LongLeftFlank

Wrong forum, lunkheads!®

Hmm, somebody took his grumpy pills this morning (or is jetlagged). Silence, in Polish!!!! (been a while since I broke my vows and posted a meme) We must make allowances for our Polish cadre. Hopefully we see a lot more Polish content for all CM games!

No, he's right, I meant Berling and typed Anders. And I even walked the pilgrimage trail from Hill 445 to the Polish cemetery at Cassino. ...See what I mean about being careful what you post on this Mother of All Boards? **** .... extending remarks, this historical sidebar is actually ending up more interesting than the OP deserves. In addition to sheer callous indifference to life, there's also a pragmatic reality that by 1944 the Red Army is (successfully) operating thousands of AFVs and other vehicles, plus aircraft and reasonably competent artillery. So by 1944, those who are literate, or at least have fundamental mechanical skills by Eastern European 1930s standards (the Hammer), as well as Russian language skills -- so that's Russian and Russian-adjacent urban proletarians -- more likely end up as mechanics, gunners, tankers or air crew. Meanwhile those who don't (the Sickle) get the high casualty grunt roles. So there's that.

And in addition to the Like, you get a special shoutout for using 'the Russian' in the singular. As in: Der Russe ist tot! Lol (sardonically)

Sure, and Poles got caught up in it too, along with Romanians, Bulgarians, Slovaks, etc. The 'lucky ones' went to General A̶n̶d̶e̶r̶s̶' Berling's Polish Army. Others simply got stuck in Red Army units, as ordinary infantry or else doing whatever menial jobs (often hazardous, like mine clearing. 'Letter to Ilza' is a memoir). *Nobody* is whitewashing the Red Army in WW2 on here either, btw. This board is filled with hard core grognard wargamers who have spent their adult lives reading deeply into all the corners. We are pretty hard to gull. So if somebody shows up making an extraordinary claim that by late 44 the ethnic Russians are largely running punishment detachments of everyone else in front of them onto the German lines, well, bring your sources mate. Because the consensus is, the Red Army were pretty much equal opportunity bastards, with a brutality exceeded only by their enemy.

Thanks for this, yes, although I prefer to leave the burden of proof on the accuser. ....Because he can just claim your stats were all falsified by Stalin, the same way his demographers had the average Georgian male living to age 99, blah blah blah. I mean, there is no question that after 1942 the Red Army was either shooting as a fascist or else conscripting every male it could lay hands on as it retook territories in the RSFSR, Ukraine, White Russia and then various non-Slavic possessions. (This would seem to imply that Russia proper did its fair share of dying, relative to the entire USSR) ....But as you note, his conclusion is... simply false, and of a piece with the rest of what he spews on here.

And I will once again call BS on this assertion. Cite a credible source on Red Army demographics.

"Who lost ______?" has been a terrifying putdown for Republicans ever since the days of Clare Booth Luce.

I don't work in defence, but I do live in a Procurement world, and this guy's analysis is dead on, though some here might find it wonky.

...I don't personally believe in Vlad's nuke, but if I did, it could take the form of a high altitude 100kt EMP blast aimed at destroying central Ukraine's power grid. The USSR tested a series in Central Asia in the 1960s. That way he can 'absolve' himself of killing civilians, directly.

I use Brave and usually have to refresh 2 or 3 times before the proper tweets appear where they are supposed to. Not a huge deal. Dam bridge under threat, RU is back to trying to get Antonovsky bridge back in service again, somehow.... Dzankoy air base, Crimea (near Perekop Isthmus). Strange. It seems they're still letting (veteran) contractors whose time is up return to Russia. Or is this a stealthy withdrawal of forces to save something from the coming disaster?

Always darkest before it goes completely black....

Interesting thread on RU drone war. No one from the command understands anything about UAVs! ...they decided that a copter for 16K rubles would be enough for reconnaissance. It’s just difficult to explain...to the old reserve colonel, that you need DJI Mavic 2 or 3, that it needs batteries, accessories, tablets, androids and flash drives, other stuff, and ideally, a couple (of qadrocopters) to work continuously. [From the nested thread]There is a huge shortage of qualified UAV operators, and an even more significant shortage of good instructors. (DRONNITSA) organizers have plans to train both.

I can haz air superiority? hmm...

Southern front unit positions. (New source, so I cannot certify its reliability, but I've yet to run across a Pole who is pro-RU)

We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line / Have you any dirty washing Mother dear.... That being said, this (grainy) "CM Level 7" drone footage (7 minutes) from last month of a UA mechanised battalion getting backed up in a hedgerow gives you an idea of what could happen here. Russian shells start falling around minute 2:00. "Bad pathing" in action. UA please fix or do sumfink. .....The lead UKR tank actually has to *back up* and (via shouting???) get the rest of the platoon moving and out of the hedgerow breach. But by then, precious time has been lost and a traffic jam has formed, as the RU gunners zero in. This reminds me of some of my more frustrating CM games.

Zed's dead, honey. Zed's dead.

Comic book manuals and *shudder* reading is so, like 1985, Daddy-O. The Millenials and Gen Zer(o)s viddy the old YT....

Belarus: the Potemkin front... Do some of these poor old duffers count as 2 mobiks? And do they need to bring their own oxygen?

Ukraine raises the trolling bar, again! But as @The_Capt correctly reminds us, we cannot afford to assume "Russia Sux" when it comes to the Snark Wars. Those wily Ivans can surprise us, lashing back with sardonic wit!

Gooooood morning, North America! ....And what's behind Door Number 3? (oh, looks like that's outgoing. Weird how they fire air defence missiles offensively; seems a little wasteful.) Anyhoo, here's a bloody great bang....

Dang, that either sounds like a headline from @danfrodo 's 'Perilous Liberal Site' or something concocted by the Okhrana (evidently their Learned Elders of Zion had this fetish for derailing trains).

Future UKR President? And ok, the backdrop of high detail maps are pretty cool. Sign of a real hands-on administrator!

Bakhmut tactical situation (most of our discussion has been about Wagnerites and symbolic (un)importance. I am sticking here to the frontline situation). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63261600 Col Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's Eastern Command, still doubts the Russians have the numbers or equipment to take Bakhmut - which he says is now the concentration of its military efforts.... It is still possible that the Russian forces may be able to capture Bakhmut. But what then? "When we retreated from Lysychansk we exhausted the enemy," said Col Cherevatyi. His expectation is that Bakhmut might do the same. Maps. The longggggg topo map..... (miladviser is a RU source....) 4 minute clip, no combat footage but a look at the ground (ruins) and some discussion of the grunt level tactical situation (subtitles). "Every second level building has been leveled." you can see the terrain feature in the left centre (red zone) of that RU Google map above. ...Jawin's feed has a lot of these overhead kill sequences, for those into that kind of thing. I'm more interested in the field fortifications (and I read Hefner's mag for the articles too).