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France fought on in 1940 until the frontline had broken down completely and German mechanised units were freely driving through the West of the country seizing all of the ports. Surrender did not work out great at all but there was no longer any chance of organised resistence beyond getting everyone they could onto boats to England (and that would have meant risk of reprisals to their families/possible permament exile).
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Feb 25, 2022 16:53
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https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1497236669543727106
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Feb 25, 2022 16:53
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Russia was assessed as having the best ground forces in the world by military nerds i think and lol that they're underperforming so bad What we've seen so far is that every time the Russian ground forces fight a proper battle against the Ukrainians, they're seeing heavy losses even for their gains. Most of their advances seem to have come unopposed and they're being stalled at chokepoints and getting into the population centers. Of course, I'm weary that we're only hearing this from Ukrainian-aligned sources and it might be different in reality.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:53
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EvilHawk posted:https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1497235734100516868 i honestly dont think they planned this through. https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1497205001302814721 CommieGIR posted:It helps that the vast majority of the social media sphere is on Ukraine's side. Ironically, Russia doesn't have that much positive engagement. yeah my cousin works in media analysis with foreign interference and etc and she says outside some tankies, the only people supporting the russians are trumpists.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:53
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Redgrendel2001 posted:https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/1497195540261474305?t=1f5mL_2VfuDrnU2IIVmY3A&s=19 Pfft, how many divisions does he have?
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Feb 25, 2022 16:53
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Alchenar posted:France fought on in 1940 until the frontline had broken down completely and German mechanised units were freely driving through the West of the country seizing all of the ports. Surrender did not work out great at all but there was no longer any chance of organised resistence beyond getting everyone they could onto boats to England (and that would have meant risk of reprisals to their families/possible permament exile). True. France was, ironically, in a less enviable position than even Ukraine is right now although the battle for France took weeks.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:54
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Eric Cantonese posted:I thought Ukraine was willing to negotiate. What reasonable concessions did Ukraine not give? The impression I got was that Russia basically put down a lot of non-starter demands that were essentially "become our puppet state and cease to exist as an independent nation with self-defense capabilities." I think Russia very likely would have accepted an agreement not to join NATO (or the EU) and to recognize Russia's claim to Crimea, but obviously no one can say for sure. At this point it's kind of irrelevant except in the sense that terms can always get worse depending on the facts on the ground, so accepting even awful terms now might be better than what's available if Russia actually captures Kiev.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:54
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Sinteres posted:I think a better analogy would be France, who did surrender. And as much as they get made fun of for it, they were spared the worst of the war because of that surrender. Was it the right move? gently caress if I know. Obviously morally monstrous decisions were made by the Vichy government, and they deserved what they got. But there were benefits to the surrender in terms of French lives spared. They were not spared the worst of the war. While being spared some of the devastation of the German cities during the strategic bombing campaign, which incidentally was because of the influence of the Free French who did not surrender, French cities were still bombed. French villages were wiped out by the Waffen SS, the French population suffered under German occupation, French Jews were sent to extermination camps, and Germany ultimately collapsed and occupied Vichy France (the area of France left over after the surrender) because Hitler, like Putin, did not honor his treaties and Vichy's existence no longer suited Hitler's strategic needs. On top of that from June 1944 until the end of the war some of the heaviest fighting on the Western Front was on French soil; and incidentally, the French resistance was also a thing in the occupied zone in addition to the fact that 300,000 French soldiers, sailors, and airmen did not honor that surrender and continued to fight under the banner of Free France--and it was their participation in the war against Nazism, like I said, that spared German occupied French cities from the worst parts of the Allied strategic bombing campaign. And finally, when the French signed the armistice with Germany, while they expected Britain would soon follow, the French could at least tell themselves that the British were still fighting on. This is a luxury Ukrainians do not have. If they agree to any 'terms' Putin offers there is absolutely nobody left with the possibility of rolling back the Russian tide. What will be lost will likely be lost, if not forever, for many, many generations.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:54
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Russia was assessed as having the best ground forces in the world by military nerds i think and lol that they're underperforming so bad While I don't want to think that this is all some big feint by Putin, I'm otherwise having a hard time reconciling the Russian performance over the last 36 hours contrasted against a lifetime of being brought up to view Russia's military as being able to steamroll any opposition that isn't the US or China.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:55
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Sinteres posted:Most of France's Jews survived the Holocaust, which may not have been the case if Germany had occupied the entire country. I'm not saying Petain was a good guy or defending Nazi collaboration or saying surrendering was morally good/making any normative judgments at all really (other than that Nazis are evil of course), just that it very likely saved a whole lot of lives in France. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Anton Germany did occupy the entire country two years later. Funny that.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:55
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CommieGIR posted:How does this help him? How does this possibly gain Russia any PR? I think this is all for domestic consumption. He knows what he has to do to demilitarize Ukraine, but a public appeal is a better look at home. Has there been any confirmation that a bunch of VDV were killed or did they harass, get routed, and successfully held out?
