Russia/Ukraine conflict

[Surfer of Life]

Someone asked what difference the ICC’s arrest warrant actually makes to Putin, I guess not much, but it might constrict his travel a bit (scroll down a little)-

March 18, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was met with dismissal from Russia and praise from Ukrainian and Western leaders.

www.cnn.com

-unless he actually did wander into a scenario where he really WAS trundled off to The Hague to stand charges, at least there’s a chance now.

 

[wdolson]

Yep, Ukraine has been quite savvy about misdirection so far and applying pressure on such a long front that weaknesses are exposed. I just want to know which oligarch had the contract to build those concrete anti tanky pyramids. I bet he's rolling in a new set of wheels or a new jet. Miles and miles of those. Be so easy to cheat at them too...add a bit more sand, etc. Just cut the aggregate amount down a bit. Make the sides 1 cm smaller than spec, reduce volume by a huge amount, etc. Funny just guessing how they cheated.

Those dragon's teeth are not being installed correctly either. To be effective, they need to be partially buried in the ground. If they aren't buried, a tank, especially one with a dozer blade attached can simply push them out of the way. The Russians are just dumping them on the ground and making no attempt to bury them.

It's easy to find a chirping lunatic fringe but tough to make any sense of what they say. Apparently he is a regular on Tucker Carlson's show.

It is a spin on a real story.
Ahead of Xi-Putin meeting in Moscow, White House rejects cease-fire in Ukraine

Any attempt to broker any kind of cease fire without talking to both sides is supporting Russia's claim that Ukraine isn't really a nation. Places that aren't really a legal entity have somebody else negotiate on their behalf, they don't get a seat at the table.

Russia's claim to Ukraine is similar to China's claim to Taiwan. Both claim the other country is a breakaway region of their own country and therefore any conflict is an internal struggle. There is only one legitimate government in this struggle and the poser government of the rebels trying to break away from their rightful ruler.

China only approaching Moscow is telling the world that they think Moscow is being a little hard on their rebel subjects and maybe they should back off a bit. or at least for a little while.

The position of the United States and most countries outside Moscow's sphere of influence is that Ukraine is a sovereign state that was invaded in a war of conquest by their neighbor. As a sovereign state, Ukraine has the right for self determination and any negotiations involving Ukraine should have Ukraine as a primary contributor. Other nations may sit in as voices willing to support Ukraine, but any decisions about Ukraine's territorial integrity needs to be made by Ukraine.

Since 1945 wars of conquest have become extremely rare. China took Tibet in the late 40s and North Korea tried to take South Korea in the early 50s, but most wars of conquest have been border spats that remain frozen conflicts such as the dispute between India and Pakistan over ownership of the Cashmere Valley, the territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia, or other similar disputes. Both sides claim the territory, but while there is occasionally some shots fired, the two sides mostly just stare at one another.

There have been a few conflicts where one side tried a limited territorial grab such as the Falklands War in the 1980s. There Argentina was trying to annex a minor outlying territory of the UK. their ambitions were very limited. Putin's venture into Georgia and the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 were also limited territorial grabs. Israel's territorial grabs are similarly taking small chunks out of other countries.

This conflict is the first I can think of since the Korean War where one country has tried to eliminate one of its neighbors from existence. Vietnam maybe, though the division of North and South Vietnam was a division within an ongoing civil war and the north won the civil war.

Such wars were common before WW II, and WW II was primarily about territorial conquest.

Countries have invaded other countries for other reasons than conquest. The US invaded Iraq for regime change, and a coalition of European countries toppled Quadafi in Libya. In those cases the invaders had no intention of incorporating that country into their country.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has distinctions that some people don't see, but to leaders in the west who have lived their whole lives under the world order created after WW II in which nations' borders are now sacrosanct and wars of conquest are out of order, this war is an unprecedented attack on the world order.

If Russia is allowed to get away with its claims on Ukraine, it could potentially destabilize Europe. What if Germany asserted claims on the territory it lost after WW II? What if Austria claimed the territory it lost after WW I? What if Spain claimed the territory it lost in the 80 years war?

Europe has been at peace for nearly 80 years because everyone has agreed on where the borders are and have agreed to keep them there. That is the only time since humans first came to Europe during the last ice age that the borders have been that stable. To have a war of conquest on European territory is a major violation of the order that has become the norm for modern Europeans.

