Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[magnkarl]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

I get paid for it!

[StefanAVFC]

Quote

Manchester United is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Aleksander Kukin, one of the founding members of the Kyiv Reds supporters' club.

A statement by the Kyiv Reds on Monday (21 March) confirmed that the much-admired United fan had been killed after his car was shot at by opposition forces.

Man Utd deeply saddened by death of loyal Ukrainian supporter Aleksander Kukin | 21 March 2022 | Manchester United

[Mic09]

44 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Man Utd deeply saddened by death of loyal Ukrainian supporter Aleksander Kukin | 21 March 2022 | Manchester United

Quote

A statement by the Kyiv Reds on Monday (21 March) confirmed that the much-admired United fan had been killed after his car was shot at by opposition forces.

 

Why post this in the Russia thread?

Surely it's not related?

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I hope sarcasm is not a lost art.

 

**Clearly it is.

Edited March 22, 2022 by Mic09

[tonyh29]

5 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

Why post this in the Russia thread?

Surely it's not related?

He was shot dead by Russian invaders  !

[magnkarl]

Oryx - a website studying and verifying video proof and satellite images from Ukraine now has the total losses at:

Quote

Russia - 1705, of which: destroyed: 825, damaged: 32, abandoned: 221, captured: 627

Ukraine - 501, of which: destroyed: 185, damaged: 10, abandoned: 37, captured: 269

For every 1 Ukrainian equipment loss, Russia loses 3-4. 

Worth noting that the losses on the Russian side include parts of 39 BUK systems, 17 T-90A, 2 TOS-Rocket launchers and 4 SU-34's. Very expensive equipment indeed.

Edited March 22, 2022 by magnkarl

[ender4]

2 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Oryx - a website studying and verifying video proof and satellite images from Ukraine now has the total losses at:

For every 1 Ukrainian equipment loss, Russia loses 3-4. 

Worth noting that the losses on the Russian side include parts of 39 BUK systems. 2 TOS-Rocket launchers and 4 SU-34's. Very expensive equipment indeed.

Is that good enough or will Ukraine run out of equipment before Russia at that ratio?

[magnkarl]

This is where the T90A comes from.

Edited March 22, 2022 by magnkarl

[Mic09]

17 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

He was shot dead by Russian invaders  !

You don't say?

[tonyh29]

few rumblings that Ukraine have surrounded Russian troops in Bucha ,Irpin and Hostomel  , also cutting them off from sup0plies 

that's a lot of troops about to become POW's  ..if confirmed to be true 

 

[Panto_Villan]

On 21/03/2022 at 16:12, blandy said:

It's all opinions, but there's 0 chance for me.

If Russia uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine, then firstly there's no such thing as "NATO" will use a nuke on Belarus - it would be either a UK, or US, or German, or French or etc. national plane deploying it, right? and it's a straight up war crime. It's not Belarus that's done the bad thing with the tac nuke in Ukraine. Then there's the rest of the "argument" - why on earth would Belarus suddenly want to go all join NATO or join the EU, if those nations had just nuked them for something the Russians did?

There's a lot more than that to make the case that it's completely off the table, but that's enough, on its own.

So much is based on the exact circumstances of how Russia used its nukes that this is all conjecture upon conjecture so I won't say you're wrong, but I do see personally it differently.

I don't think it would be a war crime to drop a nuke on a base in Belarus being used by Russian forces actively involved in the war (as opposed to just wiping Belarus off the map), and if we're talking about nuclear escalation that could potentially devastate most of the world the long-term prospects of Belarus joining the EU probably wouldn't be that much of a consideration. The main thing would be sending a message to Putin saying "we're also perfectly willing to use nukes so you'd better stop using them right now" while also trying to break the cycle of tit-for-tat escalation. And hitting Belarusian soil with a nuke would be less of a provocation than Russian soil while still sending the same message.

Yes, it'd likely be a US plane and a US missile. But you'd have to imagine this would be a collective decision made by the leading powers within NATO, with a statement accompanying it (and the lines start to become a bit blurred anyway if it's a US nuke currently housed in Italy / Belgium / etc being fired from a US plane that launched from a German / Polish airbase).

[Genie]

57 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Is that good enough or will Ukraine run out of equipment before Russia at that ratio?

Nope, because the rest of the world will keep replenishing Ukrainian gear.

