Ukraine conflict - im Westen nichts Neues

[Darkpriest]

5 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I mean it's not like it will get worse for them by doing it and it's a middle finger to everyone else.

Yeah, foreign institutions will be bag holders with huge losses. Might cause severe liquidity issues if not addressed fast. Expect unexpected i guess... 

[Sarex]

11 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

I'd have guessed it was a Buratino, if it was a MLRS going up. I'd be a bit skeptical though with the number of people who've been begging for footage of one of those exploding.

General consensus in the more neutral parts of reddit seems to be it that it was an ammo or chemical storage dump on the outskirts of Cherkassy, from the geolocation.

Ukrainians are claiming the video is fake, but I saw it from two angles...

[Katphood]

Russia is losing the war. Seriously, Putin...go home.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

Ukrainians are claiming the video is fake, but I saw it from two angles...

Yeah, it's pretty genuine footage wise and we can be pretty sure the explosion happened. There isn't really any proof of what it was though, just a decent theory.

I can understand people thinking it looks fake, a lot of night stuff looks fake or weird- case in point that Su27 shot down over Kiev- because it's night and you get effects you can't see during the day and poor perspective/ scaling. The outright fakes tend to be a lot more sensationally labelled though, and show something (at least theoretically) concrete rather than a big bang that requires geolocation for evidence of what it was.

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

more neutral parts of reddit

I feel like this is an oxymoron. Any halfway decent active community on that trash bin, outside of older niche interests perhaps, unfortunately seem to always eventually attract the childish simpletons that spam the same awful memes and caveman thoughts ad nauseam. I'm to the point where I can't even use it for sports because of how repetitively obnoxious it's all become...much less actual serious matters.

Edited February 28, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Malcador]

33 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I feel like this is an oxymoron. Any halfway decent active community on that trash bin, outside of older niche interests perhaps, unfortunately seem to always eventually attract the childish simpletons that spam the same awful memes and caveman thoughts ad nauseam. I'm to the point where I can't even use it for sports because of how repetitively obnoxious it's all become...much less actual serious matters.

The generic rage it leaves me with has supplanted caffeine as my morning pick-me-up.   But so far r/combatfootage is relatively free of cheerleading for any side and is good at spotting old footage. I guess people that are into war porn have some use.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Katphood said:

Russia is losing the war. Seriously, Putin...go home.

While the war ending in less than a week with Russia going home would be good, I think it's likely this drags on for a while longer than that. I would very much love to be wrong though.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Sarex said:

This may sound a little...whatever... but for now it looks like the Russians are really trying to avoid civilian casualties. Then again it may only look like that, I guess we will never know for sure.

But guess in the end it doesn't matter at all, because the best way would have been not to invade after all.

Yes they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, the Geneva Convention does apply to them but also they have no way to control the media narrative until Ukraine is occupied then they can ban\arrest journalists. 

So its an accurate point, Russia is trying to avoid civilian casualties which is a noticeable difference to other conflicts they have been involved in

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Katphood said:

Russia is losing the war. Seriously, Putin...go home.

I wish it was that simple, Russia will definitely win a sustained war 

Their should be no doubt of that. But this invasion has highlighted  weaknesses of the new Russian army when they are involved in this type of city warfare 

[rjshae]

2 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I wish it was that simple, Russia will definitely win a sustained war 

Their should be no doubt of that. But this invasion has highlighted  weaknesses of the new Russian army when they are involved in this type of city warfare 

That remains to be seen. You can lose every battle and still win a war.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

But so far r/combatfootage is relatively free of cheerleading for any side and is good at spotting old footage. I guess people that are into war porn have some use.

There's still a lot of cheerleading there, but at least it doesn't completely subsume everything else and there are people willing to label wishful thinking as wishful thinking unlike the half of reddit that still thinks the Ghost of Kiev exists (with most of the other half having forgotten about him already). Far and away the best place to check if there are any obvious problems with footage I've seen though. It's absolutely awful when and nearly only when* it's anything to do with Turkey though, and the general... impression of people who enjoy watching other people kill each other isn't that edifying. I'm pretty desensitised to stuff having followed Syria fairly closely, but at least I'm not clamouring for more and would be perfectly happy- literally, just about- if there was never another combat video made.

