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Blocking battalions existed, and they probably weren't popular, but they were basically just MPs. The Soviets weren't shy about shooting the red army soldiers they caught it they thought they were guilty of something, but those cases still went through a court martial. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 26, 2023 15:03
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It's the kind of ridiculous stuff you see in like the Ethiopia-Eritrean War, where one side was so confident that they had much more human capital they could rely on sheer numbers (it also didn't work).
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Mar 26, 2023 15:11
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Charliegrs posted:Was it a myth in WW2? I thought the myth was that troops were sent into battle without guns (because they didn't have enough) and were told to pick them up from their dead comrades. They were real but usually just send individuals back to their units or tried to restore order if a unit disintegrated under pressure. Executions for cowardice were a threat aimed more at officers and commissars who failed to maintain order or who lost their nerve and retreated. Individual conscripts were supposed to be kept in line by their own unit, not a separate unit which might not even be there any given time.
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Mar 26, 2023 15:27
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steinrokkan posted:Blocking battalions existed, and they probably weren't popular, but they were basically just MPs. They were literally NKVD, and "not popular" is quite an understatement.
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Mar 26, 2023 15:49
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five days ago:quote:https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/zyxw/202303/t20230322_11046188.shtml quote:The two sides emphasized the significance of the “Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on the Prevention of Nuclear War and Avoidance of an Arms Race” and reaffirmed that “nuclear war cannot be won or won”. The two sides call on all signatories of the joint statement to abide by the concept of the statement, effectively reduce the risk of nuclear war, and avoid any armed conflict among nuclear-weapon states. Against the backdrop of deteriorating relations among nuclear-weapon states, measures to reduce strategic risks should be organically integrated into overall efforts to ease tensions, build more constructive relations, and minimize conflicts in the security field. All nuclear-weapon states should refrain from deploying nuclear weapons abroad and withdraw nuclear weapons deployed abroad. the Belarus announcement seems calculated to embarrass Beijing in a "so you thought we were obedient junior partners huh?" way
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Mar 26, 2023 17:48
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Putin's actually made a snide remark to the effect of 'people who say Russia will become China's little brother are just jealous'.
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Mar 26, 2023 20:41
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https://twitter.com/Nader_SM/status/1638518551857315840 Looks like Brown Moses & Bellingcat was a test run or maybe an opportunistic bribe, to see if Prighozin could use the UK's legal system to silence larger media organizations.
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Mar 26, 2023 21:16
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hey mom its 420 posted:Anders Puck Nielsen has a new video about Bakhmut and the larger picture of the war right now. I always find him to be insightful and he presents (what I humbly deem to be) good takes. I've been looking and looking for a summary of what's actually happening for ages and this is it. Seriously good interview.
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Mar 27, 2023 05:36
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It was reported in both the BBC (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65075952) and Kyiv Independent (https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-ukraine-cant-start-counteroffensive-yet/) that on 25 March 2023, Zelensky said in an interview with Yomiuri Shimbun (a Japanese newspaper) that "We can't start (the counter-offensive) yet, we can't send our brave soldiers to the front line without tanks, artillery and long-range rockets." This seems to be counter to what Oleksandr Syrskyi (the commander of Ukraine’s land forces) said on his Telegram channel on 23 March 2023, that “[Russians] are losing significant forces [in Bakhmut] and are running out of energy." and that "Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupyansk". (https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/23/europe/bakhmut-ukraine-counter-offensive-intl/index.html) I've checked the website of Yomiuri Shimbun and I could only find Zelensky being quoted as saying "“We do not have ammunition. For us the situation in the East is not good" (https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/world/europe/20230325-99649/), but there were no quotes of him saying "We can't start the (counter-offensive) yet". Is anyone able to find any mentions on the Yomiuri Shimbun of Zelensky saying "We can't start the (counter-offensive) yet"? If not, where did the BBC and Kyiv Independent get that quote from? Could this be deliberate dezinformatsia being promulgated by the Ukrainian high command to confuse the Russian commanders? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 27, 2023 07:00
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fizzy posted:If not, where did the BBC and Kyiv Independent get that quote from? Could this be deliberate dezinformatsia being promulgated by the Ukrainian high command to confuse the Russian commanders? Or it could just be the continued effort by Zelensky to pry more weapons from the West while public opinion is still on his side. I highly doubt anyone is going to publicly tell you what the real plan is in public, disinformation or no.
