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gay picnic defence posted:A lot of the stuff that is making Russia look poo poo isn’t really obvious until they get engaged in a high intensity war. i keep recalling the military chapter of Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia (which i need to re-read) circa 2014 and thinking "well, this written not long after the end of the absolute mess of the Yeltsin area, surely things have improved" (it was a set of collected works published in 2004) til now. my expectations were apparently quite wrong
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Mar 20, 2022 08:13
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Feliday Melody posted:Of course, this could have effects like the winter war did. Where it causes massive reform of the military that could see it vastly improved and an even bigger threat several years down the line. I think the Russians doing some sort've reform after all this is a given. But as many people have said the decline of local industry in Russia + heavy dependence on foreign trade + sanctions for much of their more advanced military electronics means it'll likely take around a decade to rebuild up back to where they were before this war. On top of that their population demographics are going to be in even worse shape than they are now so its going to cause on going problems with building their army numbers up. Generally, for one reason or another, the Russian military has counted on having either a huge numbers advantage vs their opponents or being able to call up huge numbers of replacements on demand and in the future they won't be able to do either of those things. So they're probably going to have to do a whole lot of restructuring and rethinking to become a major (offensive + invasion capable conventional warfare, they're still going to be highly effective for defensive local conventional warfare or nuclear war) threat again. Their "artillery" model sure doesn't seem to be working all that well so more missiles probably won't cut it as a solution either. PC LOAD LETTER fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 08:15
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Reiterpallasch posted:nobody likes to remember this because it gets in the way of a good mythology, but the revolutionary french armies benefitted from what was probably the finest artillery arm in europe. since service as an artillery or engineer officer required passing math examinations, it tended to attract minor nobility who took their work seriously, but would find their prospects for advancement limited in the cavalry. after the revolution, far fewer of those nobles emigrated than in the other services, and the army retained gribeauval's excellent field pieces--and artillery was commonly and correctly considered to be the battle-winning arm. plenty of french battles were won because the infantry managed to not lose until the french artillery, firing at ranges longer than the muskets of the time could contest, literally blew apart the enemy's center of gravity with massed cannister or grapeshot. Very true. Lots of nobles hosed off during the revolution, but the ones who stayed tended to be the best of the best - not least of which being a certain young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. The combination of highly skilled artillery and massive assaults allowed the French to overwhelm their opponents who, at that point, found themselves on the wrong side of a major shift in how war was to be waged. The smaller professional armies of the 18th century had years of training, but they also tended to be slow, filled with foppish nobles who often bought their ranks in the military, and a bit inflexible. The soldiers were drilled like crazy to follow orders, but if the orders were bad then those drills didn't really mean much. The French took huge casualties in the early years of the war, but they were able to fight off the invasions. They had very high morale and were fighting for a popular cause, whereas their foes were disunited and often were more keen to follow their interests rather than to work as a unified coalition. The rest of Europe did eventually get its act together and began to copy how the French did things, but only after many years of defeats and learning how not to do things the hard way. Nations like Prussia had to completely redo their militaries in order to be able to adapt to the new reality. As for D'avout at Jena-Auerstedt, at that point the French military wasn't what I'd call a ill-trained conscript army. It was still a conscript army, but by then it had more than a decade of combat experience and some of the best commanders of its time - with D'avout being one of them.
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Mar 20, 2022 08:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Based on everything we're seeing it's kindof amazing, yeah. Even the just competent military response at this point would be withdraw and regroup. Russia's not going anywhere. Their current momentum won't allow it. Not just because of the propaganda aspect of what happens if they actually, physically retreat and how disastrous that'll be from a PR standpoint, but because more and more weapons are flooding into Ukraine every single day. If Russia pauses to regroup, that means Ukraine who need a breather a hell of a lot more than Russia gets a break, and that means more time to mobilize, more time to get hands on western weapons, more time to stall out hoping for some kind of intervention. More to the point, it's really starting to look like Russia is also slowing down to set up supply depos and a proper logistics chain and and especially artillery, and they're not going to let that go to waste from all the trouble it took getting this far.
