The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread

[tonyget]

Zelenskyy is frustrated that the west does not provide the much needed fighters and tanks for Ukraine

Zelenskyy accuses West of cowardice in helping Ukraine fight

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the West of cowardice Sunday as his country fights to stave off Russia’s invading troops, making an exasperated plea for fighter jets and tanks to sustain a defense as the war ground into a battle of attrition. Speaking after U.S. President Joe...

japantoday.com

 

[Goknub]

The division of Ukraine East/West as per Korea would require the long-term deployment of Russians forces. That would be a serious ongoing drain on resources. A puppet may have been viable prior to open war but I doubt it would be sufficient now.

 

[GermanHerman]

He's not exactly a credible source, at best he's a useful idiot

He is not but he still provides video material which can be looked at and analyzed.

Even if he is reporting false flag events, his material is a good source for evidence that the events were in fact staged.

We don't have to follow his narative and believe what He says, but we can look at the pictures and draw conclusions.

I studied history and in the very first semester I learned the importance of source critique. You cant just dismiss a source because it's biased, we wouldnt have a single history book if that was the standard. Instead we take the bias into account and try to work out fron what hard evidence there is what the real story is.

 

[ngatimozart]

I think what matters is to have an armored platform with a gun that shoots and don't put that platform in close quarters. Also make production and repairs as simple and less costly as possible. I think if the Russians used ww2 era T34's and KV's they would have achieved the same result as the modern tanks as long as they had air cover but they would have been much easier and less costly to replace and repair. Tanks vs tank battles seem very rare in this war, they are likely taken out by air or precise artillery strikes or by portable missiles/AT guns before they get to shoot at each-other. The best use for tanks seems to shoot HE at infantry positions from a safe distance or to engage armored cars and lighter armor. But they need a ton of support in order to perform their role and the moment they are out of support they are toast. I'm not a specialist on the issue so probably I am wrong and experts will easily contradict me but from the outside it looks like in modern warfare tanks are increasingly a liability rather than an asset. They are expensive to produce, expensive to maintain, require trained crews, require tons of logistical efforts, get easily destroyed by a competent and well equipped opponent.

I would argue that in this war, the Russian use of their armour is an aberration and that it doesn't necessarily offer enough valid data for any sort of reasonable conclusion to be made. There are claims that Russia's legendary and elite 4th Guards tank division Kantemirovskaya, who earned their spurs at The Battle of Stalingrad, fought at Kursk and in the streets of Berlin, were destroyed at Trostyanets, a town 350 km east of Kyiv and 24 km inside Ukraine from the Russian border. Russia-Ukraine war: Legendary Stalingrad tank division destroyed as Ukraine reclaims key town - NZ Herald If this is indeed the case, what is the story with the VDV?

 

[ngatimozart]

Would LNR and DNR formally joining Russia be more beneficial than those states being quasi independent and serving as buffers? If this war ends and Russia wants to lift sanctions, they wont be able to use LNR and DNR as platforms for their assymetric wars anymore. Any attack from LNR and DNR will be official attakcs from Russia if they formally join.

And as for legal bans on Azov and S.14, with their current popularity in Ukraine, will the Ukraine govt be able to pull it off and even if they did ban them, it would be a ban in name only. Its not like the members will disappear into thin air, they will just adopt another name. The German model worked because the Nazis were thoroughly and utterly demolished in the heartland of Germany, I dont see Russia pulling that off with Azov.

Are they that popular at all in Ukraine?

This is the conclusion from a 2020 Swedish report of the far right in Ukrainian politics:

"Ukraine’s ultra -nationalist parties remain far less relevant politically than has been alleged in Russian propaganda and was feared by some international experts on generic right -wing extremism following the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. Nonetheless, in early 2020, the radical right’s role in Ukrainian public life is still characterized by a high level of activity in realms such as civil society, the mass media and cultural affairs. The various permutations of contemporary Ukrainian ultra -nationalism therefore require careful monitoring and continuing analysis by independent researchers and law enforcement agencies" Ukraine's Far Right Today​

What is not said here on the forum, but is spoken about in the report is far right activities and influences in Russia, which may be as bad or greater than those in Ukraine. So if you are going to condemn one side for its far right / Nazi activists you should condemn the other as well.

 

[T.C.P]

Are they that popular at all in Ukraine?