Maxim machine gun being used by Ukraine

Ukraine's troops fight off 'massive' Russian attacks in Bakhmut with World War I-era machine guns and sniper traps

The brutal fighting in Ukraine, filled with trenches and heavy casualties, has frequently been compared to WWI.

news.yahoo.com

There are probably a lot of those machine guns around that region. It was the most common domestically produced heavy machine gun of the USSR in WW II. The Russians got a lot of lend lease Browning machine guns from the US, but that machine gun on wheels was a common sight on the Eastern Front in WW II.

The Soviets stopped production of them in 1945, but they ended up in the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts. Apparently 35,000 were stored in Ukraine when the USSR fell and the Ukrainians have put the ones that could be made operational into service:
PM M1910 - Wikipedia

I have seen evidence the Russian troops are using them too. It's ancient hardware, but it does the job.

 

[TesslaBull]

Please excuse my ignorance on world affairs, but I thought I would share a thought that I've had, and see what folks perhaps with a more informed opinion might think on the matter.

It would seem that the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia have at least been partially mitigated by the ability for them to simply increase trade with countries like China, India, Brazil, etc.

Why not have all NATO countries impose sanctions against those supporting Russia and thereby circumventing sanctions? I understand this would potentially cause its own political issues, but if you tell your kid they can't have candy, and someone else keeps giving them candy, you have to address the person enabling your kid to have candy, right?

Could China survive a unified NATO set of sanctions? Could India? Brazil?

 

[BitJam]

There are probably a lot of those pMaxim] machine guns around that region. It was the most common domestically produced heavy machine gun of the USSR in WW II. The Russians got a lot of lend lease Browning machine guns from the US, but that machine gun on wheels was a common sight on the Eastern Front in WW II.

The ubiquitous Browning 50 cal. machine gun is still in use today in all branches of the US military. It was originally designed over 100 years ago.

 

[nwdiver]

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Please excuse my ignorance on world affairs, but I thought I would share a thought that I've had, and see what folks perhaps with a more informed opinion might think on the matter.

It would seem that the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia have at least been partially mitigated by the ability for them to simply increase trade with countries like China, India, Brazil, etc.

Why not have all NATO countries impose sanctions against those supporting Russia and thereby circumventing sanctions? I understand this would potentially cause its own political issues, but if you tell your kid they can't have candy, and someone else keeps giving them candy, you have to address the person enabling your kid to have candy, right?

Could China survive a unified NATO set of sanctions? Could India? Brazil?

NATO etc are too dependent on China to effectively sanction them. Too much manufacturing has been sent there over the last ~half century. We can't afford to actually follow up on any sanction threat that was meaningful. Brazil and India, we could almost certainly sanction and only take minor economic hits ourselves, but China is a non-starter without a decade or two of investment in moving manufacturing back from China.

 

[nativewolf]

Ukraine reports of destroying equipment went off the chart, 21 tanks? 23 apc? Very few vehicles so this does not seem to be an attack in the rear.

 

[petit_bateau]

Please excuse my ignorance on world affairs, but I thought I would share a thought that I've had, and see what folks perhaps with a more informed opinion might think on the matter.

It would seem that the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia have at least been partially mitigated by the ability for them to simply increase trade with countries like China, India, Brazil, etc.

Why not have all NATO countries impose sanctions against those supporting Russia and thereby circumventing sanctions? I understand this would potentially cause its own political issues, but if you tell your kid they can't have candy, and someone else keeps giving them candy, you have to address the person enabling your kid to have candy, right?

Could China survive a unified NATO set of sanctions? Could India? Brazil?

Ultimately this is a cost/benefit analysis, after one has set aside all the pretty words.

For example : Is the minor benefit of seeking to deny (say) Brazilian soy-beans to Russia worth the cost of massively upsetting western relationships with Brazil ?

In this particular conflict the western consensus has been to take no direct action against 'neutrals' but to seek to cause transaction costs (shipping, banking, etc) for trade with Russia to significantly increase, such that they self-sanction due to normal economic imperatives. Plus take names, for later consideration.

In a wider conflict the calculus might lead to more assertive action. That (for example) was the British view in WW1, which of course the USA hugely disagreed with at the beginning because, as a neutral country, the USA sought to carry on trading as it saw fit. That USA view evolved fairly rapidly, especially given that the British were able to mount an effective blockade. (Blockade of Germany - Wikipedia). In the case of Russia it is very difficult for the west to mount a blockade that would be meaningfully effective. Hence the calculation behind the current approach.

 

[wdolson]

Please excuse my ignorance on world affairs, but I thought I would share a thought that I've had, and see what folks perhaps with a more informed opinion might think on the matter.

It would seem that the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia have at least been partially mitigated by the ability for them to simply increase trade with countries like China, India, Brazil, etc.

