Richi

Finally got round to making this video. Throughout this year the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian state and military against overwhelming odds has been nothing short of outstanding, and since this war also has so much quality combat footage that wasn’t even remotely possible to create in previous major wars I figured it would be awesome to make an action-packed tribute video for Ukraine’s defenders.
Almost all the source material is combat footage since 24/02/2022. Some of the clips are super iconic and will be well known to all, while others are relatively unknown. I tried my best to include footage from throughout the year and featuring as many of Ukraine’s star performers as possible (biggest gripe is that I couldn’t make any reference to the Moskva sinking). Also, the whole Russian Z vs the Ukrainian + has been kinda fascinating to me, so clips that showed vehicles with those markings were preferred.
Thanks to all the users here who’ve been sharing such footage since things kicked off (especially some of the less famous stuff). This thread has been the source of many of the clips that were used, in addition to just being an awesome way to keep up with war news in general. 
And, of course, a great big salute to all Ukrainians for not only standing your ground against the Russian beast, but also showing it can be pushed back. It’s nothing short of incredible, and history will remember your defiance.
 

"Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"  I guess we will see if Russia can dance....

We need some actual news, or the new game.....Maybe a tiny bone fragment about the new game?

Replace "Russia" with "China", replace "energy" with "manufacturing" and the paragraph sadly still makes a lot of sense. 🤑 and  .

No. He dies in his bed surrounded by [pecadilloes] before he's 73. Old. Dying. Those are the important bits. Nothing to lose that he can't bear to see the back of. Which is where he'll be if his regime is crumbling.
Sure, his bodyguards/concubines in the bunker might murder him when they realise he burnt the world down for his own funeral and wasn't ever planning even to be there, but hey, he's going to swing from a lamp post if he doesn't, so why not push the button out of spite?

Ok, let me hit this on the head one last time because it is going to a really bad place.  And I totally get the sentiment but we need to be absolutely clear on this point - being the 'good guys' and acting like a modern professional military means all the time, no matter what. 
No days off, no "revenge breaks" and definitely no "hey they are doing it."
Only a combat veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq can describe just how badly we wanted to call in an A10 and wipe out an entire grid square after one of your own goes home in a box.  Or retaliate when the insurgents did some really dark sh#t.
But that ain't the gig, ever.  The single biggest point civilians do not get about war is that 'killing' is not the hard part - the hard part is 'to not keep on killing'. 
We clipped guys for holding a cellphone in the wrong place for too long, chewed up teenagers digging hole in roads, and a hammered into meat a few farmers dumb enough to stick around.  We did it and high-fived when we dropped them.  We slept soundly that night and never thought twice about doing it the next day. 
But we never let that out of the professional box we kept it in - the second we did, and could no longer tell which way was up - even when the other team was basically operating on Genghis Khan ROEs - we would stop being soldiers and become something else. And then the whole thing starts to unravel.
The RA and Russia will pay for their actions for decades.  War crimes are one of the key indicators that the RA is in freefall and not a coherent fighting force - military discipline has fallen apart on a wide scale, and they are reaping that field this fall.
But we beat them by being better than they are, forever.    

So back to the analysis of this war.  Caution and confirmation biases disclaimer accepted - it is things like these which really set the antenna twitching.  The level of systemic breakdown expressed in this one paragraph is enough to leave me wondering what is holding the RA together at this point.  This points to broad failures from force generation thru to force employment; inadequate training, nearly non-existent RSOMI - particularly on the (I) integration"; significant leadership failures and attrition; non-existent RA targeting enterprise, and; a plummeting morale - to the point they are adopting it within a sub-cultural norm, they named it.
The only question left is "how wide spread is this experience?"  The answer to that determines just how badly the RA has broken itself in this war.
We keep coming back to the idea of "freezing the conflict" as the new western fear.  I have to be honest, I cannot see how the RA can do that by this point.  To freeze any conflict one has to be able to create an unsolvable symmetry and frankly I cannot see how the RA can possibly accomplish this in the state it is in.  A lot of pundits are going on about a "long war" but I have some serious doubts.  I think we may see Steve's full RA collapse before this is over and it will likely start in units like this one.

