Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Sir Slash]

I saw that same footage this morning on FOX. Doesn't look like the Russians are too keen to stand and fight for Mother Russia I guess.  ::)  Maybe Vlad should go down there and take control himself and show them how it's done.  :hide:

[Tripoli]

Can some of you ground pounders help out a USN guy?  It looked to me like possibly some form of road block at the front of the column, followed by the following vehicles jaming up, followed by ambush on the traffic jam.  Eventually, the blockage up front was cleared, and the column moved on, leaving about a  platoon of their vehicles burning.  Am I interpreting this video correctly?

[Gusington]

Russia is maintaining it's lead as the world's leading exporter of bullshit.

[MengJiao]

Russia is maintaining it's lead as the world's leading exporter of bullshit.

  And the Turks are being realistic:


  From CNN's Betsy Klein

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues his attempts to position himself as the broker between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the West, he spoke by phone with US President Joe Biden.

They discussed "their shared concern about Russia's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine," according to a statement from the White House.

"They reaffirmed their strong support for the government and people of Ukraine, underscored the need for an immediate cessation of Russian aggression, and welcomed the coordinated international response to the crisis. President Biden expressed appreciation for Turkey's efforts to support a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, as well as Turkey's recent engagements with regional leaders that help promote peace and stability," the statement read.

  Plus, it turns out, Turkey bought a Russian air defense system recently and now they want 40 F-16s to keep everybody on their toes.  I guess they's better load up while they can.  An additional
40 F-16s would give them a total of about 300 to go with their nice new S-400 Russian air defense.  I don't think the Russians are going to want to mess with Turkey.

[FarAway Sooner]

There's an old family story in the FarAway household that, 40 years ago, a plumber was working on some stuff in our kitchen.  He was trying to explain what he needed to fix, and after asking one or two questions, my mom blandly said, "That sounds good.  Go ahead and fix it.  I didn't follow everything you said, but that's one reason why you're a plumber and I'm not."

At that point, the plumber scratched his chin, looked at my mom thoughtfully, and said, "Ma'am, there's only 3 things you need to know to be a plumber.  Hot water on the left, cold water on the right, and shit don't run uphill." 

Shit seldom runs uphill in authoritarian regimes either.  That dramatically undermines the professionalism and accountability of everybody, including the armed forces.  Whatever his grasp of the situation now (and that's debatable), Putin clearly had no idea what would happen if the Ukrainians actually tried to stand their ground and fight. 

That said, I have no idea who is winning the military war of attrition that seems to be going on in Ukraine right now.  The only clear losers seem to be the Ukrainian civilians.  I've heard very few military experts in the US publicly predict that the Ukrainians can fight the Russians to a standstill over the long term.  If that opinion is changing, I'm only hearing it here.

The US outsourced an awful lot of vaguely military functions to US-based firms during the Iraq war (Blackwater was the most notorious).  The US military seems to be staying well out of the shooting war for now.  I wonder if US companies have US-manufactured equipment and US-trained employees on the ground in Ukraine?  I wonder if that's even legal?

I'm sure that the CIA has been doing everything it can to get assets into place.  I don't even have any idea how many such assets they have for roles like this.  I can't imagine their budget for that sort of thing is as large as it was back in the 80s.  On the other hand, they have a MUCH larger pool of recently seasoned combat veterans to draw on than they did 20 years ago.

I wonder what the Europeans are doing.  I don't even have a good sense for which European militaries and countries have the best reputations for the sort of bare-knuckle fighting going on in Ukraine right now.

[MengJiao]

There's an old family story in the FarAway household that, 40 years ago, a plumber was working on some stuff in our kitchen.  He was trying to explain what he needed to fix, and after asking one or two questions, my mom blandly said, "That sounds good.  Go ahead and fix it.  I didn't follow everything you said, but that's one reason why you're a plumber and I'm not."

At that point, the plumber scratched his chin, looked at my mom thoughtfully, and said, "Ma'am, there's only 3 things you need to know to be a plumber.  Hot water on the left, cold water on the right, and shit don't run uphill." 

