Budzilla posted:

I do know how some Russians view this war from personal experience. Yes, I do know how much of a disaster this would be for Ukraine with the crazy numbers I posted in my batshit crazy hypothetical. However for most Ukrainians it would be more acceptable than the Russian alternative. I know from previous posting you are from Saudi Arabia, I will not lecture you on the civil war there but people in extreme and desperate circumstances will make decisions that might seem counter-intuitive to third party observers likes ourselves.

Tankbuster posted:

Do you think real life has modifiers like "defender's advantage" when one side has significantly more artillery than the other?

Frosted Flake posted:

Lostconfused posted:

Pretty sure I've read fear mongering about China with the number of degree graduates, works published for a few years now.

I'd assume everyone is aware, and just doesn't want to talk about it that much. For reasons.

Ytlaya posted:

I mean, there are a massive number of battles that have occurred since WW2 of similar/greater scale (to the point where it doesn't even make sense to list them).

It's like pointing at some 2-hour long movie and being like "this is the longest movie since Citizen Kane"

quote:

This battle is compared with the Battle of Kursk in the Second World War for how it changed the course of the India-Pakistan war of 1965 in India's favour. War historians, including Dr. Philip Towle, regard the Indian resistance near Khem Karan as one of the key turning points of the war, one which tilted the balance of the war in favour of India.[11] Peter Wilson states[1] that the defeat of the Pakistan Army in the battle of Asal Uttar was one of the greatest defeats suffered by Pakistani forces in the course of the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965.[1]

Lostconfused posted:

Pretty sure I've read fear mongering about China with the number of degree graduates, works published for a few years now.

I'd assume everyone is aware, and just doesn't want to talk about it that much. For reasons.

Best Friends posted:

but seriously why is it named that. Is it actually after the composer? If so why did they not pick any one of the thousand famous Russian composers for their Russian nationalist mercenary corps

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

Coming back a few pages: the Russians didn't name Wagner. It's a name the US Intelligence came up with to describe *all* Russian PMCs. It was a deliberate effort to create a scary bogeyman like Al-Quaida. It's actually a really close parallel, because Al-Q did not exist in the form US propagandized - until the US propagandized it enough that a bunch of disparate factions decided to become it.

This is exactly the case with Wagner. It's an American name, chosen by Americans to be scary to Americans. After a decade of Western media spin, Russians decided to adopt it because of its brand recognition, and a lot of separate PMCs started coalescing into a "Wagner Group" because it's useful marketing.

fits my needs posted:

drat...that was a good post tho lol. and the replies back in that thread are p lol too.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

It is really weird to see posters claiming that the fact that Russia is capable of producing its own arms and equipment is actually disadvantageous. That relying entirely on foreign aid is a net positive despite the fact that the foreign aid appears to be drying up and the domestically produced shells does not.

It's kind of like arguing that a beggar is richer than a factory owner.

fits my needs posted:

back when i stumbled into the gbs china thread i think their arguments were that the papers being published are low quality because of "chabuduo" and other inscrutable characteristics of chinese society.
whats weird is that some of these dudes are living there with chinese wives and stuff? well i think there was one weirdo in there hella proud of his british colonizer past living in hong kong.

speng31b posted:

no syq, blind quote, link quote of active out of thread drama itt. quoting someone else directly is fine if they are posting itt and you want to use their own directly relevant post history out of thread to make a point, but otherwise better not

Ardennes posted:

The assumption is anything Western even if it is a mundane item/weapon will always be far superior than Russia/Soviet "garbage." Those shells probably are filled with sawdust. I mean the Western press pushes the idea 24/7, it isn't that hard to see how it happens.

Budzilla posted:

I agree. A lot of the Ukraine military were in Bakhmut but as I said in an earlier post we don't know the numbers deployed, casualties or materiel used for each side in the past 7 months except to say it has been extremely high.

I could make a stab in the dark about losses for either side and say that Ukrainian casualties are much lighter than Russian losses with defenders advantage and all that. I won't do that. But with the constant battle that has raged in the area for 7+ months the amount of equipment Russia has expended would make it a terrible "investment". Ukraine doesn't have to worry about producing new equipment since most of the largest economies/MICs in the world support its fight. Russia has to produce its own equipment and now they are deploying MT-LBs (with other old rear end poo poo) might be a red flag that Russian command haven't been smart with what's available.

Bakhmut was a city of 75K covering an area of 50km2. This should have been wrapped up months ago by the world's second largest army.

Nix Panicus posted:

I don't think we're going to see desperate brigades of Bandera Youth trying to hold Kiev like its 1945 Berlin. This is not an existential war, although Zelensky and the west would very much like you to believe it is

evilmiera posted:

Given the lengths Ukraine went to protect Kyiv in particular, and the lengths Russia has gone to defeat Ukraine, what about it disqualifies it from being an existential war exactly?

evilmiera posted:

Given the lengths Ukraine went to protect Kyiv in particular, and the lengths Russia has gone to defeat Ukraine, what about it disqualifies it from being an existential war exactly?