Maciej Zwolinski

Actually, that seems like a reason for the Germans and other West Europeans to develop a defence industry not dependent on US conventional arsenal, rather than exploring the options of cozying up to a bloody dictator waging a war of aggression. Even more so now, as by this moment in time, the Russians have repeatedly presented the war in the Ukraine as a war with the West. The "diplomatic option" without getting the RUS at least back to the 24.02.2022 borders would be for many intents and purposes a surrender on terms, not only of the UKR, but also of Germany.

Surely they cannot be less advantageous than in Kherson. Yet Russians did manage to supply critical materiel and even rotate troops by ferries and the Kahovka dam bridge hastily filled in with rubble and earth to the extent necessary to hold on for what, four months? And the defended area is not going to be so small, to prevent dispersing of units and cause Russians to mass excessively. They basically have the square Vasylivka -Volnovakha - Mariupol- Melitopol at their disposal, which is a lot of real property. So yes, getting additional troops from Kherson and Berislav areas to strengthen the Zaporizhe direction will be beneficial to the RUS. After the RUS withdraw from the Kherson bridgehead (actually, I think they will not withdraw fully, but will rotate most of regular units with heavy equipment out and leave mobiks in Kherson city to die fighting; I think they are going to do basically a reenactment of the defence of Severodonetsk but on the defender side; provided they do not care about mobik casualties - and they do not -this would be optimal for both political and military purposes ) I think the Ukrainians will not attack in the Zaporozhe front in the foreseeable future, there is a reason why they have not done so until now. They will keep using the potentially decisive character of this sector as means to keep as many valuable units as possible off other areas of the front. I think the Ukrainians will keep trying to succeed in the North Luhansk sector throughout the rest of the autumn and winter or (if RUS loose control over how many people they spend in frontal attacks near Bachmut) possibly attack straight to Doneck, if the Russian lines get thinned there during the winter. Zaporizhia is actually the last place I would expect the Ukrainians to try and mount a winter offensive. They have no purchase there and would have to start developing the battlefield for breakthrough, only to attack into the teeth of relatively best enemy units. Not particularly attractive option.

Some of them must genuinely come from very different assumptions. I think they may take it as granted that Russian army will suck for at least the first year of the war, and then will become gradually more effective through sheer Darwinian attrition. And may assume that in a long war, Russia will just outlast its opponent simply through the depth of manpower and materiel and disregard for losses. And that the morale of Russian units just works in a diffferent way, the threshold of lossess and general misery after which the unit surrenders, runs away or mutinies being significantly higher then elsewhere. Etc. Obviousy, there is a large amount of bat**** crazy stories about Boris Johnson directing the war from Kiev or brigades of Polish mercenaries which are just that. However, some of Russian military bloggers' viewpoint must be at least partially based in reality, because Russians, while not getting closer to any kind of victory, are not losing quickly as predicted by many in the West.

There is another very good sci-fi book which projects drone warfare even further into the future, "The Invincible" by Stanisław Lem. I am not sure how well known it is outside of Poland, but it is very good. It is not military sci-fi, but unmanned warfare is a part of the plot, and it is scary as hell (wont' say more not to spoil it). Notably it was written in 1964.

Before we reach that stage, I think IFVs will specialise in anti-drone warfare. In a combined arms unit, the autocannons on IFV are not fundamental for the unit's attack power vs ground targets. They are nice-to-have kit, but both infantry and light AFVs can be engaged more effectively with tank guns. On the other hand, drone defence is becoming a life-or-death capabliity. So I think that we will see the next generation of IFVs with a bigger calibre autocannons (for altitude) and some kind of dumbed down radar or IR tracking equipment.

Judging by Afghan weddings and funerals, turbans will suffice

Actually, they coluld strip KPV and DshKs from the BTRs and ship them to cities to be remade into anti-drone batteries. They seem to be marginally more effective than rifle calibre guns when mounted in APC's, but could really do God's work when fighting cheap drones. Bringing back the 57mm AA gun into service would be even better, provided not all of them have been scrapped. Until lasers can be used for anti-drone work or fighter drones are perfected, the return to gun AA looks like the only way to fight cheap drones without the defender being forced to expend his AA missile stock on them or spend a fortune constantly restocking.

Actually, they are sowing dragon's teeth so that some warriors grow up from them. Chmobiks have turned out to be not quite warrior material.

Who's the young fella here? I have been reading this forum since 2003, steadily lurking at periscope depth. Well, I lost 1 account and had to open another, so maybe not so steadily, but that's mere formality, a lawyer's quibble I say.

