Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[YGIFS 19445]

Look, I'm willing to accept Russia conscripting prisoners, foreigners, and 70 year olds to die on the front in futile meat-grinder style frontal assaults on fixed, armored positions.  I have seen them committing baby murder, rape, torture, and myriad crimes against humanity.  But that they would stoop to the level of having a few guys type on a keyboard to infiltrate our election-news outlets.  I simply cannot believe that such a thing is possible.  But yes, detonating mines using small children as sweepers, is totally within the boundaries of behavior.  

So we're all agreed we're just gonna be this fucking stupid going forward?  Asking for a friend.  

[Schulz2.0 28657]

 

[Parliament 14027]

Why didn’t we send them a long time ago?

[statsman 5355]

Just now, Parliament said:

Why didn’t we send them a long time ago?

We were probably concerned about the unexploded ordnance littering the landscape. 
 
That was then. This is now. 

[tx 3 putt 75625]

Poor lady is about to slip and fall out a window 23 stories up …

 

[tx 3 putt 75625]

8 minutes ago, statsman said:

We were probably concerned about the unexploded ordnance littering the landscape. 
 
That was then. This is now. 

Unexploded munitions is a bad bad thing 

[Gatorubet 29797]

18 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Unexploded munitions is a bad bad thing 

I’m certainly more careful when playing croquet in the Falklands

[27-25 2030]

Artillery experts please chime in.  Can the submunitions be removed or replaced?  If so, I'm sure Ukraine would be more than willing to do the work of retooling the shells to their needed purpose.  AND it would get rid of ordinance that we would otherwise have to pay to dispose of anyway.  Win - Win.

[RDCanecutter 26014]

16 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Unexploded munitions is a bad bad thing 

CSB: Back in olden days when I was a Lieutenant and we still used M60 machineguns, I was in charge of running our guys through an M60 range on some half-deserted post. Which meant I got to climb up in the control tower and fiddle with all the switches that popped the targets up and down. I tried to inflict madness on my troops by using non-Euclidian math, making the targets pop up without repeating patterns. My favorite thing to do was the over-long pause, where guys would relax and look around, wondering if we were done, then BANZAI have all the targets jump up.

Anyway, there was long dead grass that would occasionally spark up, so a couple of times we had to stop firing, send dudes out there to stomp it out. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.

About the third shift to come through, the guys are chopping up targets, when there's a WHOOMP and soil flies up halfway down range. The Sergeants look up at me. "You do that, LT?" "No. No I did not."

We called an audible that M60 shooting was done for the day.

As y'all have already figured out, that M60 range used to be something else. An M203 grenade launcher range, so I was told. So yeah, that area where my guys had been stomping out fires is where a bullet dinged an old dud. Probably a practice round, but the way it blew up I wouldn't have wanted to be stomping on it. /CSB

[Schulz2.0 28657]

1 hour ago, Parliament said:

Why didn’t we send them a long time ago?

We sent some. We still have more that the taxpayers will pay to dispose of.

[Herbie Hancock 7278]

We sent some. We still have more that the taxpayers will pay to dispose of.

Could have done the same with the mustard gas and Sarin we’ve been destroying for the last decade too. Maybe throw in some of those radioactive rabbits from Hanford for shits and giggles too. One man’s trash is another man’s weapon of mass destruction!

[tx 3 putt 75625]

 

[UpperWestside 6033]

5 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Unexploded munitions is a bad bad thing 

The Solomon Islands can still attest to this 80 years later.

[ABSR 5276]

15 hours ago, 27-25 said:

Artillery experts please chime in.  Can the submunitions be removed or replaced?  If so, I'm sure Ukraine would be more than willing to do the work of retooling the shells to their needed purpose.  AND it would get rid of ordinance that we would otherwise have to pay to dispose of anyway.  Win - Win.

We’ve already crossed this bridge and have given them cluster munitions.  The article is about a way to give more without the additional funding bill being passed.

From what was reported prior the issue is if you drop a US cluster bomb with say 100 bomblets, on average 2 of those don’t explode and are potentially an unknown danger.   Now Russia or other countries might have 20-30 that don’t explode, so other countries munitions are even worse.   Of course Russia has been using their own without concern in all of their conflicts, including Ukraine, regardless.

But for all the handwringing about us giving them some of our estimated 8-10 plus million shells in storage, the reality is they will be used by Ukrainians on Ukrainian soil, so they make the call.

The conversation went something like this.

UK:  Give them to us!!

US: Okay, but you do understand that …

UK:  Please give them to us!!!

US: Are you aware that some will not detonate and then….

UK:  WE KNOW!  PLEASE give them to us immediately.

US: We are really conflicted here.  We know that your country and people are being systematically and intentional targeted for genocide by an evil oppressor,  but giving them to you may make us feel bad about ourselves.

UK:  PPPLLLLLEEEEAAAAASSSSSEEEEEE!

 

and as said before, America will always do the right thing….after we have tried everything else.

Edited February 17 by ABSR

[Schulz2.0 28657]

 

 

 

[Schulz2.0 28657]

 

 

 

[bolverk 29116]

Unfortunately, it can't always be good news. 

Avdiivka, Longtime Stronghold for Ukraine, Falls to Russians
With Ukraine’s forces at risk of encirclement, the top military commander ordered a retreat. In startlingly candid accounts, soldiers described disarray and despair.

Ukraine ordered the complete withdrawal from the decimated city of Avdiivka before dawn on Saturday, surrendering a position that had been a military stronghold for the better part of a decade, in the face of withering Russian assault.

“Based on the operational situation around Avdiivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines,” Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, said in a statement issued overnight.

