
Hi All!

Väinänlinna–Vilna-junan pitäisi olla tulossa tämän vuoden aikana. En muista tarkemmin, missä kohdassa vuotta, mutta on sille ihan alkamiskuukausikin kerrottu viime vuoden lopulla.
Tässä nyt vielä nörtteilypohdintaa mahdollisista aikatauluista. Tätä tekstiä olisi kilttiä tästä hioa paljon, mutta menköön tällaisena raakaversion suunnitelmana, koska mun pitää mennä nyt nukkumaan :)
Noiden kolmen Liettua–Puola-junan aikatauluja pystynee päättelemään aika tarkasti siitä, että Mockavaan saapuvan puolalaisen junan on käytännössä pakko lähteä sieltä heti johonkin järkevähköön kohteeseen.
Ajoaika Vilnasta Mockavaan on 2h 17min. Mockavasta Suwałkiin sitten 51 minuuttia. Tällä hetkellä puolalainen juna seisoo Mockavassa yhteensä 50 minuuttia, littualainen taas 19 minuuttia. PKP Mockavaan 14:35 LTG Mockavaan 14:52 LTG Mockavasta 15:11 PKP Mockavasta 15:25
-> Puola 33 min -> Liettua 36 min
Eli, Suwałkista on lähdettävä jokin juna Mockavaa kohti n. 10 minuuttia sen jälkeen, kun liettualainen juna on lähtenyt Vilnasta. Jos kyse on aamuvarhaisesta, sitten se Suwałkista lähtevä tosiaan lähtee aamujuna. Silloin ei käytännössä muodostune vaihtoyhteyttä Varsovasta päin. Vastaavasti junassa Mockava–Suwałki on kyse siitä, että matkustajat Mockavaan tuonut juna menee Suwałkiin nukkumaan. Yksi junarunko siis ajaa päivän aikana Stettin–Mockava–Suwałki, toinen taas Suwałki–Mockava–Stettin. Nykyinen matka-aika Suwałki–Szczecin on 9h 34min, eli Vilnasta sitten tuohon 3h 41min päälle. Eli yhteensä koko reittiä ajaa 13h 15min. Suwałkista lähtee nykyisellään viimeinen Białystokiin klo 17:24, ja jos tuo juna lähtisi Stettinistä n. 6:15, se ehtisi kääntyä Mockavasta Suwałkiin niin, että siellä ehtisi vielä Białystokin junaan, ollen Białystokissa 19:40. Białystokissa sitten taas ehtisi junaan, joka on Varsovassa 22:05 ja Łodżissa 23:29. Voi, tää menee jo unelmoinniksi, mutta jospa se Berliiniin menevä yöjuna pysähtyisi Varsovassa vasta tuon 22:05 jälkeen. Vaihtoja tulisi niin miljoona, mutta jos tuo yhteys Suwałkiin lähtisi Vilnasta ajoissa, muodostuisi vielä yksi iltayhteys aika pitkällekin Puolaan. Sellainen yhteys tosin lähtisi Vilnasta jo 14:30. Ei ehkä järkevää.
Sitten voisi vaihtoehtoisesti toivoa, että Suwałkin junaan ehtisikin Tallinnasta tulevalta junalta. Kaunasiin sieltä ehtii nyt klo 20:57. Jos juna Suwałkiin lähtisi Kaunasista sitä myöhemmin, se olisi Suwałkissa n. 23:34. Siellä voisi nukkua ja jatkaa aamuseiskalta eteenpäin.
Jos junayhteys lähtisi Vilnasta klo 7, se olisi Stettinissä 20:15. Ja Mockavassa siis 9:17.
Müncheniin menevä yöjuna on näemmä ensisijaisesti ukrainalaiset mielessä suunniteltu: Se lähtee rajakaupunki Przemyślistä, jonne tulevat leveäraiteiset junat Ukrainasta. Laiturin yli sitten vaihto puolalaiseen yöjunaan, jolla Müncheniin.
