Russia's War Against Ukraine

[MengJiao]

they wont get past kamkatchka

  Wait.  Anyway, the Russians (or at least Putin) claim they haven't been trying to do anything yet.  Wait til you see them do something!  Then you will see them do something!


Ukrainian official responds to Putin saying offensive is not "anything in earnest" yet
From CNN's Tim Lister and Olga Voitovych

A senior Ukrainian official has responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertion that the offensive in Ukraine was only just beginning.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's office, said on Twitter: "37,000 dead Russian soldiers. Total sanitary losses [injured] of 98-117 thousand people. 10 generals were eliminated. 1605 tanks, 405 planes/helicopters were turned into scrap."

"Has Russia not started fighting yet? Is [the] Kremlin considering war only by Stalin's mathematics - 20 million losses?"

CNN is unable to verify Ukrainian claims of Russian losses.

Podolyak was responding to remarks by Putin to parliamentary leaders in Moscow on Thursday.

"Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven't even yet started anything in earnest" in Ukraine, Putin said.

He said the conflict might drag on until the "last Ukrainian is left standing."

"Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try," Putin said during a meeting which aired on state media television Russia-24.

"We have continuously heard that the West is ready to fight with us until the last Ukrainian is left standing. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. However, it seems like everything is going towards this," he said.

[nelmsm]

Back in 1977 I lived on the same dorm floor with a vet from the 82nd Airborne.  He said after spending 6 weeks in Alaska on exercise that the best thing the Russians could do for us was to invade Alaska.  He said they didn't run into anyone in the country who wasn't armed and knew how to use that weapon.

[MengJiao]

they wont get past kamkatchka

  Wait.  Anyway, the Russians (or at least Putin) claim they haven't been trying to do anything yet.  Wait til you see them do something!  Then you will see them do something!

"Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven't even yet started anything in earnest" in Ukraine, Putin said.

He said the conflict might drag on until the "last Ukrainian is left standing."

"Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try," Putin said during a meeting which aired on state media television Russia-24.

"We have continuously heard that the West is ready to fight with us until the last Ukrainian is left standing. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. However, it seems like everything is going towards this," he said.

  What's so odd about whatever it is Putin thinks he is saying is how scrambled it is.  Okay so.  Theoretically, he would like some kind of victory (or would he?  Does just blasting Ukraine forever satisfy whatever it is that he wants?  Maybe. If so it doesn't give Ukraine or the West much choice except to defeat him as quickly and thoroughly as possible).  Okay, so saying the point of the war is
to kill all the Ukrainians -- does this give Ukraine and the West any choice except to defeat him as quickly and thoroughly as possible?  It seems not.  If he was worried (as he seems to sort of mention)
about "tragedy for the Ukrainian people"...well he could just stop and leave.  As for defeating the Russians on the battlefield -- it seems like the Ukrainians are indeed trying so what's the point of saying
they can try?  Moreover...this business of not having seriously attacked yet seems very odd.  Shouldn't he be relishing the victory (small but not negligible) from which his forces are now resting?
So he definitely reached a point where he can declare victory, but even Putin doesn't seem to be noticing that.  Instead, that victory is written off as not even a real start.  So now (with lots of new weapons) the Ukrainians can try not to be exterminated.  This does not seem like a coherent set of utterances even for Putin.  Less than pointless, in fact.

[FarAway Sooner]

I'm not sure when Putin stopped bringing his A game, but it was apparently sometime before his invasion of Ukraine. 

Statements like this are bravado and stagecraft, which sometimes plays well with the Home crowd.  But in the old days, those statements of bravado and stagecraft still made some vague sort of sense.  Most of the communications from the Kremlin and from Putin seem incoherent. 

I can only pray that their nuclear controls are in better shape than their statecraft.  That strikes me as a dubious assumption, though.

[MengJiao]

I'm not sure when Putin stopped bringing his A game, but it was apparently sometime before his invasion of Ukraine. 

Statements like this are bravado and stagecraft, which sometimes plays well with the Home crowd.  But in the old days, those statements of bravado and stagecraft still made some vague sort of sense.  Most of the communications from the Kremlin and from Putin seem incoherent. 

I can only pray that their nuclear controls are in better shape than their statecraft.  That strikes me as a dubious assumption, though.

   I guess -- with some applied reading-between-the-lines, you can decode this verbal posturing of Putin's as having the revealing implication that he only wants to exterminate the Ukrainians.  The
implied threat is that now he will apply himself to exterminating them and he hasn't really started that yet and its going to take a few million years -- so LOOK OUT -- he's not stopping no matter how long it takes to kill all the Ukrainians.  I suppose that's a minimal aim compared to killing everyone on the planet, so maybe it makes a kind of remote logical sense if nothing else.  I mean if you have a few million years to waste -- why not get started now and be serious for once, right?

[Sir Slash]

Henry Kissinger was on FOX News tonight and he said both sides are reinforcing their positions right now but he expects the heavy fighting to resume soon, perhaps in August. He compared the situation to the WWI stalemate on the Western Front.

[GDS_Starfury]

Im still surprised that that fucker is still alive.
I also think that in a WW1 environment that the the Ukraine wins based on actual mobilization and long term national will.

