acrashb

Prove it! 😃

Well Clausewitz kinda left these parts out.  War is personal and worse it strips off all the veneer of civilization pretty quickly.  Military discipline is not just about keeping people from running away, it is just as much about ensuring they can still see which way is up. 

Why did they do it?  Because they can.  And in the end we are all scared monkeys that are equal parts kind as we are cruel.  You de-humanize your adversary hard enough and it is a slippery slope right to this sort of stuff.

Kind of puts the knee-capping incident into a different perspective.
This was almost inevitable sad to say.  A lot of this has the whole “civilian reprisals” feel to it.  However I would not rule out some old fashion “ethnic cleansing”.  Not much to add on a military assessment as this sort of thing is a blight on the profession.  I would only add that this either demonstrates an extreme loss of control, or Russian high command has gone to a pretty dark, and stupid place.  Stuff like this results in assassinations and reprisal attacks for a century.  Further any hope of normalization with the west has left the building as any easing of sanctions will now be tied to warcrime investigation and prosecution.
This sort of thing also plays into any anti-war support in Russia itself as these tales of atrocities come home.  
This right here is why war is best left to gaming.

This is what the PC and Woke Brigade of the West cannot grasp about Russia

The number of people needing to be killed and dispersed to permanently crush an entire good-sized nation is astonishing; I don't know enough about history to know how often it has successfully been done.  The Carthaginians come to mind, and that worked partly because the dispersed part of the population could not communicate, unlike today.
The military science fiction writer David Drake, who knows not much about science and technology but a lot about history, and who had personal combat experience in Vietnam, identified the difficulty of oppression in his first book "Hammers' Slammers": "And the ones we kill - doesn't every one a' them have a wife or a brother or a nephew", etc.  Also an instructive dialogue in "Cross the Stars" (a re-imagining of the Odyssey) on pages 247 / 248 (original edition) about how much killing is needed to to successfully oppress a population with force. 
I'm sure there are more conventional commentators on this matter, but Drake's thoughts are accurate.

In short I agree, the Marshall Plan was better.  Things like the Morgenthau Plan, even if they work, which is clearly seldom, can only leave a long-term brutalizing stain on the people who enact them, regardless of how righteous it seems at the time.

Not to take away from the well-earned fierce feelings and expressions of Ukrainians experiencing their homes, friends and family being savaged in real time.  In the words of one of my Ukrainian friends, "I am all out of tears" - and that was only a week in.  Now, as we see building evidence of not just one-off but systemic atrocity, it is much worse.
 

The number of people needing to be killed and dispersed to permanently crush an entire good-sized nation is astonishing; I don't know enough about history to know how often it has successfully been done.  The Carthaginians come to mind, and that worked partly because the dispersed part of the population could not communicate, unlike today.
The military science fiction writer David Drake, who knows not much about science and technology but a lot about history, and who had personal combat experience in Vietnam, identified the difficulty of oppression in his first book "Hammers' Slammers": "And the ones we kill - doesn't every one a' them have a wife or a brother or a nephew", etc.  Also an instructive dialogue in "Cross the Stars" (a re-imagining of the Odyssey) on pages 247 / 248 (original edition) about how much killing is needed to to successfully oppress a population with force. 
I'm sure there are more conventional commentators on this matter, but Drake's thoughts are accurate.

In short I agree, the Marshall Plan was better.  Things like the Morgenthau Plan, even if they work, which is clearly seldom, can only leave a long-term brutalizing stain on the people who enact them, regardless of how righteous it seems at the time.

Not to take away from the well-earned fierce feelings and expressions of Ukrainians experiencing their homes, friends and family being savaged in real time.  In the words of one of my Ukrainian friends, "I am all out of tears" - and that was only a week in.  Now, as we see building evidence of not just one-off but systemic atrocity, it is much worse.
 

Well, having an international arrest warrant for war crimes will put a damper on Putin's travel plans.  Having an interpol arrest squad waiting to arrest him when he arrive for the G20 summit or Olympics or where ever is probably his future.  
Would love to see his private plane forced down over some country and some very serious heavy armed unsympathetic international law enforcement waiting to take him into custody would make my day.

Some historical comparison.  After Pearl Harbour, Admiral William Halsey said 'Before We're Through With 'em, the Japanese Language Will be Spoken Only in Hell"  A sentiment shared I'm sure by many Americans at the time.
Passions can run high during war time.
 

Took me a while to find it, but I did and now my reading in this thread will be faster and considerably more pleasant.  Thanks.

What racism? Both sides are white Slavic. Racism plays no real role in this. Hating invaders who come to subjugate, rape, kill, and destroy is completely understandable. 