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Mar 27, 2023 07:09
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Sekenr posted:They were literally NKVD, and "not popular" is quite an understatement. Sounds like something you'd say if you lacked political reliability and class consciousness... Or if you were part of the reaction 
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Mar 27, 2023 07:13
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Eric Cantonese posted:The blocking detachments were real, but I believe it’s a bit overblown about Russia having to shoot their own men. They mainly served as ways to help reorganize and reconstitute so soldiers didn’t just retreat in a disorganized manner and get even more people killed. I think the draconian stuff you’re thinking of became less necessary once the Red Army finally learned the right lessons from its defeats by the Germans in 1941-1942 and got its poo poo together. It actually in some cases got a bit worse towards the end of the war as the continued appaling casualty rates meant that the Soviets were beginning to depend more and more on "unreliable" manpower rather than the "dependable", but heavily depleted, Russians and Siberians. When they began increasingly drafting Central Asians and putting them in the front line as well as forcibly conscripting liberated populations in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, there was a lot of worrying about desertion and defection among these troops. Forcing these soldiers out of their trenches and into the attack and keeping them from retreating or going back was a concern.
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Mar 27, 2023 12:16
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It appears that the current RuAF usage of barrier troops is closest to that of how the NKVD used them with penal batallions in WW2 - they were far more brutal with them because by definition the penal batallions were unreliable and very expendable, which also describes a good part of the RuAF's current force in Donbas.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:15
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Charliegrs posted:Was it a myth in WW2? I thought the myth was that troops were sent into battle without guns (because they didn't have enough) and were told to pick them up from their dead comrades. The belief that soldiers were executed en masse for cowardice was largely a myth. There were purges of the military (that damaged military effectiveness) during and before WW2 but those were mostly targeted at officers not enlisted soldiers. Commissars were tasked with ensuring the loyalty of officers specifically because the paranoid Stalinist regime did not believe that the czarist officers they inherited could be trusted. Many point to the history of the Russian civil war just 15 years earlier as the source of this paranoia or at least the appointment of a paranoid regime. Either way, soldiers retreat all the time and it's impossible to shoot anyone who does so without causing a mutiny. You simply can't run a successful military with such a hard line, it's physically impossible. Especially when much of the Russian tactics in WW2 were "retreat and force the Germans to stretch their supply lines to the breaking point in the dead of winter". Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 17:45
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Cpt_Obvious posted:You simply can't run a successful military with such a hard line, it's physically impossible. ". That doesn't actually contradict the argument that Russia might be doing it now. They aren't succeeding.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:11
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quote:After the war it was forbidden to publish any details about Order Number 227, though it had been distributed to all fighting units. Not until 1988 was its existence first revealed to the Soviet public. The order did not fit with the post‐war image of Soviet heroism and self‐sacrifice, for it not only called for a fight to the death, but promised the severest punishments for those who flinched. Anyone caught within the net of the order, the ‘panickers’ and ‘cowards’, were liable to summary execution or service in shtrafbaty, penal battalions. There were penal units for senior officers who shirked their duty and separate units for junior officers and privates, modelled, according to the order, on German practice during the winter fighting in 1941. Stalin also authorized so‐called ‘blocking units’ (otryadi zagrazhdeniye) from the regular Red Army troops, whose task was to prevent panic and desertion and keep soldiers fighting. They were supposed to co‐operate with the thousands of NKVD troops who had been performing the same task without a specific order. In practice these new units found themselves carrying out menial tasks or guard duty in the rear when they were needed desperately at the front. On October 29 they were cancelled by a fresh order. The NKVD troops continued to track down anyone accused of slacking or cowardice. Guilt did not need to be clear. The practices of the pre‐war terror were reimposed to keep Soviet soldiers fighting. The slightest infringement could be interpreted as sabotage; desertion was punishable by a death sentence, meted out by hundreds of summary courts‐martial. Over the course of the war 442,000 were forced to serve in penal battalions; a further 436,000 were sentenced to periods of imprisonment. How many died at the hands of their own side, either shot, or lost in the suicidal missions assigned to penal battalions, may never be known with any certainty. Latest Russian estimates put the figure as high as 158,000 sentenced to be shot during the war. The penal battalions were given the most dangerous work. They were sent ahead through minefields or on air attacks into the teeth of German defences. They could be reinstated only if they were wounded. ‘Atoned with his own blood’ was added to their reports. Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945 So penal battalions with mind-boggling fatality rates indeed, but it was not actually necessary, as Stalin envisioned, to mobilize large numbers to point guns at their backs then - and nor is it today. Fear and uncertainty was sufficient to disrupt any prospect of penal battalions organizing a flight en masse. ronya fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 18:12