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Mar 20, 2022 08:47
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Doccers posted:I wonder how much of that was setting public expectations. PR is a thing that governments do, and a lot of people like to root for the plucky underdog that punches above his weight. Might have been a way to prepare the public for supporting the sanctions a bit better maybe? I wouldn't be surprised if something like that was going on, perhaps for various reasons including ones potentially not obvious to us. Intelligence agencies generally release information with some kind of agenda in mind, if not multiple ones. We shouldn't disregard what they communicate to us outright but should also understand that they don't necessarily operate on principles of honesty. I get the sense that the US wants to be seen as trustworthy, after years of distrust surrounding the massive earlier WMD blunder and the more recent Afghanistan pull out mess, and indeed a lot of the intel they spread to the public turned out to be impressively accurate so far. This still gives them room to look trustworthy to the public and still get their agenda accomplished at the same time, if done properly. It's definitely a contrast to how Russia has been playing the PR game, with basically zero tact whatsoever and basically forcing belief in crudely crafted Russian propaganda by force of authoritarianism. Of course there's all kinds of games going on under the table, and a lot of it we will probably never get a full understanding of. In this particular case I wouldn't be surprised if the prediction of a probable quick war between Ukraine and Russia was not entirely honest. I could see it at the very least being a statement something akin to "Yeah on paper a Russian invasion of Ukraine would probably last only 3-4 days*" *That is without us implementing our plan of providing extensive access to the world's most sophisticated military intelligence, high quality military consultation, plans for massive pushes for unprecedented sanctions and arms support, and whatever other tricks we have up our sleeves that we will never reveal to Russia
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Mar 20, 2022 09:07
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Grape posted:Mariupol is not some insanely important mega city and I have no idea why you seem to be under that impression. Amusingly, it was in 2014, which is the last time a lot of people seemed to have learned anything about ukraine, but the writing has been on the wall for 8 years and it very much is not the industrial powerhouse that it used to be.
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Mar 20, 2022 09:08
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God loving poo poo damnit https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1505448874604957698 AP story doesn't have much more info yet https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-zelenskyy-kyiv-business-europe-7d2f30478f5fb2d80ba6c38fef38129a. Poor Mariupol 
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Mar 20, 2022 09:12
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Djarum posted:Well it seems that the threat from the north of Kyiv seems to be sputtering out completely which should free up some resources as well. What are you basing any of this on?
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Mar 20, 2022 09:14
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Youth Decay posted:God loving poo poo damnit "Russian troops dropping bombs" is kind of weird phrasing but I'm assuming they mean Russian artillery.
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Mar 20, 2022 09:17
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ImpAtom posted:War is a horrible thing and even a self-defensive war is a horrible thing. After seeing all the war crimes personally committed by Russian forces from, executing people that surrendered in front of their house, or taking people to the woods to rape them I have zero sympathy for Russian forces, none whatsoever. They are monsters.
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Mar 20, 2022 09:18
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:The US has said they confirmed it was a hypersonic missile and that they tracked it Both things can be true. The video the Russians showed is pretty obviously fake as it makes almost zero sense for a large, slow Russian UAV to be loitering over SW Ukraine. There may have been a hypersonic missile strike but it’s not the video they said was a hypersonic missile strike.
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Mar 20, 2022 09:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I haven't seen anyone saying the photography of POW's was good. Tbh I think photographing and making them is good - isn’t that even like.. standard practice? Like how else is your family back home supposed to know you’re alive if there’s not a photo and location of you as a POW? Or is it a "war crime" because the Ukrainian military doing it and not the Red Cross?
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Mar 20, 2022 09:43
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Saladman posted:Tbh I think photographing and making them is good - isn’t that even like.. standard practice? Like how else is your family back home supposed to know you’re alive if there’s not a photo and location of you as a POW? Or is it a "war crime" because the Ukrainian military doing it and not the Red Cross? It's a war crime because they're being used for propaganda, i think. Speaking of war crimes, just saw a super cool video of some (description of some real bad stuff,   )civilians having their pants pulled down and tied to signposts by soldiers so that was fun to see. twitter is really fun sometimes. make sure everyone has autoplay videos off!!
