dan/california

Can´t get my head around those german idiots...
 
 

Steve mentioned this earlier to some extent, but the Russians have given up on taking much/any more territory in Ukraine and started systematically attacking rail lines. I think the nationwide attacks on fuel depots are part of the same thing. The Russians are trying wreck Ukrainian logistics as far into Ukraine as they can reach. It is going to take the second coming of the Red Ball express to keep the Ukrainians in the fight. NATO needs to start organizing this TODAY. Including supplying engineering assets for temporary bridges. There also needs to be intelligent thought about how far things can move in civilian trucks, and how to transfer to smaller loads and/or military grade transport while minimizing vulnerability to Russian attack.
 

Steve mentioned this earlier to some extent, but the Russians have given up on taking much/any more territory in Ukraine and started systematically attacking rail lines. I think the nationwide attacks on fuel depots are part of the same thing. The Russians are trying wreck Ukrainian logistics as far into Ukraine as they can reach. It is going to take the second coming of the Red Ball express to keep the Ukrainians in the fight. NATO needs to start organizing this TODAY. Including supplying engineering assets for temporary bridges. There also needs to be intelligent thought about how far things can move in civilian trucks, and how to transfer to smaller loads and/or military grade transport while minimizing vulnerability to Russian attack.
 

if you use "woke and PC" you are just another brainwashed tool.  This is just a shiny object meant to ignite culture wars.  We have much bigger problems.  Like in the USA we are considered now a failing democracy.  And it's not because of some "woke & PC" horses-t.  It's because of a very different brand of propaganda.
So how about we all call a truce on this foolishness and get back to Ukraine?  Do we not (nearly) all here have a shared interest in seeing the new Hitler defeated?  What I care about is that the west (and the world) stays united and that Ukraine can emerge 'victorious', although that's an odd word for having a big part of one's country laid to ruin.

Read this, then tell me why EVERY plane, armored vehicle, and soldier in NATO is not being fueled armed and dispatched to the front lines in Ukraine right now. If the Russians are still there when they get there it's on them.

There is probably also a simple answer for giving heavier equipment to UKR:
- They can fight Russia and win
That's been said plenty up to now, it was all talk until they had actually defeated Russia's strongest attack. 
This is undeniable proof that UKR has what it takes in many different areas, where then can be given more stuff and they'll use it well. For all the WE STAND WITH UKRAINE blabber, everyone was waiting to see if they could actually pull it off. Which they have, to their eternal credit.
For our US friends, its a little like Saratoga - once the US had shown it could defeat a major British army, France was all in.
 

Russian practices and Ukrainian practices are not equivalent. Also, its a mighty big coincidence that the Russian speaking territories Russia is 'liberating' just happens to coincide with the location of newly discovered oil and gas deposits.

Seems like the more things change the more they stay the same - Was Russian going  into Ukraine with whatever the Russian equivalent of Einsatzgruppen units  to "de-nazify"  the Ukrainian Country side ?

Read this, then tell me why EVERY plane, armored vehicle, and soldier in NATO is not being fueled armed and dispatched to the front lines in Ukraine right now. If the Russians are still there when they get there it's on them.

days?  Within days?  We can haz tanks tanks to Urkaine in days?  So are we finally gonna give them the gawdamm jets???   The whole "don't upset little Vlad else he'll throw a fit" bull-t has driven me crazy from the start.
I know I am feeding into my wishful thinking but if these are combat worthy and can be on the southern front in next couple weeks that could make a big difference.  We'll see if UA can do a better job against ATGMs than russia did, though I suspect morale will be a big factor.  Takes some guts to ambush an armored column  from RPG range.
Putin is gonna completely flip out over this.  And he'll send jets and missiles to try to stop the trains.  And hopefully those jets & missiles will be shot down w the AD systems that have been sent.