This is the conclusion from a 2020 Swedish report of the far right in Ukrainian politics:

"Ukraine’s ultra -nationalist parties remain far less relevant politically than has been alleged in Russian propaganda and was feared by some international experts on generic right -wing extremism following the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. Nonetheless, in early 2020, the radical right’s role in Ukrainian public life is still characterized by a high level of activity in realms such as civil society, the mass media and cultural affairs. The various permutations of contemporary Ukrainian ultra -nationalism therefore require careful monitoring and continuing analysis by independent researchers and law enforcement agencies" Ukraine's Far Right Today​

What is not said here on the forum, but is spoken about in the report is far right activities and influences in Russia, which may be as bad or greater than those in Ukraine. So if you are going to condemn one side for its far right / Nazi activists you should condemn the other as well.

I have no illusions towards Russian far right parties, Russia has after all been funding far right parties in Eruope for a while now. The uber nationalistic and ethno nationalistic jingoism that Putin and his administration give off, feeds the flame for far right pricks.

Subscribe to read

www.ft.com

https://www.jstor.org/stable/48600543?seq=1

Regarding Ukraine they may not have been as popular back in 2020, but right now they are enjoying unprecedented levels of Popularity thanks to the war. I am not condemning Ukraine for it either. Azov, Sp14 and their likes have been some of Ukriane's best fighting units and as I mentioned before in this thread, I totally see from their perspective, why they need them so much right now.

The war is still recent and there is no source I can cite for this, but go to reddit, twitter and any other Western social media, 1 year ago, the very likes of Azov was treated with disdain and disgust, but since the intervention, the level of hero worship they have received is extraordinary. Putin has ironically made them stronger and their presence more normalized than ever.

 

[Ananda]

Chinese media shown Russian Defense Minister, Shoigu appearence after two weeks missing from Media. He talk to keep maintain the rate of sophisticated weaponry on the Special Operation.

We see this last few days on Russian Consolidating possition, leaving some of their possition in North, continue grinding offensive in Donbas area, but increase Bombardment toward Ukraine fuel dump accross the country.

division of Ukraine East/West as per Korea would require the long-term deployment of Russians forces. That

Ukranian inteligence quoted by various western media that Russia going to carve Ukraine. If Russian see this is the option they will have to take as Zelensky will not come to their demand on Donbas and Crimea security (Zelensky keep talking on referendum on that, something Russian will not accept as means referendum from all Ukrainian and not people in Donbas and Crimea only), perhaps that's what they are going to do.

However they will destroy as much as possible of Ukraine Army (practically Ukraine AF and Navy is no more anyway). I suspect that's why they are destroying Ukraine Fuel dump. Western media talk much on destruction of Russian arnour, however how about Ukrainian armour ? Most video they shown Ukraine 'counter offensive' done by light infantry support by light armour. That will not done much toward Russian line.

If Ukraine army only left most on Light Infantry and Light Armour, Russian can hold on the area in East and South, and carve new Republic on that, while using Pro Russian Ukrainian Opposition perhaps.

This just some speculations, but I can see that happen, and even Ukranian Inteligence see that.

March 28, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Ukraine has slowed some of Russia's advances, but multiple cities are being hit with missiles, a presidential adviser says. Follow here for live news updates.

www.cnn.com

This is Inteligence unit that so far talking on Russian failures and Ukraine winning propaganda in Western media. When they talk like that in Western Media, in my opinion they know they are facing serious potential on loosing nearly half of the Ukraine.

Yes, Russia will then have to put permanent military units in East-South Ukraine. However if they done this, means they acknowledge that Ukraine will be their new buffer zone with Nato. In such West Ukraine will go to Nato. That's why I said on my previous post, if they do this, there goes Neutral Ukraine.

 

[Vivendi]

Slightly OT but Ukrainians use humor to keep morale high and the mood up. Perhaps they would appreciate this:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1508093127055265797

Apologies for the OT...

 

[Sandhi Yudha]

According to this news repprt, there is a fire at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant. This seems to be different from the forrest fires last week.
@Feanor
How serious is this?

Kebakaran Terjadi di Kompleks PLTN Chernobyl yang Diduduki Rusia

Otoritas Ukraina melaporkan kebakaran kembali terjadi di zona eksklusi di kompleks PLTN Chernobyl yang sudah tidak aktif, namun kini diduduki pasukan Rusia.

news.detik.com

 

[Vivendi]

Interview with Ukranian fighter MiG-29 pilot, with supplementing comments from a USF fighter pilot who trained with the Ukranians, quite interesting read. Some excerpts:

"The Ukrainians are defining modern warfare,” said Jersey, a retired F-15C pilot who flew training missions with the Ukrainian air force as a member of the California Air National Guard’s 144th Fighter Wing, which has worked with Ukraine since 1993. Jersey, who began working with the Ukrainian air force in 2013, asked to be referred to by his call sign for this article.

