Maciej Zwolinski

Where did you get the idea? They were very effective as tactical bombers, only vulnerable to interceptors due to low speed. Where the enemy air cover was absent or not effective, StuKas worked very well.

A drone homing in on ethanol in exhaled air practically guarantees a hit on Russian soldier.

I think the "joke" becomes more apparent in the context of the Soviet Union, when huge part of books, films and art was specifically about Wehrmacht being the worst enemy of the Russian man. And in order to underline the heroism of the Russian man, sometimes (particularly at the beginning of those films/books) the German soldiers were portrayed as extremely well trained killing machines, while the Soviets as victims and well meaning, self-sacrificing amateurs with basic weapons. And of course the atrocities of the Werhmacht and Waffen SS were played up. So the symbolic message of painting a Waffen SS divisional symbol on a tank or a helmet I would read like a combination of <<Russians, I hate you, I am your worst nightmare, I am a superior soldier and a human being in general, your weapons are no match for mine, and I will take revenge on you with horrible deeds straight out of "Go and See">>. I have no doubts it may be an attractive message for a soldier in this war. Obviously, a hard sell to someone watching news in the West.

He was hoping for a door to Narnia, where no barrier detachments or sellers of polonium tee would find him.

For an army in the time of peace, that reasoning makes a lot of sense. However I do not think that a country fighting an existential war would be so picky, if the nationalists actually follow their ideology and volunteer for service. And values such as machismo and hatred for the foreign enemy may actually translate into high combat morale, being more valuable than the ability to easily get along with women or sexual minorities. There is a lot of literature about people becoming good soldiers in war often being poor soldier material for a regular peacetime army.

There is no better use for far right elements than to draft them into the army and let them fight some other nation. They are supposed to like it.

"Madiar is a homo"

On a more serious note, one of the few things which could explain this refusal to surrender which sometimes borders on madness is the belief that Russia will eventually win and all prisoners will be repatriated like von Pannwitz' Cossacks and will meet a similar fate to the repatriated von Pannwitz Cossacks. That, or those particular soldiers who refuse to surrender are guilty of attrocities and are afraid of Ukrainian revenge more than anything.

"Oh BTR of the lake, tell me your wisdom: how to get the hell out of here?"

Not yet, he keeps mentioning a future episode discussing drones in more depth. Although the comment about drones being better on the defensive usually appears in comparison to conventional artillery, from which I deduce that pursuant to Koffman it is the tube artillery which has offensive advantages. My guess is he refers to the fact, that during an offensive against enemy hiding in field fortifications, artillery needs to shoot up trenches, which requires large amounts of HE on target in short time, which drones cannot match, and anyway it would be uneconomical to try to do so .

Very likely. Giving priority to the moving targets is the basic overkill avoidance logic. Don't think so - logically, the first step is recognition of the shape of soldier or vehicle, moving vs non moving comes into play when there are several things of the right shape to chose between. The most cost-effective camouflage would probably be breaking up the shape

For a couple of months already Kofman has been commenting about drones being one more thing which is more helpful on the defence than on the attack. This may be one element of it, the attackers being the side which moves more.

I am not sure. I remember Syrski saying that there are many soldiers not used properly, assigned to rear area duties or kept at places without active fighting, like the Bielarussian border etc. who could be reassigned to frontline units. That may indicate that he is more malleable re. mobilisation and more willing to make do through these reassignments. I don't know if there is a specific English term for such activity, but I believe in German it was called Heldensuche.

If the speculations about the reasons for Zaluzny's removal are to be believed, it was rather the other way round. Zaluzny was rumoured to be pushing for new round of mobilisation, and Zelensky to be refusing it because of the mobilisation's unpopularity.

I think he means that technically speaking, Russia will probably never exactly run out of war material, because before that happens it will reduce consumption/exposition to risk when faced with a shortage. Therefore one can not just draw a graph with one line representing average production, the other average consumption and at the point where they meet, the Russian army will stop firing guns or have no more tanks. He says this in all his podcasts in particular whenever ammo production is discussed, so I am fairly confident this is what is meant here as well. And whereas the Russians can decide to reduce the firing rate/usage rate pretty much at will, they cannot increase the production rate by will alone, therefore the replacement rate is the more objectively observable variable.

And throw in a torpedo or two, even light ones. A ship manoeuvering violently at full speed to avoid a surface drone will not hear anything on its sonar, active or passive. A stealthy carrier drone able to release a torpedo within several kms off the target would be a perfect crime.

The reason is crystal clear. 44 year olds do not have many children, usually. The Ukraine has dire demographic situation and does not want to be in the position, that it survives the war but has nobody to replace the population gap. To put it crudely, it protects the breeders.

That assessment assumes that the Russian's one BTR was actually trying to assault Berdychi and needed to cross the entire length of the Sadowa street to Centralna street (BTW Polish names on the map are very helpful) to debus on top of Ukrainian positions. I on the other hand assume that the single BTR was recce'ing (bcause it was single) and the Russians would actually do a better job at that infiltrating on foot e.g. along the trees of Sadowa or even going just through the fields, getting some MGs to unmask as per your example, and calling artillery on their positions.

On the Ukrainian side, they were not necessary. Bradley was shooting up the BTR first, then the soldiers hiding behind it. Even the bombing by the drone was superfluous - in a couple of minutes the Brad would have chewed up the Russians anyway

Why did they even attempt this death ride in a BTR of all things? Particularly In the absence of UKR artillery they would be better off scouting on foot

They are not emaciated, and they should not be. Poland was willing to transfer a very significant part of our military equipment, accept a huge number of refugees, pay for Starlink terminals, act as one of the most active diplomatic supporters of the Ukraine, etc. We even took an Ukrainian SAM which killed 2 Poles and desperately tried to pretend it was Russian missile until we could not pretend anymore. But why gut a significant part of agricultural industry? That is unnecessary and a step too far. Especially since - as far as we know - in the Ukraine the grain export is a business of equally not emaciated and well nutritioned oligarchs and multinationals, who would like to make a better margin through cutting transportation costs and dumping the goods immediately after crossing the border. That is not a very appealing cause.

Isn't it rather an indication that the Ukrainian claims have been significantly overstated? I can't imagine Russians going on as if nothing happened if they lost 13 SU-34/35 per week. That is ca. 10% of their entire fleet of those aircraft. I am inclined to think that the Russians only lost those 2 planes whose crash has been confirmed by photos.

Rusi report talks about a 10-day plan for invasion https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022

Seems accurate. Translating dolboyebism is a complex task. You need to include several steps First, Dolboyebism - the suffix "-ism" suggests that this is a word denoting things related to another word, in this context it would probably mean "something that a dolbayeb would do" (a hypothesis confirmed by meaningful conclusion of step 2). Second, "dolbayeb" is a compound word, where two parts may be distinguished: "do lba" (to the head) and "yeb". Given that we are dealing with a swear word, it may be safely assumed that "yeb" pertains to "yebat", to have sex (rude). Thus we arrive at "dolbayeb" - man, with whose head someone had sex (presumably damaging it in the process) - and "dolbayebism" - "a thing so stupid, that it could be done by a man, with whose head someone had sex, damaging it in the process". On the Internet I found someone's translation of "dolbayeb" as "****head", which I like as it is both correct as to the meaning and the closest ethymologically. Dolboyebism thus could be translated as "****headery" or "****headism".

It sounds like another regurgitation of the well publicised story of the withdrawal from the Zenit position, where a company of 110th Bde retreated in some chaos, incurred casualties and had to leave 6 wounded, whom Russian subsequently shot after surrendering