[MengJiao]

Henry Kissinger was on FOX News tonight and he said both sides are reinforcing their positions right now but he expects the heavy fighting to resume soon, perhaps in August. He compared the situation to the WWI stalemate on the Western Front.

  There are a lot of differences.  Troop density is a lot less for example.  The Russians are already using SAMs to attack ground targets so they are running out of precision munitions just as the Ukrainians
start building up their long-range precision weapons and air defenses.  Also of course in WWI, the alliances had negotiable aims, unlike what Russia seems to be claiming its aim is -- the extermination of all Ukrainians.  You could say, "Wait, but wasn't one of the Ottoman Empire's aims the extermination of the Armenians?"  Sure well, but that's only one of the Central Powers.  The fact that four out of six Empires involved in WWI collapsed should be a warning to Russia's imperial ambitions in its campaign of extermination.

[GDS_Starfury]

remember during summer:  dont leave your tanks outside, they might melt.

[Uberhaus]

UK MOD is reporting that:
https://mobile.twitter.com/defencehq

Russia is moving reserve forces from across the country and assembling them near Ukraine for future offensive operations.
A large proportion of the new infantry units are probably deploying with MT-LB armoured vehicles taken from long-term storage as their primary transport...

Despite President Putin's claim on 07 July 2022 that the Russian military has 'not even started' its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment.

[Gusington]

If the Russians keep it up they can see 100s of thousands of their troops dead. Is that their aim?

[Uberhaus]

Im still surprised that that fucker is still alive.

Whoa!  I'm guessing you're not a Kissinger fan.  Well, he did have the cognisance to warn that the westernization of Ukraine was a redline for Russia.  Myself, I was wondering when he'd comment.

I also think that in a WW1 environment that the the Ukraine wins based on actual mobilization and long term national will.

The West is holding back in providing weapons to Ukraine.  https://www.dailypioneer.com/2022/columnists/us-helps-ukraine-but-ensures-war-doesn---t-go-nuclear.html

How would we know if the United States is deliberately starving Ukraine of weapons in order to force it into a compromise peace settlement that leaves some Ukrainian territory—maybe even a lot—in Russian hands?

You can imagine the White House having such a strategy, though it would never admit it. After all, if Ukraine managed to drive the Russian army out of the whole country, Moscow might panic and escalate to nuclear weapons. President Joe Biden's prime duty is to keep the United States safe, not to put the Ukrainian border back where it used to be...
There is reason to suspect, therefore, that the very slow drip-feed of American weapons to Ukraine is deliberate, and is intended to keep the Ukrainian government from winning too soon or too big. Better that both sides exhaust themselves and arrive at some sort of compromise peace deal.

Of course, the Ukrainians might actually lose as a result of this policy, in which case Biden would have to choose whether to save them by direct military intervention or not. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

Hypothetically, if Ukraine is given the weapons, they could humiliate Russia.  The US and UK are training officers and soldiers respectively. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62001336 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62102451
I think we can be certain that if the Ukrainians can retake Crimea, especially Sevastopol, the Russians will use nuclear weapons.  Sevastopol is obviously of the utmost importance to the Russians. If they can retake Donbas, it will be highly likely that the Russians will use nuclear weapons.

Right now Russia has an upper hand in the attritional warfare and the Ukrainians are being ground down.  https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/ukraine-war-paving-road-survival-victory

Russian electronic warfare (EW) is denying Ukraine a sufficiently fast kill chain to destroy Russia's artillery.
Russian artillery is fixing the Ukrainian military and preventing the Ukrainians from concentrating to undertake offensive manoeuvre.
Russian cruise missiles are imposing a high economic and political cost on Ukraine.
A shortage of skilled infantry and armoured operators is limiting Ukraine's offensive combat power.
Limited staff capacity is limiting Ukraine's ability to plan and execute combined operations at scale.

The BBC articles above discuss training Ua military is receiving abroad and the Rusi article goes on to discuss what Ukraine further needs to be supplied with.
The West has the choice of adequately supplying Ukraine and provoking Russia or possibly seeing Ukraine fail and shortly after a real threat being posed to the Baltic states and no one needs to be reminded that they are protected by Article 5.
Putin will clearly try to take Donetsk Oblast and then if possible Odessa, and Ukraine's southern coast linking up with Transnistria.
Does anyone have news about the buildup in Belgorod and Belorus with the intentions of getting to artillery range of Kyiv?

[GDS_Starfury]

Does anyone have news about the buildup in Belgorod and Belorus with the intentions of getting to artillery range of Kyiv?

Ive been reading about lots and lots of ammo dumps and storage facilities getting smacked by Himars strikes.  <:-)

[Uberhaus]

Does anyone have news about the buildup in Belgorod and Belorus with the intentions of getting to artillery range of Kyiv?

Ive been reading about lots and lots of ammo dumps and storage facilities getting smacked by Himars strikes.  <:-)

<:-) <:-) <:-)

[GDS_Starfury]

I'm guessing you're not a Kissinger fan.

I think in a time and place he was 100% the right guy in the right place.  I think hes a bit out of touch and way past his prime now.