[Ukraine] ahegao to the poles

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] ahegao to the poles

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Best Friends: Nov 4, 2011

they�re doing the �Russia bombed their own pipeline because they�re evil orcs� script again beat for beat and its successfully driving me insane. The contextless and possibly fake phone calls, the occasional gloating of how this helps Ukraine strategically, the pointed lack of any plausible motivation provided, the screams of moral indignation at Russia for doing such evil, and of course, that questioning any of this means you love and want to kiss Putin.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 12, 2024 19:33

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Marenghi posted:

I'm going to hazard a guess based on the reports of grifting among the military and government of the aid they are receiving for this war. Right now it's a very profitable time to be a Ukrainian official but that is only true so far as this war is on-going. The post war future is uncertain so this may be the best time to fill your bank account for retirement. Continued aid is dependent on continued results, even if they are failures, any action is better than no action for keeping the money flowing. You can always spin the failures as proof you need more aid.

I predict this war will continue until the US gets tired of providing aid, or Ukraine runs out of manpower.

I think you nailed it. Which is very funny because there was a book just added to the reading list here, Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine which posits that Ukraine's inherent democratic nature and accountability will lead them to persevere. I'm simplifying while I dig up the quotes.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:39

Neurolimal: Nov 3, 2012

It would be a fun post-war project to collect all the extremely fake phone calls & compose a recap of the war exclusively off them

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:43

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Yeah, so I think one brigade had a total of 28 (I guess 27 with that training accident) of Leo2s, if they lost 8-10, they would be much of the offensive firepower at that brigade.

Also, those brigades were using a mix of equipment and a lot of it was Soviet which makes things a little murkier.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:47

Neurolimal: Nov 3, 2012

*civil war narrator voice* Day 900 of the war. The orcs, having endured countless beatings by the virile Ukrainian supersoldiers and their massive penises, are demoralized. They have run out of toilets to steal, and their ugly 90 year old girlfriends are demanding more iphones. As the Ukrainians successfully defend Lviv from yet another futile failed offense, prisoner-conscript Glugg Ok'tuk wishes he could return home to his sheepskin tent in the untamed Russian plains.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:49

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Frosted Flake posted:

lol is it even worth breaking out my operational analysis charts to show losing 10% of AFV strength on the first day is... not ideal?

Attackers always take more losses than defenders. Losing 10% of the AFV strength is proof Ukraine's offensive is successful otherwise they wouldn't be losing any AFVs.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:49

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

bedpan posted:

Attackers always take more losses than defenders. Losing 10% of the AFV strength is proof Ukraine's offensive is successful otherwise they wouldn't be losing any AFVs.

costs money to make money

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:50

Neurolimal: Nov 3, 2012

They dont even use the toilets because Russia has no running water or sewage system, they place them in the middle of the living room (a cave) and fondly admire the Ukrainian craftsmanship

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:52

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Frosted Flake posted:

Yeah, but the counterarguments in the book that argues that I am part of an "operating system" are gibberish to me and mention things like "digital Maoism":

So, instead of having loving red tabs, I guess staff are Maoists or something.

Honestly the Cold War ending while RAND and company's budgets continued unabated led to a lot of loving bullshit freeform thought experiments as they disappeared up their own rear end.

"This vision is potentially revolutionary as it strikes directly at the hierarchical structures that militaries have always relied on for command and control. " Christ on the Cross.

they are trying to build the framework and theory of mind for an AI/computer controlled force that would allow the person at the top with the access codes entire control without ever having to worry

# ? Jun 9, 2023 16:58

Turtle Sandbox: Dec 31, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

Slavvy posted:

This sort of loops back around into politics and philosophy doesn't it? Like if you're NATO and you accept the reality of the above, and analysts are telling you that it's not possible to out-produce, out-shoot and out-man the USSR, then it follows that you'll inevitably lose any non-nuclear conflict. This is politically unacceptable so the system will promote people with an answer to this problem, namely that we will always find some way of flanking or out-maneuvering the enemy by fighting 'smarter', and our smart weapons will help us do this, because we're so smart. If you then ask why NATO commanders and troops would be so much smarter than their Soviet counterparts you end up at either ethnic or political superiority, we are intrinsically better because of X aka Nazi thinking.

So you can argue that NATO doctrine and training was caused by integrating Nazi officer thinking, or you could argue that integrating Nazi thinking was inevitable and unavoidable because there was literally no alternative besides just accepting that you'll almost certainly lose a war with your main enemy.