The fall of Avdiivka, a city that was once home to some 30,000 people but is now a smoking ruin, is the first major gain Russian forces have achieved since May of last year. After rebuffing a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer and fall, Russian forces in recent weeks have been pressing the attack across nearly the entire length of the 600-mile-long front.

The Ukrainian withdrawal on Saturday follows a bloody endgame that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the two-year-old war. Relying on its superiority in personnel and weaponry, Russia pounded the city with aerial bombardments and ground assaults, even as its fighters suffered a staggering amount of casualties.

Outgunned Ukrainian forces had begun withdrawing from positions in the southern part of the city on Wednesday, and since then have been engaged in a desperate battle to avoid encirclement inside the city as Russian forces advanced from multiple directions. As Russian bombers pummeled Avdiivka, Ukraine said its forces had targeted and shot down three Russian warplanes.

Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the head of Ukraine’s forces in the south, said there had been no choice but to withdraw, given the Russian advantage in firepower and the number of soldiers Russia was willing to throw into the battle.

“In a situation where the enemy is advancing on the corpses of their own soldiers with a 10-to-1 shell advantage, under constant bombardment, this is the only correct solution,” he said in a statement.

The commander said that there were losses for the Ukrainians and “at the final stage of the operation, under pressure from the superior forces of the enemy, some Ukrainian servicemen fell into captivity.”

Smoke rising above an area of Avdiivka on Thursday.

 

Even if Ukrainian lines stabilize in the rear of Avdiivka, the city’s fall into Russian control will allow Moscow’s military to move its troops and equipment more efficiently as it presses in other directions.

“Avdiivka is a very important strong point in the Ukrainian system of defense,” because it protects Pokrovsk, about 30 miles to the northwest, a logistical hub for the Ukrainian Army, Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine, said in an interview.

“Taking control of Avdiivka might create an opening for Russia,” he said.

Soldiers reached by phone on Friday, who asked not to be identified given the ongoing military action, described a harrowing bid to escape the city. They gave accounts of racing past blasted-out buildings as shells thundered from all around and Russians pressed in from several directions.

“In one of the sectors in the town, fighters from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade find themselves completely surrounded, but they are attempting to break through, and they succeed,” Maj. Rodion Kudryashov, deputy commander of the assault brigade, said in an interview with Radio Liberty.

Some expressed concern privately in interviews that the call to withdraw had come too late, or posted stark accounts on social media of their dangerous and chaotic retreat.

Viktor Biliak of the 110th Brigade, which has been defending the city for the past two years, described his evacuation on Thursday of the garrison known as Zenit, in a southern pocket of the city.

Mr. Biliak, who uses the call sign Hentai, said his unit was left no time for an orderly exit — neither to evacuate weapons and equipment, nor to burn papers and lay mines in the way of attacking Russian troops.

Ten men made a failed attempt to leave on Wednesday night, he said. They had to fight their way forward in a gun battle, but then came under artillery fire.

“Only three wounded made it back,” Hentai wrote on Instagram. He helped rescue one of the wounded men the next morning, he said, a dangerous movement in daylight that cost the unit four more wounded, including himself.

The troops made another attempt Thursday night, and the severely wounded were told to wait for an armored vehicle to take them.

“Groups were leaving, one after the other,” Hentai wrote. Still able to walk, he decided not to wait for the evacuation vehicle and led a group out.

“There was zero visibility outside. It was just plain survival. A kilometer across the field,” he wrote. “A bunch of blind cats led by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is littered with our corpses.”

The evacuation vehicle never came for the wounded, he said. The last group left the bunker, and he overheard a wounded soldier asking over the radio about the evacuation vehicle. The commander replied that no vehicle was coming and that they should leave the wounded behind.

“He didn’t know he was talking to a wounded man,” Hentai wrote. “This dialogue on the radio wounded us to our very core.”

His and other accounts could not be independently confirmed, but the soldiers cited in this article are known to be members of the Ukrainian military with a public presence on social media, and the locations of landscapes shown in videos were verified as being in Avdiivka by The New York Times.

As the battle for Avdiivka intensified, Ukrainian commanders fighting in the area were forced to ration ammunition, soldiers said. White House officials have seized on similar accounts to assert that the failure to pass a $60 billion renewed military aid package in Congress was directly undermining the Ukrainians’ fight on the ground.

The Ukrainian government is also struggling to recruit and mobilize soldiers to fill its depleted ranks after two years of often brutal fighting.

Avdiivka and the surrounding communities have been on the front line ever since Russian-backed militants seized territory in eastern Ukraine in 2014, but the Russians stepped up their efforts to take the city in October, launching large-scale assaults to broadly encircle the area.

Those attempts largely failed and resulted in some of the heaviest Russian losses of the war, with tens of thousands of its soldiers killed and wounded, according to the Ukrainian military as well as British and American officials.

Early this year, the Russians managed to break into the city of Avdiivka itself, at which point Ukrainian losses started to increase significantly. At the same time, Russia stepped up bombardment of the city, seeking to smash heavily fortified Ukrainian defenses.

As the situation turned increasingly dire, military analysts inside and outside Ukraine worried that the leadership would repeat what many regarded as a past mistake: holding on after it was clear that hope was lost, and unnecessarily expending personnel and weapons.

The withdrawal from Avdiivka was still underway Saturday morning under withering Russian bombardment. The Ukrainian military command said the withdrawal from the southern part of the city had been conducted with “minor losses.”

But soldiers posting videos on social media provided a window into how dangerous movement in the area had become. In one video, several Ukrainian soldiers ride atop an armored vehicle just half a mile from the Avdiivka Coke Chemical Plant on the northwestern edge of the city, a landmark.

 

They drive past the sign “Avdiivka is Ukraine” at the entrance to the city, made famous when President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a selfie video from there in December. Seconds later, the soldiers duck and grimace as shells land just yards from them, throwing up clouds of dust and dirt.