Initial reports only, so treat with caution, but I’ve already seen multiple images of dead civilians with hands tied from Bucha:
 

The events in Ukraine are going to add some more fuel to the fire regarding the highly controversial reorganization of the US Marine Corps. The current commandant has eliminated all tanks, reduced artillery, helicopters and fixed wing assets to focus on guided missiles, drones, long range anti-ship missiles batteries and long-range unmanned surface vessels that has sensors and weapons that allow for pinpoint bombardment. They are also buying unmanned boats loaded with Kamikaze drones.
The reason for the re-org is the likely adversary China is a Pacific oriented theater that involves vast distances and the need for light highly deployable forces. Many of the potential hot spots are small atolls and shoals. Tanks are too cumbersome and heavy to land on these atolls and the risk of losing them to handheld anti-tank weapons is too great is the argument.
Artillery is also limited by the fact many of the tiny islands are so small they can't be used from a safe distance away from enemy fire and may not be able to use indirect fire at close range. While not totally useless its argued that tanks and artillery "are of less value than the things we need the most" and with a limited budget choices have to be made.
   
This has drawn the ire of just about every past commandant and they have been engaging in a PR campaign to slow or stop the re-org and are now lobbying congress. The argument here is the force structure is too tailored for a potential fight with China and would be ineffective elsewhere. There have been arguments that eliminating tanks makes the new force structure vulnerable in a fight with a armored heavy opponent.
The events in Ukraine where light infantry armed with guided missiles are decimating tanks and IFV's, pretty much invalidates the infantry is vulnerable to armored formations even when taking into account the Russians lack of finesse.
The argument that the new force structure would not be useful in a theater like Europe is also looking sketchy. A force structure like the new Marine Corps one would be highly effective in the southern coastal region of Ukraine. Anti-ship missile batteries would make any sort of Russian amphibious invasion or ship resupply of land forces a very risky proposition. Long range unmanned surface vessels with precision guns and guided missiles and drones would also be very effective.
Norway another area the marines currently train in would be another region where the new force structure would be very effective as would Sweden and Finland if it ever came down to it.
I still believe tanks are highly effective when properly used, but they are expensive to acquire, expensive to maintain and they will definitely need APS and more APS systems need to be developed. All of this will require money, lots of it and they are not easily deployable as their weight is already approaching the limits of practicality and adding on more stuff to protect them will only add to the weight problem.
In the past few decades global populations have been trending away from rural areas into urban areas. Over 90% of global commerce moves on the sea, so it follows that urban areas located near the water is where the centers of government and economic power lie.
A light infantry centric force with precision weapons, drones, unmanned surface vessels and anti-ship missiles makes a lot of sense. He may be highly controversial but General Berger is beginning to look very visionary.
 

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.

Sorry all for this pictures, but after this no one dares to accuse us in "racism", "bulling of Russians", "violation their rights" and other bull****. There many killed civilians were found in Irpin', but now our troops came to Bucha and have seen THIS. The nation, which let all of this must be punished. ALL, maybe except those, who actively represented own anti-rashism position before this nightmare.
GRAPHIC IMAGES!
Just tortured and executed civilans: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPSd5RMXsAoLdXy?format=jpg&name=900x900
The street of Bucha, littered with dead bodies of civilians: https://twitter.com/i/status/1509985789404459011
 

Rubbish. Utter poppycock. Sure, 1.4 million people all working together would be a big lever to unseat Putin, but he has more than half that number in the Federal Police alone, and has spent the last 20 years breaking up the opposition so it can't work effectively together. Also, that "1%" would be diluted among the entier population, so it would only take 2% actively opposing them to shut them down completely.
Don't get me wrong. I have great difficulty understanding how the Russian population as a whole can swallow Putin's self-contradictory nonsense justifications for the war to a sufficient degree that we see the bellicose support that we do, and I'm sure there are die-hard Russian Nationalists who truly think that Uncle Vlad is a saintly figure incapable of error, served by Angels. I think there does remain a sense of Russian exceptionalism that underlies their self-serving internal justifications for not "fixing or doing somefink" ever since the kleptocrats' thievery started undermining the initial successes of throwing off the old Soviet shackles. But I don't live there, and I can empathise with the wish to not be hospitalised by riot police thugs or sent off to the gulags. It must be difficult to see a way through for your average Russian-on-the-street, same as it does for your average Belarusian-on-the-street. And their leaders have been murdered, imprisoned or exiled as fast as they come forward, so there's nothing for opposition to crystallise around any more.
Edit: Russian opposition is another frog that has been gently warmed up and is about boiled to death by now.