@Haiduk, @kraze Agreed. What is being done to your country and your people is vile and evil. Your anger and hatred towards your enemies is justified. All the " be nice to each other" crap can wait until the war is over. Be safe and keep your heads down guys.
 
 

Your western hypertrophied tolerance, false humanism and "real politic" led to Russian attrocities in Georgia, Syria and Ukraine. Western world - the stronghold and the stream of civilization turned out to the bunch of frightened wimps which deadly scared of this "superstate", made from "s**t and sticks" and gave us "48 hours to new political reality". So, this is our right how to relate to Russians. Here, in ruined Mariupol and Izium, in looted, raped, murdered Kyiv outskirt cities and villages, here completely other reality, where all liberal or leftist ideology voices must shut up and keep silence until last Russian scum find own death here. 
Yes, even among SS troopers not all were murderers. But whole SS was criminal organization and the spot of blood fell to all. So this is no matter either private Vania looted or murdered or not. The spot of dirt on them all. 
This is not Putin loots and murders. This is Russian soldiers. This is not "SOME".  This is "USUAL". The army is a cross section of society. So it reflects Russian society. So if I hear "common Russians shouldn't bear the brunt of sanctions", "stop bulling and cancelling of Russian" etc., I say "Too few sanctions. Too few cancelling. Too few rusophobia". Russia must be destroyed, derashizied and de-nuclearezied.   
My hate speech is finished.

Could we maybe knock off these racist accusations? Russian is not a race. Ukranian is not a race. It's the same as saying American or British or French is a race. That's just nonsense and all it's doing is inflaming passions.
Plus it's tiresome to wade through while trying to catch up.
Dave

There, fixed that for you.
Collective responsibility for Putin's excesses is vastly different from asserting that every Russian soldier is a rapist and looter, and every Russian is a zombie who wishes to murder any Ukrainian they can get their hands on. Every. Single. Conflict. Ever. Has brought out the worst in SOME of the combatants. Generalisations can lead to tragedy.

On U.S. mortar rounds, at least the 60mm, there is a bore-riding pin that’s spring loaded to eject (about 30 meters IIRC) after the round leaves the tube to arm the fuse. I’m sure they can be removed with a little work. I know from experience of dropping an illum down the tube and having it start to tick in the tube, that they don’t always work as a safety. I’ve also had the pins bounce off my helmet as they exited the tube that the fuse can arm before the design distance.

According to UK, 40 % of all destroyed Russain armor is a work of NLAW

The same can say about UKR infantry. But this is not sign of cowardice. The armor, especially in attack gives a confidence to infantry. The losses of armor reduce confidence, thus reduce motivation, especailly if this conscript/green troops with motivation low than avarage and their commander w/o any strong abilities ) 
In the warfare of 2014-2015 both sides often stopped own attacks after the loss of several armored vehciles. 

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/krieg-in-der-ukraine-bundesregierung-will-kiew-lange-liste-mit-waffen-anbieten-a-8fe6d35c-d3b3-4ce7-aa60-ea9b62dd3d4b
The German government wants to offer Ukraine more weapons systems as soon as possible to strengthen the resistance against the Russian army. According to SPIEGEL information, a round of state secretaries from the ministries involved agreed on Tuesday to offer the government in Kiev a list of various weapons systems in the next few days. After that, Ukraine is to decide for itself which weapons it can best use.
The Excel list, however, now makes it clear that almost all reservations against arms deliveries to Ukraine have been dropped. In addition to a lot of protective material, the list also includes heavy military equipment such as mortars or heavy machine guns of the type GAM B01 from the manufacturer Rheinmetall. According to the manufacturer's offer, the heavy weapons cost a good one million euros each.
There is also plenty of high-tech material listed. For example, Thales offers to supply ground radar systems of the "Squire" type. Thales also offers twelve mortars mounted on trailers, which, according to the manufacturer, could be delivered to Ukraine as early as this week. The delivery of thousands of night vision devices, protective waistcoats, helmets - but also modern drones to monitor the battlefield - would also be possible.
In total, the list includes possible arms deliveries worth 308 million euros. More than half of this amount is for reconnaissance equipment, such as night-vision devices or radar systems - but also for ultra-modern micro-drones equipped with jammers to cut off the mobile radio signal. A good 40 million are for hand-held weapons, almost 80 million for equipment such as protective waistcoats or helmets

Hey I resemble that remark

Partly narcissistic monomania, and party a conscious or other understanding that if the big gamble fails they're going to have a mysterious heart attach and a state funeral.  Because success is attributed to the Leader, therefore failure sticks to the same leader.  If success, as happens in societies with a large civil component, is distributed then so is failure - not so in dictatorships.  It's win or die.

