I. Going back to the unfortunate (tragic, really) downing of Iranian commercial B-737 in the wake of Iran's missile strike at US bases in Iraq in response to murder of General Soleimani. I maintain and will continue to maintain my position that Iranian missile from Tor-1 which downed this Boeing was launched due to:
a) Mounting pressure on combat crews of AD complexes around Tehran in anticipation of the American response which never came;
b) Possibly not a very good training of crews and failure to follow procedures (which procedures, that matters).
And here is a clue that Iran was correct in anticipating of some sort of US response after missile strikes. Let's Russia's Sergei Lavrov speak.
Translation: Russia's air-defense-anti-missile systems control air and space around Russia for thousands of kilometer. This was stated by Sergei Lavrov, who also stated that Russia's air-defense systems detected six F-35 fighters near Iran's border several hours after Iran's strike on US bases. In his words:"this time, in the air, near Iran's air border, there were minimum six F-35s. This information needs more clarification but it underscores the nervousness of this situation."
Cannot get any clearer than that. But this also brings fourth couple of important issues:
1. Trump, as POTUS, needs, ahem, just teeny-weeny bit better explanation on how things can and DO go wrong when people make stupid and irresponsible decisions;
2. Russia's tracked "invisible" F-35s thousands kilometers away using latest radar Container.
While Russia's ability to detect, track and develop firing solution on VLO targets is news mostly for flag-waving fanboys, one thing which is noted by establishment Rossiskay Gazeta where the article originated is this:
А если говорить по Ирану, то у нас просто нет соглашения об обмене данных по противовоздушной обороне. Возможно, придется их заключать.
Translation: If to speak about Iran, we (Russia) do not have an agreement on the air-defense data exchange. Possibly, we need to have one.
Now the question, could Russia's NTSUO (National Defense Control Center) have at least tipped Iranians about incoming F-35s? Not only it is possible, it is very-very likely. Iranians, most likely, being under stress over anticipation of American attack, simply overreacted. Which, indeed, brings up the issue of Russia covering Iran's air space by early warning umbrella, thus allowing Iran to have track and targeting on any type of targets. That means, making Iran's aerospace largely impenetrable. But that is a whole other story in itself. This also shows that present and upcoming air-defense technologies not only are capable of detecting all those "super-invisible" targets, but able to track them and provide targeting. I do not need to comment on that anymore.
II. One of the traits of Putin's leadership, which also manifests itself increasingly as time goes by, is his principle of making Russophobia an extremely expensive luxury for anyone who exercises it. Poland fits the bill perfectly. I will omit writing too much on this issue but as you may recall--I state non-stop that Holocaust, that is deliberate annihilation of Jews did happen, it is just that some numbers should be adjusted for Jews who actually died fighting and that Jewish Holocaust was not the only one. Slavs were deemed untermensch also and were murdered on an industrial scale. Read this piece by Israel Shamir to get a scoop on what really is going on.
BTW, Israel DOES have now monument to people of Leningrad (this is not to mention May 9 being Israel's national holiday).
Poland, meanwhile, equates USSR to Nazi Germany and desecrated monuments to Red Army soldiers who died liberating Poland from Nazism. Plus, of course, there is this "teeny-weeny" fact of Poles taking a very active part in murdering Jews and Russia is declassifying those archive documents as there is no tomorrow. You see, and that is the whole point, Russians tried not to "disturb" memories in Soviet times in order to preserve a degree of harmony between various nationalities populating USSR. Such as trying to downplay a huge role of Ukrainian nationalists not only in helping Hitler, but excelling at murdering civilian population such as they did to Khatyn, among many other places. They repeated it in 2014 in Odessa. Now it is Poland's turn to face her own REAL history.
In the end, it was the Red Army which liberated Auschwitz and many other places where horrendous atrocities had been committed against civilian population. Somebody tries to rewrite history. Not so fast. In the end, many world leaders will attend Moscow on May 9, 2020. Even Trump is considering a trip, granted he will not be betrayed by his "own" party. If he survives impeachment, he may find trip to Moscow to be most desirable. Where will Polish delegation be on May 9, 2020? In reality, nobody cares. After all, Russians and Nazis, in accordance to Polish "historiography", are the same. So, let it stay this way in Poland. Just expect few more skeletons being taken out of Warsaw's closet. And then there is Ukraine, but that shithole of a country requires a separate post (not that I want to do it) dedicated to it and pro-Polish agenda of US former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski who fvcked it royally up for the United Sates on so many fronts that it may require a separate Ph.D level study of this "American" allegedly "scholar" contribution to a current American crisis. Not to mention a complete destruction of Russian-American relations.
