|
StarBegotten posted:Just saw on BBC news that Germany just announced increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP... good job Putin! ref: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/nato-spending-by-country
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 02:24 |
|
|
Tomn posted:Earliest assessments were that Ukraine could potentially put up a stiff fight but would eventually be overwhelmed by far superior Russian numbers and a kind of lovely defensive strategic position barring sanctions crippling Putin or convincing him to pull back. Do we still think that’s true? Signs of high morale and Russian failures have been heartening, but are we prepared yet to call it a big enough shitshow on Putin’s part that he might actually stalemate or even lose? There’s still a lot of troops that have yet to go into action, no? No, the earliest assessments were that Ukraine had nothing to show against the vast military might of Russia. As it turns out they did, and Russia's military might was a lot weaker than everybody, including themselves, thought. Sanctions would hurt Russia after they had conquered Ukraine, but sanctions wouldn't stop the invasion, let alone Ukraine. In no way did Putin plan for this to take this long. Ukraine will stop the invasion, sanctions will hurt him later and Putin will be out of power and probably dead before 2022 is over.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:39
|
|
|
drat, that's really going to throw Vova
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:39
|
|
|
I have a question that might be answerable by modern military goons or those that are more familiar with sieges of cities like Baghdad: How do you -take- a city like you see the Russians driving around in, in all of these twitter threads? Do you just drive to City Hall and put up a russian flag and start yelling at everybody in earshot "This city is now property of Russia!" and just hope none of them open their trenchcoats to reveal they are carrying an AT launcher and a AK under it? Like do you just have to put a squad on every single street corner in the entire city all day every day until you stop getting shot at nonstop and can reasonably say "Nobody is left trying to kill us." Like in WW2 this seemed understandable enough: Roll into x city, kill everyone you see wearing a german uniform. City now liberated. But in modern times it's just "Drive into city, everyone there hates you forever". How do you radio back to moscow and go "We have captured x city". Like at what point does that become feasible in a modern war like this. I see videos of detachments of russians driving through these city streets and my first thought is just "Where the gently caress are they going and what is their plan when they get there?" Like I can't wrap my head around how they are supposed to be 'taking' these cities. Can anyone that is more familiar with urban warfare of this modern nature explain?
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:39
|
|
|
Kavros posted:Why is this a war seemingly featuring fantastically numerous cellphone video'd instances of I'm fairly sure that tank was abandoned. Comstar posted:
That's a heavy scene. Nice that the Ukrainians are finding victories here and there, but nobody should be dying like that. The pointlessness of this whole thing is so frustrating
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:40
|
|
|
nurmie posted:Honestly, now that the high emotions and the shock of the first two days is receding, I'm not seeing any significant failures on the part of Russian forces that can be corroborated by hard evidence - sure, we've all Seen Footage, but taking the scale of this conflict into account it's not saying much that a bunch of Russian platoons/companies/columns are doing some oopsies. As I said, most of the losses that we currently have concrete, video evidence for seem to be light mechanized infantry doing combat recon probes - dying like that is basically part of their job. That, and logistics convoys getting ambushed, which suggests that Ukrainian military is already operating in partisan warfare mode, which in turn doesn't bode well for their capabilities at mounting conventional defensive action. This really is the unfortunate reality. As much as Ukraine puts up a fight, they absolutely lose a war of attrition eventually. Sufficient Russian embarrassment/losses however could hurt Putin domestically, but that's still a ways out.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:40
|
|
|
Kamrat posted:and remember that the war has only been going on for 3 days, we don't know what the plan was for Russia, we don't know if they expected this to go quick or if they expected to be greeted as liberators as some posters put it. By now I think there's been enough credible information from enough sources to say with some confidence: at least according to intelligence inside Russia and their armed services, none of this was expected by Russia. They had a plan, and it wasn't this. They're in disarray currently and may be getting pressure from the top for a symbolic win, or anything which doesn't rapidly erode the strongman image.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:40
|
|
|
An Italian newspaper has reports of a new front opened near the polish border to get to Lviv
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:41
|
|
|
StarBegotten posted:Just saw on BBC news that Germany just announced increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP... good job Putin! 2% has been a goal for some time, but I think this will move the time tables up a lot. Gotta say, looking at OSINT Twitter, I'm not particularly impressed by the Russian military. If even half of it turns out to be accurate I think the stripped down European broom stick armies might actually be adequately equipped to defend us.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:41
|
|
|
Ola posted:No, the earliest assessments were that Ukraine had nothing to show against the vast military might of Russia. As it turns out they did, and Russia's military might was a lot weaker than everybody, including themselves, thought. Sanctions would hurt Russia after they had conquered Ukraine, but sanctions wouldn't stop the invasion, let alone Ukraine. In no way did Putin plan for this to take this long. Ukraine will stop the invasion, sanctions will hurt him later and Putin will be out of power and probably dead before 2022 is over. I keep thinking about 1905, where Russian prejudice led to them making war plans off of the fundamental perception of adversarial weakness.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:43
