Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Uberhaus]

Wanna see a Tesla Cybertruck with a HMG mounted on top?  Wish granted...

Chechen leader Kadyrov grins and drives around in his new toy, then name drops "Musk."

In the video he claims the vehicle is being sent off to fight in the "Special Military Operation." Presumably onto a battlefield with a Tesla charging station.

Queue the "Its Good to be the King" meme...

Hopefully, it can still burn and/or explode.

[bobarossa]

Putin's evil Belo Buddy picks up his d-20 and rolls for this week's strategy...

https://x.com/Liveuamap/status/1827775853339586792

...ah, line up most of Belorussia's troops and nearby Wagner mercs on Ukraine's border and threaten to invade.

I can't even figure out what smiley to add to that.

(Currently these are "military exercises" but that's how Putin's own invasion started. Wonder where their hospital units are.)

I'm confused (as usual), didn't Belorussia just send all it's military equipment to Russia?  Are they planning on crossing border with pitchforks and torches?

[ArizonaTank]

I keep seeing articles about how Russian troops have surrendered "en masse" in Kursk. The articles sometimes seem to be pointed at the idea that the Russian army is on the brink of collapse. 

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-08-25/ukraine-forces-russian-soldiers-prisoners-14973952.html

If history "rhymes," I don't see collapse as anywhere close yet. But we may be seeing the first cracks.

In history, collapse looks like:

-A gaggle of Iraqi troops surrendering to a journalist in Operation Desert Storm.
-Long lines of unguarded German POWs streaming back to collection points behind British lines in the last days of WWI.
-During the last weeks of WWI, a US infantryman, armed only with a stick, burst into a German bunker. Almost 100 Germans surrendered to him without a fight.
-100s of thousands of German troops began to surrender as entire units in the last month of WW2.

[ArizonaTank]

Wanna see a Tesla Cybertruck with a HMG mounted on top?  Wish granted...

Chechen leader Kadyrov grins and drives around in his new toy, then name drops "Musk."

In the video he claims the vehicle is being sent off to fight in the "Special Military Operation." Presumably onto a battlefield with a Tesla charging station.

Queue the "Its Good to be the King" meme...

Hopefully, it can still burn and/or explode.

Well apparently it is "bulletproof", at least against hand-gun ammunition.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-electric-pickup-bulletproof-stainless-steel-body/

[JasonPratt]

At this point, Kadyrov might be hoping it will go back into time when it reaches 88 miles per hour...

I'm confused (as usual), didn't Belorussia just send all it's military equipment to Russia?  Are they planning on crossing border with pitchforks and torches

One can only hope! -- but Ukraine looks to be taking this buildup very seriously. Evidently the Belos have equipment. Maybe Belosaur convinced Putin to let him keep his kit if he lines up threatening to invade Ukraine, I mean cough doing 'military exercises' on the border?

When are the various EU/NATO forces supposed to arrive on the Belo/Ukr border? That timetable could be a major factor on what's going on here.

[JasonPratt]

Russia's biggest air attack on Ukraine so far during the war -- which I suppose they had to be saving up for.

Most potentially problematic strike was a drone that wandered about 17 miles inside Poland before exploding on the ground. The Ukrainian Kursk offensive hasn't gone more than 25 miles yet. It probably is operator error (knowing Russian capability) more than a suggestive Russian terror oopsie (though y'know, knowing Russian psychology...)

Ukrainian Anna is fine, though some people were injured and one killed in her town.

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, no surge over the Belo border yet, but Wagner did post on its Telegram account that they're only posted in Africa and Belorus, not anywhere in Russia -- soooo apparently they didn't go to reinforce Kursk. If they're telling the truth. Ukraine, at least, does treat the buildup on the Belorussian border as including Wagner mercs.

[ArizonaTank]

Reports of a new Ukrainian strike across the border into Russia...

First there was the Kursk Oblast...

Now Belgorad Oblast.

Ukraine's strategy would make "Wee" Willie Keeler proud (Keeler was one baseball's all-time greatest hitters). "Keep your eye on the ball, and hit'em where they ain't," Keeler would say." 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukrainian-forces-descend-on-belgorod-in-fresh-attempt-to-break-russian-border/ar-AA1pwyZT?ocid=msedgntp&pc=NMTS&cvid=fbf9a6e78d614d77bc786b3725a9b0ac&ei=13

[JasonPratt]

I had seen some movement toward Belgorod from the west last week, and wondered if that would be a prelude to rolling up the Belgorod/Kharkiv front.

I kind of have Steel Divisions II campaign vibes from all this. 

