while drinking tea and Starbucks, before abruptly deleting them.
What does that remind me of?
Given that Cambodia has no air force and ancient armoured divisions (they still use T-55s), while Thailand has F-16s and Gripens, and more modern armour, how bad is this for Cambodia? It looks pretty bad from my perspective.
Ukrainian one way attack drones just attacked Alder and Sochi in Russia, while making use of Abkhazian airspace, likely a first in the war. Fuel depots and a railway bridge were hit. Here a Ukrainian AN-196 Liutyi one way attack drone is seen crossing over the Russia-Abkhazian border, into Russian airspace, while under fire at low altitude. Abkhazia is the Russian protectorate in Georgia, Russia has had a military presence there since the end of the 2008 war. Georgia is set to host the Agile Sprint 2025 military exercises on 25 July, involving multiple NATO countries including the United States, and Ukraine, as participants.
So a combination of higher altitude and low altitude threats. Looks like the higher altitude interceptions were over the Black Sea.
The only way Russia crosses the Dnieper in the next six months is if the Ukrainian military completely collapses I think. River crossings or amphibious assaults are a big deal.
The was a large amount of NATO aerial reconnaissance activity around Crimea and in the Black Sea a few hours ago.
Now Ukraine has proceeded to begin Neptune cruise missile attacks, combined with one way attack drones, on Crimea. Yesterday's Ukrainian one way attack drone raid managed to hit railway and power infrastructure in Rostov oblast, Russia.
"We're kicking out the food delivery slaves" - Keir SStarmer
Liberals in opposition to Starmer will then proceed to make the argument that slavery and exploitation, and wage depression by taking advantage of people's immigration status is necessary for the economy (who will pick the fruit/cotton/wash the dishes/deliver the food), instead of making a principled argument that modern day slavery exploitation, and deportation of people based on immigration status is wrong on principle, thus, in an incredible own goal, hand over the moral high ground to those in favour of deportation.
A Ukrainian Air Force operated, French made Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft crashed all on its own in Volyn oblast, far northwest Ukraine. The pilot reported issues with the aircraft before ejecting.
It's likely Zelensky consolidating power. Ukraine's new prime minister is the same woman who signed the natural resources extraction deal with the United States, and is one of Zelensky's biggest supporters, and came out in support of him again.
Why in your opinion? I've not followed the situation closely outside of the military movements.