Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[meregreen]

14 hours ago, magnkarl said:

Seems like Ukraine is allowing Russia to advance only to counter attack behind them. Ukraine estimates that they’re knocking out 100 armoured vehicles per day, including the crews. How many qualified tankers are left in Russia?

Saw a graph which showed Russia has 13000 tanks. A bloody huge number, USA has 5000. However most of those tanks are pretty outdated by modern standards. Their latest Tank the T14, dubbed the worlds most deadly tank. Hasn’t been deployed in Ukraine yet. However, like the Germans in WWII, it might be the loss of experienced crews which will ultimately blunt their armoured capabilities. If this war has shown anything, it is that the days of sitting duck armoured giants might be over. One man with a hand held missile can take them out very effectively. Long range artillery and missiles seem to be the biggest problem for the Ukrainians. Supplying more drones, which the West is now doing, could cause the Russians some grief in the future.

[bickster]

Longish thread, worth a read

 

[Awol]

For anyone keeping score, that’s nearly a million Ukrainians abducted by the fascists. Imagine if they succeeded in taking over the whole country:

 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, meregreen said:

Saw a graph which showed Russia has 13000 tanks. A bloody huge number, USA has 5000. However most of those tanks are pretty outdated by modern standards. Their latest Tank the T14, dubbed the worlds most deadly tank. Hasn’t been deployed in Ukraine yet. However, like the Germans in WWII, it might be the loss of experienced crews which will ultimately blunt their armoured capabilities. If this war has shown anything, it is that the days of sitting duck armoured giants might be over. One man with a hand held missile can take them out very effectively. Long range artillery and missiles seem to be the biggest problem for the Ukrainians. Supplying more drones, which the West is now doing, could cause the Russians some grief in the future.

There's absolutely no way Russia has 13,000 servicable tanks. A huge proportion of that 13,000 will be junk. Some T-72As have already been spotted at least on the way to the front, that is a variant that goes back to the 1979-1985 era, it was the Tanks first real upgrade. Of the 13,000 number often quoted it is thought that 10,000 are T-72s and most of those were thought to be T-72Bs, it seems they've needed to look down the back of the sofa and have found some As. 2,000 of the 10,000 were thought to be on active duty, the other 8,000 were mothballed and there have been plenty of reports regarding the army sellling engines and other bits on the black market to make money, that level of corruption will have junked a big number of the 8,000. No-one knows how many working T-72s they have, in all likelihood, even Putin doesn't know. One commander of a tank warehouse is reported to have blown his own brains out when the order for more tanks came, most have assumed this is because there weren't many he was charged with overseeing that were even close to being battle ready

The T-14 will not be deployed in Ukraine. They deployed a few in Syria and one got blown up by the rag tag army they were fighting. Publically they say they have 100 of the Amata, the reality is closer to 30. They were supposed to have 2800 by now, production of the tank was severely impacted by sanctions since 2014. They don't have enough to use it properly and if they use it with T-72s it will be slowed down by them and that isn't good. Russia also cannot afford to have any blown to bits as it would haope to be selling this new generation of kit to the likes of India and China and they can't have it seen to be failing. Currently the T-14 is nothing more than a show tank

Also, another reason the Russian tanks are getting blown to bits by small units armed with modern AT weapons is that conventional tactical wisdom says you need masses of infantry in front of the tanks to wipe out the threat from the NLAWs etc, Russia doesn't seem to be capable of doing this. They don't have anywhere near enough cannon fodder to be able to do it and its hard enough to motivate the infantry they do have, they are already using the Kadyrovites behind the front line to enforce soldiers fighting (or get shot for desertion), more infantry would be even harder for them to control and they might not have enough people willing to enforce behind the lines.

 

[magnkarl]

I wonder what percentage of Russian injured return to the front line. It’s likely few.

[Mr_Dogg]

Dozens of Bucha civilians were killed by metal darts from Russian artillery

Quote

Dozens of civilians who died during the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha were killed by tiny metal arrows from shells of a type fired by Russian artillery, forensic doctors have said.

Pathologists and coroners who are carrying out postmortems on bodies found in mass graves in the region north of Kyiv, where occupying Russian forces have been accused of atrocities, said they had found small metal darts, called fléchettes, embedded in people’s heads and chests.