As a side note: You are mixiing up two Polish armies. The Anders Polish army was organised in 1941 out of those, who were not shot in Katyń, survived Gulags and transportation to Siberia or Central Asia. Soon they left Soviet Union via Persia to Palestine and went on to fight in the Middle East and Italy with the British. The other army, which had been organised in 1943 and got the influx of men mobilised in territories reconquered in 1944 was called the Polish People's Army (going by the commander's name, Berling's army, not Anders'). On the main point: I am not interested in whether Red Army is whitewashed or villified by anyone in this forum, I do not think this discussion would lead to any edifying conclusion. It was a horrible organisation, how horrible? How long is a piece of string? What I am interested is this: I have read opinions that by 1944 (or 1945) Red Army was so depleted on men that it had to rely on people mobilised in the reconquered territories in order to keep fighting effectively. I have not seen any data to prove or disprove this point, though, but maybe someone else on this forum has. The Wikipedia data about losses during the entire war does not really weigh on this point either way, being too aggregated.

Believe it or not, I am actually interested in the answer to the question what proportion of RKKA in 1944 onwards were Russians and what proportion were others, including the men mobilised from the reconquered territories. - as I wrote in my post. Not so much in the other stuff you mention now.

This is not the point Kraze was making. He specifically referred to the period after 1944 as the time when the Russians were in the minority and to the period 1941-1942 when it was mostly Russians fighting. The Wikipedia statistics quoted above are for the whole war so they do not refute his point, as it is possible that the majority of ethnic Russians casualties happened in the first phase of the war. There is evidence for Soviets conscripting heavily from the regions vacated by the Germans as soon as the front moved further west. I would be very interested if someone has the data specifically for 1944 onwards.

This is how it should be. However, the affected countries probably have to make the first move of making an international scandal of this. So far Sweden and Germany have been quiet.

Apologies in advance to the German forum members and the good Herr Oberst, it is uncalled for but I could not help myself. The title of this is so Deutsche Wochenschau 1943....

There are many Ukrainians working in Poland, so now is our turn to return the favour.

Better still, you can make a Babushka Doll of a Russian soldier if you manage to score a direct hit and put one inside him.

Causeway?

Of course. Wunderwaffen and Volkssturm will turn the tide of the war.

Wszystkiego najlepszego!

They are really scraping the barrel!

We will see, but the intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers which the Ukrainians post from time to time on the Internet show the Russian soldiers to be EXTREMELY resigned to their fate, apathetic and tolerant of abuse. They expected to be sent on suicide missions, not fed, not supplied, etc. They grumbled about it freely and some of them talked about trying various beaurocratic excuses for getting back and not fighting, but nothing more energetic. No talk of mutiny, no talk of desertion.

Sure. Wars emphatically are about collective guilt and collective punishment, which is assumed to happen in war. If you are an enemy combatant, the other side is presumed to be trying to kill you with full intent and premeditation, yet legally . Solely because someone in your country told you (even forced you) to put on the uniform, without any relation to your individual actions. This is preciselys what differentiates war from law enforcement. Murder of civilans during war is morally wrong an/or morally prohibited but not because of the "collective punishment" angle, which is a concept from a different order of affairs, but because it exceeds the level of violence culturally considered to be acceptable in order to resolve conflicts between groups, by targeting people who are generally considered to be ineffectual in that conflict.

The man is from a country fighting a war against genocidal enemy. His is a different perspective. I think that this would be the case for many other forum members, if we were in his place. War is by definition collective violence and by definition makes people guilty by association and enemies for no other reason, than their nationality. This extends to emotions about the enemy, which of course tends to be hate. The imperative not to say anything racist or "hate-speachy" is something for people not concerned with life or death or, yes, feelings of revenge for the destruction of their country and barbaric murder of their compatriots. Let us respect that this is a different situation and move along. Nobody is required to support what Kraze is saying but it should be acknowledged this is something else than trolling about WW2 war crimes or Middle East ethnic issues, which the forum rules are intended to prevent.

He will very dramatically commit suicide just before going on air. His last words being the traditional farewell speech of Soviet/Russian suicides: "Comrades, don't shoot, I too am a Communist !"

One small correction - it was not the Warsaw ghetto, but Warsaw entire. Warsaw ghetto fought in 1943. The rest of Warsaw in August 1944, which is when Russians got close, but stopped on the other side of Vistula (some say: were stopped by effective German defence; I would say that they were stopped initially, but then took their sweet time to get back moving.)