*yeah, all the big subs are dumpster fires, especially default subs. Completely pointless unless you like circle jerks and imaginary points. I'm not that keen on rating systems like here; except in comparison to the utter disaster that is upvote/ downvote ones.

And for some good news it seems just about certain that the defenders of Serpent Island (ie "Russian boat f___ off") weren't all killed as some of them have turned up in a POW video (which to be clear could be faked, but someone has gone to a fair bit of trouble if it is).

[Azdeus]

 

Well, I'm hardly surprised at this, Putins lapdog joining in isn't terribly surprising, and there were videos of a Belarussian former soldier that went online with a video to tell Belarussian soldiers not to follow the illegimate regime.

[BruceVC]

2 minutes ago, rjshae said:

That remains to be seen. You can lose every battle and still win a war.

Absolutely but I was watching a comparison on CNN between the sizes and resources of the Ukrainian army vs the Russian army and its literally like David vs Goliath. So we need to be realistic but I do think the Ukrainian army has done exceptionally well  so far against  the much better resourced and much larger Russian army

https://en.as.com/en/2022/02/26/latest_news/1645907062_698195.html

But what has made this invasion much harder for Russia is they cant just adopt their normal military strategy of " bombing cities to the ground " and they have been forced to use boots on the ground and hand to hand combat and clearly their  training of infantry is not that great 

 

[kanisatha]

There's more to the Russians' problems than it's a ground war in a highly populated urban setting. We can clearly see their problems include poor command and control, supporting fire, equipment serviceability, and logistics. Also poor training and morale. And most of all, a lot of their vaunted hi-tech weapons are not performing as well as expected, especially their aircraft and missiles. But their propaganda machine is the one area they've excelled at, to where both we (NATO) and they themselves ended up believing and buying into their hype. And on this score I feel the same will prove true of the Chinese in a real war.

[BruceVC]

26 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

There's more to the Russians' problems than it's a ground war in a highly populated urban setting. We can clearly see their problems include poor command and control, supporting fire, equipment serviceability, and logistics. Also poor training and morale. And most of all, a lot of their vaunted hi-tech weapons are not performing as well as expected, especially their aircraft and missiles. But their propaganda machine is the one area they've excelled at, to where both we (NATO) and they themselves ended up believing and buying into their hype. And on this score I feel the same will prove true of the Chinese in a real war.

The US learnt lots of important lessons about urban warfare in places like Iraq and the battles for Fallujah 

The Ruskies have let to learn those lessons

[Darkpriest]

A risk factor:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stocks-tied-chinas-swift-alternative-are-soaring

[Lexx]

That's exactly what I posted about, but people were like lalalala, blocking SWIFT will be PERFECT!

 

Anyways. I'm kinda tired of all of this and I wouldn't mind going back to normal again. For all I care, we could forget about most of this if russia just pulls out now and leaves them alone.

[rjshae]

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Absolutely but I was watching a comparison on CNN between the sizes and resources of the Ukrainian army vs the Russian army and its literally like David vs Goliath. So we need to be realistic but I do think the Ukrainian army has done exceptionally well  so far against  the much better resourced and much larger Russian army

https://en.as.com/en/2022/02/26/latest_news/1645907062_698195.html

But what has made this invasion much harder for Russia is they cant just adopt their normal military strategy of " bombing cities to the ground " and they have been forced to use boots on the ground and hand to hand combat and clearly their  training of infantry is not that great 

On the face of it, sure. With Western support that might not be as true. The longer this conflict goes on, the weaker the internal support becomes for Putin and the more it is going to cost the Russian economy.

[BruceVC]

22 minutes ago, Lexx said:

That's exactly what I posted about, but people were like lalalala, blocking SWIFT will be PERFECT!

 

Anyways. I'm kinda tired of all of this and I wouldn't mind going back to normal again. For all I care, we could forget about most of this if russia just pulls out now and leaves them alone.