“We found several really thin, nail-like objects in the bodies of men and women and so did others of my colleagues in the region,” Vladyslav Pirovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor, told the Guardian. “It is very hard to find those in the body, they are too thin. The majority of these bodies come from the Bucha-Irpin region.”

 

 

[bickster]

Finish this sentence. Tonight there was a large explosion at an airfield...

Everyone has lost count now, somewhere between 20-22 times is the consensus

[magnkarl]

Another fire at an oil depot in Bryansk, another UA attack or sabotage.

[Awol]

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

Another fire at an oil depot in Bryansk, another UA attack or sabotage.

I suppose if you can’t persuade Europe to stop importing Russian oil, you have to stop Russia from exporting it. 

Bryansk in blue circle on pipeline map below:

[sidcow]

7 minutes ago, Awol said:

I suppose if you can’t persuade Europe to stop importing Russian oil, you have to stop Russia from exporting it. 

Bryansk in blue circle on pipeline map below:

I mean, you would think after recent events Russia would have these kind of sites so well protected so they would be near impossible to hit, bristling with anti aircraft batteries. 

Suggests they are either really stupid (very possible) or they just haven't got enough equipment to protect key sites at home as all the hardware is in Ukraine.  Maybe the plan is to force them to repatriate some anti aircraft / missile systems leaving operations in Ukraine more exposed. 

[Awol]

4 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I mean, you would think after recent events Russia would have these kind of sites so well protected so they would be near impossible to hit, bristling with anti aircraft batteries. 

Suggests they are either really stupid (very possible) or they just haven't got enough equipment to protect key sites at home as all the hardware is in Ukraine.  Maybe the plan is to force them to repatriate some anti aircraft / missile systems leaving operations in Ukraine more exposed. 

I don’t think this was hit from the air mate.

[Awol]

Russian army completes the journey to ISIS-like occupier.

Filth.

[magnkarl]

15 minutes ago, Awol said:

Russian army completes the journey to ISIS-like occupier.

Filth.

Yeah, I think people are starting to wake up to the reasoning given by Chechen freedom fighters as to why they were attacking Russia the way they were. Russian soldiers are absolute dogturds, it isn't a case of just some of them being bad eggs. They are all part of this depravity.

[magnkarl]

20 minutes ago, Awol said:

I don’t think this was hit from the air mate.

Apparently (unconfirmed) air raid sirens went of before dawn this morning, so it could be one of the many stolen grad patterns turned back on Russia or a well placed missile like the one that took out the ship at the docks in Melitopol?

Edited April 25, 2022 by magnkarl

[Awol]

1 minute ago, magnkarl said:

Apparently (unconfirmed) air raid sirens went of before dawn this morning, so it could be one of the many stolen grad patterns turned back on Russia or a well placed missile like the one that took out the ship at the docks in Melitopol?

I don’t know, have a look at this vid and see what you think. Explosion doesn’t look like an aerial bomb goes off to me. It’s defo not a SRBM

 

[magnkarl]

4 minutes ago, Awol said:

I don’t know, have a look at this vid and see what you think. Explosion doesn’t look like an aerial bomb goes off to me. It’s defo not a SRBM

 

Agreed. Sabotage seems more likely.

[theunderstudy]

The Russian ship they're sending out to the Moskva wreckage is apparently 109 years old. They don't like chucking stuff away do they....

[sidcow]

33 minutes ago, theunderstudy said:

The Russian ship they're sending out to the Moskva wreckage is apparently 109 years old. They don't like chucking stuff away do they....

Maybe Ukraine should do something that might encourage them to think they need a replacement for it!

[Mandy Lifeboats]

I assume  the Moskva wreckage is out of range for Ukraine's missiles? 

The increased use of drones in this conflict does make me wonder if they are all being manned by Ukrainians.  Is it feasible for these drones to be launched in Ukraine but controlled from Poland and Romania?  

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I assume  the Moskva wreckage is out of range for Ukraine's missiles? 

The increased use of drones in this conflict does make me wonder if they are all being manned by Ukrainians.  Is it feasible for these drones to be launched in Ukraine but controlled from Poland and Romania?  

I think that assumption is incorrect. I think last time I looked Sevastopol Harbour was only just outside Missile Range from Ukraine