Baneman

I swear, the Russians are going to be facing "tractor" jibes for decades after this !

Don't know if this is high quality analysis, but, given the Russian Army's troubles with the mud, I was struck by the thought that if Putin did hold off the invasion to avoid the Chinese Winter Olympics, that decision could go down in history along with delaying Kursk to wait for the Panthers...

You and us all, man !

Ha ha, oh man, when it pans up at the 1:00 minute mark and there's a line of vehicles ... That looks tactically useful !

I loved seeing that guy pop out of the hatch with his phone in hand - I was imagining he's looking up a YouTube video on how to start the tank. Because of course there'd be a YouTube video for that !

Methinks the Ukrainians are leaving the convoy alone now that they have ( reportedly) stopped it moving forward. Stationary it's just a fantastic drain on resources without making use of any of those resources in a militarily meaningful way.

The secondary thread spinning off that talking about the possible implications of Ukrainian forces breaking Russian IFF codes due to these captures is fascinating. Hope they can pull something like that off.

I think it comes under his operating principle to bolster his power whenever there's some domestic problem by fomenting and then winning a "military police action" or somesuch. A "Quick Victorious War". His problem is that the war has not co-operated on the "Quick Victorious" part.

My head !

I wonder how much of that determination is based on being told what he wants to hear vs reality ? I guess you'd ensure you're properly up to date, but given how it seems that the initial premises for kicking this off were wildly unrealistic ... you have to wonder. To be honest, the vibe/feel I get for all the Russian actions is the Japanese High Command in WWII who ended up believing their own propaganda. They were ok putting out wildly optimistic reports, but somehow failed to realise that every level below them was doing it too.

I saw in a post somewhere else where they called it "The Putin War". Which seems better than calling it the "Russian-Ukrainian War" - it tells everyone who started it and who for. Let that be his legacy.

Genius ! He knows it's non-taxable too !

Not only that - how sure are they that the thing won't malfunction ? A lot of their other army equipment looks poorly maintained. Obviously not very likely given the sensitivity of that sort of kit, but still a risk. Worst case : a nuclear catastrophe in your own country AND the world now knows your nuclear arsenal is rubbish...

Head exploded in a good way ! True, but his circle/top brass are used to that. That's normal for them. Bringing in nukes is a whole different level - especially when there is clearly no actual threat of Ukrainian or any other forces invading Russia.

You'd have to wonder how Russians ( in the army and in the political circle ) would respond if Putin threatens to nuke their "brothers" because they just. wont. listen. There's got to be more than a few that would realise that isn't any kind of rational act - even if Putin's cracked up a bit, they can't all go mad at the same time.

Is it all sand ? I can't tell for sure myself as the pic is small, but it looks to me a bit like sand holding down the edges of a tarp covering something.

I cannot get my head around the value of the equipment the Russian Army is just throwing away ! Just that Tunguska and Tor-M2 together have to be $30 million plus ( I assume the Tor-M2 DesertFox showed being towed is the one we saw a still of earlier ... because if they've captured 2 my head will explode ).

Doubtful there's more than a few Armata in anything like war-readiness ( I'd say any, but that's just because I've heard nothing about them since they were first announced ). Besides, it seems like they would be risking just giving an Armata to the Ukrainians.

After all the worry about how Western supplies were going to reach the front, it turns out that most of the supplies are coming from the east !

This. For a couple of days now the news headlines have been screaming fear about a "40km tank column" when the reality was always that it was a 40km column with some tanks. You'd think journalists would make at least some effort to grasp what they're talking about. And the speed of their progress either says they're hyper cautious now ( and that won't help when they have to push against a defence ) or they still have massive logistical issues.

Agree - if I was a Russian commander, i would not be too sanguine about that thin eastward thrust towards Mariupol.

Jamming and/or bad radios might explain some of the more bizarre "abandonments" we've seen - You've been ambushed, you've lost a few vehicles, not sure where the enemy is and even if you did, you're not sure where you are, taking more fire and the comms hookup you cobbled together stops working so you have no contact higher up... - low motivation troops might well just leg it and leave everything behind.

Yep, it is. But (strangely), "historical" bits of the "Russian Empire" that can defend themselves are exempt from rejoining. Funny that. Must just be coincidence.

I don't get this - it's ok for Russia to mess with Ukraine ( occupy, dismember, whatever ) because "it's their backyard" ? By that logic, Canada should just take Alaska - it's much more their backyard than the USA's... Plus any NATO missiles in Latvia/Estonia are practically the same distance from Moscow as a missile in Ukraine, so why isn't that a problem ? It couldn't possibly be because Putin can't attack them owing to the defensive nature of NATO ?

Surely the point of Glonass was that it would be outside possible Western interference ? But I guess if we've learned anything in the last 5 years or so, it's that anything can be hacked. Still, it is surprising that the Russians didn't have backup maps if so. Don't you plan for everything to fail and plan accordingly ?