dimyh

Appreciate the posts even though we do not draw the same conclusions. I believe you are presenting your own concerns in a reasonable manner and not merely spouting vatnik propaganda points. It is perfectly understandable to be concerned about being vaporized over a war half the globe over but not taking a stand right now has its own repercussions. From the start I always believed Putin had committed strategic suicide the moment he sent troops across the border. The fact that he could secure a short-term victory still meant a long-time loss as we would resurrect the ghost of USSR only to have it slowly die away due to economic strangulation. Ending the war now with a few territorial concessions still has the West winning long-term, maybe 40 years out, with a neo glasnost undoing everything Putin is ranting about. However by not taking the additional risk and trying to end it right now has some significant consequences: Normalizes nuclear threats for offensive gains - if that becomes the norm then any nuclear nation can just wave around their arsenal to meet their demands. Nuclear proliferation - since nukes can be used with offensive threats then the only defense is having your own. Which means many smaller/less stable nation states will be loading up. I'm not looking forward to international nuclear Mexican standoffs between all the regional crazies. No longer deters land grabs - if Putin can get away with annexing clay with brute force then that opens up that opportunity for others sharing the same mindset. Continues propaganda machine - the most brainwashed in Russia are the older generation, still watching TV and still sipping that old Soviet nostalgia juice. The younger generation has lived without that legacy and is not as averse to Western culture. Adding another younger generation, immersed in more anti-West propaganda over their formative years is going to dilute the ones needed to make a long-term cultural change. Because it needs to be understood: the West is not trying to destroy Russian culture...we just want to stop the imperialistic ultra-nationalist ideals that says that they can bludgeon their neighbors anytime they want. While my initial idea was that by waiting it out and not joining the conflict directly we could achieve the same end goal by re-enacting a mini cold war. However we could strive for a more decisive win. We may not have a better opportunity of poor military performance, pathetic leadership vs a unified multi-national response featuring a defensive target valiantly fighting for their survival. The actions from this conflict are going to redefine the world order in ways we have not seen since the end of WWII.

So I'm still intrigued about the pipeline sabotage. Here is a clip that goes into some more detail, including some reasons for Russia to scuttle their own stuff. Avoid contract penalties due to a force majeur reasoning. Not sure how much they would save if that stood up in court. Not sure what else we could do even if we were able to positively identify RF/Gazprom as the saboteurs. We're running out of sanctions that we can throw at these assholes. Lifting technology sanctions so that RF/Gazprom could make the repairs. Which sounds absolutely fucking bonkers that anyone from the West would trust them with any repairs. Not sure how it works with a multi-national like this one but I'm guessing someone is telling Russia to back the fuck off, we got this. Possibly just to cause general instability or incite concern about the gas supply for the winter. Which is also ridiculous...nothing screams more little dick energy then threatening to take away the one thing everyone likes about you. Not because you have direct control of it but because of some "accident". It actually would make Putin look very weak. Or just your basic run-of-the-mill false flag operation. Where you are trying to point the finger at Ukraine, USA, or whatever western culprit you can imagine, in a supposed attempt to shut down any possibility of rapprochement. In any event all of those possible reasons sounds bat shit crazy if true. Not sure if Putin is showing his Chekist background and going to the only playbook he has left since his nuke brinkmanship button is worn out and broken at this point. If he is behind this then he is truly grasping at straws to figure out any type of angle he can gain. Curious to see ultimately what the investigators find out. They mentioned that the explosion could have been outside or possibly generated inside the pipe. Either way it sounds like a significant operation to pull off and something straight from a Bond movie or a Clancy novel.

fify

Russia not the only one in the referendum game. Netherlands putting together their own version declaring Russia belongs to them. Glory to King Willem-Alexander!

This guy provides a nice summary of sanctions and the impact upon the Russian economy to date. His delivery is a bit dry but he does slip in a few sly jokes such as oligarchs concerned about the changes in the building codes. (Why do the windows always have to be open?)

Yeah I understand being nervous but I think about the movie The Sting and the scene between Hooker and Gondorff the night before the big sting. Hooker is on edge and obviously nervous and Gondorff says: "Take it easy, you won't lose him now. We had him 10 years ago when he decided to be somebody." Putin lost this 10 years ago when he wanted to be the Soviet Union again. USSR in its prime could not outlast the economic powerhouse of the west. RF is starting in a worse economic and demographic hole and all this war did is accelerate the decline.

And if you need an uplifting message watch this cheerful interview of a Russian murderer who was pardoned so he can fight as part of Wagner. The lighting and depressing tone makes it look like an Ilya Repin oil painting from the 19th century. Except it moves and has subtitles. If you didn't know any better he could of been a prisoner from the first Crimean war.