If you are NATO you are absolutely ok with letting Ukraine be completely wiped out to force a geopolitical rival to spend as much as possible on the war.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:02

Throatwarbler: Nov 17, 2008; by vyelkin

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1667188558052851713

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:04

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

Zelensky should try to free Navalny from prison and declare him the legal president of Russia

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:05

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Nonsense posted:

Zelensky should try to free Navalny from prison and declare him the legal president of Russia

Navalny would have to fight juan guaido for the office

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:06

CongoJack: Nov 5, 2009; Ask Why, Asshole

The smoke from those tanks is actually just the crews enjoying a well deserved cigarette break after a successful attack into the russian defenses.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:09

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

Throatwarbler posted:

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1667188558052851713

whenever something bad happens to a ukranian armor column, they pull into a tight huddle to discuss next steps. ive seen it happen a bunch of times, all video feeds from rus spotting drones unfortunately :smith:

Frosted Flake posted:

On the last Maple Resolve, a battalion of RCR got disorganized and paused at a crossroads to regroup. A fire mission was called in for 14 LAVs parked under a group of trees.

That Btn then rotated to Latvia to train the Ukrainians.

Frosted Flake posted:

It�s true, remember who trained them

blame canada

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:11

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Yeah, one of the Leopard 2a6s was really lit up as well, the crew may have not made it.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:11

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Throatwarbler posted:

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1667188558052851713

russian tanks getting blown up in a field? zelenskyy will be with his army at the gates of moscow in three days

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:12

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, one of the Leopard 2a6s was really lit up as well, the crew may have not made it.

clearly those are all russian tanks because they are getting destroyed

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:12

euphronius: Feb 18, 2009

the russian tanks are driving south because they are scared and going home.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:15

redneck nazgul: Apr 25, 2013

Frosted Flake posted:

Yeah, but the counterarguments in the book that argues that I am part of an "operating system" are gibberish to me and mention things like "digital Maoism":

So, instead of having loving red tabs, I guess staff are Maoists or something.

Honestly the Cold War ending while RAND and company's budgets continued unabated led to a lot of loving bullshit freeform thought experiments as they disappeared up their own rear end.

"This vision is potentially revolutionary as it strikes directly at the hierarchical structures that militaries have always relied on for command and control. " Christ on the Cross.

this just makes me want eddie lampert for sec def honestly

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:15

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

Ukrainians are blowing up their own tanks to show that they can destroy tanks

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:16

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Frosted Flake posted:

lol is it even worth breaking out my operational analysis charts to show losing 10% of AFV strength on the first day is... not ideal?

you're forgetting that this is the spring offensive, and spring ends in 11 days. even at current rate of loss they'll only be without heavy hardware for 2 days so it's not an issue

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:17

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

bedpan posted:

Ukrainians are blowing up their own dams to show that they can destroy dams

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:17

CongoJack: Nov 5, 2009; Ask Why, Asshole

bedpan posted:

Ukrainians are blowing up their own tanks to show that they can destroy tanks

Ukraine sending a message to the mobiks that they don�t even need the tanks they spent months begging for to win.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:18

Dixon Chisholm: Jan 2, 2020

Eat This Glob posted:

eat more beaver? you sound like my HARPY OF A WIFE! (canned laughter)

shut up dj khaled

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:18

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

From Hybrid Conflict to All-Out War: Russia Fights Ukraine posted:

A dog senses when somebody is afraid of it, and bites.
- Vladimir Putin

On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a vicious war against Ukraine, causing immense death and destruction, without yielding the anticipated political gains for Russia. The origins of this war go back to the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. For many Russians, it was hard to imagine Ukraine as an independent state with its own national identity. Vladimir Putin saw the separation of the two states as unnatural, a source of artificial discord that made no sense in the light of their shared history. He also feared that the closer Ukraine got to the West the more threatening it would become to Russia. This would especially be the case if it joined Western institutions, such as the EU and NATO, but also if it was treated a showcase for a popular democracy with a low tolerance of autocrats.

This chapter includes an unavoidably incomplete analysis of the 2022 war, which had yet to conclude as this book went to press. It is largely concerned with the origins of the conflict in 2014, as Russia annexed Crimea and stirred up trouble in Eastern Ukraine. The links between these events and the later war are self-evident, yet what is striking is how much Putin�s own risk calculus changed, from being audacious yet careful in 2014 to becoming reckless in 2022. In 2014, he allowed loosely controlled adventurers to make the running in Eastern Ukraine. In 2022, these adventurers, now in charge of their small statelets, provided the pretexts for Putin�s much more ambitious war.

