Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[avfc1982am]

A short doc with videos taken by a Russian soldier leading up to and during the invasion of Ukraine....English subs.

 

[Awol]

I hope his knees are in better shape than mine, the infantry is a young man’s game. 

 

 

[tinker]

17 hours ago, LondonLax said:

No the point was to give them the cover to announce their NATO membership process. Joining NATO is not something that happens overnight, it could take 12 months or so (and Turkey are threatening to throw a spanner in the works).

So the problem for Sweden and Finland is that they announce their intention to join but Russia decides to get a few punches in before the NATO protections kick in.

The U.K. has promised to cover off that period, including the use of the U.K.’s nuclear deterrent. 

We're playing Russian roulette with someone who appears to have totally lost the plot and has no compassion for his own soldiers let alone anyone elses. Boris should not be leading us into this, he's a moron. 

[magnkarl]

Ukraine will by June 1st have mobilised 1.000.000 men. Russia has mobilised a rumoured 200.000 men. This war is going one way, that is a complete withdrawal from Ukraine by Russia, kicking and screaming or peacefully. 

There are now 30-40 M777 for every Ukrainian attack plan. They're absolutely taking Russian artillery apart. As @Awol described early this would be an artillery battle in the East, and if we could supply the Ukrainians with enough long distance systems Ukraine would come out on top. I just didn't think Russia's flanks would fold this easily.

In war theory terms, Russia would need 5 million men to overcome a million men in defensive positions. I'm not even sure Putin has 1 million.

Edited May 16, 2022 by magnkarl

[sidcow]

Ukrainian MP on Breakfast just now was saying the air battle is now their main issue, the need aircraft and anti aircraft systems.  I suspect the latter will be easier to The West to supply. 

Putin MUST be under pressure internally, this is a total disaster for them.  If they start losing massive numbers of aircraft and pilots too it's going to get worse. 

[magnkarl]

Of course Latvia and Estonia's spend isn't that huge in the first place, but compare their numbers to ours and France's and I think both Macron and Boris has a lot of catching up to do.

[Genie]

1 minute ago, magnkarl said:

Of course Latvia and Estonia's spend isn't that huge in the first place, but compare their numbers to ours and France's and I think both Macron and Boris has a lot of catching up to do.

Boris is contributing “grand gestures” to the cause. He’s number 1 on that measure.

[ender4]

22 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Of course Latvia and Estonia's spend isn't that huge in the first place, but compare their numbers to ours and France's and I think both Macron and Boris has a lot of catching up to do.

Germany donated more than double what the UK has?  Is that right?

 

Wasnt Germany stalling on delivering equipment, or at least the right type of equipment?

[magnkarl]

5 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Germany donated more than double what the UK has?  Is that right?

 

Wasnt Germany stalling on delivering equipment, or at least the right type of equipment?

Germany donated a lot of first generation anti tank and manpads from East-Germany early on. It's also worth noting that it's % spend, not in actual sums. Germany has yet to deliver much heavy equipment as Scholtz is dancing around the issue.

The U.K has delivered more 'usable' high tech equipment, just in smaller quantities.

 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, ender4 said:

Germany donated more than double what the UK has?  Is that right?

 

Wasnt Germany stalling on delivering equipment, or at least the right type of equipment?

Last time I looked at these figures France and Germany’s numbers benefited by having their share of what the EU has donated as a whole added to them

[The Fun Factory]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

Ukrainian MP on Breakfast just now was saying the air battle is now their main issue, the need aircraft and anti aircraft systems.  I suspect the latter will be easier to The West to supply. 

Putin MUST be under pressure internally, this is a total disaster for them.  If they start losing massive numbers of aircraft and pilots too it's going to get worse. 

Putin entire tactic seemed to have been hoping on a quick raid through eastern Ukrarine, resulting in panic and the central government fleeing Kiev in which he could then put in a puppet regime. That didn't happen and they seem woefully underprepared and undersupplied.

Edited May 16, 2022 by The Fun Factory

[bickster]

36 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Putin entire tactic seemed to have been hoping on a quick raid through eastern Ukrarine, resulting in panic and the central government fleeing Kiev in which he could then put in a puppet regime. That didn't happen and they seem woefully underprepared and undersupplied.

That's just a part of it

Their entire military doctrine is outdated. An example of what I mean is the way they use tanks, they just send them right in with nothing in front of them, that leaves them vulnerable to small numbers of soldiers equipped with personal anti-tank weapons. If those weapons are of the latest generation and your tanks are Soviet Era design then you have a huge problem

Then you need to add in that Russian military doctrine also doesn't seem to be able to combine different arms of the military. The Air Force does what the Airforce wants, the Navy does what the Navy wants andd the Army on the ground doesn't get the support in needs.

Russia has also failed miserably to achieve Air Superiority because again, Ukraine's forces are equipped with large numbers of MANPADS of the current generation that the older Russian / Soviet aircraft that Russia is using can't cope very well with and there are no AA Batteries to target Ukrainians with MANPADS could be anywhere

It;s also very noticeable that Russia is using very few of its Modern Tanks and Aircraft, it's becoming increasing obvious that they just don't perform as previously claimed. And they don't have that many of them anyway.