[JasonPratt]

While all the cheering is going on, as Ukraine runs up the score, Russia has decided that they DAMN WELL NEED TO TAKE PROVOROSK (sp?) NOW, and have been sending a dozen human meat waves at it a day to try to overwhelm its few guardians. That's the supply node for the Ukrainian Donbas frontage, which if it falls would require them to create new and much less efficient reroutes for the front -- opening up a window of Russian assault opportunity across that front (maybe). Though more important for the Russians, Crimea might as well be unsupplied at the moment, and taking Prov would allow at least some road supply to feasibly happen for their occupation of that area.

Zeihan thinks the Russians might decide it's reasonable to simply shift all Crimean orks northward to take Prov, temporarily abandoning Crimea altogether with an option to come back later if they can hold the routing node themselves. Though to me that sounds more like ceding Crimea to try to hold the Donbas.

[JasonPratt]

If history "rhymes," I don't see collapse as anywhere close yet. But we may be seeing the first cracks.

In history, collapse looks like:

-A gaggle of Iraqi troops surrendering to a journalist in Operation Desert Storm.
-Long lines of unguarded German POWs streaming back to collection points behind British lines in the last days of WWI.
-During the last weeks of WWI, a US infantryman, armed only with a stick, burst into a German bunker. Almost 100 Germans surrendered to him without a fight.
-100s of thousands of German troops began to surrender as entire units in the last month of WW2.

I'm reading Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War, and just finished a section of Chapter 8 ("Maximum Danger") where in early February 1940, the British War Office sent two Russian-speaking officers to Finland to visit p-o-w camps and debrief (eventually 2075) captured Soviet troops. Their impression was of a common experience of horror, terrorized by the Soviet system whether as civilians or as soldiers. The p-o-w's were mostly shocked by Finland's humane treatment of them, and yet many believed they were still going to be shot. They overwhelmingly did not want to be traded off in prisoner exchanges, as that would be regarded by their Soviet masters as betrayal, leading to immediate execution upon return and dire consequences for their families.

And yet, none of this necessarily portended a political awakening. The basic Soviet troop attitude toward life (concluded the British officers) was that, "They accept the persecution in civil life and the brutal discipline of military life, the permanent shortage of food and clothes, and the ordering, herding, and hectoring by the Soviet state, as being the dictate of an unkind fate." The War Office's actual rationale in sending the officers had been to gauge the odds of an internal rebellion against Stalin's regime, but the officers concluded there was practically no chance of that -- not without equally overwhelming military conquest (by a kind western nation, not by the Nazis {wry g}) giving the people security. The officers observed that "twenty years of underfeeding," by itself, had resulted in "a very low standard of physique and lack of stamina," simply unconducive to even a successful military coup. "Patrotism as such was dead," the officers wrote. Because of Stalin bringing troops far from the Finnish area to fight (largely Ukrainians and Causasians, as I know from elsewhere), the p-o-v sample was widely indicative of all Russia west of the Urals.

Notably, the only thing that seemed to inspire enthusiasm among the Soviet peoples was religion, "in which they showed a lively interest," despite the regular 2 hour atheistic agitprop ladled on them each day (including during fighting!) But Putin has managed to corner the market on that, sewing up a potential gap to exploit, by co-opting the Russian Orthodox church to serve his quasi-messianic goals: that might be the most effective thing he has done to keep Russia from boiling out against him before now.

So yeah, what I've been hearing about modern POWs still fits the type established in that 1940 survey: the Russians may be so demoralized that (for example) they're willing to loot their own neighbors as the Ukrainians drive by (trying politely to dissuade them), but they've been systematically beaten down in a way to minimize effective uprisings. The troops would rather make other people more miserable than they themselves are, than stop their own misery which they see no end to and no hope out of -- aside from quick looting gains and bragging rights over defeated foes.

(Btw, Stalin's War is in effect an updated independently cross-researched version of Suvorov's Icebreaker Thesis, with only some rare cursory-critical nods toward "Suvorov". It has the merit of being much more chronologically ordered, and tries to be much more sober and reserved about its inferences. While I appreciate that, I've also found McMeekin throwing Suvorov under the bus on his rare nods, without fair regard for the sourced evidence on why Suvorov took his positions.)

[ArizonaTank]

Wanna see a Tesla Cybertruck with a HMG mounted on top?  Wish granted...

Hopefully, it can still burn and/or explode.

Yes, they do burn...and quite dramatically.  See the below:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/this-used-to-be-a-cybertruck/ar-AA1pxjD2

[Jarhead0331]

I heard F-16s have made their first air to air kills.

[ArizonaTank]

I heard F-16s have made their first air to air kills.

Saw that as well...

[JasonPratt]

Link to Iron Eagle soundtrack on Youtube needed for verification.