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Feb 25, 2022 16:55
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OwlFancier posted:Does it count as air superiority if they have a sufficient ground based air defence network that the enemy air force can't operate effectively? Air superiority is both "Our opponents can't effectively use their air force" and "we can use our air force freely", Russia still hasn't accomplished the second part.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:55
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Russia was assessed as having the best ground forces in the world by military nerds i think and lol that they're underperforming so bad This is what made me have that drunk "wtf" moment last night tbh (apologies to everyone if I came off as beligerent or an rear end) I have been told all my life in the great old US of A that the Russians are still a major threat, that they are cool and amazing with their special forces and brutal and efficient and whatever else chuds go about... And poo poo like this happens and I'm just kinda left dumbfounded tbh.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:55
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Russia was assessed as having the best ground forces in the world by military nerds i think and lol that they're underperforming so bad This is because you're being selective with your viewing. Ukraine has been suffering heavy losses but has been holding on. It looks like just now Russia is putting its full weight into the attack. There might not be a clear moment when the "organized" resistance becomes "insurgent," but I think things are still moving along fairly quickly despite the heroic defense. It's just too many fronts.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:56
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https://twitter.com/lapatina_/status/1497238346460016644 That'll show them
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Feb 25, 2022 16:56
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SourKraut posted:UN forces didn't cross into China; they stalled after having taken Pyongyang because MacArthur wanted to go into China and Truman didn't. UN forces never crossed past the Yalu River. I looked this up and you're right, I was thinking of China feeling threatened and crossing the Yalu River themselves to help North Korea. Completely forgot the UN-force didn't even get to the river themselves.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:56
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Sinteres posted:I think Russia very likely would have accepted an agreement not to join NATO (or the EU) and to recognize Russia's claim to Crimea, but obviously no one can say for sure. At this point it's kind of irrelevant except in the sense that terms can always get worse depending on the facts on the ground, so accepting even awful terms now might be better than what's available if Russia actually captures Kiev. Again, its a lucy football case: Putins demands basically require what he is already doing militarily. Either way Ukraine is conquered, but right now its actually looking worse for Russia publicly even if they are advancing.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:56
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OwlFancier posted:Does it count as air superiority if they have a sufficient ground based air defence network that the enemy air force can't operate effectively? that just means that the airspace is contested and neither side has air superiority
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Feb 25, 2022 16:57
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ranbo das posted:Air superiority is both "Our opponents can't effectively use their air force" and "we can use our air force freely", Russia still hasn't accomplished the second part. Yeah that was what I was thinking, there probably isn't much of a ukrainian air force left but that doesn't mean the russians can operate with impunity the way the US likes to do. So you likely won't see air battles or necessarily tank columns getting strafed, but equally the russians can't do as much as they would like.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:57
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TulliusCicero posted:This is what made me have that drunk "wtf" moment last night tbh (apologies to everyone if I came off as beligerent or an rear end) They're probably going to take the capital of a country of 45 million 3-5 days after invading. This is not the time to underestimate the military threat that Russia poses.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:57
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CommieGIR posted:But Russians are not going to return to their lines. That's the gist. That's the demand. Putin still demilitarizes Ukraine (which likely means occupation), Ukraine becomes a defacto Russian territory. You don't know until you sit down and try. What do you have to lose? If he says the country needs to be occupied then you can reevaluate. No help is coming and Putin is too deep to just walk away with nothing. The thing is that these demands have been consistent for years. A full-time occupation is also no good for Putin and this gives everyone a chance to pull back from sanctions that everyone suffers from at some point in the future. ZombieLenin posted:I wouldn't. Shrug. To me, you might as well be advising Władysław Sikorski to just agree to what Hitler wants in 1939, because you know, surrendering to Hitler would mean saving lives; or advising Churchill to see the writing on the wall, and that the Germans have won. These asinine Hitler comparisons ignore basic geopolitical realities. Hitler long before he got into power dreamed of Lebensraum in 1933 and said so publicly. In any who is giving in to what? Even if Putin intends to go for more, NATO sold you out. Why would you die for their security?
