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mlmp08 posted:When did Ukraine strategically retreat from Mariupol? I believe that he’s talking about since the pushback on the initial invasion, otherwise his sentence wouldn’t have made sense at all.
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Jul 4, 2022 21:28
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cinci zoo sniper posted:https://twitter.com/coupsure/status/1543944957739802624 If we don't get a video montage of Russian ammo depots exploding to the 1812 Overture I shall be sorely disappointed.
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Jul 4, 2022 22:55
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saratoga posted:This is just Russian propaganda. In reality there has been months of inconclusive fighting, with the Ukraine demanding (and receiving) ever larger shipments of weapons. What's not inconclusive is that Ukraine is losing territory and its army, and has no way to get either back.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:18
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FishBulbia posted:I had no idea Vladimir Putin has been alive for 400 years. I always assume anyone named 'Vlad' is a vampire until proven otherwise.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:28
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the white hand posted:What's not inconclusive is that Ukraine is losing territory and its army, and has no way to get either back. As opposed to Russia, which can bring the dead back to life?
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Jul 5, 2022 01:36
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the white hand posted:What's not inconclusive is that Ukraine is losing territory and its army, and has no way to get either back. what do you think happens to that territory if Russia runs out of equipment and/or troops? I'm not predicting the future, but "no way to get either back" is really kind of silly. This is not a board game where you get victory points for holding land each turn, the goal is destroying Russia's army, and Russia is paying an enormous price for tiny amounts of land..
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Jul 5, 2022 01:38
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The idea seems to be that Russia, contrary to the start of the war, has taken a more cautious century-old tactic of "just unload on a spot until everything stops moving, then move in", there was an ABC? Interview with an american volunteer who suggested that the Russians could have attacked and killed his group after an artillery strike, but were being timid about advancing. It makes some degree of sense; Russian forces are outmanned by Ukraine, but far from outgunned, so they'd prefer to trade Russian shells for Ukrainian bodies, even if that makes advancement very slow until frontlines break to attrition. They likely still have a glut of munitions, but if casualties mount & mobilization efforts need to expand beyond the willing, that actually does endanger the war. Neurolimal fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 01:41
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:As opposed to Russia, which can bring the dead back to life? As opposed to Russia with larger reserves of every resource including human, with its homeland intact and not slowly being absorbed.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:48
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Neurolimal posted:The idea seems to be that Russia, contrary to the start of the war, has taken a more cautious century-old tactic of "just unload on a spot until everything stops moving, then move in", there was an ABC? Interview with an american volunteer who suggested that the Russians could have attacked and killed his group after an artillery strike, but were being timid about advancing. Also if ammo dumps keep going kaboom.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:48
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My bottom line here is that I do not think the United States would be making this kind of an investment if they believed Ukraine was ultimately going to fall. You really get the sense of quiet confidence from the DoD without wanting to be needlessly cocky in briefings. I believe their calculation is that it is going to take a while and a lot of people are going to die, but with the weapons Ukraine is now getting, Russia is eventually going to be doomed without doing something massive like a general mobilization or Clancy poo poo.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:48
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One year ago those same DoD sources were insisting the government of Afghanistan would last for months or years.