[If captions are turned on, they're in English.]

 

On Friday, the commander of the 2nd Mechanized Battalion of the Third Assault Brigade said that the Russians had used incendiary munitions to ignite tanks storing hazardous fuel at the coke plant.

“When burning, this poisonous substance has extremely severe consequences for the health and even the lives of our fighters,” he said in a statement. The wind sent plumes of toxic black smog over the city and seeping into the plant, which the Ukrainians had long used as a stronghold in the face of Russian advances.

It was unclear early Saturday whether the Ukrainian troops holed up in the plant had also withdrawn.

Volodymyr Furayev, a soldier posted at the sprawling Soviet-era industrial plant, said that his unit had been ordered to evacuate.

“Leaving the coke plant,” Mr. Furayev said in one post on TikTok. “Everything is being targeted. Hard to know where we’re going. Hello to everyone who knows me. I don’t know if we’ll make it out.” (TikTok account is marked private for me.)

[Schulz2.0 28657]

^pretty directly attributable to us not delivering artillery shells.

 

[bolverk 29116]

Russia Hides Its War Toll. We Pieced Together the Clues.
Interviews with wounded Russian soldiers, and with relatives of others, reveal glimpses of what injured veterans can expect when sent home from Ukraine.

The true casualty toll in Russia from its invasion of Ukraine is an enduring secret of the war. The Kremlin maintains a policy of silence, and many Russians do not speak publicly for fear of repercussions.

But the number of Russians wounded in combat is believed to be staggering.

The Pentagon puts the Russian death toll at about 60,000, with the wounded three or four times that, totaling roughly 300,000 casualties, said a U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity.

What Russians say
One senior Russian official estimated that amputees represented more than half of those seriously wounded.

The New York Times interviewed five wounded Russian soldiers and the relatives of others to learn more about what happens to the vast numbers of injured, coming home to inconsistent treatment and little discussion of them.

One has a microprocessor to move the fingers on his prosthetic arm, but only a simple mechanical elbow: He can hold a glass, but not lift it. The arm, he said, was “more cosmetic than working.”

Another soldier lost part of his brain, and relies on his wife for care. She turned to crowdfunding, writing, “I feel like I’m putting my loved one together like a puzzle.”

A Russian who visited his brother-in-law in a Moscow hospital said the six soldiers on the ward mostly still wore battlefield fatigues, so he brought them new clothes, soap, toothbrushes and a warm meal.

Accounts of erratic care
Some laud the medical care available while others described an overwhelmed system, with shortages of everything from medicine to adult diapers.

The wounded are often pushed to return to the front quickly.

A soldier who suffered shrapnel wounds said he was told to report back to the front six days after his hospital discharge.

“It was a conveyor belt,” he said of his crowded ward.

Official praise, unofficial dismay
The wounded are not entirely hidden. President Vladimir V. Putin has made a few hospital visits, sometimes handing out medals, and state media often portrays wounded veterans as heroes.

Anton Filimonov, who lost a leg stepping on a mine, has become one such symbol in Russia of an amputee overcoming adversity.

He has said publicly that Russians were “not ready” to see amputees, and some medical workers have noted a distinct lack of public compassion, with amputees seen begging on the streets.

Read more about these soldiers here (pasted in spoiler).

 

Spoiler

How Russia Depicts Wounded Soldiers: As Heroes, or Not at All
Troops with amputated limbs or serious injuries return home to find a patchwork system of treatment and, often, efforts to keep them out of the public eye.

A shell slammed into the ground just feet from where the Russian soldier was deployed, and the explosion tossed him into the air.

“I felt my arm fall off, then a blow to my leg, everything slowed down, just a frozen picture in my eyes — no sounds, no other sensations,” said the soldier, Andrei, a 29-year-old former convict recruited into the Wagner private military company.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, he was convinced that death loomed, he said in an interview, requesting that only his first name be used because of a fear of retribution by the Russian authorities. As shells exploded on all sides in the fighting near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, fellow soldiers dragged him to an evacuation point. He eventually spent more than a year in hospitals, with the remnants of his left arm amputated and one leg still at risk.

Cases like Andrei’s do not receive much publicity in Russia, where — as in Ukraine — the total number of war wounded is not disclosed. But, according to American and Ukrainian officials and numerous military analysts, the number is staggering, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands. And one senior Russian official estimated that amputees represented more than half of the seriously wounded.

Because reporters and aid groups have little or no access to hospitals or rehabilitation centers in Russia, information is scarce, often limited to community news reports and Telegram channels.

The Kremlin, military analysts and some medical personnel say, wants to avoid a repeat of the antiwar movements that forced a halt to earlier wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

“The Russian state has learned by experience that if it wants to maintain domestic stability, it should suppress that kind of debate,” said Nick Reynolds, a research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based military think tank.

Military analysts say the high number of wounded also reflects the striking indifference that Russia exhibits toward its soldiers as it sacrifices huge numbers to make small gains across the 600-mile front in Ukraine.

“The Russian leadership on every level does not care much about soldiers,” said Pavel Luzin, a Russia military expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based research group.

Wounded veterans are not ignored entirely. They are occasionally featured on state television in the service of war propaganda — invariably presenting an upbeat account of how they are readily adapting to life with their injuries, including missing limbs.

On rare occasions, President Vladimir V. Putin visits the wounded in hospitals, pinning medals on their crisp, cobalt blue military pajamas. He sometimes acknowledges problems in the system, and he unfailingly promises solutions.

“As for prosthetics, there is still a lot to be done,” Mr. Putin said last month while talking to veterans.  He had recently learned, he added, that former soldiers issued with prosthetics received reduced government payments, which he called “unacceptable.”