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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Sinteres posted:It's an example of there being no good decisions to make and French surrender saving lives that very likely would have been lost otherwise. I'm obviously not saying any of what happened was a good thing, or that collaborators should have died with a clean conscience (or even escaped punishment) or anything like that. Like the point of Sophie's Choice isn't that she should tell the Nazis to take both of the kids since she can't choose between them. One caveat on all of this is that Hitler had a... sympathetic view toward most of Western Europe and the UK, because he viewed them as descended from the same historical racial groups as the Germanic peoples, i.e. while they weren't Aryans like the true Germans were, they were still related. So we'll never know, but it's very likely that had France held out longer, not much would have changed besides possibly a German governor installed instead of the Vichy government. But the Vichy government enacted its own anti-semitic laws and didn't really try to protect French Jews, so I'm not sure it would have made a difference here (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220127-how-three-quarters-of-french-jews-survived-the-holocaust-despite-the-vichy-regime). It was more the interpersonal relationships that French Jews had with their neighbors that protected them, not the Vichy government. And that wouldn't have changed whether the Vichy government existed or not. And the Vichy government didn't stop the mass rapes committed by German troops, the reprisals, etc.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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Hannibal Rex posted:That's after the Russian response that they're willing to negotiate? I think it’s something like “vova ba-show na qhui” sorry for the bad transliteration
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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FishBulbia posted:This is because you're being selective with your viewing. It's also important to note that Russia seems to be rolling in early as opposed to just bombing the everliving gently caress out of everything from range. If they switch it up, poo poo's gonna get real bad real fast.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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Sending in the canon fodder first, newbies and older equipment to soak up the AT attacks, then send in the seasoned troops in convoys, presumably with the newer tanks, not the cold war era stuff. https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1497238122932940800 https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1497235725477105664 drunkill fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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thunderspanks posted:While I don't want to think that this is all some big feint by Putin, I'm otherwise having a hard time reconciling the Russian performance over the last 36 hours contrasted against a lifetime of being brought up to view Russia's military as being able to steamroll any opposition that isn't the US or China. this is after the military was modernized.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1497238122932940800 I appreciate I'm just kind of reposting tweets at the moment, but I think it's worth showing that the Ukrainian military appears to be in a better position than we thought as of this morning. We'll see how well they can mount the defence of Kyiv and other cities.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:58
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EvilHawk posted:https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1497235734100516868 It does seem like the Russians entirely failed to take out Ukrainian anti air defenses yesterday and have had to ground most of their air forces today. The Ukrainians also can't put anything in the air but it means that it's entirely a ground battle which suits Ukrainian anti tank defences who can operate with near impunity as they aren't at risk of Russian air support. Knock on wood The Russians seem to have hosed this up massively and I'm kind of expecting Putin to declare victory as soon as he can.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:59
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StarBegotten posted:I guess this gives Putin the excuse to play to type and carry out Stalinist purges of the traitors who will be blamed for the intelligence leaks? I would take that bet.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:59
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What terms can Ukraine reasonably extract from a bilateral ceasefire agreement with Moscow? An open ended question.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:59
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ranbo das posted:Air superiority is both "Our opponents can't effectively use their air force" and "we can use our air force freely", Russia still hasn't accomplished the second part. That's not right. You are confusing air superiority for air supremacy. Air superiority means that "we can use our air force more effectively than our opponents, and we generally speaking have an advantage in the air over the battlefield;" whereas air supremacy means essentially that "we own the air space and can use our air force freely without contest from our opponents air assets."