|
|
|
So, while things are still up in the air, what happens, say a week from now, the remaining units in Russia collapse and end up getting captured or deserted; the high-reputation elite units dead or captured; lots of Russian war material now belong to Ukraine; the Russian economy isolated and deep in decline; Russian popular discontent hitting almost 1989 levels because of the economy and the failure of the war; no negotiated peace with Ukraine; etc. Putin just ignore it and try again 3 months from now (and with what)? Putin's oligarch sycophants are to scared to remove him, so a palace coup might not happen, but losing a good chunk of the security apparatus and war material feels like it'll have repercussions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:43
|
|
|
General_Disturbed posted:I have a question that might be answerable by modern military goons or those that are more familiar with sieges of cities like Baghdad: How do you -take- a city like you see the Russians driving around in, in all of these twitter threads? I'm glad someone asked this because I also have no clue and would like to know
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:45
|
|
|
Kavros posted:By now I think there's been enough credible information from enough sources to say with some confidence: at least according to intelligence inside Russia and their armed services, none of this was expected by Russia. They had a plan, and it wasn't this. They're in disarray currently and may be getting pressure from the top for a symbolic win, or anything which doesn't rapidly erode the strongman image. It might not be the scenario they hoped for but I refuse to believe a modern military wasn't ready for all kind of scenarios, I'm sure they had a plan B/C/D etc. ready from the onset.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:45
|
|
|
General_Disturbed posted:I have a question that might be answerable by modern military goons or those that are more familiar with sieges of cities like Baghdad: How do you -take- a city like you see the Russians driving around in, in all of these twitter threads? Do you just drive to City Hall and put up a russian flag and start yelling at everybody in earshot "This city is now property of Russia!" and just hope none of them open their trenchcoats to reveal they are carrying an AT launcher and a AK under it? Like do you just have to put a squad on every single street corner in the entire city all day every day until you stop getting shot at nonstop and can reasonably say "Nobody is left trying to kill us." Remember that the US never ”took” baghdad. They kept a green zone where they huddled in relatively safety, and only went out in heavily armee patrols. If the inhabitants are hostile enough, you can’t ”take” an entire major city without ethnic cleansing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:45
|
|
|
General_Disturbed posted:I have a question that might be answerable by modern military goons or those that are more familiar with sieges of cities like Baghdad: How do you -take- a city like you see the Russians driving around in, in all of these twitter threads? Do you just drive to City Hall and put up a russian flag and start yelling at everybody in earshot "This city is now property of Russia!" and just hope none of them open their trenchcoats to reveal they are carrying an AT launcher and a AK under it? Like do you just have to put a squad on every single street corner in the entire city all day every day until you stop getting shot at nonstop and can reasonably say "Nobody is left trying to kill us." The modern method is what the US did to Fallujah. You establish total air superiority, fly around spotting pockets of resistance, bomb them till they stop moving, move in troops to mop up. The Russian army appears to be trying to do this with tanks instead, which isn't how that works or what tanks are for. The Russian failure to get air superiority is inexplicable in a few different ways and probably the root cause of their failures so far. Edit: the other way is you scare all the defenders into running away. That was Plan A. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Feb 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:46
|
|
|
Young Freud posted:Putin's oligarch sycophants are to scared to remove him, so a palace coup might not happen, but losing a good chunk of the security apparatus and war material feels like it'll have repercussions. True. Oligarch means something very different today than it did in 1990. Now they are people enriched by Putin, not independent "entrepreneurs" who can play kingmaker
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:46
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1497809352979361798?t=4c66yzmhbxn6IPIU9aPHew&s=19 A good summary thread covering what appears to have been this mornings failed Russian attack on Kharkiv. Really dumb poo poo once again.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:47
|
|
|
nurmie posted:I'm kind of sensing that Russian forces are not particularly interested in anything west of the Dnieper, tbh. All pushes towards Lvov/Odessa thus far seemed to be feints. That's why they heavily supplied and fortified Mariupol, and only Mariupol in the south, it's the key to creating the land bridge and everyone knows it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:48
|
|
|
nurmie posted:... which is why aforementioned oopsies get presented as proof for the inevitable and imminent collapse of the Russian invasion. Sadly, I don't see that happening any time soon. Yeah, and how about the situation in the south and east. I go by this, a map some Finns are putting together: https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/091194 Plenty of encircled cities and if Russian forces manage to reach Dnipropetrovsk, that would cut off anything east of it. Where Ukrainian army has been putting up a strong resistance. I don't put that much faith in Ukrainian army, nor would I into Russian army. But Russia has plenty of oil money to make up for it. As long as they aren't sending in green troops on missions with unclear goals. edit: also, when some Ukrainian MP tweets things like "5000 Russian mercenaries started rioting" or "chechen troops executed a handful of russian officers", that sounds like a load of bullshit to me. It'd be much worse if they themselves start believing it out of hand. I'm following a local Estonian military-themed message board and some people are so high on war fervor that they'll link ANY tweet, no matter how absurd the content. jonnypeh fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Feb 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:48
