Maciej Zwolinski

Well, of course this is exactly what pretty much everyone in a nation at war feels about the enemy. For a very good reason - this would be instant victory and you and your family would be safe. You realize that Zeleban, Kraze and Haiduk are Ukrainians? This is a completely wrong point of view for this situation. It is war, not a court of law. Ukrainians are dying not because they are guilty but because they are Ukrainians. And it is of course their preference that in order to stop this, Russian die for being Russians. except faster and in greater numbers.

I think this line of thinking is completely off. 1. You cannot have a war without dehumanizing the enemy. It is the very core of what a war is. You are actively trying to kill human beings whom you have never met before only because they wear the enemy's uniform and you are being rewarded for it, the more the more people you kill. Without any regard whatsoever for the individual qualities of the person you try to kill. And you hate the enemy because it is the enemy - that is the general psychological mechanism, which I am sure has deep evolutionary roots to support precisely the capacity of conflict at the group level. Having said that, this has become muddled up in the West since the end of the Cold War because of the expeditionary wars where the ally and the enemy are difficult to distinguish. Luckily, this is not one of those cases. 2. The normal thing is dehumanizing the enemy at the time of war and rehumanizing (if the word exists) during the peace. Of course the Germans have no monopoly on the hereditary enemy stuff. French and English, Japanese and Koreans, Romans and Parthians, Poles and Russians. The list is endless. The thing is, that proper conditions for peace have to occur in order for the peaceful relations to be created. If at least one of the groups entertains the possibility of war as the attractive way to resolve the differences, the relation between them will be strained and they will see each other in a dehumanized way as a collective enemy. But thinking that you first start treating the enemy as human individuals and then you stop thinking about them as the enemy is putting the causation backwards. After Germany gave up the design for war, it stopped being the enemy to the peoples of the West. Russia has never done that, and the Russians are perceived as a potential enemy by Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Finns, Ukrainians - quite correctly so.

Let us assume that the information about Russian atrocities is part of Ukrainian propaganda. And in a sense it is, Ukrainians certainly show it in order to gain support from the West. So what? Is it untrue? Is it exaggerated? Is it matched by equal and opposite amount of atrocities committed by the Ukrainians on Russians? To me, the answer to these three questions is a no, without much doubt. Therefore, it being propaganda is completely irrelevant. The information is factual and you may draw your own conclusions from it. Together with other facts, like: - Russian command treating the life of its own soldiers as dirt (admitted by Russians, by some critically, by some others as a unique Russsian virtue of self-sacrifice; unlikely to be more humane to the enemy) - Russian people in the media calling for genocide of Ukrainians (also by private Russians on social media, with fairly high frequency) - Russian soldiers engaging in war crimes willingly or at least without protest (none have been recorded) - Russian parliament putting up a bill to exonerate all perpetrators of war crimes "in the interest of Russsia"; - Wagner PMC being a popular institution in Russia while braining people with sledgehammers for camera; etc. Anyone can get his own conclusions, but to me, the evidence is sufficient to say that Russians generally are a nasty bunch and be glad that Ukrainians are killing their soldiers.

One more thing to be taken into account is the level of Ukrainian losses and their mobilisation constraints. They are being actively downplayed by the Ukrainians, as they clearly have identified the West's giving up on the support because of perception of Russian inevitable victory to be the main risk in this conflict and have decided to portray the war as going on better than in reality. Polish military Internet, perhaps due to the lower language barrier and geographic proximity, seems to be more aware of this than the Western sources so overall there is a more sombre tone to their reports at this point in time. E.g. Wolski (see thread below) has recently estimated that UKR are able to field 300 K troops, out of which 100 K as as light infantry, due to the weapons availablity which apparently is the bottleneck for the UKR. With RUS being able to mobilise 500 K as one mobilisation wave the strategy of just outlasting the UKR does not look unrealistic, even if they are equipped with old weapons. I know RUS do not have the facilities to train 0,5 million soldiers at a go and will have to stagger the training over time, but eventually after a couple of months delay the mobilised soldiers will make their way to the front. )

They had over 80% accuracy the last time. But today's was a very big launch, so this was 75% in the face of a saturation attack, very good indeed.

That's a very interesting point. However, I do not follow part of the argument. Why absence of deposits or other local sources of income prevented the government supported by the US from controlling the country? I do not get the connection, sorry.

Thank you. Just one more question, if I may, how would you define the "another group in power" that the US sided with? I do remember the initial cooperation with the Northern Alliance (I recall pictures of Tajik militants dressed up like the late Shah Massoud), but then it got too confusing.

At the risk of going one more step off-topic, why did US not succeed with that strategy in the most recent Afghanistan war? This is not a rhetorical question nor sarcasm, I am honestly curious. Afghanis seem to be very happy fighting among themselves, there should have been plenty of opportunity to play them off against one another.

If by GRU you mean "General intelligence Radically Underdeveloped" you got that right. The story is described above in Huba's post. Short version: that Szymczyk guy is an incredible idiot who was playing with an RGW 90 "Matador" he had in his office. Some other idiot gave it to him as a souvenir. It was a training version, but unbeknownst to Szymczyk, still capable of firing a training projectile, only without a live warhead. Which it did in Szymczyk's office, apparently collapsing one floor of the Police headquarters and sending that cretin to a hospital.