In 2014, Putin dominated Russian politics. He had taken advantage of both Kosovo and the Second Chechen War in his rise to power, and then used them to claim that Russia had regained its strategic aptitude. His position, along with the Russian economy, benefited from high commodity prices. Yet at the same time relations with the West were tense. The Kosovo conflict had confirmed his view that the United States followed double standards when it came to international law. He suspected the United States and its allies of wanting to undermine his regime, by encouraging popular discontent in neighbouring countries as a prelude to drawing them into NATO. (lol)

Ukraine was of special concern. In 2013, Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine�s largely pro-Russian president, tried to pursue a generally popular association agreement with the European Union, while at the same time engaging with Putin�s alternative proposal for a Russian-led customs union � the Eurasian Union. Putin, however, insisted that a choice be made, and put Yanukovych under intense economic pressure to abandon the association agreement. When the pressure succeeded in November, a popular revolt broke out, known as the EuroMaidan movement after the large square in Kyiv where many of the demonstrations took place. On 22 February, Yanukovych fled the country. A new government was formed from the opposition parties in parliament.

Faced with this setback, Putin decided to respond by annexing Crimea and stirring up discontent in Eastern Ukraine. This had the effect of escalating the crisis. European and North American countries demanded that Russia withdraw from Ukrainian territory and imposed economic sanctions until it did so. The situation stabilized with Crimea left in Russian hands, enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk (together known as the Donbas) under separatist control, sustained by Russian subsidies but formally still part of Ukraine, and sanctions still in place. It was hard to see how this could be counted as a strategic success, as Ukraine moved closer to the West and away from Russia. At most, Putin had made the best of a bad job, taking away a consolation prize in the form of Crimea, avoiding an obvious defeat, keeping the conflict contained, disrupting Ukraine and deterring the West from getting too involved.

Russian strategy towards Ukraine was aggressive, yet carried out in a form that allowed it to be denied, albeit not very convincingly. In this, it was not dissimilar from what had been attempted in Chechnya, prior to the direct military intervention of December 1994. The Kremlin was said by Western observers to be practising �hybrid warfare�. The theoretical foundation for this approach was discerned in a 2013 speech by Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia�s general staff. Gerasimov was considering how warfare would evolve now that �frontal clashes of major military formations� were �gradually receding into the past�, and he pointed to the importance of �political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other non-military measures�, as well as forms of irregular warfare that required firing up local populations and using �concealed� armed forces. Notably, Gerasimov also had control of the military�s main intelligence agency, the GRU, and had established a Special Operations Forces Command.

Later analysis suggested that more had been read into Gerasimov�s words than intended. The strategy followed by Russia in 2014 was more an expedient and improvised response to events than something deliberate and properly planned. Nor did hybrid warfare describe a clever innovation, something never tried before. Most wars are hybrid, in that belligerents engage in a variety of activities to hurt and disorient their adversaries. Often these activities follow their own paths and so they may not be well coordinated. The talk of hybrid war suggested that apparently disparate activities were properly integrated to achieve a degree of synergy. As we shall see, this was often far from the case in Ukraine. Russia certainly sought to wrong-foot its adversaries, by bringing together regular and irregular forces, overt and covert activities, combining established forms of military action with cyberattacks and information warfare, but the disparate actions were rarely synchronized to maximize their strategic effect. There were limits on what could be directed and coordinated from the centre.

Although many of the rebels in eastern Ukraine were Russian, and either members of or linked to Russian special forces and security agencies, Moscow never appeared to be wholly in control of their activities, and they squabbled among themselves. There was not a single chain of command but multiple chains, some more tight than others. In Russia, strings were pulled by businessmen and political associates of Putin, as well as the FSB and the GRU. At the other end of the strings were militia leaders in Ukraine. They had their own political agendas, which did not necessarily fit with Putin�s or each other�s. They took their own decisions on how to fight forces loyal to the Ukrainian government. The core problem was that the rebels wanted Eastern Ukraine to follow Crimea and be absorbed into Russia, which would require Moscow to mount a major military operation, while Putin wanted the enclaves to be thorns in the side of Ukraine, and any Russian military engagement to be minimal. In the summer of 2014, Russia did have to accept a more overt role to prevent the separatists being defeated. This left the enclaves without any formal status, dependent on Russia for financial and military support, yet still notionally part of Ukraine. Eventually, Putin found the ambiguity in this situation untenable and decided to resolve it through a full-scale war. When he ordered the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, he cited the vulnerable position of the separatists as the pretext, although his underlying objective was to bring all of Ukraine back into Russia�s sphere of influence.