After the war’s first month, the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, announced 3,825 wounded, a figure Russia has never updated. So estimates of the wounded from both sides are extrapolated from the number of dead, which already involves significant guesswork.

William J. Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs last month that Russian dead and wounded soldiers numbered 315,000.

Numerous doctors, veterans or relatives, when contacted, declined to speak about the wounded, lest they breach Russia’s laws against revealing confidential information or denigrating the military, not to mention jeopardizing their jobs or benefits. Some who spoke declined to use their full names.

Multiple interviews indicated that the main aim in treating the wounded was to redeploy them to the battlefront quickly. There is a paucity of medical discharges, analysts and medical personnel said, underscoring the desperate need for soldiers, with the Ministry of Defense preferring to recycle the wounded rather than implementing another unpopular mobilization.

Dmitri, 35, was mobilized in September 2022. He said that his first horrific taste of the war came two months later, when a drone dropped a grenade on a nearby dugout holding 10 men. “There were arms ripped off, a helmet with brains on it, and one guy’s leg was torn off, although not completely torn off yet,” he recalled in an interview. “I was not ready for that. Nobody was.”

Last summer, Dmitri suffered shrapnel wounds from a drone strike that sent him to a hospital just inside Russia, he said. He counted about 400 patients in his ward, and 150 seriously wounded lying in another. With roughly 80 patients each, the doctors initially spent less than five minutes per soldier, he said: “It was a conveyor belt.”

Since Dmitri’s injuries were relatively light, nobody examined him for two days, then a doctor ran a magnet over his wounds. When it did not react, he received a splash of disinfectant and a few bandages before being discharged and told to report back to the front six days later.

“I was in shock” at the instructions, said Dmitri, who fled Russia with the help of the Georgia-based organization Go by the Forest.

Many of the accounts from doctors and the wounded suggest that Russia lacks essentials for treatment — everything from sufficient evacuation vehicles to hospital beds to drugs. The military runs a network of about 150 medical facilities nationwide, including a sophisticated medical academy in St. Petersburg and several specialized hospitals in Moscow.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.

Some veterans lauded what they called their fast, thorough care, but it could seem like winning the lottery. Artem Katulin, head of a training program for combat medicine, told the official RIA Novosti news agency last year that over half the war deaths were from injuries that were not life-threatening and that improperly tied tourniquets accounted for one-third of amputations.

Maxim Lukashevsky, a surgeon who volunteered at a hospital near the front and is now back working in Moscow, said in an interview that on a busy day he might treat around 45 wounded men in five hours, including up to five amputations.

A young Russian named Regina has published a diary on social media documenting the highs and lows of caring for her husband, Denis, hospitalized in St. Petersburg for more than a year with a chunk of his brain missing.

She has relied on crowd funding for everything from adult diapers to a high-tech wheelchair. While praising the dedication of the medical staff, she denounced the lack of individually tailored rehabilitation programs.

“I feel like I’m putting my loved one together like a puzzle,” she wrote. In another post, she noted, “I was so angry about how terrible everything was in terms of prescriptions for individual rehabilitation; I was just shaking with resentment.”

About 54 percent of wounded veterans classified as disabled have suffered amputations, Aleksei Vovchenko, the Russian deputy minister of labor and social protection, testified to a government committee in October, without giving an overall figure.

A traumatologist working in Siberia said that many permanently disabled young veterans had damaged organs or shattered joints.  Although Russia builds prosthetic limbs, joint replacements are elusive because they were largely imported before the war, he and others said.

The traumatologist and others noted a distinct lack of public compassion for the grievously wounded. Amputees have begun to appear on the streets, begging for money, he said, and there are few facilities like wheelchair ramps.

Even Anton Filimonov, Russia’s poster boy for the upbeat amputee — he lost a leg by stepping on a land mine — said at a public forum in St. Petersburg last year that Russians were “not ready” to see amputees.

The stream of wounded will likely continue, military experts said. The losses have not prompted the armed forces “to change their fighting in this very attritional, infantry-led, frontal assault style,” said Karolina Hird, a Russia analyst with the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Andrei, the Wagner recruit, was a construction worker from near Rostov who had served about three years of an eight-year sentence for severely wounding someone in a bar brawl. He trained for two weeks before being thrust onto the front lines, and was soon seriously injured.

With all the nerves and veins in his left arm destroyed, it was amputated. The doctors recommended that his heavily damaged left knee be replaced, but he was discharged last month in a wheelchair. He still endorses the war.

Originally left-handed, Andrei had to learn to depend on his right. Although a microprocessor moves the fingers on his prosthetic arm, it has a simple mechanical elbow, so he can hold a glass but cannot lift one to his lips.

“It is not a comfortable thing, to be honest,” he said.

 

Edited February 17 by bolverk

[Parliament 14027]

Technology develops SO fast in war.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/16/as-the-ukrainians-fling-50000-drones-a-month-at-the-russians-the-russians-cant-get-their-drone-jammers-to-work/

 

 

[Schulz2.0 28657]

 

 

[B00M 6046]

Partners in the US? We crowd funding artillery shells now? Where do I put my credit card 

[Neonmoon 38126]

[Viper 11956]

Sounds like a firsthand account of Avdiivka

 

Casualty wise (WIA&KIA) Bahkmut was likely higher.

Deaths only wise, Avdiivka was likely 2x worse for the Russians than Bahkmut. 

The easiest way to explain why is Terrain, and the built up fortifications. Even in the areas at the flanks.

The opening day of RUs offensive in our sector over a dozen BMPs were destroyed before they even got within 800m of Ukrainian lines. The infantry on and in that initial assault were caught out in the open and mowed down rather quickly.