So here is the part that people who have not been in a war simply do not get - it is an incredibly slippery slope to the bottom.  Humans are natural born killers for the most part and when given license they get very good at it very fast.  So in war, unregulated killing turns into exactly what we are seeing the RA do in occupied territories very quickly.
”I do not see the point of arguing combat warcrimes” is right next door to “killing of civilians is a-ok” when one is talking warfare.  
“What?!  I never said that!”  Well you basically did because “letting boys be boys” in combat will spread to non-combat situations incredibly fast and there is a mountain of history to back me up on that point.
So the notion of a “war crime” started to try and keep civilians out of it.  This turned out to be very difficult and we failed gloriously at it in WW2 - hence the big push in ‘49 and the new LOAC.  
The idea that two sides can kill each other but not “kill” each other seems counterintuitive and for some “woke” but it is core to military discipline and the idea that war does not need to collapse into strategies of extermination on entire populations. 

As to your last point - “stop war” well in 1949 the UN was set up to do exactly that.  War between states without just cause and recognition of the international community is “illegal” - e.g. the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “illegal”.  Why? Because unregulated war is very bad for everyone on the 21st century, not just those directly involved in combat.
Finally without all these legal frameworks the case for defending Ukraine itself erodes.  We may care to keep Russia at bay but in reality they are barely a global power - I mean seriously, beyond the strategic dead end of nukes, Russia poses an annoyance to NATO (and justification to spend money), it is not an existential threat.  
It is the attack on The Rules that underpins our support to Ukraine in this war - if there were not “The Rules” then why should I care about a “border dispute”* in Eastern Europe from all the way here across the Atlantic Ocean?  

[Canadian trade with Ukraine in 2022 was $155M out of over $62B in Canadian global exports.  The $155M we do in annual sales to Ukraine is one sixth support we have provided so far (nearly $1B)]
*(literally the words I have heard from some circles) 
 

No evidences that they were 100 % unarmed (grenadeds, pistols etc), because procedure of unit surrendering wasn't finished and UKR soldiers didn't have time to search them. Combat episode wasn't finished. 
To prove during suddenly started engagement? To whom? They had to call a lawyer under fire?
Western rules based order often turns out into swamp of bureaucracy, red tape of 100500 of committees and useless talking shop.   

Article 37 does prohibit perfidy or the unlawful use of the protections of the LOAC; however, it does not give license for further violations or mean the rest of LOAC does not apply.  https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/ART/470-750046?OpenDocument
The Russian soldier(s) who are proven to have participated in an act of perfidy are prosecutable under the LOAC.  If the whole unit and its chain of command were involved then they too can be prosecuted.
However none of this gives licence to legally gun down every man in the RA squad, especially unarmed men lying face down on the ground.  For that, they would need to prove that the entire squad was about to get up and re-engage in combat - so intent and capability, which allowed for lawful engagement or self-defence.
As to the legal defence of “well they are doing it!”  Welcome to the western world. Having spent time in combat with people who were absolutely medieval I can sympathize but this is the deal - we follow the rules even when the other team is not. Why? Western Rules Based Order…key word is “rules”, and we all have to follow them or risk breaking the deal.
You want to support the Russians just keep promoting a reciprocal Russian-way of war for the Ukrainians.  You want to beat the Russians in the strategic narrative?  Keep to the high ground and remain recognizable to your western supporters.  Fair?  Nope.  Reality? Yup.

Well said. Though it is helpful to have the legal points brought up and clarified for our edification. Focusing pages of debate on one such incident in a brutal genocidal war with literally thousands of equal or in most case far worse circumstances by the invader feels as if it only furthers the propaganda/PR value for Russia. I for one do not expect Ukrainian forces to be perfect in defense of their homes and families, especially after all this time and horror. I do expect that reckonings will come AFTER the war. At least in the West, where our shared values strongly incline us to. My support for defending Ukraine against this illegal invasion is not so thin and weak as to be shaken by this. 