Sankis fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 09:51
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Saladman posted:Tbh I think photographing and making them is good - isn’t that even like.. standard practice? Like how else is your family back home supposed to know you’re alive if there’s not a photo and location of you as a POW? Or is it a "war crime" because the Ukrainian military doing it and not the Red Cross? This thing called letters worked splendidly the last hundreds of years. I can't quite wrap my mind around why you think a photo with attached GPS coordinates is the standard practice to communicate you are being held as a prisoner of war. Sankis posted:Speaking of war crimes, just saw a super cool video of some (description of some real bad stuff, Images of this practice from the Ukrainian side floated around in the beginning of the invasion, could it be those? Trump fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 09:55
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Blarghalt posted:"Russian troops dropping bombs" is kind of weird phrasing but I'm assuming they mean Russian artillery. It would have been an air dropped bomb, artillery is unlikely to damage the basement.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:00
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Honestly I understand the reasoning behind the laws but I just can't get too upset about the Ukrainians filming Russian prisoners getting treated well and using it to encourage more of their comrades to do the same instead of getting bbq'd in a tank or blowing up Ukrainian children. Of course if they are being taken after being filmed drinking tea and shot that's a bit different but the more confused Russian conscripts peacefully opting out of the war the better imo.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:00
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Trump posted:Images of this practice from the Ukrainian side floated around in the beginning of the invasion, could it be those? Yeah, I think so. The soldiers had yellow armbands ( I didn't look too long, though) and someone in the comments, though who the gently caress knows, said they were doing that to people who refused to fight. which is a super cool thing to do in a place you can't leave
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Mar 20, 2022 10:00
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The thing I've been thinking about more and more is how the expectation a month ago was that within the first week of a conflict it would be very obvious that Russia would be well on its way to defeating Ukraine - encircling major cities and the JFO and pushing deep on all the axis Ukraine didn't have the forces to contest. That anchored everyone expectations around 'Ukraine can't possibly win' and we've spend week after week waiting for events to start to take the shape of proving those initial assumptions right. I'm trying to imagine more now how I'd view the situation if my expectations hadn't been anchored around Ukraine losing because clearly pretty much everyone had their expecations wrong. Also a point on consciption: all the people you would expect to be conducting the induction and training of new cohorts of conscripts are presumably out fighting in the field in Ukraine right now. They left behind in garrison the people who even by Russian army standards have no idea what they are doing. Would be really interesting if anyone spots any serious people writing about this.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:01
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Sankis posted:Yeah, I think so. The soldiers had yellow armbands ( I didn't look too long, though) and someone in the comments, though who the gently caress knows, said they were doing that to people who refused to fight. The story attached to the images from the first days, was that it was suspected infiltrators left for police/military to pick up. Alchenar posted:Also a point on consciption: all the people you would expect to be conducting the induction and training of new cohorts of conscripts are presumably out fighting in the field in Ukraine right now. They left behind in garrison the people who even by Russian army standards have no idea what they are doing. Would be really interesting if anyone spots any serious people writing about this. Not necessarily. With a full mobilization there is bound to be a lot of ex-military and even veterans that is too out of shape to fight, but could put to good use training recruits. Trump fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 10:03
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. im dumb
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Mar 20, 2022 10:08
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Trump posted:
Yeah I'm sure they can find enough people to teach marching and how to aim and shoot a gun, but they are going to struggle to teach modern battle drills or 'what is your place in the Russian army structure today?'
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Mar 20, 2022 10:13
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Cool double standards in this thread again, "Ukrainians did [a thing], they are evil nazi monsters" vs. "The Russians bombed yet another civilian target/shot up an ambulance/put minefield on the evacuation corridor/pressgang civilians into militia, oh well its just those crazy, jolly ol'Ruskies for you, back to their best hits mix of the 90's I see.".