 

One defensive operation that we were on, 16 of Chosen and 8 Ukrainians(javelin teams+snipers) destroyed 4 BMPs, damaged one that made it under a bridge with 6 others that escaped unharmed after dropping troops 300m+ away from the line in the field, 2 BTRs destroyed, 2 tanks one of which was destroyed by one of the craziest tank maneuvers by a UA tank team i ever saw and 70+ infantry killed or wounded. 

The Russians successfully pushed us out of the trench to another friendly trench (there was only 10 defenders in that 1 trench with reserve force and supporting fires/overwatch being provided from nearby trench 200m away) and took control of the trench. Which was then blown with demolitions, fpv and artillery once the surviving russians (around 12) grouped up into it.

 

Our losses that day were 4 UA KIA, 2 Chosen KIA (Gander & Stremski) and everyone minor or moderately wounded with frag.

 

The human cost of Russia's Avdiivka sector endeavor likely cost them 100k WIA&KIA easily. Day after day for 2 or 3 weeks they continously attempted to run armor at fortified lines. In our sector, after they ran out of BMPs&BTRs they used troop transport trucks(Kamaz type) to try and get infantry as close as possible. These vehicles more often then not were hit by fpv or drones waited for dismount and hit infantry with droppers. 

We made it a point to try and hit every enemy soldier still alive. If they crawled into a bunker, thermobaric. If they were crawling in an open field, grenade drop. 

 

Mid to end Nov though, something changed. No longer were the Russians attempting 50+ men assaults. They'd move in groups of 8-12 men. If 2 or 3 made it, they'd hide amongst the rubble. The next group would move 5-15 minutes behind the first and they'd do the same. Once the survivors regrouped and had 20 or so men spread in 2 or more positions, they'd then push forward while a new rear element pushed up from behind and they'd mass creeping fires and drones while doing so. Only stopping once the RU infantry were within 25-50m of our positions. 

 

They adapted their tactics to run as a mass of smaller human waves with less armor and more foot infantry to knock out a few meters of the killing fields or Grey area at a time. They didn't try to dig in. They just hid wherever they could. 

 

One position we consistently fought over ended up with dead soldiers stacked around it (obj kyiv). There was well over 100 Russians strewn about infront and inside of it. Our fallen(KIA) Ukrainians around 10 or so that were taken in the 3 weeks of holding it, we had organized to the rear area of the fighting line, in hopes of getting their remains out, some we were able to, others we werent. We did take dozens upon dozens of wounded trying to hold obj k and took a lot of wounded and killed trying to retrieve remains of fallen and wounded soldiers from positions(I'd say 20-35% of all our wounded in the sector was trying to get remains or wounded out). You'd spend more time trying to organize where to throw the dead or move the dead out of firing lines than attempting to rebuild the positions daily.

 

[Schulz2.0 28657]

 

[Parliament 14027]

I'm starting to think Russia makes inferior fighter jets.

[Schulz2.0 28657]

[Schulz2.0 28657]

 

 

 

[Schulz2.0 28657]

[tx 3 putt 75625]

Love it ….

 

1 hour ago, Schulz2.0 said:

 

 

 

Free field testing, great idea 

[bolverk 29116]

A Stunned Russian Opposition in Exile Considers a Future Without Navalny
The death of Aleksei A. Navalny in a Russian prison has been a blow to an opposition movement in which he was the figurehead. But it has also raised hopes of a united front against President Vladimir V. Putin.

The death of Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader, has stunned Russian dissidents. But it is also spurring some hope that in its desperate moment, the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin will be able to unite like never before.

Doing so will be a challenge, given the often aloof approach of Mr. Navalny’s movement and the disparate assembly of other leading opposition Russian figures: nearly all of them in exile, and none with his broad national appeal.

Among them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch who fell out with Mr. Putin, spent 10 years in prison and in London became one of his most prominent opponents in exile. Then there is Maxim Katz, a YouTube influencer and a former poker champion, who is based in Israel. There is also Ilya Yashin, a longtime liberal politician who is serving an eight-year sentence for publicizing Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

Beyond these figures who are trying to speak for the whole of Russia is a plethora of small antiwar groups focused on particular Russian regions, social issues or ethnic minorities. Some of their demands — like a reckoning with Russia’s imperial history — have clashed with the more conservative position of Mr. Navalny, who had flirted with Russian nationalism in order to gain a broader following.

cont'd

Spoiler

Many operate their own YouTube channels, or use other social media like Telegram and podcasts, to beam their messages to millions of viewers in Russia despite the Kremlin’s tightening its control of information.

But looming over all of them will be Mr. Navalny, even after his death in a Russian prison on Friday. As of Sunday, Mr. Navalny’s family has still not been able to locate his body, according to his team.

During his decades-long political career, Mr. Navalny built an unmatched network of nationwide activist cells, social media channels and international allies that made him the face of the opposition to Mr. Putin. A team of skilled lieutenants transplanted this network into exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, after Mr. Navalny’s imprisonment in 2021.

“All of us in the opposition are at a certain loss about what we should be doing now and how,” said Mr. Katz, 39. “The entire opposition life has always revolved around Navalny, so now it’s completely unclear what will happen.”

Some of Mr. Navalny’s lieutenants, who are mostly in their 30s, have become political players in their own right, with a chance to shape the future course of the late leader’s movement. There’s Leonid Volkov, a skillful political organizer who had overseen Mr. Navalny’s network abroad and Kira Yarmysh, Mr. Navalny’s longtime press officer.

The death of Mr. Navalny has also drawn attention to his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, 47. Her forceful speech to Western leaders in Munich after the news of her husband’s death on Friday raised speculation that she could also have a political future.

Mr. Navalny’s team acknowledged on Saturday that their sprawling organization would need to restructure to adapt to their leader’s loss. But they gave little indication of what political direction they could take, beyond vowing to carry on Mr. Navalny’s mission.

