Politics

[Tanner Lee]

You seem to agree and disagree with me at the same time?? In any event, I think we are on the same page more or less..

Yeah I agree and disagree. I really haven’t made up my mind on the issue because we don’t have a clear picture of what is really going on. There is so much propaganda on both sides and I really am suspicious of the current US administration I don’t really know anything for certain.

I agree with you that we need to support Ukraine but I am also worry that this conflict will get out of control. I really don’t want to have to go and fight and my friends in the military to go and fight either. At the end of the day I know we’re I put my trust and will do what needs to be done. I really at this point I just want to see the war end before it gets out of hand.

This isnt a history book I am reading it’s really life and that has affect the way I see the conflict some and the dangers it poses.

 

[CoElkHunter]

"At the end of the day, the war needs to end. Unfortunately, neither side seems to want to end the war without the ability to walk away with honor. The one belligerent who refuses to offer honor to the other is Ukraine."

This war is wrong, it is unfortunate but it is a fact. The potential for nuclear weapons usage is there, so the old mechanism of ending the war of one side utterly conquering the other is not an option. It therefore has to end in a compromise. One hopes that sensible cool heads are looking at what that may be. To roll back to the pre-February situation would probably not satisfy Russia. To give away the annexed territories would not satisfy Ukraine. Perhaps a thin land strip to Crimea would do it, together with a pledge of Ukraine not joining NATO and Russia pledging to halt further expansion.
Clearly going forward the mechanism for preventing global conflagrations needs to be revisited. World leaders can and must be made to talk to each other more frequently and meet, air grievances, work out solutions. The UN has utterly failed in it's original mandate to do that, it is now largely irrelevant. Perhaps what is now needed is an association of parliaments who force their elected leaders to interact. Using contentious situations to make political points should be utterly banned as it just creates the seed for a conflict and fans the flames. The Democrats shoulder a heavy responsibility for having done just this to get rid of Trump with all the anti-Russia nonsense. Major powers will always have differences, but when you elevate it to presidential level and force them into the ring of ego's you are asking for trouble.

I agree the UN has failed terribly with its original purpose to prevent exactly what we're seeing in Ukraine with the invasion of its sovereignty by Russia that has put the world on the verge of WW3 with Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons. The UN replaced the useless League of Nations after WW2 in an attempt to prevent WW3. They have failed miserably to contain Putin's military aspirations and conquests over the last 14+ years, including the many THOUSANDS of documented WAR CRIMES committed by Putin and his henchmen in Syria and now Ukraine. How can a rogue state that Russia has become, still be a member of the UN Security Council? In my opinion, many of the UN members have favored Russia and China for economic reasons for years and have overlooked their original purpose as members to do whatever it takes to prevent WW3. The only reason Putin hasn't already used nuclear battlefield weapons is his uncertainty of NATO's response. Just my 2 rubles.

 

[Wheels]

 

[Wheels]

 

[cpr0312]

 

[cpr0312]

 

[NE 7x57]

Russia invaded Ukraine, and the war could end tomorrow if Russia would take what's left of their crap army and go home, but we all know that's not going to happen. Whatever their rational they consider it in their national interest to conquer Ukraine. They have stated that repeatedly. They have also stated that anyone in Ukraine who doesn't believe they are Russian are actually Nazis and need to be pushed out, eliminated etc. So if that is the case then any ceasefire or "truce" will be temporary at best, a pause in an ongoing conflict. If so then the only way this conflict can end and not leave the question unsettled, is with Russia completely defeated, anything less and the can has been kicked down the road...again.

As to Ukraine's unwillingness to negotiate. They've had their cities destroyed, their citizens raped, killed and kidnapped, their infrastructure blown apart, They've had the Russians and others agree to respect their sovereignty in the past and found those commitments worthless.To put it bluntly they're pissed off. What they want is Russia off Ukrainian soil now and forever and they are more than willing to fight and die to do that. A Ukraine has been created that will hate anything to do with Russia for centuries. I don't see them being in the mood to negotiate until they are sure it's on their terms.

 

[PARA45]

@Red Leg, do you believe the Russians have used their best trained soldiers in this war?

 

[Red Leg]

@Red Leg, do you believe the Russians have used their best trained soldiers in this war?

Their two most professional (by Western standards) combat organizations were the VDV which are their airborne airmobile formations and their naval infantry (marines). One should add the Wagner Group to that total. Wagner are essentially government sponsored mercenaries with meaningful combat experience in the Middle East and Caucasus.