I don't think this is incorrect or flawed essentially, except where the narrative of the political dimension intrudes. However, this having set the stage, the command lessons that follow are a bit absurd imo. Maybe truth is stranger than fiction, but some of this is clearly here for flavour rather than useful analysis.

GIRKIN/STRELKOV posted:

His politics had already moved to a romantic extreme, embracing ultranationalism and advocating, at a time of chaotic transition in Moscow, a return to monarchism. One who knew him then described him as �living in the beginning of the 20th century�. This belief in the restoration of the Tsarist Empire found an outlet in military re-enactment societies, which allowed him to dress up in old uniforms and carry vintage weapons to relive the battles of past wars. His favourite role appears to have been as an officer of the anti-Bolshevik White Russians during the civil war that began in 1918 and continued until the early 1920s. White Russian General Mikhail Drozdovsky, who was killed in battle in 1919, was his hero. Girkin�s distinctive look, with closely cropped hair and thin moustache, was said to be influenced by this period, along with his military tactics. As a commander, he could act decisively, and was sufficiently brave, confident and ruthless to get others to follow him. As a politician, he was trapped in his romantic world view, which left him pursuing unrealistic goals.

Ukraine provided a cause for Malofeev�s circle. This was in part because Ukraine�s separation from Russia was seen as an affront. They found it hard to think of the country as anything other than artificial, and assumed it was ready to break up. This opened the possibility of Russia recovering the eastern parts, known as Novorossiya, which had first been attached to Russia at the time of Catherine the Great. Crimea was an obvious, credible first step in this project. It had been detached from Russia and handed to Ukraine as recently as 1954, when they were both republics of the Soviet Union. To bring forward their territorial project, this group worked with like-minded groups in Ukraine, particularly those attached to the Orthodox Church, who shared their disgust at Western decadence, gay rights being something of an obsession.

ANNEXING CRIMEA posted:

The gathering anti-Russian movement in Kyiv prompted opposing pro- Russian sentiment in Crimea. This created secessionist possibilities that were straightforward for Russia to exploit, not least because it had a naval base at Sevastopol, attached to Crimea. During the first weeks of 2014, interested parties from Moscow visited Crimea. On 30 January, Malofeev accompanied a religious delegation to Simferopol, the Crimean capital. Girkin provided security. He took the opportunity to do some reconnaissance and meet with Sergey Aksyonov, head of the small Russia Unity Party and previously a businessman, with alleged links to organized crime.

Back from his visit, Malofeev sent a memo to Putin�s office detailing the vulnerability of Yanukovych and the likelihood that Ukraine would soon disintegrate. The memo urged Putin to use the West�s own language on self-determination to take Crimea and a large part of Eastern Ukraine.

Plans to annex Crimea took shape during January and February. Surkov also visited the territory in early February. By February 23, when Putin decided to act, the plans were in place. This was the day after Yanukovych fled Kyiv. Putin told senior aides that events had unfolded in such a manner that planning to return Crimea to Russia had to start. He stated that they couldn't leave the region and its people to the whim of fate and the nationalist steamroller.

Putin kept an eye on the larger picture as events unfolded, prepared to hold back should Ukraine manage to muster a serious response and gain significant support from the international community. However, Ukraine was in disarray. There was no Minister of Defense and no decision-making authority in a position to respond.

Putin�s strategy was to present his move as a response to popular pressure rather than opportunistic aggression. However, this was not a spontaneous uprising. Russia already had substantial forces on the peninsula, including two naval infantry brigades, which had been at half strength and were brought up to full strength. These forces were used to secure airfields and arms depots. Moreover, the Russians had turned the deputy commander of Ukraine�s Black Sea Fleet. Special forces were moved by sea and air into Sevastopol.

There, on February 23, a Russian-born engineer, Alexei Chaly, used a mass demonstration against EuroMaidan to depose the mayor and get himself installed instead. Elsewhere, the operation was more coercive. Putin later admitted the role of 'our soldiers' standing behind 'the self-defence forces of Crimea', to make possible 'an open, honest and dignified referendum and help people to express their opinion'. The Ministry of Defence, under his orders, had deployed 'a special division' of the GRU 'together with naval infantry forces and paratroopers'. This was 'under the guise of protection of our military facilities in Crimea'. The Russian troops, with standard uniforms and equipment but no markings, came to be known as the 'little green men', their presence at first vehemently denied and then admitted by Putin.