“We would need to undergo some changes,” Ms. Yarmysh, the spokeswoman, told an independent Russian news program on YouTube. “We are all perfectly aware of this.”

Ms. Yarmysh said that she did not have an immediate comment for this article. Two other senior aides to Mr. Navalny declined to comment.

Mr. Navalny and, later, his team have long justified their decision to go it alone, saying that the time and effort spent managing political alliances would be better spent directly confronting Mr. Putin.

“I will be direct: Go to hell with your coalitions,” Mr. Navalny wrote in response to Mr. Katz’s call for an electoral alliance on his website last year. “This is imitation of activity. A fake.”

Mr. Katz often sparred with Mr. Navalny’s team on social media. Other dissidents said such squabbles diluted the impact of the opposition and kept it divided.

Now, with Mr. Navalny’s death, his allies, as well as the wider Russian dissident movement, are looking for a new strategy with which to oppose Mr. Putin.

From Vilnius, Mr. Navalny’s organization runs online news channels, investigative outlets and groups of activists that continue to set the agenda for the wider opposition movement.

Their main tool has been YouTube, the last major Western social media platform allowed inside the country, and the primary source of information for millions of Russians.

Mr. Navalny’s main YouTube channel, maintained by his staff, has more than six million subscribers. The organization’s news channel, Popular Politics, which was set up after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 to counter government propaganda, has more than two million. Last year, Popular Politics increased its broadcasts to about 30 hours a week and nearly doubled its staff to 130.

In general, broadcasts by Mr. Navalny’s team try to straddle a line between political campaigning and news, a format used by dozens of opposition politicians, civil society leaders and independent media groups that are trying to remain part of the conversation in Russia from exile.

A YouTube channel run by Mr. Katz has attracted nearly 10 million unique visitors in the past three months, according to YouTube Analytics data. Nearly 60 percent of them came from inside Russia.

For his part, Mr. Khodorkovsky’s much reduced wealth still allows him to sponsor a network of online news outlets targeting different sectors of the Russian public.

Mr. Katz said the success of a social media campaign launched from abroad to help a long-shot antiwar candidate, Boris B. Nadezhdin, collect the required signatures to run in the presidential election in March showed that it remains possible to create a political impact in Russia from exile. (The government-controlled electoral body later challenged some of those signatures, most likely ending Mr. Nadezhdin’s run.)

A report last year by JX Fund, a research group focused on freedom of speech, estimated that Russian independent media reached 6 percent to 9 percent of Russia’s adult population, a sizable amount given the ubiquity of state propaganda and repression in the country.

Some figures in the wider Russian opposition movement expressed cautious hope for a more inclusive political alliance against Mr. Putin that would carry on Mr. Navalny’s legacy.

“I have always called for a coalition because, among other reasons, I knew just how vulnerable individual opposition leaders are,” Mr. Khodorkovsky said. “A coalition is much more stable as a system, because if one person is gone, others are left, and yet other new ones appear.”

His view was shared by Maxim Reznik, a former regional lawmaker from St. Petersburg, Russia, who continues to work on local politics from exile in Vilnius.

“I have always thought that their isolationist position is not the correct one,” Mr. Reznik said about Mr. Navalny’s organization. “Aleksei cannot be replaced, but we need some mechanism of collaboration.”

The opposition’s initial reaction to Mr. Navalny’s death has pointed in the direction of greater unity, at least for now. A unifying cause has centered around a voting initiative endorsed by Mr. Navalny on social media on Feb. 1, in one of his last public statements.

The initiative, initially proposed by Mr. Reznik, calls on Russian voters to head to polling stations at noon on March 17, a vote that Mr. Putin is all but certain to win.

Mr. Reznik said the initiative, essentially a political flash mob, was the safest way to express discontent in a country where any protest risks a prison term.

“We want to show that the Emperor has no clothes,” Mr. Reznik said.

After Mr. Navalny’s death, almost all prominent opposition figures had declared their support for the midday vote.

“This dragon, this beast, has destroyed everyone — it has killed our Lancelot, our hero. The question is now only about us,” said Mr. Reznik, referring to the Russian government. “Either we come out and show the world that Russians are not slaves of the regime, or we don’t.”

“And I really fear the second scenario,” he added.

 

[956 Worldwide 34022]

The Lithuanian Foreign Minister spells things out clearly:

 

[Gatorubet 29797]

I know there’s a ton of M-60 tanks that were upgraded in various ways by various countries.  all of them would be at least equal to the T 55s and probably better.   It’s a shame we can’t have a nudge-nudge, wink-wink agreement with those countries to send their tanks to Ukraine in exchange for future sales of non-advanced M1A1s.  And I get that it’s a logistics nightmare for repairs and ammunition, having a bunch of different types of tanks, but at some point concentrating the M 60s in one area would counter Soviet older tank threats and help in the meat waves defense.  And promising to sell newer tanks in the future means the older tanks to Ukraine won’t cost anyone a cent from our current military budget, refuting the current objections. But it does my heart good to see T-55s being used.  That means the good guys have blown up most of their newer kit. The T-55 was introduced in the mid 1950s for God’s sake.  Surly we can find some almost free tanks to combat those until our promised good stuff finally arrives

[Herbie Hancock 7278]