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I read the book Man Is Wolf to Man by Janusz Bardach, a red army tanker. In 1941 he was a tank commander caught up in the retreats at the start of Barbarosa, but his tank got stuck in some water or mud or something. He managed to get the tank unstuck and back into working order, but overzealous NKVD officers decided that the original accident was an act of sabotage, held a trial on the spot, and sentenced him to a summary execution. Because he knew the guy was given a sentence in gulags instead. He managed to survive that and become a well known plastic surgeon in the US.
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Mar 27, 2023 18:29
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So would you say that part of the problem is that the current leadership starts to believe all the myths about the Red Army in WWII, including and perhaps specifically the one made up as propaganda by nazi-Germany and possibly the US, and they're now trying to actually act them out?
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Mar 27, 2023 19:01
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https://mobile.twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1640365108948811776 The first batch of 18 German Leopard 2 tanks were apparently handed over last week. In addition some 40 Marder IFVs have also been delivered. It will be interesting to see if any footage of them will appear. So far it seems like there has been extremely little footage of German military equipment (Gepard, PzH2000, Mars MLRS), even though have been praised a lot.
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Mar 27, 2023 19:02
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I have seen much MARS or Gepard, probably due to their relative value, but PzH photos are common. Or were common earlier, the maintenance pace on those seems inconsistent, with Ukrainians occasionally running out of barrels and whatnot.
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Mar 27, 2023 19:09
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Shogeton posted:So would you say that part of the problem is that the current leadership starts to believe all the myths about the Red Army in WWII, including and perhaps specifically the one made up as propaganda by nazi-Germany and possibly the US, and they're now trying to actually act them out? I think that’s a weird way of putting it. There’s some hair-splitting going on to call some of these behaviors myths when the truth is more complex and a lot of these things happened despite aspects being exaggerated. It seems more likely there was always a thread of this stuff in the Soviet/Russian military and the current war is bringing it back to the surface with an utter lack of professionalism and morale.
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Mar 27, 2023 19:30
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Russian is much more homogeneous, and it can be quite difficult, if not impossible, to place an accent on a map. There are some stereotypical traits ascribed to this or that region, but they're not particularly difficult to avoid, i.e., we're not talking Receive Pronunciation vs Texan English here. You could film an equally credible video in Latvia, if you had nothing better to do with your time. Interesting, thank you. It's wild to me that a language which is spread over such a vast amount of territory - and spoken by i.a. Slavic people who were taught it as a second language during the cold war - can have such a homogenic accent/pronunciation. Compare this to Flemish where I can guesstimate which village a person comes from depending on their vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation, and where a video of a bunch of "mobilised soldiers" speaking in news anchor Dutch would be a telltale giveaway that it's being staged.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:48
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Deltasquid posted:Interesting, thank you. It's wild to me that a language which is spread over such a vast amount of territory - and spoken by i.a. Slavic people who were taught it as a second language during the cold war - can have such a homogenic accent/pronunciation. Compare this to Flemish where I can guesstimate which village a person comes from depending on their vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation, and where a video of a bunch of "mobilised soldiers" speaking in news anchor Dutch would be a telltale giveaway that it's being staged. A practical explanation of it is that Moscow has a stranglehold over Russian-speaking media, and has always maintained it. That in essence defines what “proper” Russian is, and things like stereotypically Ukrainian ch sounding as sh (very roughly cheap->sheep) can be consciously avoided due to how simple Russian pronunciation is in general (there’s no separate written and spoken form for words). Comically, I have quite the accent due to growing up in an environment where Russian was not wholly dominant (my schooling was exclusively in Latvian, and so was talking to dad’s side of the family), and where I usually get geolocated on the terms of my accent by people from Russia is Ukraine, or rarer Belarus.
