2022-2024 Russo-Ukrainian War

[Red Team]

One other area that Ukrain might have an edge in, is intelligence regrding Russian movements. The sites that track aircraft show an E-3 running a racetrack pattern in Eastern Poland. If we are sharing intel it could help explain why the Ukrainian air force and C3 assets are still up and running. Its also likely to be a source of serious risk and escalation once the S-400 is in range of it.

Shooting down a NATO AWACS aircraft in Eastern Poland is a one-way ticket to the Russian Air Force being reduced to carnival parts.

[TopHatter]

The thing I can't figure out is where is the freaking Russian artillery.

Yeah, that's....bizarre. I mean, Russia worships at the altar of massed artillery and for a damned good reason.

[Red Team]

Yeah, that's....bizarre. I mean, Russia worships at the altar of massed artillery and for a damned good reason.

Maybe they want to take Ukraine relatively intact? Russia barely had the money to maintain the infrastructure of their own major cities before the escalated sanctions, I'd imagine they'd have next to nothing to spare to rebuild Ukraine.

[Bigfella]

Get that walking clusterfuck away from the lines. He is worst than Trump, another showman surrounding himself by yes-men. He's only interested in photo-ops, not anything concrete. We've been screaming for months that Putin was going to invade and he still insisted he saw no signs of pending doom. Did nothing to beef up defence and only declared Martial Law on the Day of the Invasion when DNR and LNR had mobilized for days. Talked to everyone else but the one person who could stopped the invasion, Putin. Pretty well ignored Putin until it was too late. Put him on the lines and he would only open the gates to Kiev just to get a dramatic picture of him and him alone facing down a tank.

If he were in my chain of command, I would have relieved him for incompetence.

You are supporting my point sir. I wasn't suggesting he take command, just be seen to fight....or give a nice speech....or something. About the most useful thing he can do right now is either martyr humself for the cause or at the very least look inspirational. He won't achieve either scuttling into a helicopter as it flies him to safety.

Ukraine is going to lose this round. It needs to generate as much sympathy from the outside and as much determinaton from the inside as it can. A few Ukranian units and the President fighting to the death (or something close to it) somewhere near Kyiv will do more to achieve both than any of them will do by running. Within a couple of weeks western Ukraine is going to have more defeated soldiers & homeless politicians milling around than it will have weapons & offices to give them.

The President and a few soldiers going out in a blaze of glory will be about the most useful thing any of them can do by the time the Russian army arrives. Make the Russians pay, generate sympathy, inspire the patriots.

[Bigfella]

https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/sta...bee56d585d%2F0

These Ukrainians are hard motherf--kers.

Sadly that is precisely the sort of thing that is needed at the moment. I really wish it wasn't.

[InExile]

Ukraine is going to lose this round. It needs to generate as much sympathy from the outside and as much determinaton from the inside as it can. A few Ukranian units and the President fighting to the death (or something close to it) somewhere near Kyiv will do more to achieve both than any of them will do by running. Within a couple of weeks western Ukraine is going to have more defeated soldiers & homeless politicians milling around than it will have weapons & offices to give them.

Is it really a foregone conclusion?

Is there any chance that the Russians assaults on the major cities fail; atleast to the extent that the Russians suffer casualties to the point that Putin cannot ignore. Perhaps making him go for some face saving deal with an exit such that its not a total defeat for the Ukranians?

Wishful thinking?

[Officer of Engineers]

You are supporting my point sir. I wasn't suggesting he take command, just be seen to fight....or give a nice speech....or something. About the most useful thing he can do right now is either martyr humself for the cause or at the very least look inspirational. He won't achieve either scuttling into a helicopter as it flies him to safety.

Ukraine is going to lose this round. It needs to generate as much sympathy from the outside and as much determinaton from the inside as it can. A few Ukranian units and the President fighting to the death (or something close to it) somewhere near Kyiv will do more to achieve both than any of them will do by running. Within a couple of weeks western Ukraine is going to have more defeated soldiers & homeless politicians milling around than it will have weapons & offices to give them.

The President and a few soldiers going out in a blaze of glory will be about the most useful thing any of them can do by the time the Russian army arrives. Make the Russians pay, generate sympathy, inspire the patriots.

Those kind of things are for the movies. I don't want that clusterfuck there because he will get people killed and more than likely get Kiev killed. He just announced himself Russia's Enemy #1 and his family Public Enemy #2. What fucking ego. If there is a job, it would be the same job the HEER did the last days of Berlin, to buy time for the civies to reach Western allied lines. Kiev civies are fleeing and if there is a military mission, that is it. To keep an escape corridor open and to keep open for as long as possible.

And do you actually think that clusterfuck could keep himself from assuming command?

