Ukraine Conflict - continuing

[Malcador]

34 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

The ISIS "officials" has already responded to the Russian videos of torture. They have announced they will avenge their "warriors" and will be going after Russian officials, as they view them as "anti-muslim nationalists". From the historic point of view, it will interesting to see how the Russia will fight against enemy, which has as much disregard for human life, as they do. Especially, when 80+% of their forces are currently in Ukraine and their borders have more holes than a collection of Swiss cheese.

20% by your count should be strong enough. They also have the Rosvgardia.

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

20% by your count should be strong enough. They also have the Rosvgardia.

Rosgvardia is currently also mostly in occupied territories going after partizans. And Russia is crazy big country. You can see once in a while how 20% for that big country is enough, whenever the "Russian Volunteer Corps" decide to heat up the pot a little bit Russia is currently all-in after Ukraine, hoping, that no one is brave enough to attack Russia. And this might have changed with the release of these videos Only time will tell...

[xzar_monty]

Uh-oh. The alleged terrorists have appeared in Russian court in a not very good state at all. A surprise, that.

(I'm saying alleged because there is no doubt that Russia will always find someone to convict if it deems the crime serious enough. Whether these people are indeed guilty is another matter. And something like the murder of Politkovskaya obviously isn't serious enough, or serious at all.)

[BruceVC]

8 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Uh-oh. The alleged terrorists have appeared in Russian court in a not very good state at all. A surprise, that.

(I'm saying alleged because there is no doubt that Russia will always find someone to convict if it deems the crime serious enough. Whether these people are indeed guilty is another matter. And something like the murder of Politkovskaya obviously isn't serious enough, or serious at all.)

Yes its clear they have been  brutalized  and tortured  but no  surprise.  If a  state is  fine with killing political dissenters  you can imagine what they would do to  people involved in  a terrorist attack 

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

Rosgvardia is currently also mostly in occupied territories going after partizans. And Russia is crazy big country. You can see once in a while how 20% for that big country is enough, whenever the "Russian Volunteer Corps" decide to heat up the pot a little bit Russia is currently all-in after Ukraine, hoping, that no one is brave enough to attack Russia. And this might have changed with the release of these videos Only time will tell...

RVC didn't gain much, even with armour and artillery and whatever else Ukraine helped with, though. And unlikely ISIS is going to be running with that. 

But I suppose people will be back rooting for oppressed Muslims to rise up and disintegrate Russia or something. 

[Zoraptor]

This time around all the RDK achieved was one selfie by an administration building. Otherwise their best confirmed footage was, what, a guy firing a dud RPG at a tank? Everything else was shot in Ukraine or embarrassing like the 'white flag' (neither white nor a flag, almost certainly a trench telescope) being 'waved' by Russians in a trench or them running over an AT mine with a tank while, heh, still in Ukraine. At least last time they took a bit of ground in between releasing footage of them larping in Pripyat.

The imminent Orthodox/ Muslim civil war in Russia is unlikely to be kicked off by 4 Tajiks any more than the imminent race war in New Zealand got kicked off by one Australian shooting up two mosques. I'd doubt they're even going to do much for ISIS; they're not exactly the leading edge of the inghimasi sword and just seem kind of pathetic really.

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I'm saying alleged because there is no doubt that Russia will always find someone to convict if it deems the crime serious enough. Whether these people are indeed guilty is another matter.

Alleged is fair enough since they haven't been convicted so are legally just accused of the crime, but in this case there's no reason to doubt that they've got the right people. The evidence is pretty conclusive.

(You could fake it, technically, but... really, you'd have to get 4 people to shoot up a concert hall, leave and depart in the same car, and then get four identically dressed people caught hundreds of km away in the same car (or same model, with jiggered plates). You'd also need to get both Amaq and an ISIS telegram to post pictures of the same four people who were caught posing in front of the Seal of the Prophet and more. You'd also have to come up with a good reason for faking it. Clearly Russia would prefer for it to have been Ukrainian, or sponsored by them. If they were going to fake it you'd expect them to find, dunno, signed instructions from Budanov or Zelensky? Most they've got in that respect is that they were heading for the Ukrainian border)

[Mamoulian War]

12 hours ago, Malcador said:

RVC didn't gain much, even with armour and artillery and whatever else Ukraine helped with, though. And unlikely ISIS is going to be running with that. 

But I suppose people will be back rooting for oppressed Muslims to rise up and disintegrate Russia or something. 

Well they are still holding/fighting in Kozinka, Glotovo and Gorkovskyi villages. And Russian army destroyed almost every house in the Kozinka. And tens of thousands people had to be evacuated from Grayvoron and even Belgorod. So yes for some it might be considered as not much, but it has still shown a weakness at russian borders. If they cannot guard even borders with a state with which they are at war, how good do you think, will their other borders will be guarded? And as you have seen ISIS did not needed any artillery to get to Moscow, unlike Prigozhin

[Lexx]

It's actually quite interesting. If Ukraine wouldn't be forced to hold back, they could easily cross the border in various places and sting from there, forcing russia to divert more troops.

[Malcador]

4 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Well they are still holding/fighting in Kozinka, Glotovo and Gorkovskyi villages. And Russian army destroyed almost every house in the Kozinka. And tens of thousands people had to be evacuated from Grayvoron and even Belgorod. So yes for some it might be considered as not much, but it has still shown a weakness at russian borders. If they cannot guard even borders with a state with which they are at war, how good do you think, will their other borders will be guarded? And as you have seen ISIS did not needed any artillery to get to Moscow, unlike Prigozhin

If you're talking about terrorist attacks, not sure military border defense is relevant.  Towers got dropped in NYC, that didn't mean the US military wasn't effective. 