Oh now she needs to tell the truth? Bitch, please. Hoping all of these propagandists get called out for their BS and get front row seats for whatever carbomb takes out Putin.

Motherfuckers...

Battle of the Stan's just kicked off. I don't know their backstory but looks like we have a new conflict to fire up in the old Soviet backyard.

Russia still making a late push to get the #1 recruiting class in the Eastern Europe conference. Look at all of those 2* star recruits still out there! Wonder if he is showing his depth chart and selling everyone on the benefit of guaranteed playing time?

I'm doubting it ever happened until Russia comes out and denies it. Then it 100% fact.

Also to note: the sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan last year was also seen as a sign of weakness. Either as simply militarily weakness or, at a minimum, a sign that USA's foreign policy was shifting away from overseas adventures. Just as we don't understand their willingness to go to war to annex territory, the Russians don't understand why anyone would willingly give up force in an occupied nation.

Things that put up more defense than the Russian army:

I suspect that if UF continues to demonstrate a high level of professionalism and keeps current operations on military only targets then those concerns are loosened. I bet the initial concern was that Ukraine would get petty and start targeting civilians, any type of soft target.

Which is why I'm 1000% behind Ukraine in this conflict. As long as they are willing to fight then I'm pushing for the best terms because you never know when an adversary will be this weak or stupid again. There might not be a better opportunity to recover their territorial integrity. Plus a victory demonstrates demonstrates precisely why authoritarian regimes are so toxic. If RF was content with being a major petro state working as an European peer that would be perfectly fine. Even if there was major corruption and significant kleptokracy but kept their stink within their borders then we could stomach that arrangement. But as soon as Putin started pushing some revanchist fantasy and supported by some ethno-natonalist ideology then that is a clear threat to other nation's self-determination.

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Also need to add this guy to my Twitter list. I haven't gone through all of it but it looks impressive. With giant pictures that helps my little Surly brain follow along. Tons of good stuff in his feed. Just needs to add some NAFO fellas to take it to eleven.

So I've been watching some this guys recaps. Just general info but good to see the map updates plus always helpful to hear the actual pronunciation of some of these crazy town names.

Me in middle school

And we should definitely be pushing the news about the Russian tactics in Donbass and Luhansk. No sham referendum is going to stop Ukraine or Sir Himars from continuing the attack. And the Russians are not willing to spill their own blood but will be pressganging any Ivan they see in those territories to take those bullets. Those citizens better have an exit strategy, getting out of town or start sabatoging whatever they can because Russia's winning strategy is built upon their suffering. It's brutal but if you can't GTFO then you need to start picking sides.

Ukrainian Independence Day!? Sure hope that the Ghost of Kiev is able to surprise Putin's mothership.