Tired? Surly you jest, this is just the beginning

I have been having debates around the US invasion of Iraq for nearly 20 years and we are going to talking about how Russia lied to justify an invasion of Ukraine for decades

You must have fortitude ....its going to be a  long and glorious series of debates and outrage for the rest of your life, or at least the next 20-30 years 

[ComradeYellow]

42 minutes ago, Lexx said:

That's exactly what I posted about, but people were like lalalala, blocking SWIFT will be PERFECT!

 

Anyways. I'm kinda tired of all of this and I wouldn't mind going back to normal again. For all I care, we could forget about most of this if russia just pulls out now and leaves them alone.

Can't.  Ukraine will just go back to poking the bear if they withdraw w/o a peace agreement.  Uncle Shmuel helping militarize Ukraine (including firing up fascists) will continue with even more fervor. 

REAL NEWS: Russia now has complete air superiority over Ukraine.

Edited February 28, 2022 by ComradeYellow

[pmp10]

45 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Anyways. I'm kinda tired of all of this and I wouldn't mind going back to normal again. For all I care, we could forget about most of this if russia just pulls out now and leaves them alone.

There really is no 'normal' to get back to anymore.
Putin is past the point of backing down and sanctions will have to stay in place for a long time to come.

And far more important is that he made some top European politicians look ridiculous. 

[ComradeYellow]

6 hours ago, Katphood said:

Russia is losing the war. Seriously, Putin...go home.

O'rly?  You get news from British sources or something?

Last 24h Russians destroyed:

8 air defense systems: Buk M-1, S-300

3 radio positions with P-14 stations

4 combat aircraft struck on the ground and 1 combat aircraft was shot down in the air.

In total: 1114 military infrastructure destroyed, 314 tanks, 57 MLRS, 31 command posts, 121 artillery and mortar pieces.

And here is a perfect metaphor to the current Russian mindset:

Spoiler

 

 

[Gorth]

55 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

I have been having debates around the US invasion of Iraq for nearly 20 years and we are going to talking about how Russia lied to justify an invasion of Ukraine for decades

Not necessarily the "truth" (nobody has a patent on that I think), but an interesting take on what makes Putin tick (warning 30+ minutes long, but quite interesting)...

 

[Lexx]

59 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Tired? Surly you jest, this is just the beginning

I have been having debates around the US invasion of Iraq for nearly 20 years and we are going to talking about how Russia lied to justify an invasion of Ukraine for decades

You must have fortitude ....its going to be a  long and glorious series of debates and outrage for the rest of your life, or at least the next 20-30 years 

meh, I'll give it 2 or so weeks until most will not be talking about it anymore. I can already see the feeds slowing down right now.

[bugarup]

3 hours ago, kanisatha said:

There's more to the Russians' problems than it's a ground war in a highly populated urban setting. We can clearly see their problems include poor command and control, supporting fire, equipment serviceability, and logistics. Also poor training and morale. And most of all, a lot of their vaunted hi-tech weapons are not performing as well as expected, especially their aircraft and missiles. But their propaganda machine is the one area they've excelled at, to where both we (NATO) and they themselves ended up believing and buying into their hype. And on this score I feel the same will prove true of the Chinese in a real war.

I've been reading anti-Putin Russian media and their version of why Russia attacked Ukraine with old rust buckets as opposed to what it shows in military parades is simple yet plausible - corruption. Like, everyone there knew that a big part of defense money "were going to deposit as new fat rolls on faces of generals", but appears they didn't anticipate just how big.  Anyway, even if so, those parade machines do exist, and even if 4000+ soldiers were killed, there are 100K more and not all of them are cooks, drivers and unmotivated 20yr old conscripts so nothing is set yet. Still, hype balloon has absolutely been popped and I hope the thought of buying into it will make certain decision making people very angry. 

Also, Lexx, even if news will be slowing down, the fact itself that Europe has a new Hitler will be a bit harder to un-remember. Not to mention re-allocation of defense budgets and sh†t. Did you guys notice technology spurt we had since Cold War was over? Wel...yeah.