The VDV was destroyed as a combat effective organization in the initial stages of the war when they seized and attempted to hold Hostomel airfield near Kiev and attempted to seize key infrastructure of the port of Odessa. They suffered horrific casualties, and no conventional formations were able to break through to relieve them. For their part, the naval infantry were fed into the battle of attrition at Mariupol. They too suffered casualties exceeding 50% of their force, and have not been a contributing factor since. Neither group will be capable of regenerating trained formations during the duration of this war.

The conventional forces were also Russia's first line units. DOD and the UK both publicly estimate that 1/3 to 1/2 of Russia's modernized formations and associated combat platforms have been destroyed. Based on the Oryx open source count, I suspect the actual attrition is even worse. Russia will be decades recovering from this miscalculation.

It speaks to the rampant delusion that affects such totalitarian societies that they now are counting upon, and may actually believe, 300K mobilized but barely trained soldiers manning obsolete equipment will somehow make a difference.

I included the clips below from a popular Russian TV show discussing current events. Normally they are heavily scripted for propaganda purposes. For the first time Western observers are treated to independent thinkers questioning the special military operation.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1586395220476039168

The final clip is a parody recreation of a Russian recruiting video for the VDV airborne. It is getting as much viewership in Russia as it is in the West.

 

[Ray B]

I have two questions for those that access to the various study of war organizations.
1. On their own (without other nations providing military aid) how would Ukraine do against what we know about the Russian army?
2. given the present course of the war, what is the over/under (soonest/latest) expectations for an end of hostilities?

 

[Wheels]

There have been reports on the internet for a couple of days that the UK took out Nordstream. Russia supposedly had hacked Truss' phone and has proof that Truss texted Blinken "It's done" immediately after Nordstream was taken out.

Now the BBC is talking about an investigation regarding Truss' phone being hacked.

This is getting more interesting if there is anything to this.

Liz Truss phone hack claim prompts calls for investigation

The Mail on Sunday claims the ex-prime minister's phone was hacked while she was foreign secretary.

www.bbc.com

 

[Hunter4752001]

Obviously fake news. Not even the Poms give classified info to temporary employees.

 

[observe]

Speaks volumes I think...

 

[PARA45]

Thank you @Red Leg for your detailed response. I asked you the question due to a discussion we had at work, and some military individuals believing that the Russians were not using their most up to date equipment and soldiers.

 

[bowjijohn]

..... some military individuals believing that the Russians were not using their most up to date equipment and soldiers.

I think that is unlikely given the importance of this war to their strategic ambitions

The reports I read prior to the invasion did hint at a far more sophisticated 'New Russian Army' - however that has not (so far) proved the case

I now suspect that they never really had the updated equipment, tactics, command and control systems that were hinted at

I do believe though that they still have some major strategic assets and some level of competence in ''irregular warfare''

That kind of expertise would fit with the paranoid control of a totalitarian regime as it doesn't require empowering the rank and file - always dangerous for a dictatorial regime

 

[Major Bonkers]

This article answers PARA45's posed question nicely:

https://spectator.org/putin-army-inept-weapons-technology-himars/

The Russians are an analogue army fighting a digital war.

 

[jeanes]

View attachment 497305

The Joseph Goebbels school of journalism.

 

[Wheels]

 

[Red Leg]

This article answers PARA45's posed question nicely:

https://spectator.org/putin-army-inept-weapons-technology-himars/

The Russians are an analogue army fighting a digital war.

I had missed this article thank you. Tyrrell has a way of getting to the nub of any subject.

I think your last comment is very well put. I would add one additional point to his thesis. It is amazing to me the difference a generation and a half outside the Russian bubble has made in the Ukrainian military, its leadership and soldiers to think differently than their Russian counterparts. They daily demonstrate the ability to quickly adapt current technologies and exploit totally new weapon systems on the fly. Meanwhile their counterparts actually seem actually to have regressed from the capabilities of the Red Army.

A short aside. When as a colonel, I was XO to the TRADOC CG (Training and Doctrine Command). In 1998 we made a trip to Eastern Europe to visit with counterparts in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In the latter, I had a long conversation with their chief of field artillery where we were comparing US and Soviet/Russian artillery employment and tactics. The Gulf War was still rather recent where we had employed very agile artillery and digital integration of fires with observers and sensors such as counter battery radar. I had been a artillery brigade operations officer during that campaign and we had a long discussion over the employment of our artillery.

At one point he finally laughed and said that the Russian's believed artillery was all about formulas. X amount of ground required X amount of shells. It was thinking little different than the First World War. I have seen nothing in their employment that says their reorganization of their armed forces over the last 20 years has done anything to change their "thinking" about warfare.

 

[jpr9954]