But ok, Russia is ripe to be overrun by ISIS.

52 minutes ago, Lexx said:

It's actually quite interesting. If Ukraine wouldn't be forced to hold back, they could easily cross the border in various places and sting from there, forcing russia to divert more troops.

Well, forced to hold back by others or just their manpower limitation?

[Lexx]

Forced to not strike back at russia by our western friends. Obviously they wouldn't do a full on invasion since yes, they don't have the manpower for that.

[Elerond]

5 hours ago, Malcador said:

If you're talking about terrorist attacks, not sure military border defense is relevant.  Towers got dropped in NYC, that didn't mean the US military wasn't effective. 

But ok, Russia is ripe to be overrun by ISIS.

Russia has made quite lot extremist groups angry in Syria, Afghanistan and West Africa and as in past two years Russia has focused its intelligence to sabotage Ukraine and hunt domestic dissidents, those extremist groups may have had opportunity infiltrate in Russia and plan terrorist strikes. Considering that Russia has not been very selective when they have hired mercenaries to fight in Ukraine, so those extremist groups could have even got paid by Russia to sent their people there.

[HoonDing]

That Ukrainian money must've been really good if you bother risking being taken alive by RUssia.

[Zoraptor]

Ukraine doesn't invade Russia because this isn't Hearts of Iron IV, and wars aren't won on the battlefield of reddit and facebook.

(Militarily the first attack was pointless but probably worth a try, the second was the kind of stupidity people accuse Russia of all the time, zerg rushing prepared defences for photo ops. That they got so few photo ops out of it is indicative of how very very badly it went. They're not really limited by any impositions from outside, everyone knows the troops involved are not majority Russian despite their name and both attacks featured western supplied equipment. They're limited mostly by being PR operations that have a high resource cost

Should probably add, since it's key to why the whole thing is counterproductive: the advantage of 'forcing' Russia to station troops there is decidedly double edged because in reality it doesn't happen in a vacuum. What practically happens if Russia has lots of troops there? So does Ukraine. They have to, to guard against Russian invasion from their troop build up. So no net advantage)

Edited March 26 by Zoraptor

[Mamoulian War]

If you start to think, Russia can’t provide more comedy, youtube recommends you this

 

[Amentep]

Old thread:

 

[Mamoulian War]

A little bit more thoughts about the “theater incident”

Budanov words,

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/03/27/7448459/

and William Spaniel explanation, who also suggest that Rosgvardia is to busy in and around UA as well.

 

[pmp10]

Russia attacked Ukrainian power facilities last night.
It's long past winter by now, so these would likely be a response to strikes on Russian refineries.
Interestingly enough there are no signs of any escalation as a result of the terror attack. 

[BruceVC]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/04/01/how-to-lose-a-russian-tank-regiment-in-just-a-few-hours-attack-ukraines-angriest-missileers-in-broad-daylight-with-the-wrong-forces/?sh=3004ea551308

Another example of minefields preventing meaningful advancements for both sides 

 

[Gfted1]

^This link has drone video of some of the attack: Ukraine Situation Report: Russian Armor Massacre At Avdiivka (twz.com)

*WARNING* Embedded X links within the article shows people getting wounded / dead. *WARNING* Weirdly, I can dissociate watching a tank get smoked, but watching them drive an explosive drone directly into a dude hiding under come debris was gross and it bothered me watching him writhe in pain. War is a mofo.  

[pmp10]

Zelensky lowers Ukrainian draft age.
Seems the need is finally serious enough for him to take the political hit.
It still leaves Russia with at least 6 months of manpower advantage before this can make any difference on the frontline. 

[Malcador]

53 minutes ago, pmp10 said:

Zelensky lowers Ukrainian draft age.
Seems the need is finally serious enough for him to take the political hit.
It still leaves Russia with at least 6 months of manpower advantage before this can make any difference on the frontline. 

Border guards going to be busy.

[ShadySands]

They don't draft kids like we do here? Mildly surprised, an odd sensation, it tickles a little bit.

[Zoraptor]

They don't draft the young due to having the worst demographic crisis in the world.

(Specifically, the population age 'pyramid' looks like a 13 year old boy's drawing of Pamela Anderson rather than a pyramid; death rate 15.2, birth rate... 8.6; no census since 2001 due to losing around 20% of its population in the 90s; and all that before the invasion. Essentially they're desperate to keep young workers alive and, well, breeding as much as possible while there are far more older people who will generate less tax and start claiming a pension sooner)

[BruceVC]

17 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

^This link has drone video of some of the attack: Ukraine Situation Report: Russian Armor Massacre At Avdiivka (twz.com)

*WARNING* Embedded X links within the article shows people getting wounded / dead. *WARNING* Weirdly, I can dissociate watching a tank get smoked, but watching them drive an explosive drone directly into a dude hiding under come debris was gross and it bothered me watching him writhe in pain. War is a mofo.  

I know you not  posting gore pictures or these types links  for sensationalism

But its a war and you cant avoid these types of videos if you want to understand how it unfolds on the battlefield, its about the nature of war

 

What I have found different about this war is I cant think of another  example  where so much  of active battles is captured on SM from both sides

 

 

 

 

 

 

[xzar_monty]

6 hours ago, BruceVC said:

What I have found different about this war is I cant think of another  example  where so much  of active battles is captured on SM from both sides

A tiny bit of pointing out the obvious there, in that the relevant technology has either been non-existent or not in use in nearly all previous conflicts. You can expect there to be even more coverage of that kind in future wars.

(This reminds me of how the sculpting of the finish line photo of the 100 meters dash in the 40BC Olympics was only finished in 37BC, so the two fastest guys really had to wait to find out who won.)