HYBRID WAR TO TOTAL WAR posted:

Despite the talk of 'hybrid warfare', which implied a single mastermind pulling together mutually reinforcing strands of activity, the confused lines of command undermined operational effectiveness and blurred the political message. In the first stage of its war with Ukraine, Russia secured Crimea, but then it hesitated about what else it wanted to do. The pretence was maintained that a rebellion was under way as an authentic local reaction to a coup in Kyiv, denying the role of Russian money and guidance, as well as the roles played by its Spetsnaz and eventually regular forces. The militants in view were a mixture of romantics, adventurers, crooks and mercenaries. Inevitably, they often worked at cross purposes, and Moscow struggled to control their activities. They lacked the capacity to create the insurrectionary conditions that might have persuaded Putin to annex even more territory. Yet they left Russia committed to their defence, with a stake in the viability and security of a chunk of territory in a neighbouring country.

In line with the assumptions of hybrid warfare, Moscow backed up the efforts within Ukraine with both cyber operations and an intensive propaganda campaign. A GRU group mounted multiple attacks on Ukraine�s infrastructure, including the electricity grid. Government departments were disabled. Major companies were attacked. The attacks were brazen and caused real damage. Yet they were not synchronized with military developments on the ground or diplomatic initiatives, as the theory might lead one to expect. Nor did they destabilize Ukraine or coerce it into major concessions on the Donbas. Equally, the propaganda machine may have convinced Russians that the Ukrainian leadership was composed of fascists, but it had less effect in Ukraine. It went into overdrive after MH17, but only with the effect of ensuring that the controversy dragged on, including in a Dutch court.

Far from identifying a clever way to bring together a variety of military and other coercive instruments, so that the overall effect was greater than the sum of the individual parts, the Russians had set in motion events that they could not control, led by individuals they struggled to command, for objectives they did not wholly share. Militia groups, however formed, lack the stability and discipline of regular forces. They aspire to be proper armies with ranks and chains of command, but, without strong leadership and military success, they can easily fragment. Even if their leaders are strongly committed to a cause, this may be less of a factor among volunteers, who might be looking for adventure or criminal opportunities.

For their part, the separatist leaders were left frustrated. They looked up to Putin as their commander-in-chief, even if he did not communicate with them directly. They were always dealing with intermediaries and unsure how much the Russian president was taking an interest. As it became clear that he would not pursue their goals, they blamed his advisers, but still hoped that he would once more become the bold leader that had defied the world and annexed Crimea, and revive his offensive against Ukraine. Their position of not being part of either country left the enclaves in a mess. Instead of being able to walk away from the crisis of 2014 with the sole but clear prize of Crimea, Putin was left with a simmering conflict that could only be resolved by admitting political failure, or, alternatively, by taking more overt military action, with a high risk of its escalating into a more demanding and dangerous fight. Sympathy for Ukraine led NATO countries to step up material support. Instead of drawing Ukraine away from the West, Russia pushed it closer. Girkin, who had set all this in motion, was unimpressed. In 2020, he declared the enclaves to be a 'dump', with conditions worse than either Russia or the rest of Ukraine, and where Russia was hated. Nonetheless he remained convinced that Russia and Ukraine should be once more brought together.

By this time, Putin had also become increasingly frustrated by the situation. His plan to use the enclaves to influence Ukrainian politics was getting nowhere. Ukraine no longer accepted any responsibility for their upkeep and so they required substantial Russian subsidies. A former comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, became Ukraine�s president in 2019, and declared himself interested in implementing the Minsk agreements to end the conflict, but to Putin he appeared weak and held back by Ukrainian hardliners. This left Russia with a de facto annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk, which meant that they could no longer be used to influence Ukrainian politics, while Ukraine was almost a de facto part of NATO, from which it was gaining weapons and other forms of military assistance.