Here is a good article with a Russian perspective of their performance to date in the special operation. A bit surprising in the frankness of it. original article is Russian had to Google translate it: http://www.prisp.ru/analitics/11005-skorobogatiy-ukraina-gladiatorskie-boi-0408 Ukraine: gladiator fights Journalist, expert of the PRISP Center Pyotr Skorobogaty talked with the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Ruslan Pukhov about the difficulties that the Russian armed forces are currently experiencing on the Ukrainian front, what consequences the supply of Western equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine will lead to , and whether Western military corporations will be able to increase the production of arsenals. - Western weapons began to come into the possession of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In your opinion, how successfully can the Russian army, armed mainly with Soviet equipment, resist them? What technical problems are currently experienced by our armed forces? - If we talk about weapons of a new family, then in the Armed Forces of Russia, unfortunately, there are practically no fifth-generation combat aircraft. The latest version of our Su-34 bombers belongs to the fourth generation "plus" aviation. In addition, we do not have enough high-precision weapons and modern aiming equipment. This further reduces the effectiveness of this type of bombers, which are either forced to use unguided bombs at a height accessible to enemy MANPADS, or are forced to completely abandon actions to support troops. On the ground, the Russian army now uses mainly modernized third-generation tanks. Combat vehicles of the next Armata family still cannot enter service. Even our most modern T-90 tank available is a modification of the obsolete T-72. Simply put, the T-90 is a tuning of a Soviet tank. Therefore, to demand from them successful resistance to the latest Javelin, NLAW or Matador anti-tank systems is not entirely fair. In addition, a paradoxical situation has developed: the Soviet Union was the first country to invent an active protection complex (KAZ). But there is no KAZ on any of our combat tanks. This, of course, is a shame, because the experience of military operations in Ukraine has shown that a tank without a KAZ is now not at all capable of surviving on the battlefield. At the same time, the Israelis equipped their tanks with active protection systems, the Americans began to install them on their tanks, but we did not. Therefore, I have a big question for our military and for Uralvagonzavod. - Do you mean active protection complexes? - Yes. It's like gladiator fights. One fights with a short sword and shield, and the second with a trident and a net. That is, they were armed differently. So now. In the Armed Forces of Ukraine, to a large extent, the infantry and artillery army, and our armed forces act on armored vehicles. And besides, they are not equipped with modern really effective protection. - And what about the infantry? - We are very much short of infantry. The front is large, and the people involved in the special operation are not enough. Relatively speaking, the Ukrainians are on the defensive, they have a lot of artillery and fighters. We have to break into the front with an insufficient number of soldiers and on vulnerable tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Now in the Donbass, the Russian side is trying to solve this by using a large amount of artillery, but, as you can see, things are going very slowly. Another point - the SVO showed that at the moment the airborne troops, roughly speaking, are bad ersatz infantry. Because their aluminum infantry fighting vehicles are generally easily hit, and they have fewer other weapons than motorized rifles. You also need to remember that the Ukrainians have been actively training their army for eight years. They “driven” almost all of their infantry through the Donbass and actively used their artillery. That is, we used our artillery to an extremely limited extent, mainly in Syria or during exercises, while they were in a combat situation. Therefore, their gunners are more experienced. In addition, they learned how to use their old Soviet guns in conjunction with commercial quadrocopters. As a result, they have better, as they say now, "situational awareness", and they have better target designation. Simply put, in the case of an artillery duel, they often beat us. In general, the use of small drones has revolutionized the use of artillery. We actually missed this revolution and now we have to catch up "on the go." The SVO once again confirmed the thesis that you can launch hundreds, thousands of unguided projectiles, which seem to be cheap, but all this power is leveled by two guided missiles that accurately hit the target. Two missiles, for all their high cost, will solve more problems than thousands of unguided ones. Old conventional projectiles do not cause significant damage to the enemy, especially if he is deeply buried in the ground or hiding in concrete bunkers. This is another confirmation of the triumph of high-precision weapons. - The assault on Avdiivka, Marinka - are these just examples of the fact that it is possible to pour shells on well-fortified areas for a month and not achieve a breakthrough? - Yes Yes. Actually, the methods of the First World War (to put it bluntly) do not work, especially if you do not have superiority over the enemy in the infantry. A combination of modern reconnaissance equipment (including unmanned ones) combined with a large number of high-precision weapons could solve the problem of the enemy's positional front - but this is exactly what we lack. Well, plus to this, we simply do not have enough troops to effectively attack in one more direction. - Western states are now supplying Ukraine with weapons, in particular artillery and MLRS. These deliveries, accordingly, actualized the issues of the range of these guns. Why is distance so important? - The fact is that the Soviet weapons, which are now used by both Russia and Ukraine, be it howitzers or multiple rocket launchers, with a few exceptions, they hit no further than 20-25 km. Moreover, we have a lot of 122-mm howitzers, which generally fire only 13 km. Modern Western artillery is long-range - first of all, we are talking about 155-mm howitzers with a barrel length of 39 calibers, and especially 52 calibers - the latter have a range of up to 40-41 km. The problem of lagging behind the USSR and Russia in the range of artillery fire has been obvious since the eighties, alas. True, now Western equipment is at the disposal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine so far in homeopathic doses, but supplies are growing. Accordingly, during an artillery duel, Ukrainian systems will be able to destroy our batteries, and return fire simply will not reach the target. Finally, this issue is becoming particularly acute in connection with the commenced deliveries of HIMARS and MLRS missile systems to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which fire high-precision GPS-guided GMLRS missiles with a range of up to 85 km. - What about aviation? - There are two problems here - firstly, as already mentioned, we do not have enough precision-guided munitions and accurate means of detection and target designation in aviation, and secondly, Ukrainian air defense remains unsuppressed, operating on Soviet systems (S-300, Buk and etc.). In addition, the Ukrainians received a large number of MANPADS. As a result, aviation cannot freely operate effectively either from high and