To be fair, Ukrainians are complaining not about not getting help which cannot be reasonably given under existing constraints, but about not getting stuff which can be reasonably given but is withheld very unreasonably. I mean the German excuse "We will not give Leopard 1s, because tanks = Hitler", or the US refusal to provide ATACMS because it can be used to hit Russia proper - while the Ukrainians have successfully hit proper Russia with their own devices, and moreover, there is nothing wrong with hitting Russia proper in the 200th day of high intensity war with Russia. These do not make sense, so it is no wonder that people fighting for their lives are angry about getting nonsense answers and suspect that they are being lied to. I think some of those publicly presented arguments are indeed false, e.g. the real reason for not giving F-16s to the Ukrainians is that the small number of aircraft which can reasonably be donated to Ukraine would quickly get destroyed for no effect. If that is the case, it should perhaps be more honestly stated.

Hang on, the Soviet soldier in 1945 Berlin was famously a thug riding a stolen bike and festooned with watches (I guess it was more difficult to carry away a washing machine on a bike than in a BTR). The fact that he unintentionally helped to save half of Europe for democracy does not change the above bit.

Rotterdam 1940. Madrid underground terrorist bombing 2004. And, obviously, Hiroshima & Nagasaki 1945

Four things whose absence would prevent forming even light infantry units are small arms, trained commanders, trained instructors and logistic assets. So probably one of the above.

Unfortunately I have found no traces of that book actually being released, just some passing references to an English edition which could have been previews. Sorry.

So the Wagner prison recruitment drive has encountered an unexpected obstacle. NSFW content

I think it has good potential for an initial attack in order to draw Russians away from other fronts. Those built up areas include Donieck and Lugansk, and the Russians will do everything to avoid any of them being directly attacked by Ukrainians. And the Russian soldiers in front of Bakhmut are set up for attack, not defence, in recently conquered locations. Also, they are Wagner and if they are in danger , Prigozhin will use all his influence to have them reinforced. So Ukrainian attack there may have a chance to make good initial progress, at which point Russians will pull reserves from other areas to reinforce and the Ukrainians can attack in Zaporozhe or around Svatove, which are currently full of RUS soldiers.

Looking at the behaviour of the UKR soldiers from the perspective of perfidy (in this case feigned surrender - art. 37 1. (a) of the additional protocols to Geneva Conventions - the "Protocols") and whether the act of perfidy excuses shooting at Russians lying on the ground actually muddles up the analysis. Clearly neither of the Ukrainians engaged in perfidy and art. 37.1. does not need to be consulted to review the legality of UKR actions in this case. Instead it is sufficient to go directly to art. 41.2 of the Protocols, which defines persons hors de combat (the Russians lying on the ground being the case defined in either (a) or (b) of that article). This definition is qualified by the requirement not to engage in hostile acts and not to attempt escape, in which case a person is a fair target. None of the publicly available films provides evidence sufficient to form a view about tihis, however it is quite likely that the soldiers lying on the ground did try to escape once bullets started flying above their heads. At least the accused men will claim this - it is a no brainer. At the same time, any investigation against the UKR soldiers about this would have the character of criminal proceedings, so the presumption of innocence applies in full. I am sure that those soldiers will walk free, and in all fairness they should do so, unless there are other films, or there is inspection of bodies which shows them shot in the back of the head or from very close range. That is what the presumption of innocence is for.

In this case the drone shot of Russian bodies stacked one on another with blood flowing out of their heads was circulated first. It looked very much like execution. I think they released the more detailed video of the whole incident as damage limitation

Where could I find Mashovets' reports? My ability to read Cyryllic is extremely rusty, but getting better, so I may give it a go. Thanks!

They must have had some carrier. But theoretically it could have been another drone, just bigger and more seaworthy.

I think torpedoes would actually be most useful. Once the weapon goes underwater, the rules of the game change completely. ASW is so much more difficult than shooting down flying objects. And once torpedo is in the water the usual defence is to try to evade it/run away from it - good luck doing that at anchor.

That is a book by Norbert Bączyk, quite prolific author, but wriiting mostly in in Polish. I will see if I can find it for you.

While it is perfectly understandable, why the Russians are pulling out of the Kherson bridgehead, I am not sure why Shoigu and Suroviking thought it is a good idea to publicly declare this on the TV, while the withdrawal is still underway. The Ukrainians gained some additional clarity on the Russian plans and and it could not have been good on morale of the Russian troops. Did they want to make the declaration for political purposes, to try to spin it as another "goodwill gesture"? Or a tacit offer of semi-truce to Ukrainians, alolng the lines of "if you do not shoot now, we will go quietly anyway"?

It would have a good reason to do so. With the internal revolt developing in Iran, surely they will concentrate on the internal threat first. And it is reasonable to expect, that the level of Western support for the rebels would be to some extent proportional to Iran's being a pain in the *** in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Ah, the weekly. I am not that interested in the new procurements, so I tend to give this a pass.Thanks!