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Mar 27, 2023 21:04
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I am pretty sure TV anchor speak doesn't include ah-kanie, though?
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Mar 27, 2023 21:07
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Deltasquid posted:Interesting, thank you. It's wild to me that a language which is spread over such a vast amount of territory - and spoken by i.a. Slavic people who were taught it as a second language during the cold war - can have such a homogenic accent/pronunciation. Compare this to Flemish where I can guesstimate which village a person comes from depending on their vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation, and where a video of a bunch of "mobilised soldiers" speaking in news anchor Dutch would be a telltale giveaway that it's being staged. There's a great deal of interesting history about accent drift. Note how American accents cover such broad regions whereas London alone has like a hundred accents or more all significantly distinct. A lot of stuff factors in, print, literacy, mass media, population migrations, etc.
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Mar 27, 2023 21:22
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OddObserver posted:I am pretty sure TV anchor speak doesn't include ah-kanie, though? I'm not sure if we've heard the same anchors, unless you're talking about the manicured up to the wazoo Soviet radio/TV announcers. Ah-kanie doesn't have to be anywhere as a bad as “авашной ряд”, to count as ah-kanie, and modern Russian orthoepy is definitely Moscow-based.
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Mar 27, 2023 22:14
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I'm not sure if we've heard the same anchors, unless you're talking about the manicured up to the wazoo Soviet radio/TV announcers. Ah-kanie doesn't have to be anywhere as a bad as “авашной ряд”, to count as ah-kanie, and modern Russian orthoepy is definitely Moscow-based. Well, it has been a looonnng time --- probably close to 3 decades, so quite possibly (late USSR/early post-Societ period )--- but in my childhood in Odesa the TV sounded less 'weird' in that way than my relatives from Moscow.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:36
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OddObserver posted:Well, it has been a looonnng time --- probably close to 3 decades, so quite possibly (late USSR/early post-Societ period )--- but in my childhood in Odesa the TV sounded less 'weird' in that way than my relatives from Moscow. Late-USSR/early 90s sure, your perspective would then make sense to me as well, since they really don't make anchors like they used to back in the USSR. There was something implacable about the intonation, the cadence, and the general delivery of speech that they were trained to do. Perhaps I'm focusing a bit too much on the big announcement stuff, but if there's a standard that has been let go, then this would be my candidate.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:42
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What does ah-kanie mean exactly? I've never heard of it.Deltasquid posted:Interesting, thank you. It's wild to me that a language which is spread over such a vast amount of territory - and spoken by i.a. Slavic people who were taught it as a second language during the cold war - can have such a homogenic accent/pronunciation. Compare this to Flemish where I can guesstimate which village a person comes from depending on their vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation, and where a video of a bunch of "mobilised soldiers" speaking in news anchor Dutch would be a telltale giveaway that it's being staged. I suppose it's similar to how the Antwerp dialect became the de facto "standard" Flemish because the VRT was based there even though there isn't really a de jure standard or "proper" Flemish pronunciation. Only in Russia there is definitely the idea of "proper" Russian pronunciation and it's taught in a certain way and any accent or deviation is considered to be backwards. spankmeister fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 06:23
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spankmeister posted:What does ah-kanie mean exactly? I've never heard of it. Аканье, vowel reduction towards “a” (“o” most prominently).
