I've been assured that it's on 12/9. Nostradamelonus mentioned those numbers once while he was on the toilet so it must mean something eventually.
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I received my first diaper on 12/9. Just co-incidence ?
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Well this won't make me Mr popular:
I'll come back in a few months.
I'll come back in a few months.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I'll guess not, but thanks for posting anyway. A little, easily refutable propaganda gives me confidence I have a handle on what is going on. I found it amusing to read the bullet point that the war has become existential for Russia. That is mostly a very curious spin on the reasonable notion that this war is existential for Putin, and possibly the current Kremlin. It helps to see how political propaganda and political lies are assembled.
Tiger
Active Member
What is your take on the Twitter post below and how would you comment on the summarized main points:
To me, it seems that Russia, because it has larger land area to protect, is more susceptible to "death by a thousand cuts".
This means that for Ukraine, the large-scale counterattack would actually mean lots of surgical hits to the front and the rear and around (to widen the front and start civil war in Russia). By this they force Russia to spread their forces more thin (and effectively retreat) and every time this happens Ukraine can bite and advance few kilometers at a time from any spot that is left unprotected by Russia, like a Piranha.
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When his toilet ran over and he said Eureka! Or something.
A giant bowel movement for mankind.
I got my Model S on June 6.
The guy may have had some good predictions in the past, but on this he's spouting horse pucky. Similar to Henry Kissinger who was one of the top people in the US on foreign policy in his day. Agree or disagree with his policies, he knew the players very well. Today, his pronouncements on the war have been completely off base.
Russia did start this war with 3X the population, but Russia needs to keep their economy going. Ukraine has a vastly diminished need to keep their economy going. The west is propping up many parts of the economy that would be drawing people away from the war to attend to. A lot of people have left Ukraine, but almost everyone who has left are people who are not fit for military service: children, elderly, and women caring for children. What's left are mostly men of military age and women who are available and fit for military service.
Russia is not sending women to war, but the Ukrainian forces are open to female volunteers and they have a lot of them.
The rule of thumb that has held true in every military occupation for the last 120 years with only a few exceptions under special circumstances is to have a successful occupation, the invading force needs to bring 20 troops per 1000 population or an insurgency will get going the invader can't stop. That's why the US lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It's also why the USSR lost in Afghanistan.
Ukraine had a pre-war population of 44 million and the people left in the country are the same population that would fight an insurgency. If Russia had managed to topple the government of Ukraine, to keep the peace they would have needed a force of around 900,000. They have not had that many people in the entire army once during this war.
Russia got 100,000 people killed and wounded to take one small city the last 5 months. Is that really being on the ascendancy? Claiming that it is is drinking the Kremlin's Kool Aid.
Russia was firing massive amounts of artillery a year ago. They were draining the supplies left over from the Soviet era. All indications are those supplies are exhausted and the only artillery ammunition they have now is newly manufactured or bought from countries that have Soviet/Russia caliber weapons and are willing to sell their ammunition.
With the setbacks Russia has had in the last 9 months, if they had the massive stockpiles of ammunition, they would have used them.
Russian artillery is also wearing out. In the last 10 years Russia made 12 artillery pieces. Their stock is all old, most of it Soviet leftovers. Critically because they have essentially no industry making artillery they also have no industry to make new barrels.
Gun barrels have a maximum number of rounds before the barrel wears out. Other parts of a gun also wear out and Russia has been riding those guns hard. They have worn out a vast number of their guns and they are not set up to make the parts to put them back into service.
The Ukrainians too have been wearing out the barrels of the NATO guns they have been getting, but there are service centers in Eastern Europe that are rehabbing the guns and putting them back into service. Critically NATO countries make spare gun barrels.
People always focus on the US for everything military. There are a lot of countries that make artillery ammunition. Korean 155mm ammunition is making it's way into the stockpiles of the donor nations who in turn are giving more 155 to Ukraine. South Korea has a massive artillery stockpile. There are several factories in Europe capable of making both NATO and Soviet caliber ammunition and those plants are being ramped up. Just before the war began an ammunition plant opened in Australia.
Ukraine doesn't have to match Russia in number of guns or quantity of ammunition. Western countries have always stressed quality over quantity. A Russian artillery battery is considered "good" if they can hit one tank with 200 rounds. Ukrainian artillery routinely hit tanks in 3 rounds or less. At the start of the war the accuracy of Russian artillery was poor, and with their barrels wearing out, it has just gotten worse.
The claim that Ukraine is taking casualties at 2:1 is an insane assumption. First off Russia has been the one trying to be on the offensive and it's well documented they have taken staggering losses trying to take Bakhmut.
There is also a lot of evidence that Ukraine did not throw a large force into Bakhmut. Ukraine has put the defenders on rotation, so a unit goes in for 5 days, then they are rotated out and rested. So units are going into Bakhmut, but they are replacing a unit that is standing down for a rest, and it's a unit that has already been in the fight and rotated out. They recently threw a few units into the flank attacks, but that was because Russia had thinned the flanks to concentrate on taking the city.
The attacker almost always takes more losses. The only times the defender takes more losses is in cases of the defense being too thin, under-armed compared to the attacker, or some other major imbalance.
Ukraine has done everything possible to adopt western standards for battlefield evacuation and emergency medicine. Medics are trained in battlefield first aid and the medical kits have the tools they need. On the other side the Russian battlefield medicine has been World War I level bad, and a lot of lives have been lost because of it.