medium altitudes, or from low altitudes, which significantly limits its effectiveness, including in suppressing the same Ukrainian artillery and influencing enemy troops. To put it bluntly, we do not have air supremacy. The start of deliveries to Ukraine of modern Western medium-range air defense systems may exacerbate this problem. On the supply of Western weapons - Why is the delivery of Western weapons so slow? Is it due to the difficulties of training or is their sending intentionally dosed? - At the general political level in the West, there is still no political determination to supply Ukraine with truly massive quantities of heavy weapons, since this will require both partial “uncovering” of its armed forces and the need to send large numbers of at least instructors to Ukraine for training, but in reality - and their military operators for at least partial use of these weapons. The West is not yet ready to go to such a level of involvement and escalation, except for some inveterate Russophobes, like the Poles. Поэтому поставки Украине сейчас в значительной мере ограничиваются техническими и организационными моментами, доустимыми без такой степени вовлеченности. То есть нужно расконсервировать технику, провести регламентные работы. Потом нужно обучить людей с украинской стороны. Даже если военнослужащие обучены, они не станут стрелять так же, как опытные бойцы из западных армий. То есть нужен опыт. But the Ukrainians learn very quickly, they turned out to be quite talented warriors. Training takes several weeks, so in fact the supply of weapons is on the rise, including in terms of quality (the same HIMARS). By the end of summer, I think the situation on the fronts can become dramatic. In addition, we do not have mobilization; in fact, we are fighting with a peacetime army. And they already have the fourth wave of mobilization, so there is no shortage of people. Yes, the regular army has been largely eliminated in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but there is the first reserve, which was driven through the ATO. There are second and third tiers. That is, at some point, a positional deadlock may occur, as in the Korean War since 1951, and our army will simply stand up and will not be able to move further. Let's not hit them with nuclear weapons. - True, there is such a thesis that the supply of Western weapons is not so large that it would be possible to form reserves. They are thrown into battle and immediately knocked out. Accordingly, it is difficult for Ukrainians to create a strike group for a counterattack. - I'm not ready to argue with that. This thesis seems to be uttered in television talk shows for complacency. Yes, we see a picture that the Ukrainian “Volkssturm” somewhere in Lviv is armed with Maxim or Degtyarev machine guns. But those units that fight on the front lines are well supplied. They have a Reserve Corps and in which case the Armed Forces of Ukraine can counterattack. I think they are better armed than the Volkssturm. In fact, the underestimation of the enemy played a cruel joke on us. So far, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have not demonstrated the ability to launch effective offensives above the tactical level - to recapture a village or another. In essence, in the offensive they have the same tactical problems as the Russian side - the attacking forces are usually few in number, they come under fire from artillery (which usually cannot be suppressed) and quickly roll back or are unable to hold the newly occupied positions, armored vehicles massively affected. Let's see if the Ukrainians turn out to be something more in this regard. - There is another thesis - the number of barrels is not so important, but the formation of the projectile stock. According to your estimates, how regular is the supply of ammunition now, is it enough for combat operations? Is there a shortage of shells? - I find it difficult to answer this question. The fact that they are still shelling Donetsk and they do not have a shortage of fuel does not create the impression that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have serious problems with this. They are also living people, they are also dying , but I am not sure that the Ukrainians are experiencing a serious shell shortage, especially in light of the fact that they have begun to switch to Western systems with Western supplies of shells. Although I may be mistaken. I know one thing: unlike the Ukrainians, we started the SVO in white gloves. That is, we wanted not a single local resident to suffer. We opened the fighting as some kind of knightly duel. And this, sorry for the expression, is a dirty fight in the alley, where there are no rules. Test site Ukraine - What is the state of the Western military-industrial complex now? By and large, the Americans and Europeans have a chance to dump old weapons, clear out warehouses. And it looks like it's rebooting. Rumor has it that Western military corporations need a lot of time to restart their production. And others say that Ukraine is a testing ground for Western weapons, so they will be better prepared for the next clashes. - Yes, Western armies are getting rid of old equipment, and now they are ordering new ones. Of course, this is beneficial for the states: there is a load, new jobs appear, new taxes, and so on. Any war is a testing ground. For us it was Syria, for the West it was Ukraine. There is nothing shameful here, it would be foolish not to use it. Regarding the fact that they have some problems, I think this is Yaroslavna's standard lament for most military industrialists. They all over the world are terribly fond of complaining that they have something missing. Let's remember how tasty they were during the Cold War. All these productions can be quickly increased. If, say, the Germans run out of chips, they will ask the Americans for them. If the Americans, they will ask Germany. For example, did you know that the Abrams tank has a German cannon? They bought a license from them and are doing very well. Often what we think of as American is actually pan-Western and is done in a collaborative way. At one time, the United States bought licenses for unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel. If we talk about numbers, then we should not overestimate the complaints of the Western military. The total number of weapons and equipment in service with the armies of the entire NATO bloc is very large, and it is many times larger than ours, and, moreover, for the most part fresh. - By and large, there is coordination between various contractors? - Very often this happens not at the state level, but at the level of private companies. For example, when we wanted to buy Mistral-type amphibious assault ships from France, they had to Frenchize production. Because a number of American components or French parts made under an American license are involved in the manufacture of these ships for their own needs. The Americans refused to supply components for the sake of the Russian order, then they had to modify the ship. Western military companies like Korean components because they are cheap. Having multiple production chains can potentially create trouble. But one should not think that these problems will create a barrier to meet their own and Ukrainian needs in technology. There may be interruptions in the supply of individual components, but these are just particulars.

Not sure if the rest of the Russian propaganda media love having him on their side. Gotta be painful to take a cut in salary to counter the ham sandwich per diem Segal is demanding.