And I remind you that the BEF served Great Britain better leaving Dunkirk than fighting to the last man on those beaches. If there was a choice of saving an Ukrainian Army from the Russians at Kiev or to have a movie about a comedian over-acting his death scene, I take the army.

[Parihaka]

2. Thought the same but thought I was wrong. Good eye, Iain.

This exchange tells us all we need to know about Putins physical and mental wellbeing I think.
I'd suspect he's micromanaging the assault himself.

[rj1]

Is it really a foregone conclusion?

Is there any chance that the Russians assaults on the major cities fail; atleast to the extent that the Russians suffer casualties to the point that Putin cannot ignore. Perhaps making him go for some face saving deal with an exit such that its not a total defeat for the Ukranians?

Wishful thinking?

Biden told lawmakers that Russian mechanized forces were 20 miles from Kiev moving south down both banks of the Dnieper River. That was 6 hours ago. They're probably to the outskirts now.

[Red Team]

This exchange tells us all we need to know about Putins physical and mental wellbeing I think.
I'd suspect he's micromanaging the assault himself.

I lol'ed at the neat little Freudian slip from his spy chief about adopting the LNR/DNR into the Russian Federation.

I understand that Putin is rumored to be diagnosed with Parkinson's, though I am unaware how relevant that would be to the above symptoms seen in the video exchange. That man looks lethargic.

[rj1]

Passing on from a Frenchman. On the Bundeswehr thread I posted the head of the German Army saying his force has been stripped bare and cannot contribute much to the Alliance.

In this context, French MPs are publishing an assessment of the French forces readiness for high intensity conflict and it is chilling...

They forecast ammunition would last 1 week.
The Air Force would run out of missiles in two days and of airplanes in 10 days...

Remove the U.S. and this alliance is...

[tbm3fan]

Is it really a foregone conclusion?

Is there any chance that the Russians assaults on the major cities fail; atleast to the extent that the Russians suffer casualties to the point that Putin cannot ignore. Perhaps making him go for some face saving deal with an exit such that its not a total defeat for the Ukranians?

Wishful thinking?

I think the Russian Army can take most of the cities in the basic sense. However, taking the cities and placing some troops here and there are not going to be effective in keeping things quiet. After talking with a Ukrainian couple today in my office my take away is that the population is more united and motivated that ever in the past. So while his troops may parade up and down the streets, the streets could be like Mosul or closer to home Northern Ireland. A drip, drip, drip of Russian casualties. Would that be enough to get Putin to pack up his gains and go home? Only Putin knows and from what I am hearing no one knows what is motivating him now.

However, it does seem a very large majority of the Russian population is not in favor of this invasion. Can they turn the tide? Well they can't exactly protest in the streets like we did in 1970 and does Putin even give a shit what his people think?

To me Putin seems to be wrapped up in his mind/ego at this time and all standard ways of anticipating how he would react is out the window. In his previous speech he was very angry at the dissolution of the Great Russian Empire. Does he want to reconstitute? Who knows? Does he want the Baltics back? Who knows? Does he want Finland back? Who knows? Is he sane? Who knows? Is he paranoid? Who knows? For all we know he has become a human Rubik's Cube.

[Officer of Engineers]

God, I wish people would understand. As much as people wish the Ukrainians would start bleeding the Russians drip by drip to intensify anti-war emotions back in Russia, the Ukrainians are going to bleed more. Much, much, muh more. I gave a ratio of a 150 to 1 in Taliban Afghanistan against the US. The ratio was far, far worst under Soviet Afghanistan. 2 million Afghans died for 9000 Soviet combat deaths.

As much as you want to see a Russian draped coffin, I will guarrantee you that there will be over 100 Ukrainian funerals for that one coffin. It is NOT a good exchange ratio.

Another thing. This isn't the first time these two groups went at it. The last big push was WWII and Stalin won that one hands down. Putin ain't Stalin but that is little comfort when he throws out Ukrainian families out into the cold like he did the Chechens.

The best outcome, Putin sacks Kiev and goes home, leaving Zelensky to put Ukraine back together and maintain a low intensity war with Ukraine. NATO will not allow a warring Kiev into NATO less we are wiling to fight WWIII.

[nvishal]

I'm reading gossip in private groups that Russia is marching with little resistance. Ukrainian soldiers are mostly surrendering.

If this is true then it sounds like an afg taliban redux. It almost seems like the Ukraine president is acting alone and the Ukrainian generals might have confidentiality cut a deal with Russia. It may explain why the US didn't order NATO to intervene.

[Parihaka]

I lol'ed at the neat little Freudian slip from his spy chief about adopting the LNR/DNR into the Russian Federation.

I understand that Putin is rumored to be diagnosed with Parkinson's, though I am unaware how relevant that would be to the above symptoms seen in the video exchange. That man looks lethargic.

Certainly his mental state has slipped, if the reports of his isolation are true he'll be pretty paranoid by now.