Spoils

A Russian T90A Main Battle Tank, captured in Ukraine last fall, was being delivered - uh - somewhere (?)

I'm not sure how to react to the fact that the truck being used to transport the thing broke down, and now the tank sits at a joint in Louisiana called Peto's Travel Center and Casino.

DOD meanwhile disavowed any knowledge of this weird episode.

The Department of Defense said they had no information on what the tank was doing in Louisiana.

Writing for The War Zone, defense expert Howard Altman speculated the tank may "be intended for some sort of display," though he added: "If it was not imported by the military, exactly how it made it from Ukraine to Peto's parking lot is quite puzzling."

They touch on it in the video, but the extent of the problem with corruption and outright theft in the Russian military throws big shade on everything we've ever had to deal with here.

• As Moscow was spending $3.2 billion on the Russian Navy, Putin's oligarch buddies were spending $4.1 billion on Mega-Yachts for themselves
• Weapons that are supposed to contain explosives, have been shown to contain wood or plastic or rubber instead
• Soviet era radios
• Chinese walkie-talkies
• Cell phones or Garmin GPS in fighter jets

The prevailing thought among the Russian leadership class was that as long as Russia has that big bad nuclear thing going for them, there would never be another conventional war, so there's no need for conventional weapons intended for use in - oh, I dunno - Ukraine maybe?

Conclusion: Lobby to keep funding tanks, and the artillery, and the soldier suits, and then steal as much of it as you can - while you can - because it'll never have to be used, and we need to party.

But - question: The "regular" military is total Swiss cheese because of corruption-gone-wild, so how do they have any confidence that their nuke forces are doing any better?

"The fight is here.

I don't need a ride -

I need ammunition."

-- Volodymyr Zelenskyy