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:The modern method is what the US did to Fallujah. You establish total air superiority, fly around spotting pockets of resistance, bomb them till they stop moving, move in troops to mop up. It's still worth waiting I think https://twitter.com/billroggio/status/1497294873589952525 This guy was right about Afghanistan 100%, so I think he's worth listening to on war matters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:48
|
|
|
How much cyber warfare might be going on in the background in ways that we'll never hear about? A bit of an epistemologically unfair question, I know. I read the book Sandworm recently, and it mentioned how Ukraine's crummy infrastructure also proved a benefit in a cyber war since a technician could just go flip a big switch to turn things on or off. In contrast, really advanced infrastructure can be so complex and digital that you're hosed if it goes haywire.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:49
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:The modern method is what the US did to Fallujah. You establish total air superiority, fly around spotting pockets of resistance, bomb them till they stop moving, move in troops to mop up. See this would make sense to me if the camera people in Ukraine panned over to show there was a 10 mile long convoy of russian vehicles and troops approaching their cities. Just a "You are going to be inundated in a wave of war". But all the videos I'm seeing out of Ukraine are just like, here's a small detachment of russian armor with maybe 100 soldiers if you're being generous. Even if they arrive at their eventual destination without being shot to pieces, what is their plan upon arrival. You could maybe control one city block with that kind of small force. Then what?
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:51
|
|
|
nurmie posted:Honestly, now that the high emotions and the shock of the first two days is receding, I'm not seeing any significant failures on the part of Russian forces that can be corroborated by hard evidence - sure, we've all Seen Footage, but taking the scale of this conflict into account it's not saying much that a bunch of Russian platoons/companies/columns are doing some oopsies. As I said, most of the losses that we currently have concrete, video evidence for seem to be light mechanized infantry doing combat recon probes - dying like that is basically part of their job. That, and logistics convoys getting ambushed, which suggests that Ukrainian military is already operating in partisan warfare mode, which in turn doesn't bode well for their capabilities at mounting conventional defensive action.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:51
|
|
|
Young Freud posted:So, while things are still up in the air, what happens, say a week from now, the remaining units in Russia collapse and end up getting captured or deserted; the high-reputation elite units dead or captured; lots of Russian war material now belong to Ukraine; the Russian economy isolated and deep in decline; Russian popular discontent hitting almost 1989 levels because of the economy and the failure of the war; no negotiated peace with Ukraine; etc. Putin just ignore it and try again 3 months from now (and with what)? Unless they imagine him judoing everybody, they will not be too scared to remove him. The one big problem a strongman has is appearing weak. Then it unravels very quickly. None of the senators that stabbed Caesar were brave enough to do it themselves, but once they knew he was weak and they were together, it was easy. There aren't many stages between being fully in power and dead in a ditch.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:52
|
|
|
GABA ghoul posted:2% has been a goal for some time, but I think this will move the time tables up a lot. they'll finally be able to put fax machines in the leopard 2s
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:52
|
|
|
FishBulbia posted:It's still worth waiting I think I do feel like our 2020s attention spans and access to endless live media have wrecked our ability to remember that poo poo takes time. While WW2 might not make for the best comparisons, even 'quick' modern wars have taken a lot longer (not counting the protracted violence that follows after the mission accomplished banners roll out).
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:53
|
|
|
General_Disturbed posted:See this would make sense to me if the camera people in Ukraine panned over to show there was a 10 mile long convoy of russian vehicles and troops approaching their cities. Just a "You are going to be inundated in a wave of war". But all the videos I'm seeing out of Ukraine are just like, here's a small detachment of russian armor with maybe 100 soldiers if you're being generous. Even if they arrive at their eventual destination without being shot to pieces, what is their plan upon arrival. You could maybe control one city block with that kind of small force. Then what? Yeah the Russian plan so far seems to have been based on the assumption that the Ukrainians would just run away. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Feb 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:53
|
|
|
FishBulbia posted:It's still worth waiting I think The difference being Putin wanted a swift decisive victory, not going to into a prolonged proxy war with NATO and EU.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:54
|
|
|
More worm-turning: Chinese state media broadcasting interviews of Chinese students trapped in Ukraine. https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1497862113607442438?s=20&t=e77nGerizyf__6k0waILag Also... https://twitter.com/Igor_Denisov/status/1497724481934135296?s=20&t=e77nGerizyf__6k0waILag
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:55
|
|
|
Map of reported incidents where at least some effort has been made to corroborate them: https://maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:55
|
|
|
Franks Happy Place posted:https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1497809352979361798?t=4c66yzmhbxn6IPIU9aPHew&s=19 These, again, look like fairly bog-standard combat recon probes. Which basically boil down to "drive in that general direction until you're getting shot at, then glhf".