Kaiken järjen mukaan pitäisi onnistua sellaisen, että lähtee sillä tässä ilmoitetulla aamujunalla Vilnasta tai Kaunasista, vaihtaa Varsovassa Krakovan junaan ja Krakovasta sitten menee tuolla yöjunalla Müncheniin. Berliini on sen verran lähellä Varsovaa, että yöjuna lähtenee Varsovasta varsin myöhään. Semminkin kun se tulee sinne Varsovaan Chełmistä, missä menee muutama tunti siinäkin.
Tabasco's owners have been supporting the Russia in its war of genocide.
A company doing that is no way "good dudes".
Uh, the Russia is doing that on every possible platform. Why would ours be an exception? What makes Lemmy so special?
Similar conscription amounts have been inside the current numbers as well.
These 160 000 are not an addition to the troops. They are just an explanation of where the steady recruitment of new soldiers comes from this year. This means that they are no longer able to find enough suitable prisoners to send to the front and must slightly increase the yearly amount of conscripts to keep things in balance.
The 0.7 % considers only Ukrainian territory, and completely ignores everything that happened inside the Russia
In the end of 2024, Ukraine controlled an area in the Kursk province that equaled about 0.2 % of Ukraine's total territory. If that area was taken into account, the Russia's net territory gain would be about 0.5 % of Ukraine's total territory. At the peak of the Kursk province operation , Ukraine controlled about twice as big an area of the Kursk province as in the end, so an area equalling about 0.4 % of Ukraine's total territory and 4/7 of the area the Russia managed to temporarily gain from Ukraine.
(Edit: and, my understanding is that the 4200 km² does not contain the territories Russia reclaimed, but now I'm getting a bit unsure, as I don't remember the exact phrasing of the text telling how much area the Russia gained)
I'm not really sure what's stopping Putin, but at least all the previous times he's declared how many new soldiers the Russia will recruit, they've fallen very short of that number.
What is known is that the Russia's recruitment capacity is 25 000 to 35 000 new soldiers per month. It is not able to reform during wartime, because that reform would cause a mess for a few years, lowering the capacity for first.
He's saying he'll recruit those soldiers within 4 months. That translates to 40 000 per month, which vows over even the pessimistic estimates for its recruitment capacity. And that would mean that they only recruit conscripts and nobody else during those four months. Of they recruit others than conscripts, they have that much less capacity for the conscription.
Nobody is reporting the 0.7 %. What they're reporting is that the Russia gained about 4200 km² of Ukraine's territory in 2024. That is reported by several sources, such as this one: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/8/russia-gained-4000sq-km-of-ukraine-in-2024-how-many-soldiers-did-it-lose
Ukraine's total territory is 603 628 km², and 4200 km² of that translates to 0.7 %.
Some sources talk about just over 2000 km², which would be around 0.3 %, but the rough measurement I made on the map was around 4000 km², so I don't trust the lower number.
You can search for "how much Ukrainian territory did Russians gain in 2024", and 4200 and 2000 are numbers you will find.
This 4200 km² does not include the areas inside the Russian Federation around the city of Sudzha. There Russia lost a land area that equals about 0.2 % of Ukraine's total land area, and if you count that in, then that brings the Russian gains down to 0.5% instead of 0.7 %.
Why do news media have to repeat this kind of weirdness:
Russian forces have slowly made territorial gains in Ukraine over the past but that has come at a cost.
What kind of "territorial gains" is it that during all of year 2024 the Russia managed to gain 0.7 percent of Ukraine's total area. Less than one percent! That is in no manner significant. Taking over 0.7 of a country's land means the frontline having frozen in place, not the country gaining territory.
And of course, if we take the events in Kursk province into account, the percentage gets even lower...
Also, this article says "will conscript", while in reality it is "wants to conscript". Putin can want whatever. Being able to get what it wants is a whole different question.
But only one really knows how to give commands to Trump. That's a huge difference!
Mathematics and languages have different rules.
In languages it is possible for one century to be a yewa shorter than all the others. Other centuries begin on a year divisible by hundred, but centuries 1–99 and -1–-99 don't. They are both missing a year, and outside mathematics that's just fine.