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Mar 28, 2023 11:14
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Deltasquid posted:Interesting, thank you. It's wild to me that a language which is spread over such a vast amount of territory - and spoken by i.a. Slavic people who were taught it as a second language during the cold war - can have such a homogenic accent/pronunciation. Compare this to Flemish where I can guesstimate which village a person comes from depending on their vocabulary, intonation and pronunciation, and where a video of a bunch of "mobilised soldiers" speaking in news anchor Dutch would be a telltale giveaway that it's being staged. That's the same as American English, also spread over a huge territory - but (like Russia) spread over that territory pretty recently. You can't really place whether someone grew up in Anchorage or in Chicago. There are regional accents but there's also a pervasive "generic, unplaceable American English", even in parts of the country that do have a stereotypical placeable accent like the south or Boston.
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Mar 28, 2023 14:00
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I never thought I had an accent either until I went to college and literally every person I opened my mouth around went "you're from Minnesota, aren't you?" 
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Mar 28, 2023 16:39
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Yeah the idea that there are no accents or regional dialects in the United States is kind of ridiculous. Most coherent states are going to have a universal language, it's necessary that everyone involved have some common means of communication. Societies require cooperation, and cooperation requires a shared language.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:45
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I'm crossposting my latest post from the GBS thread to get D&D's take on the future of Chinese-Russian relations after Putin's latest meeting with Xi https://news.yahoo.com/xi-jinping-plan-annex-russian-190000385.html yahoo posted:The long-debated agreement on “Power of Siberia 2” (POS2) – a massive pipeline project to pump gas from Western Siberia to China via Mongolia – has become emblematic of the one-sided and slightly abusive relationship between China and Russia since the start of the Ukraine war. It is not good news for Moscow. A well-known Russian Sinologist spoke about the relations between the two countries after the meeting with Xi and Putin: Alexander Lukin posted:Психологически надо готовиться к тому, что Россия по сравнению с Китаем будет страной менее влиятельной, а со временем — и менее развитой. My translation, apologies for errors: Lukin posted:Psychologically, we need to prepare for the fact that Russia, compared to China, will be a less influential country, and over time, less developed. And get used to living with it in such a way that, while maintaining cooperation, you do not fall into excessive dependence https://v1.ru/text/world/2023/03/25/72162320/ My feeling is that the most likely path for Russia at this point is to eventually become a resource colony that fuels Chinese economic growth with cheap raw materials and Russia's future will continue to get bleaker from there.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:52
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Saladman posted:That's the same as American English, also spread over a huge territory - but (like Russia) spread over that territory pretty recently. You can't really place whether someone grew up in Anchorage or in Chicago. There are regional accents but there's also a pervasive "generic, unplaceable American English", even in parts of the country that do have a stereotypical placeable accent like the south or Boston. Ask them to pronounce "sausage". I get asked if I'm Canadian when I'm working in Chicago despite growing up about a hour north. Don't have to go too far to tell a difference in accent if you're used to an area.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:57
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Interesting article. My take away is that Russia and the PRC are forming their own trade/military bloc and china is clearly the dominant partner, the same way the United States is the dominant partner in NATO. Idk what that means in 20, 30 years but right now it seems to mean that they will be trading more with each other and less with everyone else outside of that bloc. It also means that should war break that the two will probably be supporting each other, meaning the sino-soviet split is basically impossible to replicate.
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Mar 28, 2023 17:07
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Interesting article. Russia is not a super-duper important trade partner for China --- they matter but way less than US or Japan or many other countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China
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Mar 28, 2023 17:12
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I think there's an element of prescription to a lot of the english articles on China Russia relations which is aiming to prevent the two sides from forming a stronger bond. Portraying China as opportunistic and Russia as a weak lackey. I would assume that in the short term China isn't ready to back Russia to the hilt but who knows what will happen in the next decade.
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Mar 28, 2023 17:15
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HonorableTB posted:I'm crossposting my latest post from the GBS thread to get D&D's take on the future of Chinese-Russian relations after Putin's latest meeting with Xi Note that Yahoo news is an aggregator, so you should always see who it's mediating. In this case, it's the Telegraph, which is usually seen as a Tory party mouthpiece.
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Mar 28, 2023 17:15
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Imo The United States appears to be revving up for a trade war with China. First there were tariffs under trump, now there are tech embargoes under Biden. America appears to be decoupling itself from the Chinese trade bloc but by bit, and china seems to be responding by expanding trade with Russia and India and the other BRICS.
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Mar 28, 2023 17:18
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