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Mar 20, 2022 10:14
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Der Kyhe posted:Cool double standards in this thread again, "Ukrainians did [a thing], they are evil nazi monsters" vs. "The Russians bombed yet another civilian target/shot up an ambulance/put minefield on the evacuation corridor/pressgang civilians into militia, oh well its just those crazy, jolly ol'Ruskies for you, back to their best hits mix of the 90's I see.". yeah this thread thats mostly about people talking about what monsters the russians are is definitely just full of this double standard. if i also posted about a russian warcrime would that have balanced it out for you or do i need to post two so we know the russians are worse also just to clarify, your "[a thing]" was "tied civilians to signs and stripped them from the waist down" Sankis fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 10:19
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Youth Decay posted:God loving poo poo damnit
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Mar 20, 2022 10:21
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Nessus posted:Are they going after schools, buildings marked "children" and so on deliberately? They bombed schools and hospitals in Syria, too. Terrorists go for the targets that will inspire the most terror.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:23
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Maybe, or they might just be lobbing shells in and not caring what they hit. With russian incompetence (and no one reporting on the random buildings and actual military targets they hit) it's hard to tell, although from Syria there's reason to suspect it's deliberate.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:27
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Nessus posted:Are they going after schools, buildings marked "children" and so on deliberately? Doctors Without Borders stopped reporting their operating hospital and humanitarian operation locations to the UN in previous conflict theatres because russian UN staff would access the no-bomb location lists, send it directly back home, and bomb the poo poo out of them on purpose. They will warcrime as much as they want, properly and purposefully, as much as they think they need to to accomplish anything and give no fucks.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:36
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Der Kyhe posted:Cool double standards in this thread again, "Ukrainians did [a thing], they are evil nazi monsters" vs. "The Russians bombed yet another civilian target/shot up an ambulance/put minefield on the evacuation corridor/pressgang civilians into militia, oh well its just those crazy, jolly ol'Ruskies for you, back to their best hits mix of the 90's I see.". What I don't get is if you're just going to imagine some stuff, why not really run with it? Say this thread is actually who dropped the bombs or something, live a little.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:38
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Nessus posted:Are they going after schools, buildings marked "children" and so on deliberately? That's what the Russian army does, yes.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:38
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Just to be clear, the lists weren't stolen, they were intended to be shared so that they would know to not bomb those targets.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:41
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Maybe, or they might just be lobbing shells in and not caring what they hit. Reportedly the Russians have used the same tactics & strategy in every previous conflict. There's a decent Ros Atkins (BBC) summary documenting that. Crushing cities and bombing civilians is their Thing. For the Russian army as a whole, there's likely two factors at play that make that possible: * Self selection as an organisation. Anyone who refuses to fire on civilians isn't going to stay in the Russian army too long. Faced with the choice of firing on civilian areas and Consequences (I'd imagine the Russian army doesn't look too kindly on refusing orders), who knows what decision you or I would make. But anyone who's left will be towing the line. * Escalation of cognitive dissonance. There's a decent book on this subject (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DJ4PL9W/). In summary, someone who does Bad Things to other people justifies their decisions by increasingly believing their victims deserve it. Even if someone starts off small, the "conflict" can escalate. The same mental effect is at play in both physical and emotional confrontations, and in everyday relationships, from offices to marriages. An aggressor will be capable of using increasing levels of force against an opponent because the mental effort of rowing back on all their previous decisions (e.g. realising they're wrong) is too great. "I'm a Good Person. I did this Bad Thing to another person. How do I justify this? They must be a Bad Person." More concerning is that, whatever conclusion someone arrives at to preserve their self-image, it makes the next action or an escalation even easier. "I'm a Good Person. I did this Bad Thing to another person. How do I justify this? I must be a Bad Person. That's just what I do." Aertuun fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 10:44
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Tomn posted:For what it's worth they're mostly using the same technology as the Ukrainians and I can honestly see valid reasons for landing helicopters in a frequently bombed airfield - they may not have a choice if that represents the best forward logistical link they have, and the constant loss of helicopters is deemed worth the supplies they bring to sustain the front. Those are not logistical transport helicopters, they literally have a rail line to Kherson. They are trying to stage attack helicopters on an airfield that is within enemy artillery range, and the enemy is punishing them for it repeatedly.