If almost all native speakers of a language say that a century begins in a year divisible by hundred then that's how it goes in that language.
I've got autocorrect switched off, but these kinds of corrections have lately started happening.
Anyway, corrected "need" to "mean".
But many kinds of medicine can induce Parkinson's.
A puppet is someone whose actions are fully steered from the outside.
Putin is a person chosen by KGB/FSB because he makes decisions that are very useful its leaders, but he retains a large amount of autonomy.
Yup. He had a cancer and mostly healed from it.
Happens.
Defending from something doesn't really mean opposing something in this sense.
Most importantly, it takes rewriting their school books.. The Russian school books on mathematics and on Russian language rant about Russian supremacy.
And I hope Putin outlives the Russian Federation.
...and dies as soon as possible, anyway. Preferably before April.
This will be a clash between organizations, not between people per se. KGB/FSB will fight other branches of the Russia's junta for whose candidate will get the job.
Voyager difficult to start using for existing Lemmy users
I keep hearing of people who have used Lemmy for a few days or a few weeks and want to start using a mobile version – often Voyager.
They open Voyager for the first time, and get a screen with a button for logging in. They get a choice for which Lemmy instance to join, but no place for entering their existing username or password.
I've told them that "in the first screen there is a button that is very difficult to notice, allowing you to use a pre-existing Lemmy username. Find that semi-hidden button, click it, and you can login."
It is of course a working workaround to pre-emptively tell people that the button exists, is just very well hidden, and needs to be clicked by most people who download Voyager. But still, it would be cool if the screen for new users could be altered so that the ability to log in with a pre-existing username was equally visible as the choice to create a new account!
Stefan Korshak on UA drone industry, Kursk, and western military support
Hi All!
Stefan Korshak is one of the bloggers I follow regularly. I like his texts because they often bring up points other sources tend not to, and are written so that the point comes across very easily. He is a reporter who had moved to Ukraine long before the full-scale invasion of 2022.
Here's his latest text :)
Kun Finnair lopetti vuonna 2021 maakuntalentoja, valtio alkoi ostaa reittien liikennettä. Ostojen sanottiin olevan koronatilanteeseen liittyvä siltaratkaisu, mutta voi olla, että nykyinen hallitus jatkaa niitä edelleen.
Oikein hyvä asia, että tästä tehdään taas kerran uutisia. Asia, joka pitäisi saada kuntoon. Joko junamatkailun tuet samalle tasolle tai sitten lentoliikenteen tuet pois.
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/2302885
The text of the Minerals Deal between Ukraine and USA
European Pravda publishes the final text of the “Minerals Deal,” an intergovernmental arrangement that Ukraine and the United States are set to sign this week...
The text manages to be quite surprising to me.
There was talk about USA wanting a share of Ukraine's mineral wealth, but this agreement looks more like an agreement about funding of Ukraine's reconstruction. It says that half of all income that Ukraine will free from the Russia will have to be put in this fund, but if the fund will be used for reconstructing Ukraine, how does this benefit USA?
Maybe it can be used for building mines for American companies, for them to use for free? Or maybe the fund can be liquidated and the money shared between Ukraine and USA?
But, my untrained eye cannot really recognize whatever shenanigans there might be hidden in the text.
Mitä eteläisessä Ranskassa?
Pohdiskelen tässä mahdollista matkaa lokakuulle. Pääkohde olisi eteläisessä Italiassa, varmaan ensisijaisesti Sisiliassa, mutta mukana olevaa lasta kiinnostaisi myös Ranska. Voisi käydä katsomassa hieman Pariisia ja mennä sitten yöjunalla joko tuonne Briançoniin tai Välimeren rannikolle päin Marseilleen, Touloniin, Cannesiin ja Nizzaan päin.
Mutta mitä noissa paikoissa on tehtäväksi ekaluokkalaisen ja ehkä 3½-vuotiaan kanssa?
Eteenpäin tuolta kai sitten jatkettaisiin yöjunalla Torinosta Reggio di Calabriaan tai ehkä jonnekin vähän lähemmäs. Vaikea suunnitella reissua paikkaan, jossa ei ole ollut.