I believe you give russian soldiers, propaganda effects on them and their logical conclusions way too much credit. To them any land they invade is a place to rob and let out their frustration and sadistic needs, so they don't need any more reasons from propaganda to do it other than that they simply can.
And it's not about some "justice", it's about acknowledging the probability of faked russian surrenders. Since the start of the full scale invasion russians have been coming at our troops waving white flags, but as they came close enough - they were opening fire point blank leading to a huge loss of life. We lost many many people this way. Add to that soldier's growing, untreated PTSD for 9 months due to brutal fighting, witnessing actual russian warcrimes times the number of faux white flags - and you know it may never equal any other outcome once gunfire happens in the middle of surrender. It's just the reality of things that will not get better until this is over.

I think this discussion is somewhat irrelevant outside of how it affects the war.  It's about whether it hurts support for UKR.  This episode is a tragedy however it happened: a bunch of RU guys wanted to surrender, some idiot fires on & wounds UKR soldier, the RU guys then all killed by the UKR soldiers.  The dead are dead and the wounded are wounded, tragically.  But all that matters now is the how this affects the war.  Are we so naive to think that this kind of thing doesn't happen in war?  -- no, we all get it.  This was filmed and is being seen in the west, and in RU, and that can affect the war.  
So it doesn't matter about WW2 or vietnam or whatever or whether I think or y'all think is a crime or not.  It's cynical to say it but now this is all an ongoing PR situation for RU to exploit and UKR to try to mitigate.  No point in holding endless and pointless court proceedings here on the forum, arguing about legality, etc.  'course, y'all can if you want.  But it's pointless.
I am hoping some big (and good) news comes along to get this off the media radar, and soon, but the mud is locking up the fronts.  Maybe a nice coup in moscow?  One can dream.

The Allies  were  executing German prisoners in WW2  at various times . Plenty of examples in the literature/histories  of that conflict .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenogne_massacre
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-horror-of-d-day-a-new-openness-to-discussing-allied-war-crimes-in-wwii-a-692037.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26014041
I won't even raise the issue of what happened to Germans at the hands of the Russians . Needless to say they both behaved barbarically  to each other  .  So  I'm  not sure why every one is getting so sensitive about a bunch of Russians getting handed out the same treatment they  themselves no doubt would have  indulged in given the chance . Its a war and humans really have not evolved into a more sensitive caring bunch of individuals in the last 70 years just because society itself has more visibility into what is going on at the front lines by virtue of technology .

Here's something interesting regarding the future of anti-drone warfare. Note that this isn't 30x173 Bushmaster, but 30x113 ammunition for the AH-64 type gun. Given it's size, it might perhaps be adaptable to RWSs on tanks or something similar. I guess technology could be adapted to 30mm Bushmaster too.
As a side note, PL is working on programmable (not proximity fused, but AHEAD type) ammunition  in 23x152 caliber...
 

Zelensky amazes me.  Here's a guy that only 4 years ago was an actor, comedian and businessman with a law degree and no foreign policy, governmental or military experience.  But yet, he's leading one of the most complex, challenging globally high profile and difficult situations of this century.  And he seems to be making all the right moves time and again.  The way he handles himself, his words and quiet but confident demeanor continue to be on point.  Yes, I'm sure he's getting expertise, coaching and direction from multiple sources---but he's choosing to listen and take advise from seemingly all the right people which is an art unto itself. 
And to think what his life is like on a daily basis, to have to be "on" month after month.  The guy flat out has my respect and I hope to someday read his memoirs on from late 2021 until this ends.  
 