“Whatever ideas, assumptions, and tactics we believed were set in stone were done so by a nation that has not faced a peer threat for a very long time,” Jersey told Coffee or Die. “Let me be clear, we trained the Ukrainian pilots as the experts, but there is no substitute for aerial combat. They are the experts now.”

The story of the Ukrainian air force, once fully told, will undoubtedly influence the thinking of air power theorists and combat aviators for generations to come. Above all, in this age of advancing technologies, Ukraine’s fighter pilots have clearly demonstrated the enduring importance of the human element in aerial warfare.
[...]
Creativity is one key pillar of the Ukrainians’ air war. For example, after the Russians destroyed many of the Ukrainians’ ground-based navigation aids, the Ukrainian pilots improvised ad hoc solutions to navigate their aircraft. When it comes to Russian air defenses, the Ukrainians simply fly “lower and faster,” Juice said, underscoring another key attribute of the Ukrainian air force — the courage to take extreme risks.

“It’s very difficult to fly low levels at night without night vision, without GPS, with obstacles,” Juice said. “We are more flexible than the Russians. Since 2014, we are trained for not typical missions. We are trained to do some crazy shit. We are ready to be deployed on absolutely not operational airfields.
[...]
Despite Russia’s advantages in technology and numbers, the Ukrainian air war has, in effect, become one of attrition. At this point, therefore, the Ukrainians’ top priorities are finding ways to replenish their stocks of expended anti-aircraft missiles and downed warplanes.

“I can’t estimate how many days, how many weeks we can hold the line in the air,” Juice said. “Surface-to-air missile systems and new jets are our priorities, to shore up our losses and maintain our air policing and to push away Russian jets. We can break it up into two stages. The first, easiest, and quickest stage is for Ukraine to receive old Soviet stuff, like MiGs, S-300s, Buks, [9K33 Osa surface-to-air missile systems], and other systems.”

“At the same time,” Juice added, “we need to start, as soon as possible, a second stage of delivering more advanced, Western systems — including US fighter jets. Both stages are essential for us to gain air superiority.”

To date, Ukrainian ground-based air defenses have been “pretty successful with a lot of kills,” Juice said. Even so, Russian anti-radar missiles — the Kh-31P, in particular, which is launched by Su-35 fighters — are taking a toll on Ukraine’s limited ground-based air defense assets.

Apart from backfilling Ukraine’s Soviet-era air defenses, Juice suggested the West also immediately supply Ukraine with more advanced systems such as NASAMS — a ground-based version of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), which is used to defend high-priority sites around Washington, DC. Regarding the timeline for Ukraine to employ such a novel, advanced air defense system, Juice said, “It might take months, but we must start now.”
DISPATCH: Interview With a Ukrainian MiG-29 Pilot (coffeeordie.com)

I hope NATO change course and deliver those Polish MiG-29 to Ukraine ASAP. I also hope Ukraine will be given access to NASAMS. It will require some training as he says, but the sooner they start the sooner those systems can be shipped to Ukraine. Not sure if Biden will allow F-16 transferred even medium term though.

 

[Vivendi]

Interesting analysis by Mick Ryan, arguing that Russian strategy failed miserably, mainly due to wrong assumptions, and also suggesting that getting Strategy right is more important than getting Tactics right; it might be possible to regroup and correct tactical errors, however errors in strategy are much worse to correct:

Major General (just retired!) Mick Ryan on Twitter: "Today I examine why #strategy matters in war, and how bad Russian strategy has been the root of all their military failures. 1/25 (Image - @UAWeapons) https://t.co/o4dn9OCPDf" / Twitter

To a layperson like me it seems he has some excellent points -- what do the experts on this forum think?

 

[Pentaprism]

The Russian army used new weapons for the first time in Ukraine, the work of the remote mining engineering system "Agriculture" was filmed near Kharkov. The video shows the moment of remote installation of minefields. The operation of this installation is similar to the work of the Grad MLRS. The difference is that instead of the warhead of a 122 mm rocket, they carry cassettes with mines. After the installation of mines, this territory is plotted on an electronic map, there is no need to carry out mine clearance manually, mines can be remotely deactivated.

Movement of a column of Russian military equipment of airborne units to the area of combat missions in the Kiev region

Mod edit: Text deleted for giving an irrational reply to a troll in support of his post.

Please stop supporting Pro-Russian propaganda and approving of the Russian remote laying of minefields to deny use of Ukrainian farmlands. No reply to this correction is necessary.

 

[John Fedup]

Interesting analysis by Mick Ryan, arguing that Russian strategy failed miserably, mainly due to wrong assumptions, and also suggesting that getting Strategy right is more important than getting Tactics right; it might be possible to regroup and correct tactical errors, however errors in strategy are much worse to correct:

Major General (just retired!) Mick Ryan on Twitter: "Today I examine why #strategy matters in war, and how bad Russian strategy has been the root of all their military failures. 1/25 (Image - @UAWeapons) https://t.co/o4dn9OCPDf" / Twitter

To a layperson like me it seems he has some excellent points -- what do the experts on this forum think?

