Der Zeitgeist
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Posts posted by Der Zeitgeist
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On 12/2/2022 at 9:50 AM, Der Zeitgeist said:
I hope they don't waste their time and resources going for the Russian power grid.
More useful to try and smuggle a mortar team or some drones to Saratov...
Hmmmm....
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6 minutes ago, paxromana said:
Lavrov has claimed that Ukraine's power infrastructure is a legitimate military target ...
Which means, if he even thought about it for a second, that Russia's power infrastructure is also a legitimate target.
I can presciently hear the screams of outrage at Ukrainian Terrorist Attacks coming from him and the Rat Czar if Ukraine staged such attacks.
Hypocrites one and all.
I hope they don't waste their time and resources going for the Russian power grid.
More useful to try and smuggle a mortar team or some drones to Saratov...
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6 hours ago, RockinHarry said:
Thanks. Guess the few that got delivered are only used at key areas protecting key UKR installations anyway. Who´s delivering ammo btw? IIRC the swiss refused.
I'm not following this in every detail, but AFAIK, Nammo in Norway was seen a secondary source for ammunition, but they may have some problems producing the FAPDS rounds that the Gepard is apparently most effective with. Now the German government is putting some additional pressure on Switzerland, I guess we'll have to see how that goes.
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1 hour ago, RockinHarry said:
Btw is there any known success rates of Gepards already?
There's very little detailed information, other than they're apparently working well against drones and the Ukrainians are urgently asking for more ammo. A few days ago, there was a video from Odessa that apparently shows some Gepard fire in the night sky.
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Zelensky: 30% of Ukraine's power plants destroyed in one week.
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51 minutes ago, Mattias said:
What actually did happen on the 10th, and how bad was it really?
(...)
So, what are your thoughts, have I misunderstood this? Should Putin's gestures have anyone really shaking in their boots?
The way I see it:
Russia thinks it now found a way to pull an "Allied Force" on Ukraine, so to speak. If you look at Russian channels, all they speak about the last few days is the Ukrainian power grid, and which parts of it they already managed to take out.
I guess the plan is simple: Turn off the lights and heat in Ukraine so they have to sue for peace during the winter.
Will it work? I guess it comes down to how robust the Ukrainian energy and heating grid is, if the Ukrainians (and the West) can manage to improve air defenses further, and how many cruise missiles Russia still has to keep up their air campaign.
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8 minutes ago, chrisl said:
Maybe it's an accurate x-ray and the second rear axle is a dummy so it looks like a heavier truck than it really is?
The Russian story is that this truck (the one that was x-rayed) wasn't the one that eventually exploded on the bridge, but the one that was used to bring the explosives to Russia.
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1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
I did not know Ukraine was getting 4 batteries of IRIS-T.
I hope these things work alright.
There's been so much hype around IRIS-T for months now.
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2 minutes ago, keas66 said:
Other than the Symbolic Gesture though - Russian achieved what exactly ?
The domestic nationalist critics calling for total war are probably going to shut up for a week or so. That's the most important effect for Putin, anything else is secondary.
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6 minutes ago, chrisl said:
Or could be at the beginning/end where it's back on land with ties and ballast.
The bridge has gravel below the tracks. It's easy to compare with older images.
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Just now, MikeyD said:
We say Ukraine but lets remember a lot of Russians are really REALLY pissed with mass conscription, especially in ethnic minority areas. That lowers the probability that Ukraine did it from 98% to 78% (still pretty darned high). How would Ukraine get 2 tons of explosives onto a truck driving out of Krasnodar?
By bribing a few key people.
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On 4/14/2022 at 11:43 PM, Der Zeitgeist said:
You bribe an underpaid railway worker to put a package in a certain railcar when the next train with artillery munitions is scheduled to go across the bridge.
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1 minute ago, cesmonkey said:
With Russia reinforcing their lines with thousands of under-equipped, under-trained, newly-mobilized soldiers, what is it that Ukraine most urgently needs at the moment?