Ukraine has shown a lot of caution about high losses, only taking them when they goal is worth it, while Russia has been very cavalier about the lives of their men.
Force strengths are imbalanced in Ukraine's favor too. Russia has somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 men engaged in the war, though they are having to move a bunch to deal with the rebels in Belgorod, which takes troops away from Ukraine. Personally I think their force is probably closer to 100K than 300K, but assuming it's 300K, they are still outnumbered. The Ukrainian forces are now up to 1.2 million people. Combat capable forces are about 600K.
At least 1/2 the Russian forces are not direct combat troops too. Russia has supply troops, naval forces, naval support troops, railroad troops (keeping the rail lines moving), air support forces, air defense forces, and other rear area people who are not expected to engage in direct combat.
Ukraine doesn't need as much supply logistics as Russia does. Russia has the outside lines, so their supply moves by a more indirect route than Ukraine's. To get supply to troops in the Zaporizhzhia region, they have to ship across southern Ukraine via rail with the rail lines under attack from Ukraine, or via road. Or they have to ship supplies into Crimea and then bring them north.
I saw a video a few weeks ago of a small two lane road near Mariupol that was a solid traffic jam of semis headed west loaded with war material. Each of those trucks needs a driver, and there have to be fuel depots with people to fuel the trucks, and mechanics to work on the trucks when they break down, etc.
How is Russia going to gain any significant ground this year when the number of Ukrainians capable of frontline combat outnumber them at least 4:1?
Then there is the new problem Russia is facing with the rebels in Belgorod. Even if the rebels are driven out, which might well happen, Russia will have to station a force in Belgorod to keep them from coming back. The rebels are watching the Russian situation in Belgorod and will take advantage of any weaknesses. That ties down troops Russia needs to defend their lines in Ukraine, further weakening their ability to defend the land they took in Ukraine.
Like I said, horse pucky.
We will see how much territory Ukraine will be able to take back. If the low morale, poorly trained troops cut and run when the assault starts, and it turns into a rout, Ukraine will probably be able to gain a lot of territory. If the Russians somehow hold on, the offensive might be more of a grinding slog with more modest gains.
I think the former is more likely, but I accept the latter is possible.
Russia is tying to hold ground with a very thin force and they are not showing a lot of signs of stability right now. A big hit could break open the pinata.
petit_bateau
Active Member
petit_bateau
Active Member
Why do I have the feeling that Kadyrov is blowing smoke about the 70K Spetsnaz trained troops? The entire US Special Operations Command (which includes all US special forces units) has a total strength of 70,000.
Russia does appear to be flapping. Considering how paranoid Russia has always been about invasions of their territory, I would have thought their reaction to the incursions into Belgorod would be like kicking of a fire ant hill, but while they are attacking the rebels, they don't seem to be able to bring all that much to the fight.
Russia's moving units around just appears to be giving the Ukrainians a lot of targets for whittling down their forces. When the enemy has proven to be able to interdict the flow of units, most armies adapt by taking slower, but harder to intercept ways of moving. In the summer of 1944 in France the Germans took to skulking around after dark when they needed to move units. Losses for daytime movement just got too great.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Modern day fascism and nazism in Ukraine
news.yahoo.com
This is a NYT article, re-published by Yahoo
My personal take is that it rings similar to what exists in the USA overall, although I don't know if US paramilitaries and soldiers parade around with nazi SS insignia
Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an...
My personal take is that it rings similar to what exists in the USA overall, although I don't know if US paramilitaries and soldiers parade around with nazi SS insignia
My personal take is that it doesn't matter at all. And we shouldn't be giving crappy articles a platform.Modern day fascism and nazism in Ukraine
This is a NYT article, re-published by YahooNazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an...
My personal take is that it rings similar to what exists in the USA overall, although I don't know if US paramilitaries and soldiers parade around with nazi SS insignia
If it did, then Canada would be justified in invading the US. Every county on the planet has bad mixed with the good. Every neighborhood.
Is there anywhere in Europe other than Germany, that there aren't rightwing fascist groups that adopted these symbols and have infiltrated the military? In Germany just showing these NAZI symbols is illegal so their fascist groups are more circumspect but even they have been found in the German military/security forces. Oddly in Germany much of the extremist fascist folks are in the areas of the old DDR (East Germany). How many of these Ukrainian fascists plotting to overthrow Zelenskyy and his democratic government? That should be something the government of Ukraine and its allies should be concerned about once this all ends with this flood of arms going there. Are there private Ukrainian militias like there are in Russia?Modern day fascism and nazism in Ukraine
This is a NYT article, re-published by YahooNazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an...
My personal take is that it rings similar to what exists in the USA overall, although I don't know if US paramilitaries and soldiers parade around with nazi SS insignia
How right-wing extremists have infiltrated German security forces
Those sneaky Candaians have been plotting to invade the US with their niceness for a couple centuries.
I knew Bob and Doug Mckenzie were a secret plot by Canadian Intelligence all along.Those sneaky Candaians have been plotting to invade the US with their niceness for a couple centuries.
navguy12
Active Member
Well, FWIW, as Montgomery Burns once said, “It’s not all hams and plaques”…up here either:Modern day fascism and nazism in Ukraine
This is a NYT article, re-published by YahooNazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an...
My personal take is that it rings similar to what exists in the USA overall, although I don't know if US paramilitaries and soldiers parade around with nazi SS insignia