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Mar 20, 2022 10:49
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Yeah there's no secret reason why they are actually 5d-chessing the part where they repeatedly landed combat aircraft on the giant cartoon red X. They're just catastrophically unorganized
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Mar 20, 2022 10:57
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Staluigi posted:Yeah there's no secret reason why they are actually 5d-chessing the part where they repeatedly landed combat aircraft on the giant cartoon red X. They're just catastrophically unorganized New DCS: Black Shark campaign: - Mission 1: fly your Ka-52 to the front in Kherson, then await further instructions. - Mission 2: artillery destroyed your Ka-52 overnight. The end.
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Mar 20, 2022 11:01
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Captain Kosmos posted:It's really weird how even some European politicians and news have completely forgotten the whole ordeal. Are they seen as civil wars or something and that doesn't count? Yes, that is how it is taught at some schools: "Yugoslavian civil war". And even in academia and politics, there is this weird perception that the nations of Balkan aren't 'real'. The term 'balkanization' is an example - it has come to mean an unnatural and/or unhealthy fracturing of national unity. I remember in Danish high school we were taught that the problems in the Balkans harkened back to the old divide between the eastern and western halves of the roman empire, and that everything since - from the Ottomans to the modern conflicts, was a result of this, and that the region was basically forever doomed to be a cauldron of ethnic and religious conflict. In hindsight, it was an incredibly exceptionalist and condescending view of the Balkans we were taught - and my teachers were openly socialists and marxists. Still there was a strong whiff of racism in their take on the Balkans. Growing up we spent every summer in (what is now) Croatia, as that was a way to save money and enjoy a nicer climate at the same time - and my personal experience really didn't match what we were taught. It was very strange and in hindsight even more so.
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Mar 20, 2022 11:20
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Captain Kosmos posted:It's really weird how even some European politicians and news have completely forgotten the whole ordeal. Are they seen as civil wars or something and that doesn't count? Here is a fun tidbit, in a lot of European countries law codes, civil unrest is not a war. For instance Libia and Syrian refugees are not fleeing war since there was no external aggression. So does the balkans since at the start of the conflict there was Yugoslavia and then a sea of fragmented states after but no violence from the bordering states. It's stupid i know but that's legalese for you.
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Mar 20, 2022 11:31
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Trump posted:The story attached to the images from the first days, was that it was suspected infiltrators left for police/military to pick up. I haven't seen any of these videos recently, but I see them referenced reasonably often, usually in a punishment for looters/marauders context.
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Mar 20, 2022 11:38
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a podcast for cats posted:I haven't seen any of these videos recently, but I see them referenced reasonably often, usually in a punishment for looters/marauders context. Yea, I asked because it sounded like it could one those with a new description put out for propaganda purposes.
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Mar 20, 2022 11:53
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PederP posted:Yes, that is how it is taught at some schools: "Yugoslavian civil war". And even in academia and politics, there is this weird perception that the nations of Balkan aren't 'real'. The term 'balkanization' is an example - it has come to mean an unnatural and/or unhealthy fracturing of national unity. I remember in Danish high school we were taught that the problems in the Balkans harkened back to the old divide between the eastern and western halves of the roman empire, and that everything since - from the Ottomans to the modern conflicts, was a result of this, and that the region was basically forever doomed to be a cauldron of ethnic and religious conflict. In hindsight, it was an incredibly exceptionalist and condescending view of the Balkans we were taught - and my teachers were openly socialists and marxists. Still there was a strong whiff of racism in their take on the Balkans. Growing up we spent every summer in (what is now) Croatia, as that was a way to save money and enjoy a nicer climate at the same time - and my personal experience really didn't match what we were taught. It was very strange and in hindsight even more so. French here, I was pretty young when they happened but I do recall them clearly being labelled as wars in the media. I don't remember much of my history classes but I'm pretty sure we were taught something along the lines of "civil war in Yugoslavia happened because with the decline of the Soviet Union, people in Soviet republics were looking for independence, and there were ethnic and religious tensions between the various groups."
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Mar 20, 2022 12:20
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This may have been touched upon already (I guess it almost has to have been) but is there really no way to airdrop food/supplies to Mariupol? What's the limiting factor? Does Russian AA just make it impossible, or would it be considered an act of war for a NATO plane to be in Ukrainian air? Or is it simply too much of a gamble, because everyone knows Russians shooting down a plane would almost force a response?
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Mar 20, 2022 12:21
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