Yet while Putin was gloomy about Ukraine in other respects, he was positive about Russia�s situation. A substantial effort had been put into modernizing Russia�s armed forces. He notified the West about new systems that at least sounded impressive, such as 'hypersonic weapons'. He had used military power effectively to help defeat rebels in Syria, and was using cyberattacks and information campaigns to harass Western states, with few apparent consequences. At home, he had consolidated his position, as his opponents were either murdered or imprisoned, and his hold over the media was strengthened. Prudent macroeconomic management meant that the sanctions imposed by the West after Crimea had been managed, while higher commodity prices meant that financial reserves were healthy. The West appeared unsettled after Donald Trump�s presidency, and this impression was confirmed by the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. He had also helped Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus since 1994, to suppress a popular movement, following the familiar pattern of protests over a rigged election in August 2020. Because of this, Belarus was now in effect a client state. One of the consequences of this new alliance, not appreciated as it was forged, was that it gave Russia more options for mounting an offensive against Ukraine.

Where, again, I think he's basically correct but then there's stuff like Putin is Increasingly Isolated, Trump is a threat to the Rules Based International Order, Withdrawing From Afghanistan Made America Weak etc.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:18

Dixon Chisholm: Jan 2, 2020

Al-Saqr posted:

dead leopards and bradleys spotted

https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1667152744728395781?s=46&t=kY7HKwmb1RBg9U186lxtbg

tell us how this is bad for ruzzia

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:19

redneck nazgul: Apr 25, 2013

Dixon Chisholm posted:

tell us how this is bad for ruzzia

that looks like a real mess of a traffic jam, it'll take russia hours to clear that if they want to use that lovely dirt path

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:20

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

To be clear, I think what is going on is pretty hosed up, and people are certainly dying at the moment. It is history in the making etc but quite ugly.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:22

Eat This Glob: Jan 14, 2008; God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Who will wipe this blood off us? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

Dixon Chisholm posted:

shut up dj khaled

_{we the best}

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:24

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

What's frustrating is that there's a tonne I agree with, and aligns more or less with observations ITT, interspersed with meditations on the nature of the Russian mind, autocracy, authoritarianism, Brave Little ~~Belgium~~ Ukraine etc.

To give you an idea of why I'm wary of the author and his lessons on the nature of military command, consider:

Why yes, my takeaway from the "ethically distasteful" conduct of the French in Algeria and Indochina is that they were serving "some higher notion of the interests of the state" rather than the "weak government of the day".

Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 17:26 on Jun 9, 2023

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:24

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Delta-Wye posted:

whenever something bad happens to a ukranian armor column, they pull into a tight huddle to discuss next steps. ive seen it happen a bunch of times, all video feeds from rus spotting drones unfortunately

blame canada

I was just thinking that. Yeah.

Clearly nobody taught the Russian arty staff about cost effectiveness.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:29

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

why is everyone jerking off about leopards. are they the new wunderwaffen de hour that everyone is pinning nafo hopes on??? idgi

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:31

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

the infinite arsenals of NATO can easily replace anything damaged or loss; Russia can't make new ammunition so every shot just takes them closer to defeat

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:31

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

Putin is becoming increasingly isolated. Nevertheless the fight continues against the Russian Special Operation.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:34

CongoJack: Nov 5, 2009; Ask Why, Asshole

Xaris posted:

why is everyone jerking off about leopards. are they the new wunderwaffen de hour that everyone is pinning nafo hopes on??? idgi

yea they were, lots of the worst people you can imagine were very excited to see them in action.

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:35

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

CongoJack posted:

yea they were, lots of the worst people you can imagine were very excited to see them in action.

Well, they got their wish I guess. Christ.

Did I already post about when I met with an engineer from Colt Canada and he said something along the lines of regretting that he hadn't seen the C8 in action?

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:39

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

bedpan posted:

the infinite arsenals of NATO can easily replace anything damaged or loss; Russia can't make new ammunition so every shot just takes them closer to defeat

*sighing, adding +10,000 shells to the 'russia's losses' list*

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:40

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Xaris posted:

why is everyone jerking off about leopards. are they the new wunderwaffen de hour that everyone is pinning nafo hopes on??? idgi

The Leopard 2a6 in particular is one of the most advanced tanks in NATO, so, seeing one lit up and other ones damaged/abandoned is fairly notable.

Just imagine what a nightmare it would be for an Abrams tank to be out there in terms of traffic control and grouping.

Ardennes has issued a correction as of 17:49 on Jun 9, 2023

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:44

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 12, 2024 19:33

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

Ardennes posted:

The Leopard 2a6 in particular is one of the most advanced tanks in NATO, so seeing one lit up and other ones damaged/abandoned, is fairly notable.

Just imagine what a nightmare it would be for an Abrams tank to be out there in terms of traffic control and grouping

war went better when it was bullying small countries, who knew

# ? Jun 9, 2023 17:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Ukraine] ahegao to the poles

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