Why not have all NATO countries impose sanctions against those supporting Russia and thereby circumventing sanctions? I understand this would potentially cause its own political issues, but if you tell your kid they can't have candy, and someone else keeps giving them candy, you have to address the person enabling your kid to have candy, right?

Could China survive a unified NATO set of sanctions? Could India? Brazil?

Too many countries have economic entanglements with China that are far greater than the ties people had with Russia before the war. Cutting off China now would weaken the economies of most of the world.

Isolating all countries that do business with Russia also creates a parallel economy which is what we had during the cold war. On one side was an economic universe with Russia at the center and on the other was an economic universe with the United States at the center. That allowed the USSR to stay together longer than it should have.

Letting Russia sell oil at a discount also isn't a bad thing. The world needs that oil in the supply chain, without it, prices would skyrocket. When one of the foreign ministers of one of the G7 countries was asked if it was OK that India was reselling oil and oil products, the minister said it was a good thing and he wished India would sell more. Russia is selling the oil to India at barely break even prices, then India is laundering the oil and selling it at regular market prices, which means India makes the real profit off the Russian oil, not Russia and the supply chain keeps the levels of oil up.

Sanctions don't work quickly. They always hurt, and they rarely bring down a country, but what they are good at is making it much tougher for the country to do it's normal activities. Russia is still making some smart missiles even with the supply of western chips to control them are officially shut off. They can get the chips by buying washing machines and taking them apart for the electronics. They are also buying chips on the gray market where 40% of what they are buying are counterfeit.

Taking apart the washing machines and desoldering the chips they need from the circuit boards is going to lead to some of those chips getting damaged. Removing surface mount parts from circuit boards is difficult and can result in damaging the chip. Those boards are not designed to have the chips removed, they are designed to be as cheap as possible to make and if they go bad, the whole board gets thrown away and replaced. I have had to remove surface mount chips and I'm fairly skilled with a soldering iron. It really is a massive pain of a task and it's going to take a while if you're lucky enough to get the part off the board.

So for parts Russia was paying $0.50 a piece for before the war, they are now paying several times that on the gray market and they have to take the time to test for counterfiets, of they just mount the parts and hope they work. Or they are buying $1000 washing machines and tearing it apart for one part. In both time and actual foreign currency exchange, making anything with any technology is costing them much more than it did before the war.

Their production of high tech missiles for long range attacks is about one salvo of missiles a month. That's about how often they are mounting an attack on Ukrainian cities now. That's a year into the war where they have probably tried their best to increase production to the best levels they can.

Also by not sanctioning everyone doing business with Russia, western analysts can do a better job of figuring out what Russia is buying and how. This has led to the sanctions getting tweaked to close some loopholes Russia was exploiting. If the countries Russia was doing business with were also sanctioned, the analysts would have a tougher time gathering data.

The ubiquitous Browning 50 cal. machine gun is still in use today in all branches of the US military. It was originally designed over 100 years ago.

Yes it is.

The Maxim is a bit older, but it was Russia's main infantry machine gun for half a century. Some other designs began to replace it by mid-WW II. The DShK heavy machine gun was still in service with Russian forces at the beginning of the war, and the Ukrainians have been deploying them on AA mounts to shoot down drones.

Machine gun tech has not evolved all that much since WW II. Most other areas of weaponry have. The Russians insisted on the weird wheeled mount for many of their machine guns in WW II, which made them look more antiquated than they were and the carriage also added weight.

Water cooled machine guns also look antiquated, but they can often be kept cooler when in a heavy firefight than air cooled guns. At the Battle for Henderson Field in October 1942 the Japanese made a large scale assault on US Marine positions holding the airfield. The fighting was so intense that Marine machine guns began to overheat. They solved the problem by urinating on the barrels to keep them cool.

Some Russian Maxims were fitted with a spout on top that could be stuffed with snow which would melt as the gun was fired keeping the barrel cool.

 

[JRP3]

Putin visited occupied territory

Putin visits Russian-occupied Mariupol after ICC issues arrest warrant

The trip was Vladimir Putin's first to the Russian-occupied territories of the Donbas region since the conflict began. Some observers saw it as an act of defiance after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president.

www.reuters.com

 

[nativewolf]

Putin visited occupied territory

Putin visits Russian-occupied Mariupol after ICC issues arrest warrant

The trip was Vladimir Putin's first to the Russian-occupied territories of the Donbas region since the conflict began. Some observers saw it as an act of defiance after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president.

www.reuters.com

Wartranslated has a funny piece from girkin about telling if it is the real Putin. Test: was the other person within 20 meters? Yes? Fake Putin.