Shit seldom runs uphill in authoritarian regimes either.  That dramatically undermines the professionalism and accountability of everybody, including the armed forces.  Whatever his grasp of the situation now (and that's debatable), Putin clearly had no idea what would happen if the Ukrainians actually tried to stand their ground and fight. 

That said, I have no idea who is winning the military war of attrition that seems to be going on in Ukraine right now.  The only clear losers seem to be the Ukrainian civilians.  I've heard very few military experts in the US publicly predict that the Ukrainians can fight the Russians to a standstill over the long term.  If that opinion is changing, I'm only hearing it here.

The US outsourced an awful lot of vaguely military functions to US-based firms during the Iraq war (Blackwater was the most notorious).  The US military seems to be staying well out of the shooting war for now.  I wonder if US companies have US-manufactured equipment and US-trained employees on the ground in Ukraine?  I wonder if that's even legal?

I'm sure that the CIA has been doing everything it can to get assets into place.  I don't even have any idea how many such assets they have for roles like this.  I can't imagine their budget for that sort of thing is as large as it was back in the 80s.  On the other hand, they have a MUCH larger pool of recently seasoned combat veterans to draw on than they did 20 years ago.

I wonder what the Europeans are doing.  I don't even have a good sense for which European militaries and countries have the best reputations for the sort of bare-knuckle fighting going on in Ukraine right now.

  Good points.  I think the plumbing explanation for the moment is: regimes want to stay in power.  They can't do it if they lose all credibility.  The Russians have to move fast to shut down this
war or they lose all credibility.  Now that's not to say regimes with no credibility cannot cause massive slaughters, but I think the Russians would rather keep some credibility rather than descend into
the kind of pure slaughter and endless destruction that is likely if the war doesn't stop soon.  But I guess we will see how it goes in the next few days.

[Skoop]

The longer the Ukrainians hold on the longer the bullshit will pile up and back flow into Putin's office.  That's what happened in Afghanistan for them.  They denied all the bullshit until the staggering casualties made it undeniable.

The fact that Russian citizens can't even call Ukraine a war is bullshit, and that's going to be reckoned with soon as those body bags and death notices start returning home to Russia.

[bobarossa]

The longer the Ukrainians hold on the longer the bullshit will pile up and back flow into Putin's office.  That's what happened in Afghanistan for them.  They denied all the bullshit until the staggering casualties made it undeniable.

The fact that Russian citizens can't even call Ukraine a war is bullshit, and that's going to be reckoned with soon as those body bags and death notices start returning home to Russia.

For comparison over a 9 year period (from Wikipedia's Soviet Afghan War article):
The total irrecoverable personnel losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, frontier, and internal security troops came to 14,453. Soviet Army formations, units, and HQ elements lost 13,833, KGB sub-units lost 572, MVD formations lost 28, and other ministries and departments lost 20 men. During this period 312 servicemen were missing in action or taken prisoner; 119 were later freed, of whom 97 returned to the USSR and 22 went to other countries.

Of the troops deployed, 53,753 were wounded, injured, or sustained concussion and 415,932 fell sick. A high proportion of casualties were those who fell ill. This was because of local climatic and sanitary conditions, which were such that acute infections spread rapidly among the troops. There were 115,308 cases of infectious hepatitis, 31,080 of typhoid fever, and 140,665 of other diseases. Of the 11,654 who were discharged from the army after being wounded, maimed, or contracting serious diseases, 10,751 men, were left disabled.[334]

Material losses were as follows:[41]

    451 aircraft (includes 333 helicopters)
    147 tanks
    1,314 IFV/APCs
    433 artillery guns and mortars
    11,369 cargo and fuel tanker trucks.

[ArizonaTank]

Can some of you ground pounders help out a USN guy?  It looked to me like possibly some form of road block at the front of the column, followed by the following vehicles jaming up, followed by ambush on the traffic jam.  Eventually, the blockage up front was cleared, and the column moved on, leaving about a  platoon of their vehicles burning.  Am I interpreting this video correctly?

Yes, good synopsis. But not certain. Some outlets are saying this was a drone attack.