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:57
|
|
|
Russian media is reporting on the advances but also amplifying the fake negotiations and that they'll be "really serious" if Ukraine doesn't respond!
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 11:58
|
|
|
I think it's mainly the quick attacks on Kyiv that made everything look very dire very quickly, as it could mean immediate collapse. Which eventualy led to some optimism later. Plus some appearance of expectation that this would be a quick "police operation" or whatever and that everyone would be happy to be liberated from the Nazis. Obviously in reality they can chip away at the east for a while.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:00
|
|
|
Young Freud posted:More worm-turning: Chinese state media broadcasting interviews of Chinese students trapped in Ukraine. The narrative on social media I was seeing here (HK) is that first the embassy instructed Chinese in Ukraine to put Chinese flags on their cars, etc., because they thought they'd be treated nicely. Then when people started reported being harassed (presumably because China hasn't been more supportive of Ukraine), the embassy changed its guidance to telling citizens to lay low.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:01
|
|
|
Theorycrafting ftw (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:01
|
|
|
Smeef posted:I do feel like our 2020s attention spans and access to endless live media have wrecked our ability to remember that poo poo takes time. While WW2 might not make for the best comparisons, even 'quick' modern wars have taken a lot longer (not counting the protracted violence that follows after the mission accomplished banners roll out). This would absolutely be the right view if we were seeing the Russians doing the sorts of things that set up for long term victory -- establishing air superiority, etc. If Russia was spending a month doing long range aerial bombardment of Ukraine to obliterate anything in a uniform before moving troops in, then yeah, they'd just be taking their time and following doctrine and it would be really bad for Ukraine. Instead Russia seems to be taking the YOLO approach to warfare, as if it were a giant game of capture the flag and all they had to do was get one unit onto the "presidential palace" square and then the little flag would ascend and the theme music play and the war be "won." If that's all they keep doing they might genuinely never be able to win this. Like, Russia definitely could still win this! But they'd have to stop doing what they're doing and start doing the things you have to do to win instead.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:02
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/ng_ukraine/status/1497696457486479369 Replies say some of the numbers on the dude's phone are British and Georgian. How many of these people are operating in Ukraine you have to wonder.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:02
|
|
|
Phlegmish posted:While I'm tempted to agree, I remember people earlier in the thread were pointing out that the Battle of Baghdad took several weeks...so I suppose that if Russia achieves its objectives within the following days, that's still arguably a success. Problem is that it's not very clear what those objectives even are. The Battle of Baghdad took 6 days ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(2003) ). It took about 2 weeks from when Americans first started rolling into Iraq until Baghdad no longer had military opposition, but Baghdad is a lot further from the Kuwaiti border than Kyiv is from the Belarusian border. A lot of Iraqis also hated Saddam, probably a lot more than hate Zelensky, so I suspect the Russians will face an even more hostile population in Kyiv than the Americans did in Baghdad. The Americans also hugely overestimated how much the Iraqis hating Saddam meant they would welcome Americans, but even what goodwill (or at least non-overt-hostility) they had to start, they quickly squandered. E: As other people have said though the news coming out before the Americans got to Baghdad also showed huge columns of destroyed Iraqi forces and damage to the US that was so minimal it seemed like absurd war propaganda, but which ended up being actually that lopsided. I'm personally surprised that Russia's military isn't releasing more footage of e.g. destroyed Ukrainian columns, like that one 15 km (non-dense) destroyed supply column that someone posted on Twitter that was iirc somewhere near Kherson. That's the only substantial thing I've seen from the Russian side of the war, while from the Ukrainian side I've only seen videos of extremely isolated Russian units getting hit. Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Feb 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:03
|
|
|
You are all making too much of nukes in Belarus angle. The new constitution among many other changes removes articles about non nuclear and internationally neutral status. Noone offerred us nukes and russia has no need to. Other than nuclear subs if they want to put them really close to EU they have Kaliningrad.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 02:24 |
|
|
With regards to 'taking' cities bear in mind what exactly you are asking - if it's total control of the streets and no disorder/crime then no Western country has control of it's own cities. Cities have constant needs. Food. Water. Electricity. Someone has to clean the streets and take the garbage away. The people doing that need to be paid by someone. You can't stop people sniping at you at night, but if you roll up and take over the civil administration and control the roads in and out then during the day people will have to deal with you in order to survive.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2022 12:04
|
|