 

[bkp_duke]

Putin visited occupied territory

Putin visits Russian-occupied Mariupol after ICC issues arrest warrant

The trip was Vladimir Putin's first to the Russian-occupied territories of the Donbas region since the conflict began. Some observers saw it as an act of defiance after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president.

www.reuters.com

Damn, one well-placed HIMARS could have ended all of this . . .

 

[nativewolf]

There are several fake putins, take that one out and another pops up. Like fake sadams

 

[nativewolf]

Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App

@TrentTelenko: Senior Lieutenant Andriy Rudykof the Center for the Research of Trophy and Prospective Weapons and Military Equipment of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Presented this briefing: "TANK...…

threadreaderapp.com

Trent Telenko actually linked to a really good analysis presented in a youtube video from the Ukrainian Army on the t-90.

Neat analysis from Ukrainians- tank design still limited by the same 1930s engine used in t-72s. Nothing new. If anything reactive armor adds weight and slows it down. Questionable if any better than the t72, not better than the western tanks such as challenger, Leopard2, or even leopard1 ..much less the whispering death.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Putin visited occupied territory

Putin visits Russian-occupied Mariupol after ICC issues arrest warrant

The trip was Vladimir Putin's first to the Russian-occupied territories of the Donbas region since the conflict began. Some observers saw it as an act of defiance after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president.

www.reuters.com

The only source of that Reuters piece seems to be Russian State TV. Doesn't seem to be an even remotely credible source to me... Is there any actual evidence that the Dictator or one of his fakes actually visited the Donbas?...

Remember... The Dictator/the Kremlin always lies.

 

[SmokyPeat]

Hardly an act of courage to sneak into Mariupol under the cover of darkness for a couple of hours. He probably felt he needed to show some spine after seeing Zelensky visit Kherson and other cities shortly after they were liberated.

 

[wdolson]

Thread by @TrentTelenko on Thread Reader App

@TrentTelenko: Senior Lieutenant Andriy Rudykof the Center for the Research of Trophy and Prospective Weapons and Military Equipment of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Presented this briefing: "TANK...…

threadreaderapp.com

Trent Telenko actually linked to a really good analysis presented in a youtube video from the Ukrainian Army on the t-90.

Neat analysis from Ukrainians- tank design still limited by the same 1930s engine used in t-72s. Nothing new. If anything reactive armor adds weight and slows it down. Questionable if any better than the t72, not better than the western tanks such as challenger, Leopard2, or even leopard1 ..much less the whispering death.

Russia came up with the MBT concept with the T-55, but that was an evolution of the Joseph Stalin tanks that were available in small numbers at the end of WW II. They have basically been revising the same tank design for almost 80 years. They may have done an all new design for the T-14 Armata. We don't know for sure because they have never deployed it and only a handful have been built.

Outside the Russian sphere of influence, nations decided to do a ground up redesign in the late 60s and into the 70s. The US MBT in service then was the M-60 which was an upgrade of the M-48 introduced in the late 1940s. The M-60 was roughly a contemporary of the T-55 and T-62.

Out of these redesigns came the Abrams, Leopard, Challenger, Merkava (Israel), Type 90 (Japan), Leclerc (France), South Korean K1 and K2, etc. A lot of countries that ended up with Russian/Soviet tanks have produced their own locally produced tanks, but almost all of them are based on Soviet designs. For example the Chinese domestic designs are advancements on the T-72.

The countries under US influence, often called "the west", but includes Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand has a lot of designs that are more unique from one another than the Soviet influenced designs. Almost all these countries have modernized, older designs in service, but they stem from brand new designs worked out in the 1970s rather than rooted in designs from the 1940s and 50s like the ex-Soviet tank tree.

There are some all new designs under consideration, I think the South Korean K2 and Japanese Type 10 are the only two actually in production. There are also ideas to radically upgrade some older designs like the Abrams X.

The T-72 is pretty much the pinnacle of Russian/Soviet tank design stemming from the IS-2. It's been kept sort of relevant with constant upgrades. Some of these upgrades retain the T-72 designation and others have a new designation, but ultimately the core design hasn't changed much in 50 years. It's a tired design that can still be used to good effect by a disciplined army with good combined arms doctrine like Ukraine, but it's a death trap for any army that doesn't have good combined arms doctrine and training.

The bulk of armies with good combined arms doctrine and training are in the west where other tank designs also dominate. The only western countries with Russian tank designs are in Eastern Europe and they are shedding those in favor of western tank designs.