Anyway, the bunching up is the "sin". These guys haven't trained to react to an ambush. Some bunching is inevitable, but these guys take the cake. A unit that has trained for this will have the guys coming up deploy before they get into the kill zone, and then put together a flanking force (if the ambush was a ground attack). It takes training and good communication to pull that off. To be fair to them, this is a semi-urban environment, and maybe the tanks didn't want to start driving down side streets where they might catch a molotov. But still it does look like there are fields to the sides where they could have operated.     

[al_infierno]

https://www.businessinsider.com/john-bolton-putin-saw-trump-doing-a-lot-of-his-work-for-him-2022-3

John Bolton, who served as President Donald Trump's national security advisor, on Wednesday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't invade Ukraine while Trump was in office because "Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him."

Bolton pointed to Trump's outspoken criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military and diplomatic alliance established in the wake of World War II.

"I think one of the reasons that Putin did not move during Trump's term in office was he saw the president's hostility of NATO. It was widely reported in American media," Bolton said during an interview with SiriusXM's Julie Mason. "And to Putin's mind, it's a binary proposition: a weaker NATO is a stronger Russia."

Bolton went on, "Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him, and thought, maybe in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO, and then it would just ease Putin's path just that much more."

[FarAway Sooner]

I think if Putin had to choose between the US exiting NATO, or the Soviet Union successfully occupying Ukraine, he'd take the first opportunity in a heartbeat. 

That, of course, assumes that Putin has (roughly) the same information as I do and is vaguely in touch with reality.  Putin has long had a reputation as being a cunning, pragmatic, realist, but the last few weeks have really called that assessment into question.  I have no idea what Putin is thinking or doing at the moment.

My sense, after spending a little time in Eastern Europe immediately after the Iron Curtain came down in 1990, was that the Soviet Union was a hollow shell of what it had claimed to be or even what we in the West had imagined it to be.  Like modern Russian, it did in fact have thousands and thousands of nuclear warheads. 

Which essentially made it a toothless dog wearing a suicide vest.

[Sir Slash]

Important to remember that Bolton did not part ways with the Trump Admin. in good terms and has been quite critical of him since. Trump claimed Bolton gave assurances his policy to destabilize Venezuela would result in an uprising against Maduro and he was wrong.

Serious question. Would RPG's work well against the Russian armor and if so, why haven't we seen any? Or maybe we have and I just missed it. It seems there would be tons of them laying around a country with lots of old Russian equipment and could be very useful. Do they only work in an urban environment? Are they now obsolete? Just curious.

[W8taminute]

I will point out, in a friendly manner and please I'm not being condescending here, that when I used the T word a few pages ago I was immediately crucified. 

You don't know what I'm thinking in my head but you immediately labeled me as something I AM NOT!!!!

I love you guys so please don't use hurtful language against me. 

That is all....carry on.

[Con]

Pretty powerful reporting from BBC newsman on the ground -

https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/1502000265490227206?s=20&t=B36vBX8CLXbsIYrosWWmZw

[ArizonaTank]

...
Serious question. Would RPG's work well against the Russian armor and if so, why haven't we seen any? Or maybe we have and I just missed it. It seems there would be tons of them laying around a country with lots of old Russian equipment and could be very useful. Do they only work in an urban environment? Are they now obsolete? Just curious.

There was some discussion of this several pages back. Yes, RPGs are a thing in this war, and they have been "seen."

There was actually a video of Ukrainian Special Police with RPGs stalking a couple of Russian tanks in a field...and it seems like they took them out. I have also seen another video (sorry don't have the link anymore) where an RPG takes out a Russian tank by hitting it on the side. 

In theory, the Russian's have a bunch of Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) on their tanks that should stop "traditional" RPGs. These ERA upgrades look like boxes hanging in rows on the turrets and side skirts if you aren't familiar with it. When these boxes are hit, they explode outward, reducing the penetration power of the incoming round. But the discussion was that the ERA may not be working as designed. Maybe missing. Maybe poor quality. So that is why the Ukrainians are still able to kill the tanks. Also, there are some RPGs that can fire "tandem-charge" rounds designed to defeat ERA. Basically, the round has two stages, the first sets off the ERA charge, then the second comes in behind.

Also, those RPGs can eat lighter vehicles alive. They can also be used for anti-personnel work. Think there is a sniper firing from a basement window, but you can't see him? Send in an RPG round.