[Panto_Villan]

7 hours ago, Awol said:

I was told Poland was keen to go ahead but the US blocked it. As Stefan said the provision of replacement F16 would have to have been part of it, but that is supposedly an alliance goal anyway - replacing legacy Soviet systems with NATO standard equipment. Same goes for Slovakian S-300 SAMs being donated to Kyiv and replaced with Patriots. 

Bottom line, I don’t think the US is all in on a strategy of helping Ukraine achieve victory in a conventional war with Russia. The approach was always to bleed Moscow through an insurgency once Ukraine had folded, but Ukraine is doing well, the west (Washington) doesn’t have a plan for this scenario, and Biden can’t adapt fast enough to realities on the ground.

Talk of Polish ‘peacekeepers’ is a reflection of eastern allies getting sick of waiting for the US to wake up, imho. Now it looks to be a conventional fight for every inch of Ukraine, simply hoping that Russian armour halts at your border is a high risk  strategy from Warsaw’s perspective. 

I'm not sure about this. Obviously the US was expecting to be bleeding Moscow via an insurgency but that's because Ukraine was expected to fall quickly; I expect they're absolutely delighted with this turn of events and would absolutely love to see the Russian army get defeated in a conventional war. Why would they rather see the Russian military slowly bled when they can see it getting stabbed right through the chest instead?

Biden is clearly incredibly risk-averse when it comes to the lives of US servicemen. He kept to Trump's ridiculous schedule for pulling out of Afghanistan when he took power, despite the obvious risks, and his refusal to put boots on the ground here is just a continuation of that imo.

It'd be very interesting to see what "support" the US is willing to offer Poland if they decide to go in. Maybe drone strikes and cruise missiles?

That said I'm surprised they're willing to entertain the idea of NATO countries sending troops in at all. If a no-fly zone is an unacceptable escalation then Polish troops on the ground would be an even greater escalation. And also there's a real risk of getting dragged in by proxy - if the US moved 50,000 troops over the border I'm pretty sure the Russians would be routed in relatively short order, but if the Polish did it? They don't have the same level of training and combat experience as the first-rate military powers within NATO. You'd hope they could push the Russians back too (or just cause them to immediately back off and seek peace) but ultimately there's no guarantee they wouldn't run into significant problems of their own, and require further assistance.

[Panto_Villan]

58 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Is that good enough or will Ukraine run out of equipment before Russia at that ratio?

The irony is that even if you assume 50% of the Ukrainian tank losses haven't been recorded, according to the figures Ukraine has captured so many tanks from the Russians they actually now have more than they started with.

[trekka]

 

[magnkarl]

2 hours ago, ender4 said:

Is that good enough or will Ukraine run out of equipment before Russia at that ratio?

No. The big thing in this war (for the first time in a while) seems to be manpower. Tanks and armour is rendered useless by new age anti armour tech. Russia's doctrine is mass armour and artillery against massed armour and artillery. The Ukrainian army is mobile, well known in the terrain and equipped with light but deadly NATO systems. Russia doesn't have the logistics, manpower or tactical ability for anything but mass pitched field battles against an army in the Fulda Gap it seems, or alternatively bombing civilians.

What Ukraine is winning this war with is ambushes, drones and anti-armour, not tanks and equipment on the ground.

Edited March 22, 2022 by magnkarl

[tonyh29]

30 minutes ago, trekka said:

 

I told  you this an hour ago … you don’t need that Twitter thing  

[magnkarl]

 

[sne]

Aleksej Navalnyj sentenced to a further 9 years in prison. For fraud.

His lawyers has also been arrested.

[Awol]

3 hours ago, ender4 said:

Is that good enough or will Ukraine run out of equipment before Russia at that ratio?

The Ukrainians have a bigger problem in that they are running short of ammunition, particularly for artillery. As Zelensky himself said a few days ago, what the west is a supplying for seven days lasts for 20 hours. Logistics, logistics, logistics. It wins and loses wars.

We need to be running the equivalent of the Berlin airlift to bases in Poland, but one consequence of cutting defence budgets was to dispense with strategic stocks of ammunition - who needs it when the political orthodoxy rules out inter-state warfare as obsolete?

Giving Ukraine what it really needs means leaving NATO’s own warehouses bare, and reliant on weapon production lines that are more artisan than industrial in capacity. 

[BleedClaretAndBlue]