In many wars since the late 1940s where tanks have appeared on both sides, the Russian designs almost always lost to western designs. In the early Arab-Israeli wars the Israelis had tanks as ancient as the US Sherman from WW II and they still stopped more modern Soviet made armor. It was always thought that the heavy losses of Soviet made tanks was because the armies using them had such poor training and poor morale vs the other side which had western training combined with western armor.

Training and motivation were clearly factors in these wars, but the quality of the tanks may have been more of a factor than we initially thought. It's hard to tell for sure with two major variables. Ukraine has made good use of the old designs, but they are screaming for western tanks.

The Wikipedia article on generations of MBT tanks around the world
List of main battle tanks by generation - Wikipedia

I don't find their classifications all that accurate because they put upgrades of older designs into the next generation next to all new tanks designed for a new generation. But it is a good list of all the MBTs designed and produced over the last ~70 years.

 

[Sandor]

The T-72 is pretty much the pinnacle of Russian/Soviet tank design stemming from the IS-2. It's been kept sort of relevant with constant upgrades. Some of these upgrades retain the T-72 designation and others have a new designation, but ultimately the core design hasn't changed much in 50 years. It's a tired design that can still be used to good effect by a disciplined army with good combined arms doctrine like Ukraine, but it's a death trap for any army that doesn't have good combined arms doctrine and training.

T-72 lineage is coming from T-64, which was a brand new design, first to use auto-loader and quite a few major design paths from the T-34/T-44/T-55/T-62 lineage. But it is still an MBT, so a direct follower of the medium tanks (T-34) and not a heavy tank (as in IS-2). IS-2 lineage starts with KV-1/KV-2 and goes thru IS-3/IS-4/IS-7 and finally T-10 because stalin was now dead, so they changed the name. Funny how the original name KV was from Kliment Voroshilov - the criminal of Katyn forest massacre infame- but he went out of favor in 1941 after he failed to prevent the siege of leningrad, so they renamed KV-13 to IS-1... So it's fleeting the fame of criminals. Or it is fleathing ? putin should read some more history as he claims he does ....

 

[wdolson]

Well, it would have the same virtue as the claims of Egypt, Jordan and Syria over the lands lost in wars of conquest against Israel.

For a self-purported student of history, you are remarkably ignorant.

I think I addressed the claims around Israeli territorial grabs. If not I thought of it and forgot to add it.

My point is that for the sake of keeping the peace, most countries around the world gave up their claims on territory that was lost before 1946. There have been some territorial grabs since, but almost all have been relatively small bites of territory as opposed to making a country cease to exist.

The world order has been maintained condemning attempts to take other countries. Unfortunately the countries leading this effort have not been consistent in their condemnation of territorial grabs when they have happened.

T-72 lineage is coming from T-64, which was a brand new design, first to use auto-loader and quite a few major design paths from the T-34/T-44/T-55/T-62 lineage. But it is still an MBT, so a direct follower of the medium tanks (T-34) and not a heavy tank (as in IS-2). IS-2 lineage starts with KV-1/KV-2 and goes thru IS-3/IS-4/IS-7 and finally T-10 because stalin was now dead, so they changed the name. Funny how the original name KV was from Kliment Voroshilov - the criminal of Katyn forest massacre infame- but he went out of favor in 1941 after he failed to prevent the siege of leningrad, so they renamed KV-13 to IS-1... So it's fleeting the fame of criminals. Or it is fleathing ? putin should read some more history as he claims he does ....

The real ground up redesign was the T54/T-55. The T-34 and T-54/55 came out of the same Kharkhiv Design Bureau. The KV/IS tanks were the product of a different design team. The IS-3's rounded turret has had a lot of influence on subsequent T series tanks.

The MBT is really more of a heavy tank than an evolution of the medium tank. They tend to have better mobility than most heavy tanks did, but their size and weight is more inline with heavy tanks.

 

[Sandor]

The MBT is really more of a heavy tank than an evolution of the medium tank. They tend to have better mobility than most heavy tanks did, but their size and weight is more inline with heavy tanks.

Hmm, no. I know that wikipedia is not the authoritative resource, but I think their definition for MBT is pretty good: a tank that had the firepower of a super-heavy tank, the armor protection of a heavy tank, and the mobility of a light tank, in a package with the weight of a medium tank.

The russian MBTs got into the heavy tank bracket of WWII equivalent only from T-72. Don't forget the prototypical MBT, PzKpfw V Panther, was 44t while still being considered a medium tank. Almost same weight as the heavy soviet IS-2 (46t) which was a heavy tank. The russian turret design was more weight efficient than the German ones, so generally the russian tanks of WWII were lighter (and faster) than the German equivalent.