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Feb 25, 2022 16:59
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drunkill posted:https://twitter.com/idreesali114/status/1497238122932940800 Yep this seems to be the case. Haven't seen any super flankers or T-90's in any of the leaked vids...
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Feb 25, 2022 17:00
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CommieGIR posted:Again, its a lucy football case: Putins demands basically require what he is already doing militarily. Either way Ukraine is conquered, but right now its actually looking worse for Russia publicly even if they are advancing. I still maintain that there's a difference between subordinating your security policy to a neighbor and being conquered while losing many thousands of civilians in the process, and making Russia look bad isn't a sufficient counterbalance to the difference. But hey it's Ukraine's decision, and they want to continue fighting, and obviously I'm not suggesting they're morally wrong to do so since they're the victims here. There's every chance Zelensky would just be overthrown if he tried to accept Russian terms anyway, so it might be literally impossible.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:00
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FishBulbia posted:They're probably going to take the capital of a country of 45 million 3-5 days after invading. This is not the time to underestimate the military threat that Russia poses. Must be my "Anglo brain" malfunctioning then, but it seems like this "invasion" was hastily thrown together with no planning at the whim of a petty despicably evil despot I have no delusion that Ukraine wins this iniatial invasion, just impressed as gently caress with their efforts and reassessing my world view of the "great threat" Russia is
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Feb 25, 2022 17:01
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a pipe smoking dog posted:It does seem like the Russians entirely failed to take out Ukrainian anti air defenses yesterday and have had to ground most of their air forces today. There was a report earlier that they took that airfield near Kyiv with 200 helicopters. But as with literally everything we're told it may be true, it may be a lie, it may be somewhere in the middle. Nobody really knows.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:02
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wetdela posted:What terms can Ukraine reasonably extract from a bilateral ceasefire agreement with Moscow? An open ended question. "Give up your sovereignty and become a Russian colony."
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Feb 25, 2022 17:02
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MikeC posted:You don't know until you sit down and try. What do you have to lose? If he says the country needs to be occupied then you can reevaluate. No help is coming and Putin is too deep to just walk away with nothing. The thing is that these demands have been consistent for years. A full-time occupation is also no good for Putin and this gives everyone a chance to pull back from sanctions that everyone suffers from at some point in the future. Because Putin already openly set those terms. That's why we're saying this. A full time occupation is already a given because the demands were regime change, demilitarization, and no NATO accession.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:02
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TulliusCicero posted:That's huge if true. It means Russian tank columns are potentially vulnerable as gently caress to airstrikes By now all airfields not recently bombed or not hit by grain silo-sized rockets are probably repaired.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:02
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Sinteres posted:I still maintain that there's a difference between subordinating your security policy to a neighbor and being conquered while losing many thousands of civilians in the process, and making Russia look bad isn't a sufficient counterbalance to the difference. But hey it's Ukraine's decision, and they want to continue fighting, and obviously I'm not suggesting they're morally wrong to do so since they're the victims here. There's every chance Zelensky would just be overthrown if he tried to accept Russian terms anyway, so it might be literally impossible. Tell me you don’t know any Ukrainians without telling me you don’t know any Ukrainians.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:02
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TulliusCicero posted:Must be my "Anglo brain" malfunctioning then, but it seems like this "invasion" was hastily thrown together with no planning at the whim of a petty despicably evil despot If it was hastily thrown together with no planning US intel wouldn't have been able to leak it all over a lengthy period of time.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:03
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