 

Agreed. But I think they've been doing the regrouping for at least a month now, while continuing to train up on new equipment and kit out for winter.  So by the first hard freeze in the south, it could well be the UA that throws the first new punch.
....Not to underestimate the costs of the war over the past 30 days, but it seems to me the pushes on Kherson, Svatove and the high intensity defence against Wagner in the Donbass zone has been conducted by rotating UA forces in place, not committing reserves.  But most of what I 'know' has been from passively reading here (cuz work).
Last comment, recovering the 2nd largest city after Mariupol (?) to fall under the Russians in a fairly undamaged state is a big nonmilitary win; it seems to be the key civil hub for that entire area. Of course, it still lies on the front lines so its suffering isn't over yet.
P.S. I love Armenian and Georgian wine, and also dessert wines, so I am going to make a point of putting some of my wine money into Ukraine's wine industry as soon as I can get it here in Asia.
 
 

I think UKR will, as Steve mentioned, regroup for a short bit, but it will also be busy.  I think UKR will begin 'shaping the war'.  They'll work to threaten things Putin values the most, getting Putin to reinforce there.  Then while he's protecting his face they'll kick him in the nuts or knees.  Like w the Kharkiv operation.  But they'll keep at least some pressure in multiple places. 
About Biden, as per above:  Let's credit all the leaders who had the courage and vision to do the right thing and convinced the wavering ones to join in.  Biden, B Johnson UK, Poland, and others -- the ones who worked diligently and relentlessly, mostly behind the scenes, to build the huge coalition of support for UKR.  The sanctions that no one thought possible.  The huge amounts of arms and aid.  We were all later and less than needed in material support early in this war, but credit and honor to those that led the way.

Btw,  taking bets on how soon before Zelensky appears in Kherson... 
I say by Sunday. 

Alot of brave people have died in trenches, and in worse ways. Many of them had not the slightest plan of being a soldier on 2/23. I think we should send them every single piece of gear they can physically crew to try to keep that number as low as possible.

Well guys, at last I got this!  Symbolically in the day of Kherson liberation ) 
Thank you @Kinophile for this initiative and enough "family diplomacy" in resolving of sudden obstacle on "last mile" 😀
Thank you @Battlefront.com - Steve, your "bribe" ) will be worked out ))))
Thank you all, who donated anonymously
Thank you, all other, who just have been reading and support our country - first two months were some nervous and psychologically hard, so this my 24/7 "marathone" here was giving me some emotional relief. 
 

In Canada, on this our Remembrance Day - besides remembering the sacrifice of Canadians in various conflicts and peacekeeping missions, I am also very aware of the huge loss of life in service of the Ukrainian soldiers who fought for their homeland and their people.  I am reminded all the time.  In Manitoba, our province has a immense Ukrainian Canadian  population and I can't go anywhere without seeing Ukrainian flags everywhere.  And a lot of Ukrainian Canadians returned to Ukraine to fight for their ancestral homeland.   Some will return home to Canada some day, others will not. The sad reality of war.
So on this Remembrance Day, I raise my stein as in past Remembrance Days and intone that simple ancient Norse toast - "To Our Honored Dead!"    I include all Ukrainian soldiers who have lost their lives thus far in that toast.   They have truly earned entry into the Halls of Valhalla.
 Sláva Ukrayíni!
 

Some more scenes how locals meet own army
Russians see this too and in some very rare heads a sparkle appears:

Translation: Khersonians met us with protests. But AFU meet with flowers. Then for what our guys give own life?

"there were no agreements".  Yup,  because Russians are an untrustworthy sack of lying ****s. Also perfect example of how RUS command truly does not care about its men. Any responsible and decent GHQ would negotiate a retreat agreement with UKR.
That was something I noticed ref Suvorokins pantomine nonsense  -  no mention of communication with UKR opposing numbers. No talk of staged,  deliberate and non aggressive retreat, keeping RUS troops whole at the exchange of leaving Kherson and people's  undamaged or contested. Just "We leaving,  Buh Bye!"  and all the Ivans at Kherson going "Wait,  what? Now!?".  Man,  racists bigotry reaps it's own inevitable reward. 
The UKR artillery will mow the Dniper banks like a horrific gigantic human lawn mower. 
And The ghosts of Iloviask will have their long due revenge. 
 

24 hrs change