A Stunned Russian Opposition in Exile Considers a Future Without Navalny
The death of Aleksei A. Navalny in a Russian prison has been a blow to an opposition movement in which he was the figurehead. But it has also raised hopes of a united front against President Vladimir V. Putin.
The death of Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s main opposition leader, has stunned Russian dissidents. But it is also spurring some hope that in its desperate moment, the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin will be able to unite like never before.
Doing so will be a challenge, given the often aloof approach of Mr. Navalny’s movement and the disparate assembly of other leading opposition Russian figures: nearly all of them in exile, and none with his broad national appeal.
Among them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch who fell out with Mr. Putin, spent 10 years in prison and in London became one of his most prominent opponents in exile. Then there is Maxim Katz, a YouTube influencer and a former poker champion, who is based in Israel. There is also Ilya Yashin, a longtime liberal politician who is serving an eight-year sentence for publicizing Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Beyond these figures who are trying to speak for the whole of Russia is a plethora of small antiwar groups focused on particular Russian regions, social issues or ethnic minorities. Some of their demands — like a reckoning with Russia’s imperial history — have clashed with the more conservative position of Mr. Navalny, who had flirted with Russian nationalism in order to gain a broader following.
cont'd
Spoiler

Many operate their own YouTube channels, or use other social media like Telegram and podcasts, to beam their messages to millions of viewers in Russia despite the Kremlin’s tightening its control of information.
But looming over all of them will be Mr. Navalny, even after his death in a Russian prison on Friday. As of Sunday, Mr. Navalny’s family has still not been able to locate his body, according to his team.
During his decades-long political career, Mr. Navalny built an unmatched network of nationwide activist cells, social media channels and international allies that made him the face of the opposition to Mr. Putin. A team of skilled lieutenants transplanted this network into exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, after Mr. Navalny’s imprisonment in 2021.
“All of us in the opposition are at a certain loss about what we should be doing now and how,” said Mr. Katz, 39. “The entire opposition life has always revolved around Navalny, so now it’s completely unclear what will happen.”
Some of Mr. Navalny’s lieutenants, who are mostly in their 30s, have become political players in their own right, with a chance to shape the future course of the late leader’s movement. There’s Leonid Volkov, a skillful political organizer who had overseen Mr. Navalny’s network abroad and Kira Yarmysh, Mr. Navalny’s longtime press officer.
The death of Mr. Navalny has also drawn attention to his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, 47. Her forceful speech to Western leaders in Munich after the news of her husband’s death on Friday raised speculation that she could also have a political future.
Mr. Navalny’s team acknowledged on Saturday that their sprawling organization would need to restructure to adapt to their leader’s loss. But they gave little indication of what political direction they could take, beyond vowing to carry on Mr. Navalny’s mission.
“We would need to undergo some changes,” Ms. Yarmysh, the spokeswoman, told an independent Russian news program on YouTube. “We are all perfectly aware of this.”
Ms. Yarmysh said that she did not have an immediate comment for this article. Two other senior aides to Mr. Navalny declined to comment.
Mr. Navalny and, later, his team have long justified their decision to go it alone, saying that the time and effort spent managing political alliances would be better spent directly confronting Mr. Putin.
“I will be direct: Go to hell with your coalitions,” Mr. Navalny wrote in response to Mr. Katz’s call for an electoral alliance on his website last year. “This is imitation of activity. A fake.”
Mr. Katz often sparred with Mr. Navalny’s team on social media. Other dissidents said such squabbles diluted the impact of the opposition and kept it divided.
Now, with Mr. Navalny’s death, his allies, as well as the wider Russian dissident movement, are looking for a new strategy with which to oppose Mr. Putin.
From Vilnius, Mr. Navalny’s organization runs online news channels, investigative outlets and groups of activists that continue to set the agenda for the wider opposition movement.
Their main tool has been YouTube, the last major Western social media platform allowed inside the country, and the primary source of information for millions of Russians.
Mr. Navalny’s main YouTube channel, maintained by his staff, has more than six million subscribers. The organization’s news channel, Popular Politics, which was set up after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 to counter government propaganda, has more than two million. Last year, Popular Politics increased its broadcasts to about 30 hours a week and nearly doubled its staff to 130.
In general, broadcasts by Mr. Navalny’s team try to straddle a line between political campaigning and news, a format used by dozens of opposition politicians, civil society leaders and independent media groups that are trying to remain part of the conversation in Russia from exile.
A YouTube channel run by Mr. Katz has attracted nearly 10 million unique visitors in the past three months, according to YouTube Analytics data. Nearly 60 percent of them came from inside Russia.
For his part, Mr. Khodorkovsky’s much reduced wealth still allows him to sponsor a network of online news outlets targeting different sectors of the Russian public.
Mr. Katz said the success of a social media campaign launched from abroad to help a long-shot antiwar candidate, Boris B. Nadezhdin, collect the required signatures to run in the presidential election in March showed that it remains possible to create a political impact in Russia from exile. (The government-controlled electoral body later challenged some of those signatures, most likely ending Mr. Nadezhdin’s run.)
A report last year by JX Fund, a research group focused on freedom of speech, estimated that Russian independent media reached 6 percent to 9 percent of Russia’s adult population, a sizable amount given the ubiquity of state propaganda and repression in the country.
Some figures in the wider Russian opposition movement expressed cautious hope for a more inclusive political alliance against Mr. Putin that would carry on Mr. Navalny’s legacy.
“I have always called for a coalition because, among other reasons, I knew just how vulnerable individual opposition leaders are,” Mr. Khodorkovsky said. “A coalition is much more stable as a system, because if one person is gone, others are left, and yet other new ones appear.”
His view was shared by Maxim Reznik, a former regional lawmaker from St. Petersburg, Russia, who continues to work on local politics from exile in Vilnius.
“I have always thought that their isolationist position is not the correct one,” Mr. Reznik said about Mr. Navalny’s organization. “Aleksei cannot be replaced, but we need some mechanism of collaboration.”
The opposition’s initial reaction to Mr. Navalny’s death has pointed in the direction of greater unity, at least for now. A unifying cause has centered around a voting initiative endorsed by Mr. Navalny on social media on Feb. 1, in one of his last public statements.
The initiative, initially proposed by Mr. Reznik, calls on Russian voters to head to polling stations at noon on March 17, a vote that Mr. Putin is all but certain to win.
Mr. Reznik said the initiative, essentially a political flash mob, was the safest way to express discontent in a country where any protest risks a prison term.
“We want to show that the Emperor has no clothes,” Mr. Reznik said.
After Mr. Navalny’s death, almost all prominent opposition figures had declared their support for the midday vote.
“This dragon, this beast, has destroyed everyone — it has killed our Lancelot, our hero. The question is now only about us,” said Mr. Reznik, referring to the Russian government. “Either we come out and show the world that Russians are not slaves of the regime, or we don’t.”
“And I really fear the second scenario,” he added.