I see that BeondTheGrave beat me to this reply, but mine is much more succinct
 

Perhaps, or possibly the superior info-management of the Ukrainians would have just meant more and more geolocated juicy targets got deleted, sooner than otherwise would have been the case.
I remain astonished, however, that RUS didn't have official reporters along, generating all the "favourable press" they could for worldwide consumption. I mean, they expected a total walkover, so they should've been expecting to need to promulgate TB of pictures of welcoming Ukrainian crowds and abjectly defeated UA personnel and captured equipment... Perhaps the very absence of this phenomenon suggests that RUS successes haven't been widely achieved.
I, for one, appreciate Haiduk's reportage of OSINT regarding UKR losses almost as much as the collation of UKR successes.

Ok, coalesced into a deduction.  It is naval warfare principles on land.  Naval forces already live under these conditions, so how they fight is very different and extremely high stakes.  We are talking a form of naval-like warfare on land.  Very attritional.

Guys,
So beyond the obvious competing narratives out there (nazis, bio-weapons, crisis actors etc) let's remember what this entire thing is, an egregious violation.  There has been no, and I mean zero, casus belli established for this invasion. 
People are pointing to the US invasion of Iraq in '03 in some weird "well two wrongs make it ok to kill thousands of civilians", however, the US did take their case to the UN, they were attacking a strongman dictator who had; invaded a neighbor for "reasons", used massive oppression on his own people, and had even employed chemical weapons against civilians.  So we are not even in the same strategic context here as Ukraine; a free democracy that had not even coming close to behaving like Saddam Hussein.
I have stayed out of a lot of these conspiracy theories floating around but even if the wildest ones are true (which I do not believe for a second) and let's say the Ukrainians were employing a combination of recovered nazi-occult and alien technology to make all Russian bears impotent...in the modern world your first response to that is not rolling in 120 BTGs!!  Worse, you cannot back that up with "well they were gently rolling in 120 BTGs"...no such reality exists.  That much metal + ammo + scared teenagers is never going to equal "gentle violation of sovereignty".
We can play the point-counter point game all day and try to gain political points but all of that is noise around the central and incontrovertible fact that Russia illegally invaded another sovereign European nation in a gross violation of sovereignty and global order...this is not "ok", this will never be "ok".
Finally, I know there are theories floating out there that the Russian Restraint can explain the slowness and stalling on the Russian side.  This is abject nonsense.  It is much, much harder to try and do a soft invasion.  The US military tried in Afghanistan and Iraq and they found it nearly impossible to avoid collateral damage and civilian deaths.  I have seen nothing to suggest that Russian ISR and Joint Targeting is so sophisticated and disciplined that they have any idea what they are hitting beyond..."hit there".  This baby hospital thing has been brought up, right sure....how exactly did Russian Joint Targeting know the hospital was empty (which it was not)?  How did Russian C2 know this when they don't even know where most of their own troops are?
So I am going to offer some simple rules that people can chose to adopt or not:
- Precision is hard, incredibly hard.  If your theory depends on greater Russian precision in anyway shape or form stop and think.
- Organization is hard.  If your theory depends on highly organized Russian capability...stop and think.
- Conspiracies are hard, in this day and age nearly impossible.  If your theory is relying on a "big secret"...stop and think.  All western governments leak like a sieve and even the autocratic ones bleed data like a stuck goat.  No government on earth, even NK, has an airtight seal on what information it leaks out.  So if you are relying on a "star chamber" or "black sites"...stop and think.
- If it looks like a Duck, stop calling it a Kitty Cat.  War is incredibly hard so the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.  It is the principle that has actually put this thread and forum out in front.  We have avoided over-analyzing (I know right?!) compared to others chasing some theories.  If Oryx has 297 open source pictures of destroyed/abandoned Russian tanks, well given the UA was outfitted with thousands of next gen ATGMs...it is not a hard squint to see the freakin quacking water fowl.  This is not some photoshop campaign for the ages, the Russians have lost a lot of tanks.  Is it 297, probably not could be more or Orxy might have some double accounting but it is a lot. 
- Assumptions, Factors and Deductions.  All this comes down to Assumptions, Factors (or Facts) and Deductions.  As I tell dead-eyed Majors, "make sure the line between these items is as straight and short as possible".  Make damn sure your Assumptions and Facts stay on speaking terms and then do not under any circumstances let the line between Factors and Deductions turn into a Pollock painting.  War is hard enough, complex enough and weird enough...it does not need your help in any of these areas. 
Go with the god of your choice grognards,  and try and stay out of trouble.
 

"hang fire"