"I think that people in Moldova and in the Baltics should be extremely, extremely nervous right now."
I tend to think that it's the Russians in Moldova, Georgia etc. who should be extremely nervous.
 

100% agree, the single best thing the EU can do for Ukraine, in addition to paying for a vast amount roads and bridges and train stations is to provide a REALLY good investment guarantee, in particular against further conflict. Ukraine was already getting a fair number of German auto part plants, I think they can get those back, and ad great deal more if the EU just insures companies against another Russian invasion. If Ukraine comes through this in fixable condition Zelensky is going to be the second coming of George Washington, with nearly bottomless access to EU money, and legal/technical expertise. I think he can get the governance and rule of law issues right. The Ukrainian "brand" is going to be sort of unimaginably positive.

You are hitting on something extremely important here, but not just punitive reparations in the Versailles sense....
This topic risks going way OT so I'll try to keep this tweetstorm as brief as I can. I exaggerate in places for clarity, nothing is so simple of course, nor is success guaranteed:
1. Let's assume the Western master game is for the  'European frontier' (i.e. the edge of the Western economic order as well as its military boundary) to shift east from Poland to Ukraine (and Belarus).
2. For that shift to occur, and not to revert to chaos, gangsterism and mass emigration, a stable economic order must be established. That doesn't mean an immediate German or even Polish standard of living, but it must deliver reasonably broad prosperity that keeps talented Ukrainians (including the cheerful, resourceful citizen soldiers who are presently astonishing the world!) at home!
3. The aftermath of this war presents a fantastic opening to "Build Back Better!"(c). Not everywhere and not always optimally or fairly. But in addition to aid monies, private (profit seeking) capital investment is absolutely essential.
4.  Globalization 2.0 is underway right now as multinationals seek to diversify operations out of an increasingly extortionate and unreliable China. ASEAN has countless high tech parks building right now, levering their cheap talent and basic infra (where it exists). They are overwhelmed and there is room for others to play too.
5. The Ukrainian infra base remains solid, if rusty and uneven. And rebuilding isn't as hard or expensive as some folks may think. Infra and plant is modular today, and the Chinese have driven global costs (and quality lol) through the floor, the current inflation notwithstanding. That's IF an investment case is there to bring in private FDI (and not just fat cat contractors gobbling subsidies a la Haiti).
6. Talent and infra (plus low cost energy) are table stakes, but not sufficient. You must also have reliable (I didn't say good or honest -- look at Thailand) government. The post-Soviet disease of gangsta kleptocrats turned oligarchs (ref. Galeev for the short form) taking rakes off resource flows and other forms of graft afflicted Ukraine as badly as it did Russia. If it returns, it will poison the well and foreign investors will go elsewhere. Look at the Philippines and Indonesia, whose governments talk big but can't get out of their own way or manage the greed and corruption of their oligarchs. Even the Chinese have trouble making headway.
....That will be postwar Russia btw, with or without Putin. Screw 'em, let them rot in Chinese receivership, and in time take their brightest young people in as new Ukrainians!
7.  BTW, that's why I have absolutely NO sympathy for the kinds of ancient 'tribal' hatreds espoused (or at least not denied) by certain folks on this board, where everything will be just great if only our golden motherland can be, ahem *cleansed* of those horrid Mongoloid Russian orcs who take murder and rapine in with their mothers milk. That Bloodlands crap leads only to even worse evils than what Putin is visiting today, and impoverishment.
8.  Embrace Ukraine's melting pot! when Kiev and Odessa are filled with South Asian tech bros (with their Ukie counterparts shuttling to Chennai), you'll know things are going in the right direction!
9. Am I just blowing Thatcherite hopium smoke? Maybe, I don't know, it isn't my country. But the ONE good thing the Commies left behind them is solid primary education. As I once told Lech Walesa (and really p***ed him off!) to his face back in 1997, the post-Soviet game was kleptocrats playing smash and grab for the rusting hulks of the Soviet order, and then taking a rake off resources. While where the wealth really was, and is, is in the people.
10.  As a pool for talented labor, this region is quite cost competitive with the 'expensive' end of ASEAN (Thailand, Malaysia), and with the emerging tech centers of India.  Do you need a soaring birthrate society? Nope, that creates as many problems as it solves. Witness Phils and Nigeria. And once Ukrainians have stable work, they can afford things like families and kids.
....Anyway, I think I made my point.