Or as Secretary of Defense Austin says, providing Ukraine what it needs "for the current fight"?
More artillery and ammunition?
Western tanks, APCs, and IFVs?
Easy-to-use and support attack aircraft?All of the above, plus massive support in training their newly mobilized soldiers.
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Since everyone seems to be going crazy about nukes these days, this article by Timothy Snyder about how the war might actually end is especially worth reading:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war
TLDR: It's probably not by nuclear war, but by a gradual shift in Russian perceptions about the war led both by setbacks on the battlefield and political crisis at home.
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1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:
A good analysis by a German colonel. The translator in settings does a decent job. Title Ukraine offensive operations, Russia under pressure.
I'm always amazed about how well the Google AI translation seems to handle this typical "Bundeswehr speech". I mean, for normal people, this kind of talk with its weird expressions and sentence structure is barely comprehensible in German.
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Michael Weiss has some interesting points about the NY Times article and what the reasoning of the US might be of leaking that info now (it's an entire thread):
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Whoa....
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7 minutes ago, MikeyD said:
There's some irony in "LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT OWN RISK" when its the con sites that are pushing the Kremlin propaganda.
I still remember "Daily Kos" from the early 2000s, when it was one of the biggest Anti-Bush & Anti-War sites. Now they're doing detailed frontline reports on the counteroffensives against the Russians.
What fascinating times we live in.
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2 hours ago, Haiduk said:
The area near border crossing point Hoptivka, Kharkiv oblast
One thing I've always asked myself:
What is the current situation on the Ukrainian border crossings with Belarus and Russia, where the counteroffensives pushed right up to the border? Are the crossing points operational in some way, or is this just a front line now?
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1 hour ago, FancyCat said:
What I always find fascinating about these kind of pictures of the Ukrainian military is the quiet professionalism that they seem to emit. That was something noticeable from the first hours of the war. Whatever the situation, they always seem to know exactly what they're doing.
In a few years, these guys will be training us, not the other way around.
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1 minute ago, FancyCat said:
perfect timing too, the pipelines getting cut, Putin's mafia state is making it clear that if Germany tries to assist Ukraine or raise its assistance, there will be no more NS1 or NS2, now does Germany fold, or does Germany do what's right?
Like I said earlier, this wasn't about NS 1 or 2, but about presenting a threat to the other pipelines that are actually important now.
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Just a few points about the pipeline sabotage and Germany's behaviour re: supplying modern MBTs & IFVs:
It's pretty obvious that the SPD in the German government and especially chancellor Scholz have pretty serious reservations on the whole Leopard & Marder issue. The public line was not wanting to diminish the capabilities of the Bundeswehr even further and also a risk of unwanted escalation vs. Russia. Publicly, this escalation risk was often framed in terms of not wanting to risk World War 3 or provoking nuclear weapons use.
Personally, I also think that there's a hidden agenda in Germany's and also other NATO countries' policy in that they want to prevent Ukraine becoming so powerful that it would lead to a rapid military collapse of Russia with a risk of nuclear use once Ukrainian tanks start rolling into Crimea.
I think what we see today in the Baltic Sea is simply Russia demonstrating that they still have the capability of switching off large parts of the natural gas supply to Europe. NS 1&2 might have been meant as demonstration, one that doesn't have any immediate effects on energy markets (because the pipelines didn't supply gas at the moment) but that presents a clear show of Russian capabilities.
Logically, the next target on the list would then be the natural gas infrastructure in the North Sea from Norway to Western Europe, especially the crucial node at the Draupner-E distribution platform, which would cut off about 25% of current supply and completely tank European energy markets and industrial production.
Seen like that, I wouldn't expect Germany's position on MBT or IFV shipments to change massively, not after today's demonstration.
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Photo from the Samarkand summit. Note who's missing on the picture.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
At Engels and Ryazan, on the same night?