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Jul 5, 2022 01:51
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the white hand posted:One year ago those same DoD sources were insisting the government of Afghanistan would last for months or years. That is not really relevant. Analyzing the likely outcome of a hot shooting war when they presumably have a hell of a lot more information than anyone else (including Russia) is well within their expertise. Making guesses about regional politics in a foreign nation is not. This is like saying we can't really trust a doctor's medical opinion because he had a bad night at the racetrack.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:01
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the white hand posted:One year ago those same DoD sources were insisting the government of Afghanistan would last for months or years. The Ukrainians have shown a consistent will to fight, and have been putting up fierce resistance to the Russians every step of the way. Neither of those things were true of the Afghan government and its forces.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:11
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the white hand posted:One year ago those same DoD sources were insisting the government of Afghanistan would last for months or years. Behind the scenes they clearly didn't expect the security situation to last even a couple of days because they had something like 6000 troops on planes within 24 hours (and another 10k in neighboring countries to help stage). You don't get that many people mobilized that quickly if you aren't expecting a real chance of needing them. You mobilize a response in proportion to what you perceive yourself needing shortly and in this case they mobilizied enough people to more or less fully manage the security situation in Kabul, which tells you that they expected to have to fully manage security in kabul. Wrt ukraine, you can go read reports from jan 2022 and while they aren't optimistic about the territorial integrity of the ukrainian state after a russian invasion, they were by and large pretty accurate. consensus was that russia would have early success taking ground and then would 'in two months they will be bogged down in mud with ukrainians hammering their supply lines.' Kiev being so close to belarus made kiev specifically seem hard to defend, but there wasn't much doubt that a workable amount of ukraine's extant government would survive. The only people who saw a total collapse were people who knew nothing about ukraine in 2022 vs ukraine in 2014. ironically that goes for both western experts and Russian intelligence. Ironically, again, there were Russians who quite accurately called events, too. The only entirely unforeseen thing was that russia would throw away 2,000 vehicles for nothing while trying to blitz ukraine and that they then would just withdraw from over half of the territory that they'd seized in exchange for literally nothing.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:12
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Scuffy_1989 posted:The Ukrainians have shown a consistent will to fight, and have been putting up fierce resistance to the Russians every step of the way. The point is, at that time DoD sources were either lying to the media or wildly overconfident.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:20
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the white hand posted:The point is, at that time DoD sources were either lying to the media or wildly overconfident. So, you think they are lying or being overconfident now? How does that square with that we've seen over the past 4 months?
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Jul 5, 2022 02:22
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In Afghanistan? If you want to see what they actually believed, look at their actions (eg the size and speed of the deployment). For obvious reasons they aren't going to say publicly 'yeah this poo poo is falling within a week,' especially not when they needed it to continue to hold up until they had people in place
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Jul 5, 2022 02:24
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the white hand posted:One year ago those same DoD sources were insisting the government of Afghanistan would last for months or years. Eh, it’s trickier than that. Politicians chose to amplify the rosiest possibilities, according to this NYT report: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-biden-administration.html quote:WASHINGTON — Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly, according to current and former American government officials.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:27
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Scuffy_1989 posted:So, you think they are lying or being overconfident now? I think it's possible, but I really believe the assessment capabilities of the American defense establishment have been damaged. Maybe they never really worked at anything other than expanding our footprint across the globe. In any case, they may be right or wrong about Ukraine winning the "long war" but them being right would feel more like chance than perceptiveness. I agree that we can't really know what's going on, but there are certain facts that are hard to spin. Nevertheless I hear DoD spinning them, especially concerning recent retreats.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:34
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the white hand posted:I think it's possible, but I really believe the assessment capabilities of the American defense establishment have been damaged. Maybe they never really worked at anything other than expanding our footprint across the globe. In any case, they may be right or wrong about Ukraine winning the "long war" but them being right would feel more like chance than perceptiveness. yknow the defining quote I read before this kicked off was "After two months the Russians will be bogged down in mud with Ukrainians hammering their supply lines" and while I'm generally not going to give the dod any benefit of the doubt, man they absolutely nailed that one
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Jul 5, 2022 02:37
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Was them seeing the invasion coming chance too?