[/hopium]

Even 200 tanks, and the logistics to keep them running would make a HUGE difference.

Ok, does anyone know if the UA has any riverine capability or water capable SOF? I believe they have a Naval Infantry brigade but I'm not sure of their capabilities. 
Anyway, looking at the south around Kherson there are basically two bridges of the Dnepr. The UA holds part of the river north of them around Nikopol so they have access to the waterway. Seize them or destroy them? That puts an awful lot of RA forces in a pickle if the UA was able to put pressure on them at the same time. Thoughts?

There is a bunch of Russian offshore assets currently frozen. I'd like to think an international group of lawyers and finance folk are currently working out how to seize all that and place it in trust to fund the rebuild.

So UK sending long range artillery system to Ukraine, it's reported.  Anyone else seen this?  Looks like my hope that there'd by heavier weapons system sent is starting to come true!!!! 
 

I am running out of words to describe how brave these people are, and how competent. A month straight of high intensity mechanized warfare, and some of them are still alive!!!!!!

I should have been clearer, I meant maximum support in the current proxy war, indirect involvement, environment. To put it another way the people running the war for Ukraine, and the NATO members supplying the Ukrainian army need to get on the same page as far as means and ends. If the goal is to create a stalemate on the current line of confrontation in the Donbas, then be sure the Ukrainians know that so they can do it coherently and with the lowest possible casualties. If the goal is to kill so many Russian troops so quickly that Russia abandons everything but Crimea we need to give the Ukrainians support to do that. That should specifically include higher level western AA/anti missile systems, even if that means some NATO troops have to do the false flag thing to operate them. NATO personnel from Eastern Europe could be used, it isn't like you can tell a Pole from a Ukrainian just by looking. Just don't let the BBC interview them, heck don't admit the Ukrainians have the systems, let the downed Russian aircraft speak for themselves. You won't even have to shoot down that many, they will just stop flying where it is dangerous.
On the larger issue of Ukrainian strikes in Russia you have to distinguish between logical extensions of the Ukrainian campaign against Russian military logistics in the area of operations, and "communication of our actual negotiating position". The fuel depot strike was probably more to do with communication, although Russian logistics have so idiotic it may have a real impact there as well. As communication goes it is a would I would call it a level one attack, the noise made is large, but the body counts is pretty low, and it is still local to the current theater of operations. so now we see how the Russians respond, And then we will see if the Ukrainians can do something larger if they don't like the Russian response. A really large scale covert attack on the Russian railway system, or something purely symbolic much deeper into Russia come to mind.

Everyone is hung up about small gradations in what will or won't trigger Putin. I think this is totally wrong unless NATO cuts Ukrainian support to the point they have to take a bad deal immediately. As long as Ukraine is winning Putin is getting more desperate. He has staked his regimes prestige, and probably its survival on winning this war. If he loses it he IS going to be desperate. All the hemming and hawing about giving the Ukrainians this system but not that one just moves the moment WHEN Putin gets desperate back and forth. What I have not seen is any reason to think that Putin desperate later is going to be any different from Putin desperate sooner. Later just lets him wreck even more of Ukraine and create even more refugees, thus I am for absolutely maximal support for the Ukrainians.