Ukraine invasion

[John R Davis]

It's not all Russians. It's the "but some animals are more equal than others" Russians.

There are an awful lot of unpleasant Russians involved. It's far from one person, or ten people, or a 100, or a 1000

 

[nedjer]

I know. Probably doesn't help much in driving Russians out that's what the incoming heavy weapons are for.

Russia night not be in any shape to attack come June when ground dries up.

They've lost around half the tanks and vehicles etc they deployed in theatre (580/1200).

Who knows how may tanks they have out of the 2500-2800 they were supposed to have.

Lots of speculation they'll announce mobilization on May 9.

View attachment 156460

I was posting some rough figures elsewhere . . . They went in with roughly 150,000 of which at most 20% were front of the line combat troops. A total of 30,000. They have since lost 20,000+ totally gone and the same again in casualties who won’t be back in a hurry. So 40,000 of the original 30,000 are out of it with plenty more likely affected by ‘minor’ injuries. The 'major offensive' looks increasingly pear-shaped

 

[nedjer]

I apologize, that was not what I intended.

This is more what I was trying to say.

The Russian military is a mix of extreme hazing, brutalisation and promotion on the strength of hazing and brutalisation. A case of what could possibly go wrong given that if that's how they treat themselves they are hardly likely to act differently towards their opponents.

 

[Zardnaar]

I was posting some rough figures elsewhere . . . They went in with roughly 150,000 of which at most 20% were front of the line combat troops. A total of 30,000. They have since lost 20,000+ totally gone and the same again in casualties who won’t be back in a hurry. So 40,000 of the original 30,000 are out of it with plenty more likely affected by ‘minor’ injuries. The 'major offensive' looks increasingly pear-shaped

High % were probably in vehicles though but Russian btgs are short of infantry.

At this rate they will run out of tanks and similar equipment in 6 months using the minimum loss numbers.

If Ukrainian numbers are remotely correct they run out in 3-4 months.

That's not what they've deployed in theatre but total.

This is assuming their army was as big as they claimed. After that even if they mobilize they'll have to raid tank graveyards erm I mean reserves.

Basically they have to win quickly or change the equation in terms of losses.

 

[Horwath]

The Russian military is a mix of extreme hazing, brutalisation and promotion on the strength of hazing and brutalisation. A case of what could possibly go wrong given that if that's how they treat themselves they are hardly likely to act differently towards their opponents.

Yeah, "dedovshchina" produces incompetent, demoralised and/or pychopathyc soldiers, who could have seen that...

"insert surprised pikachu face"

 

[Sacrosanct]

The Russian military is a mix of extreme hazing, brutalisation and promotion on the strength of hazing and brutalisation. A case of what could possibly go wrong given that if that's how they treat themselves they are hardly likely to act differently towards their opponents.

Yeah, "dedovshchina" produces incompetent, demoralised and/or pychopathyc soldiers, who could have seen that...

"insert surprised pikachu face"

I think it's easy to point to this as the reason we see human rights violations, but I think that ignores the biggest reason: war itself.

Every nation involved in war has members who engage in war crimes. Even the "good" nations. I'm sure I don't need to list the examples. It's one of the certainties in war, along with civilian suffering. War breaks people. It becomes personal. In survival mode, your focus becomes what is immediately around you. If you (general you) keep seeing your buddies getting blown to pieces, many people will completely break and lash out in horrific ways. The first casualty of war is the humanization of "the other side". Those people cease to become people. They become things. Bad things. Things that hate you and want you dead. Dehumanizing them makes it easier to kill them.

When I first joined the military, from day 1 of boot camp they stress how "the enemy" is less than human. I understand the logic behind it. In war, you don't want to hesitate, and people hesitate if they view the other person shooting at them as a human being.

This gets even more complex when you have an environment where if you don't kill those people, or blow up that building of civilians, you get shot yourself. It's really easy for people to immediately leap to "following orders isn't an excuse", but no one has actually been in a position of having a gun to your head, or being told a gun is to the head of your family if you don't.

War breaks people. I suspect if anyone decided to do the research after this war, we'd see a dramatic spike in suicides by Russian soldiers after they get back. The suicide rate among American soldiers is exceptionally high, and we weren't engaged in what the Russian soldiers are.

I want to be very clear that I'm not making excuses or saying that they don't need to face accountability. I'm just sayings its not as simple to say "Russians are bad." I've worked with Russian soldiers before in Bosnia. None of them were like this. They were all the same as everyone else. Just like the soldiers I worked with from other nations that were also there. The horrors of war always takes its toll on humanity, and causes people to do horrific things they wouldn't have otherwise. To every side. It's one of the main reasons I'm so anti-war unless unavoidable.

 

[Umbran]

War breaks people. It becomes personal. In survival mode, your focus becomes what is immediately around you. If you (general you) keep seeing your buddies getting blown to pieces, many people will completely break and lash out in horrific ways.

I don't argue with the points you are making, but.. it is also simpler than that. Humans don't have to be "broken" by being a witness or victim of the violence of war themselves to do horrible things to other human beings. I mean, in the US in each of the past couple of years, some 20,000 people died in gun homicides. And hundreds of thousands were victims of sexual assault. And none of those were done in war.

We are doing horrible things to each other, even without war. So, when horrible things happen in war, maybe we should not place all that blame on the war itself.

 

[Zardnaar]

An armies reputation is only as good as it's worst members.

Wars a dirty business at the best of times. The only difference between army A and B is how widescale the atrocities are.

The bigger difference is the home front and if you confront it and hold people accountable or double down on denial and justifications.

 

[Hussar]

Every nation involved in war has members who engage in war crimes. Even the "good" nations. I'm sure I don't need to list the examples.

True, but, there are some very important differences.

When Canadian soldiers beat a Somali kid to death, they went to jail (although, probably more of them should have) and the Airborne Regiment was disbanded. Canada, thirty years later, still doesn't have an Airborne Regiment. After the events, they started investigations throughout the Forces to identify and weed out bad actors. To varying degrees of success, fair enough, but, the attempt was at least made.

The Americans, for all their faults, have been remarkably restrained in their military actions since Viet Nam. And, again, I'm struggling to recall American run rape camps. While there have always been civilian casualties, and that's a tragedy, the US has been pretty good about keeping them to a minimum, compared to virtually any other armed forces in history.

The whole "war crimes happens" thing isn't really true anymore. There's a reason we have reporters embedded with US and allied units in war zones. We actually trust that our soldiers aren't animals. Ask yourself why we never see embedded Russian reporters. Ever. Or Chinese reporters, ever. Or Saudi reporters, ever.

The rise of the professional soldier in the latter half of the 20th century has resulted in armed forces that aren't commiting a litany of war crimes every time they get deployed. And that's a good thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

Potentially unreliable. Photo is probably real when it was taken????? Purported to be in Ukraine.



Back to the tyre thing. Made in the USSR in English. Apparently for export to India.

At best it was made using old equipment probably in the 90's. Otherwise if it's being used in Ukraine it's a 30+ year old tyre.

Some of the T-72s used are B models (unupgraded 1985 or 89 models). Tyres though apparently they're that hard up or raiding old stocks already.

Basic math indicates they run out of stuff in 4-6 months. That's assuming the numbers are somewhat accurate.

Edit: Apparently that logo is a Brezhnev era tyre