Russia's supply issues that you mention are huge. There's a good number of factors here. Corruption means that the reserves aren't what they were supposed to be and those mothballed vehicles etc just haven't been looked after and have had parts plundered for vodka. Sanctions means they don't have the parts to either produce or repair their vehicles.Russia's road network is dreadful, to move stuff about, you need to do it by train, rail networks are easy to target and Ukraine seems to have been doing that well.

Also, its worth noting that Russia has pretty much run out of land based precision artillery shells, they are now down to just the plain dumb shells. Guess where Russia used to get a number of the components for their precision shells from? Yup, Ukraine, they declared war on a key supplier of their weaponry. 

If you want to write a book about how not to declare and fight a war, don't bother. Russia are writing it

[Genie]

28 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Putin entire tactic seemed to have been hoping on a quick raid through eastern Ukrarine, resulting in panic and the central government fleeing Kiev in which he could then put in a puppet regime. That didn't happen and they seem woefully underprepared and undersupplied.

I actually think that was plan B. Putin’s plan A was to park tanks all along the border and hope Ukraine shit itself into agreeing to whatever Russia demanded.

[magnkarl]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

That's just a part of it

Their entire military doctrine is outdated. An example of what I mean is the way they use tanks, they just send them right in with nothing in front of them, that leaves them vulnerable to small numbers of soldiers equipped with personal anti-tank weapons. If those weapons are of the latest generation and your tanks are Soviet Era design then you have a huge problem

Then you need to add in that Russian military doctrine also doesn't seem to be able to combine different arms of the military. The Air Force does what the Airforce wants, the Navy does what the Navy wants andd the Army on the ground doesn't get the support in needs.

Russia has also failed miserably to achieve Air Superiority because again, Ukraine's forces are equipped with large numbers of MANPADS of the current generation that the older Russian / Soviet aircraft that Russia is using can't cope very well with and there are no AA Batteries to target Ukrainians with MANPADS could be anywhere

It;s also very noticeable that Russia is using very few of its Modern Tanks and Aircraft, it's becoming increasing obvious that they just don't perform as previously claimed. And they don't have that many of them anyway.

Russia's supply issues that you mention are huge. There's a good number of factors here. Corruption means that the reserves aren't what they were supposed to be and those mothballed vehicles etc just haven't been looked after and have had parts plundered for vodka. Sanctions means they don't have the parts to either produce or repair their vehicles.Russia's road network is dreadful, to move stuff about, you need to do it by train, rail networks are easy to target and Ukraine seems to have been doing that well.

Also, its worth noting that Russia has pretty much run out of land based precision artillery shells, they are now down to just the plain dumb shells. Guess where Russia used to get a number of the components for their precision shells from? Yup, Ukraine, they declared war on a key supplier of their weaponry. 

If you want to write a book about how not to declare and fight a war, don't bother. Russia are writing it

Agreed with all of this.

On the point of the 'modern' tanks and airplanes, I'm starting to believe that this might just be myths. I'm sure whoever got put in charge of making them have been signing their praises to Putin, turned around and put an 'Armata' shell on a T-80 or 90 and bragged about the awesome tank they've 'developed'. The Su-35 has been shot down a number of times in this conflict which is pretty rich considering it was supposed to be 'better than the F-35'. In one they found a GPS strapped to the dash for Pete's sake.

Soviet tank design was good for its age, mainly due to the developers being largely veterans of ww2 where they needed above all else to make tanks that could fight the panzer heavy Germans. Now there isn't a long line of Tiger tanks to fight, but rather 1 million Ukrainians armed with smart AT systems.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

Russian military philosophy has failed in 3 important areas. 

1. They don’t have sufficient troops to protect supply lines. 

2. Tanks are now very vulnerable to infantry weapons and they don’t have sufficient infantry to screen their tanks. 

3. They have air superiority but not air supremacy.  To gain air supremacy would causes loses to their best aircraft. They can’t deploy these because of the perceived threat from NATO’s airforce which is much more powerful and surrounds it on all sides. 

Brilliant! 

 

[Brumerican]

[HKP90]

36 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Russian military philosophy has failed in 3 important areas. 

1. They don’t have sufficient troops to protect supply lines. 

2. Tanks are now very vulnerable to infantry weapons and they don’t have sufficient infantry to screen their tanks. 

3. They have air superiority but not air supremacy.  To gain air supremacy would causes loses to their best aircraft. They can’t deploy these because of the perceived threat from NATO’s airforce which is much more powerful and surrounds it on all sides. 

Brilliant! 

 

On your third point, though, it still baffles me that they are so shit scared of NATO, as if when they let their guard down for a second NATO countries would invade Russia. Have they spun this nonsense for so long that they now believe it?  

If they left their northern flank with NATO open...........absolutely nothing would happen. Seriously Vlad, aside from the invasion bulls**t no-one gives a toss about Russia. In fact most of Europe would just like it if you built a massive wall and f**cked off behind it to brood on collectivism or some old mcgubbins. 

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

 In fact most of Europe would just like it if you built a massive wall and f**cked off behind it. 

Or an Iron Curtain? 

[HKP90]

Just now, sidcow said:

Or an Iron Curtain? 

Most Russians seem to be on board with the war. If they want to cower in fear, they could at least do it quietly while not interrupting the rest of the world. You gotta hand it to old Kim Jong, they know how to do isolated. 

(Hopefully this all comes across as facetious, but I can't tell the tone on the internet.) 

[PussEKatt]

I bet China is rethinking the value of Russia as a ally ?!