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Jul 5, 2022 02:38
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Behind the scenes they clearly didn't expect the security situation to last even a couple of days because they had something like 6000 troops on planes within 24 hours (and another 10k in neighboring countries to help stage). You don't get that many people mobilized that quickly if you aren't expecting a real chance of needing them. You mobilize a response in proportion to what you perceive yourself needing shortly and in this case they mobilizied enough people to more or less fully manage the security situation in Kabul, which tells you that they expected to have to fully manage security in kabul. They withdrew because the alternative was throwing away 2000 more vehicles in unsupported armored attacks, and they were running through them way too fast. Russia could not move infantry into those units in time not to get them catastrophicly damaged. Focusing their forces let them field almost complete units and slowed losses. They still have not started general mobilization, which stalling for would have made sense because you could fill out all the units. In essence it's evened out losses and given them way lower burn. They are still loosing things they can't replace because general mobilization is political poison.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:43
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If the Russian government is willing to prosecute this war for years it's difficult to see how Ukraine could win. The assumption is that Russia will stop at some point and seek a peace that involves either a frozen conflict or de facto annexation of some parts of Ukraine but it's possible they will simply grind on regardless of losses and economic pain. The question is if they have enough kit to accomplish this or if they will be forced to stop. We can't control that. We can aid Ukraine and inflict pain on Russia and hope for the largest possible Ukraine to remain free and independent.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:50
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Another dawn is breaking in Kyiv, and it's still Ukrainian.   
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Jul 5, 2022 02:54
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https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/07/03/ukraine-prepares-a-counter-offensive-to-retake-kherson-province Most of the recent reporting has been pretty bad for Ukraine. I'd been wondering what happened at Davydiv Brid as there were reports they'd made a big advance there. Of course this dude decides to run with Banderas as his name. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6f545ca0-f920-11ec-84c1-32e852e780b0?shareToken=9feaca863fd9729f4d6164a9b845397e
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Jul 5, 2022 03:02
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Owling Howl posted:If the Russian government is willing to prosecute this war for years it's difficult to see how Ukraine could win. The assumption is that Russia will stop at some point and seek a peace that involves either a frozen conflict or de facto annexation of some parts of Ukraine but it's possible they will simply grind on regardless of losses and economic pain. The question is if they have enough kit to accomplish this or if they will be forced to stop. They do not have the ability to fire artillery at the rate they are now forever. Ukraine is being supplied by basically the entire West, and is going to have better weapons than Russia for the foreseeable future. Ukraine also has a lot more soldiers than Russia unless they call a general mobilization. No one had any idea that the corruption was this bad in Russia or that their army was this hollowed out. There is really not a good reason to be optimistic about Russia's chances at all, other than maybe just a lingering bias of "they CANT lose to Ukraine, right?"
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Jul 5, 2022 03:04
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Tangentially related, but before playing the traditional 1812 overture at tonight's July 4th concert, the Boston Pops played the Ukrainian anthem.
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Jul 5, 2022 03:40
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the white hand posted:As opposed to Russia with larger reserves of every resource including human, with its homeland intact and not slowly being absorbed. Those reserves don't matter if they don't use them, and Russia seems especially scared of calling for a general mobilization. Do you think Russia's going to call for a general mobilization?
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Jul 5, 2022 04:04
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Realistically speaking they will probably go for the rest of Donetsk and call it a day. They know they can't really go much further than what they've got, which is already a sizeable chunk of Ukraine including a land corridor to Crimea and the sea of Azov, along with the industrial areas and huge number of fossil fuel reserves.
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Jul 5, 2022 04:47
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Realistically speaking they will probably go for the rest of Donetsk and call it a day. They know they can't really go much further than what they've got, which is already a sizeable chunk of Ukraine including a land corridor to Crimea and the sea of Azov, along with the industrial areas and huge number of fossil fuel reserves. The war doesn't end when Russia gets tired of fighting. It will continue until Ukraine is done fighting, and they aren't showing any signs of wearying.
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Jul 5, 2022 04:52
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Is this one new? https://twitter.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1544094137707896832
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Jul 5, 2022 05:22
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Rigel posted:My bottom line here is that I do not think the United States would be making this kind of an investment if they believed Ukraine was ultimately going to fall.     /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/17/9f/179f5ebb-d146-41b8-b3a3-d3c73099333a/huey4.jpg) 
FishBulbia fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 05:24
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What is your point? We didn't go into Afghanistan and Iraq to help them, we invaded and destroyed their governments during Bush's wild mideast adventure, "Mission Accomplished".
