Normally The Blog Concentrates On Horrid Things
The ongoing war in Ukraine, the First and Second Unpleasantness, DJ Tango looking awful in photos - we'll get round to that last later on - but occasionally we do cover something heart-warming and affirmative, such as Pan Mykola, the Ukrainian widower whose ancient overloaded Zhiguli broke down in Kiev, whose car wasn't impounded by the Politsiya, was repaired for free and was replaced the next day by a free 4x4. The co-founder of Monobank got one million brownie points for arranging that exchange. Art!
Normally when the blog covers Ukrainian Unmanned Ground Vehicles , we're talking about gun-trucks like this little spud here. Not today- and I've also come across a nickname for Ukrainians that is shorter - 'Kozaky', referring to their historic roots in Cossack culture. So, remember that name.
Also 'Unmanned' is a misnomer, there are lots of females in the Kozaky armed forces. Not sure how many operate drones.
While we're at it with nicknames, the Ruffians use the old derogatory slang for Kozaky, calling them 'Khokhols', meaning 'Crests' or 'Tufties', thanks to the Cossack tradition of shaving most of their hair away. Art!
ANYWAY Kozaky of their Third Army Corps' 60th Motorised Rifle Brigade had a drone aloft, carrying out reconnaissance behind their front lines. What did they espy? Not raiding orcs but this - Art!
This is a 77-year old woman trying to make her way along a road that the orcs regularly shell and bomb with drones. As you can see, her mobility is extremely limited and she needs two walking sticks to make her painfully slow way. She was unsteady on her pins and kept falling but was determined to get out of what had been her home, and was now becoming a dangerous front-line position.
No, she's not a 'Babushka', thank you Kate Bush. The Ukrainian term is 'Babusya', and the watching soldiers could not, in good conscience, ignore her. They had an UGV sent to the road, covered with car mats, on which they wrote "Grandma - Get In!". She probably crossed herself when it appeared, she can't have seen one of these UGVs in her life before. Art!
This picture really doesn't give a sense of scale for these UGV's, so here's Grandma sitting on the Devil's Driving Device. Art!
Bless her, she looks dwarfed by the robotic runner. The boys looking on had to make sure her feet were off the road surface in order to avoid injury when the drone started moving. Art!
It didn't travel very quickly, having to negotiate occasional rubble and craters, yet it was a whole lot quicker than struggling along on two dodgy legs. As seen above, the 60th Motorised Brigade chaps were liaising with soldiers near the front line, alerting them of an incoming UGV with a live cargo, if I may be so inelegant. Art!
Her cyber-Uber eventually reached live human troops, Ukrainian as you can tell from his - rather tactically unsafe thanks to visibility - yellow helmet band. He helped her off the UGV and was careful to collect her walking sticks. Art!
She was aided to an evacuation vehicle later that night and taken far from the front lines. Bless you boys, your mothers are proud of you. Art!
TLDR: Lady born in 1949 rescued by technology from 2026.
I don't want to sanctify the Kozaky but this attitude is one reason why they have charities seeking to feed or rescue abandoned domestic pets, and once again you could easily create a 30-minute vlog of them being kind to animals.
No details on whom the lady is, as the incident is so recent. If I get more info, I shall report back.
I Have Invented Another Collective Noun
Art!
Here we have a 'Stupor' of idiots
This is the South Canadian 'Minister For Pestilence', as the satirical Twitter poster 'Daractenus' amusingly describes him, RFK Junior, proving that he never passed in Math. Whilst Donnie Dorko pretends to understand things like sums or percentages, as he's the one who originally claimed drug prices were coming down by 600%.
A mathematical impossibility. RFK Jnr tried to back up his Wizened Orange Overlord - O look another nickname, WOO! - by saying that if a drug sold for $600 and the price went down to $100, that was a 600% drop.
NO IT ISN'T! It has been cut to one-sixth of the original price, which is almost 17% of the original. A cut of 83%.
'Idiocracy' is a documentary not a work of fiction. Prove me wrong. Art!
Unsure if Photoshopped
'Cassino '44' By James Holland
Ol' Jim had two major aims in this work: 1) to lambast the reputation of General Freyberg and 2) to rehabilitate the reputation of General Mark Clark. Well, I exaggerate a little but the core concept remains. Let us address 2).
As Ol' Jim points out, history and pundits have not been kind to Clark, and there is an urban legend circulating that asserts Clark was so desperate to conquer/liberate Rome, that he deliberately avoided attacking the retreating Teutons of Armee Ober Kommand 14. There is no proof for this, neither from Clark's official and personal correspondence, nor from his British counterparts at the time. Art!
Those arrows at centre top are the Teuton retreat routes, all five of them. Yes, five, not one. Art!
These are spectacularly unhelpful, so let me add in a Google Map that I was looking at earlier. Art!
This is a contemporary map of the area around Anzio and Rome, yet the overall geography has not changed. Anzio, from where Clark's forces had broken out, is the slight peninsula at bottom port. In 1944 the Via Casilina, the Teuton escape route nearest Anzio, would have run along what is now the A1. In order to cut it, Clark's divisions would have needed to either cross the Lepini Mountains, a tricky job with armoured or infantry units thanks to mountains being notoriously - you may be ahead of me here - mountainous. Or they would have headed north-west across the plains, bringing them so close to Rome that they might as well go for it. Not only that, hardly any Teutons were retreating along the Via Casilina. Art!
If you compare this map with those James has, you can see that the Teutons were retreating along valley bottoms where progress was relatively easy, and Clark's forces would have had to cross the 'grain' of the country, across numerous mountains in order to intercept them. Doing this would also expose the South Canadians to a flank attack from any AoK 14 units sitting in the mountains, observing thanks to their higher elevation.
Next up - General Freyberg's reputation. I bet you can hardly wait.
The Vampire Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost
As I like to say. Art!
Peter Magyar, the incoming Prime Minister of Hungary (which is called 'Magyar' in Hungarian), has stated that a lot of Viktor Orbanazi's inner circle of thieves and fraudsters are leaving for other climes, including South Canada. Orcban himself just resigned his political seat in order to be able to flee all the quicker. His daughter and son-in-law are already ensconced in South Canada. Art!
Here we have Radi Firez, the Fidesz (Orcban's) party chairman in Szeged city, whom was put on a warrant list on Wednesday and whom immediately resigned his position, and was arrested at Budapest airport on budget fraud charges.
Looks like the new broom is sweeping clean before it even arrives. Conrad is horribly ignorant about Hungarian politics, yet as I posted on Twitter to some acclaim, I like the cut of this Magyar chap's jib. Which is a compliment in English, just to be clear.
Finally -