Interesting points and clearly some basic assumptions were wrong. This can be blamed on either crappy intelligence or yes men not wanting to offer truthful facts. The strategy had a shaky foundation.

 

[Twain]

He is not but he still provides video material which can be looked at and analyzed.

Even if he is reporting false flag events, his material is a good source for evidence that the events were in fact staged.

We don't have to follow his narative and believe what He says, but we can look at the pictures and draw conclusions.

I studied history and in the very first semester I learned the importance of source critique. You cant just dismiss a source because it's biased, we wouldnt have a single history book if that was the standard. Instead we take the bias into account and try to work out fron what hard evidence there is what the real story is.

Seriously, that is what you are claiming now after all your complaining about Oryx being biased, your story changes a lot depending on your own biases.

BTW this is also the guy they trotted out when russia was trying to claim the UA shot down flight MH17 rather than russian sponsored rebels using russian equipment.

 

[tonnyc]

According to this news repprt, there is a fire at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant. This seems to be different from the forest fires last week.
@Feanor
How serious is this?

Kebakaran Terjadi di Kompleks PLTN Chernobyl yang Diduduki Rusia

Otoritas Ukraina melaporkan kebakaran kembali terjadi di zona eksklusi di kompleks PLTN Chernobyl yang sudah tidak aktif, namun kini diduduki pasukan Rusia.

news.detik.com

As best as I can tell this is a new forest fire. It should be just as serious as the previous forest fires. Lots of smoke and particulates constituting a health hazard. Someone somewhere (not here, but there'll be someone in some other social media site somewhere) will bring up the danger of radioactive particulates entering the lungs and giving people cancer and whatnot, but seriously the most hazardous effect would be from the smoke itself. Most of the radioactive particulates would've been washed away by rain a long time ago and the bigger chunks that aren't washed by the rain will be too big and heavy to go up in smoke. I.e., the danger is from smoke as in air pollution just like any forest fires, and not from radioactivity.

 

[John Fedup]

As best as I can tell this is a new forest fire. It should be just as serious as the previous forest fires. Lots of smoke and particulates constituting a health hazard. Someone somewhere (not here, but there'll be someone in some other social media site somewhere) will bring up the danger of radioactive particulates entering the lungs and giving people cancer and whatnot, but seriously the most hazardous effect would be from the smoke itself. Most of the radioactive particulates would've been washed away by rain a long time ago and the bigger chunks that aren't washed by the rain will be too big and heavy to go up in smoke. I.e., the danger is from smoke as in air pollution just like any forest fires, and not from radioactivity.

Not familiar with Ukrainian forests but possibly some radioactive material could have accumulated in decomposing vegetation on the forest bed rather than being washed away. Perhaps if the fire was intense enough this vegetation matter catching fire might release some radioactivity.

 

[tonnyc]

Not familiar with Ukrainian forests but possibly some radioactive material could have accumulated in decomposing vegetation on the forest bed rather than being washed away. Perhaps if the fire was intense enough this vegetation matter catching fire might release some radioactivity.

Previous forest fires in Chernobyl had no significant impact in terms of radiation hazard.
2015 fire.
2020 fire.
The scenario you described can indeed happen and likely have had happened, but the amount of radioactive material left on the ground after 35 years just isn't significant. The main health hazard will be from the fact that there's a raging forest fire, not because of the Chernobyl incident that happened 35 years ago.

 

[the concerned]

No matter what Russias intentions are regarding East Ukraine until they are back across their internationally recognised borders sanctions will remain. So long term this will cost them way to much to contemplate.

 

[John Fedup]

No matter what Russias intentions are regarding East Ukraine until they are back across their internationally recognised borders sanctions will remain. So long term this will cost them way to much to contemplate.

Depends on who them are. The Putin gang still have vast assets hidden away and Putin abandoning Ukraine would likely mean his end. If Russia is not able to maintain its military properly in the sanction environment then perhaps the intelligence/military and other senior government types may force a change. Also, how long a lifeline is Xi willing to offer? Do senior Russian military types want to be heavily reliant on China?

 

[Ananda]

Also, how long a lifeline is Xi willing to offer? Do senior Russian military types want to be heavily reliant on China?

First question; If Xi and CCP think that West will turn to China after they manage to break Russia, then they will prop up Russia.

Second Question; Do Russia have any other Choices?

In fact for China and Russia, do they have any other choices then to turn to each other ?