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Jul 5, 2022 05:34
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Rigel posted:What is your point? We didn't go into Afghanistan and Iraq to help them, we invaded and destroyed their governments during Bush's wild mideast adventure, "Mission Accomplished". Saying that Ukraine is winning or near victory with the fact that the US is giving them equipment as evidence is mixing up cause and effect. The US is giving them equipment to try to change the balance, not because they're a sure investment.
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Jul 5, 2022 05:40
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I'm not really sure where the idea that the US is stingy about investing weapons into bad bets emerged; South Vietnam, Contras, Mujahideen, ISIS, ANA, the mexican cartels, Iraq, we're very loose with our weapons into groups that are incompetent, going to fail, turn on us, or all of the above. Hell, This was published in 2016! We love giving the MIC an excuse to produce more poo poo.
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Jul 5, 2022 06:02
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Iraq and Afghanistan didn't end badly because the US underestimated the enemy military though.
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Jul 5, 2022 06:30
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Owling Howl posted:If the Russian government is willing to prosecute this war for years it's difficult to see how Ukraine could win. The assumption is that Russia will stop at some point and seek a peace that involves either a frozen conflict or de facto annexation of some parts of Ukraine but it's possible they will simply grind on regardless of losses and economic pain. The question is if they have enough kit to accomplish this or if they will be forced to stop. Russia didn't win in chechnya and chechen resources to oppose russia were literally 1/100th of what Ukraine has at their command. The only person who won in chechnya was Kadyrov. FishBulbia posted:Saying that Ukraine is winning or near victory with the fact that the US is giving them equipment as evidence is mixing up cause and effect. The US is giving them equipment to try to change the balance, not because they're a sure investment. yeah even ukraine is making that point Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 06:37
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steinrokkan posted:Iraq and Afghanistan didn't end badly because the US underestimated the enemy military though. It's really weird seeing people conflate Iraq and Afghanistan. You do know we still have troops in Iraq and Syria, right? Obama pulled out the majority of the troops. ISIS came along and nearly conquered Iraq, the US went back in and helped the Iraqi and Kurdish forces defeat ISIS and reclaim the territory ISIS took. I mean, Iraq is still a poo poo show, but it's not Afghanistan. What Vietnam/Cuba/Afghanistan all show though is that a people fighting for their homes are much more motivated than an outside invader and have the ability to outlast them. Eventually the invaders get tired and go home. Look at it this way, the Soviet Union was far better equipped than the current Russian Federation and couldn't conquer Afghanistan, a country that is much smaller and less well equipped than modern day Ukraine is. What makes people think the Russians will be successful this time? I mean, if you look at the military history of the Soviet Union after WW2, it's basically a litany of failure when you aren't counting suppressing popular uprisings in their client states.
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Jul 5, 2022 06:40
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If you can't answer how Russia failed to militarily conquer Chechnya (a tiny country of under 1.5 million people), you probably aren't in a good position to explain how this time is different now that they're facing a country with nearly as many people under arms as Chechnya's entire population. Putin's deal with Kadyrov was basically an admission of military defeat and was a political resolution to a military problem they never sorted out. Putin's position at the end of the second Chechen war forced him to take a 'peace at any cost' deal. Granted his position is considerably stronger now than then and avenues of dissent in Russian society are far more limited now, but the capacity to funnel people, materiel, and the Russian economy into a meatgrinder for literally several city blocks of Ukraine at a time is absolutely not infinite. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 06:50 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 06:45
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You can't win an invasion relying solely on artillery and I doubt Russia can keep this up forever because the speed their infantry is moving laughable.
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Jul 5, 2022 06:52
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