 

Mr. Khodorkovsky about to find out how Novichok tastes.

[Gatorubet 29797]

956, you keep up with the stuff closer than most of us.  I remember reading that Ukraine got 31 Abrams delivered via turkey, but I can’t recall whether that was all we promised or if we were delivered more after that.  I also can’t remember if all of the leopards promised last year were delivered.

Does anybody here have a handle on what percentage of MBTs were ever delivered?

[statsman 5355]

Nearly 100 Russians this month ventured to a place no foreign travelers had visited since the start of the pandemic: North Korea
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/vacation-in-north-korea-reclusive-state-reopens-to-tourismbut-only-for-russians-7b2978ea?st=qdszauugpbcz73s&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

[956 Worldwide 34022]

56 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

956, you keep up with the stuff closer than most of us.  I remember reading that Ukraine got 31 Abrams delivered via turkey, but I can’t recall whether that was all we promised or if we were delivered more after that.  I also can’t remember if all of the leopards promised last year were delivered.

Does anybody here have a handle on what percentage of MBTs were ever delivered?

31 is the number that I’m tracking, it was more about forming a coalition to get other countries to give MBTs and not feel isolated. The Leopards were always to be the main core of the AFU. 

[Eastwood 4394]

On 2/16/2024 at 3:18 PM, Schulz2.0 said:

 

 

[Schulz2.0 28657]

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-should-respond-to-navalny-death-by-sending-taurus-missiles-to-ukraine-says-top-lawmaker/

 

[tx 3 putt 75625]

Love it !!!!

 

[Gatorubet 29797]

[Gatorubet 29797]

Trying to answer my question (besides the Abrams)

Feb 8 partial update on Germany’s promised tanks. 

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/germany-announces-new-military-aid-package-for-ukraine/3130622

Quote

BERLIN

The German government announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, including the delivery of 105 Leopard 1A5 tanks and 30 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, local media reported on Wednesday.

Germany has already provided Ukraine with 30 Leopard 1, 90 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and 18 Leopard 2-A6 tanks since spring 2023.

The majority of the latter are currently in a repair workshop in Lithuania, the Frankfurter Rundschau daily said.

The promised 30 Leopard 1 tanks come from old industrial and Bundeswehr stocks and are currently being completely overhauled by Rheinmetall, a German arms company.

According to the government's website, Germany also plans to deliver 15 more Gepard anti-aircraft gun tanks and nine IRIS-T SLM air defense systems to protect Ukrainian cities from Russian missile attacks.

So here’s the rub: Germany “has provided” 48 Leopard tanks.  But 30 of the Leopard 1s are in shop in Germany and 18 of the Leopard 2s are in shop in Lithuania.  

Imagine what Ukraine could do to defend itself if it had all of the tanks suitable for use in actual combat today. 

[InkaUtexas 24936]

1 minute ago, Gatorubet said:

So here’s the rub: Germany “has provided” 48 Leopard tanks.  But 30 of the Leopard 1s are in shop in Germany and 18 of the Leopard 2s are in shop in Lithuania.  

Imagine what Ukraine could do to defend itself if it had all of the tanks suitable for use in actual combat today. 

Yep, if they had the equipment sitting in Depot they could guard Europe and Europe may not need them.

[Gatorubet 29797]

8 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Yep, if they had the equipment sitting in Depot they could guard Europe and Europe may not need them.

 

Found this graphic

I think most of the Leopard 2s are on ground.  The Poles and Swedes and Norway already delivered I think.

 

[Gatorubet 29797]

Russia has lost over 2600 tank so far.
 

When you consider that, the numbers we are providing them are pathetic

[MissingInAction 24439]

True, but one Abrams can destroy 10+ russian shit boxes while it's parking. 

[atomheartbevo 89100]

Some interesting and short videos you can listen to in the background covering the impact Navalny’s death will have on things going forward.

Everybody’s got their take and there’s a lot of talk about Russia as a whole, but in terms of this thread, Putin is clearing the slate in terms of probably going all in on mass mobilization after the “election” and eliminating the person who could unify Russians enough to possibly put the brakes on.  There are now no obstacles - he’s preparing Russians for far more suffering (economic and deaths/casualties) in his quest for Ukraine and Navalny was probably the last barrier.

 

goes into specifics about Navalny’s background

 

Romans take, from a younger Russian actually inspired by Navalny, shows where he was held.

 

Edited February 19 by atomheartbevo

[bolverk 29116]

I watched all three, and those are excellent reactions and analyses. For those who haven't watched due to length or whatever, I'd recommend initially starting with the second video at 1.25x speed for a great background, followed by the thought-provoking second half of the first video on political implications within the Russian sphere. Then, move on to the third for reaction.

[Gatorubet 29797]

2 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

True, but one Abrams can destroy 10+ russian shit boxes while it's parking. 

A solid point. While this is true, the support of infantry with HE shells and machine gun fire (and the elimination of lesser IFV’s) is also a tank role, and I’d rather have 10 M-60s suppressing oncoming meat waves than one Abrams.

[Schulz2.0 28657]