G.I. Joe

https://www.leonardodrs.com/what-we-do/products-and-services/m-shorad/
Army is taking delivery of these. They need to ship to Ukraine direct from the factory.

Bourgeoises )

So sorry for you & your fellow citizens.  Ongoing war crime.  Makes my blood boil and I'm not even there.  I hope Putin pays for this with his life, and soon.

...
“Please imagine how Ukrainians understand negotiations,” former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko told the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday. “You are sitting in your own house, the killer comes to your house and kills your wife, rapes your daughter, takes the second floor, then opens the door to the second floor and says, ‘OK come here. Let’s have a negotiation.’ What would be your reaction?”
...

Well violence against the Other is the purpose of almost every military, it is the form, structure and regulations of that violence that is the issue.
While it is clearly possible for a social culture framework to be constructed to be supportive of brutal violence against Others - history is literally filled with such examples, I am not sure as to what level it exists within Russia itself.  There has been historical evidence (eg mass rape in occupied Germany) and contemporary evidence. However there is also counter-evidence such as mass exodus, particularly of the highly educated.  Further as has been expounded upon here on this forum Russian society is not homogeneous, so we may have a social dynamic as acceptable with some sections but less so in others.
I am also pretty sure that few are capable of an objective analysis of Russian society given the events of the last 8 month - internally or externally.  It is likely going to need further study once the war is over.
As to the effects of war crimes on the RA, I still argue the social dimension is unknown.  Obviously Russia is not some blissful peace loving nation and now it’s troops have gone all medieval.  However, Russian society as a whole is likely also not employing 10th century calculus to the problem either or we would be seeing much worse.  From a military dimension the effects of unregulated war crimes are likely akin to corruption itself, cumulative.  The logic of corruption gets pretty “anti-cohesive” pretty fast - “well the Col is screwing the Gen, so we can screw him over too”.  War crimes and overt brutality can be just as corrosive if they are pursued for individual interests over collective interests outside of a structured framework.
Beyond the question of military cohesion, war crimes are also highly counter productive in accomplishing military objectives themselves. The damage in the larger justifying-war narratives, the increased resistance effect on an opponent, waste of resources and the severe hit to credibility for any future negotiations is incredibly damaging to actually winning a war.  In this war they also translate directly into western support, and as upside down as the political level is in Russia they realize this as demonstrated by the ridiculous denial efforts.  No matter how hard it tries Russia cannot exist in its own bubble in 2022, and they know it.
In the end I suspect the overall effect of war criminality within the RA has not been a net positive - how much is a big unknown.  Externally their behaviour has been a complete disaster.  We are talking a UNSC member, P5 and G20 continually violating international laws of war - on a near daily basis.  A few anomalies are tolerated, so long as efforts are demonstrated to correct - what we are seeing from the RA in Ukraine is going to cost Russia dearly for decades. I suspect they will be on the bench next to North Korea for at least a couple generations at this rate - if they do not simply fall apart.

Short thread about Russian cult of WWII. Nothing new, but worth reading nonetheless if somebody is wandering how much they believe in it:
 

Very well said - on both counts.
Canada has has a few high profile cases of soldiers forgetting that and civilians were very, very unhappy about it. I dare say it derailed the normal news for a long time even when investigations were done and those that crossed the line were punished. I, also a civilian, spent a lot of time explaining things and trying to share that the right things were being done and the sky was not actually falling. It was an uphill battle.

Contents of new arms package from the US. Looks like the AA machine-gun is making an unexpected comeback to the battlefields. I wonder if declared UK "AA guns" aren't in fact Oerlikons...
 

Absolute peace on this.  I have stated repeatedly that this is a single incident that is in need of a thorough investigation...and then and only then can a determination of a war crime on either side be be made and charges laid for due legal process.  
Nor is this an indicator of wider UA behaviour as far as we have seen.  There was that one kneecapping incident - and I have no doubt there have been others because: scared/angry/tired kids + ammunition = **** happens.  So there is not inclination to blow this out of proportion here.
However, what is important is that the UA and Ukraine are seen and recognized as doing the investigation and follow up, as well as re-tightening rules of engagement etc.  That way they demonstrate that they are better than the RA by leaps and bounds.  Further, entry into NATO after this war is over will no doubt require closing these cases regardless.
Finally, why make Russia's life easier?  Gawd knows what people like Col Macgregor are going to to with this in those echo chambers out there.  Last thing Ukraine needs to question marks on their way of warfare from people already tired of hearing of this war, and losing interest in paying for it in the middle of a recession.  As Steve said - the second the west cannot tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian behaviors, clearly, the whole damn gig is at risk.  
And then there is this.  I think it is very fair to say that we here on this forum and thread are very pro-Ukrainian.  We have been pushing back against the "Ukraine is doomed" from Day One largely based on tactical observation from the ground.  But we should not be blindly pro-Ukrainian, which frankly appears to be the direction some people want to go, and I for one do not support it in the least.
This is supposed to be a place where military experts, enthusiast and historical nerds can get together and observe this war through an objective lens and conduct collective analysis.  The second we jump on the "Ukraine can do no wrong" and "Lulz Russia always sux because Russia" train (despite evidence to the contrary), we will lose any objectivity we have.  The second we start supporting - even passively - some of the frankly immensely stupid extremist ideas floating around e.g. demonizing every Russian man, woman and child, lobbying for cultural genocide or worse, or some bizarre "war crimes are just ok, well ours are..." narratives, then we start the steady slide into a true internet cesspool, which frankly is beneath us all.

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.

The Sea King - Flying Yesterday's Aircraft Tomorrow!

Very interesting development, I think it is the first purely Western aircraft that Ukraine gets. It proves  that there was some covert training of UA pilots done - now waiting for handover of F-16 and Eurofighters
 

Absolutely agree with this.  In fact this entire incident aside my main aim was to clear up misinformation and mythology around the LOAC.  We have already had the “RA troops in civies can be shot by the roadside” misinformation. We do not need a “all POWs are fair game for treatment from an MG because one nitwit decided to go down blazing…see Geneva Conventions says so because, perfidy”. And we really do not need the open promotion of retaliatory war crimes as some sort of weird “levelling the playing field”, thanks to BFCElvis for weighing in on that one.
If this thread has any hope of remaining objective and level-headed we need to all keep a bead on this kind of stuff, even when - especially when -things get emotional and hard to take.  
 

Agree.
But if the UA is smart, it will crack down hard on the unauthorised sharing and uploading of videos by its troops. This is a military discipline issue.
Sorry, GenZ, deal with it for the duration.
This kind of incident is simply not going to stop happening in war, no matter how well you train your troops. You dehumanise the guys who are trying to kill you and that doesn't flick on and off like a switch. I see it as the equivalent of an unlucky mortar round dropping on the guys involved. Hard luck.
There will always be Monday morning quarterbacks (not including anyone here in that) feeding on the visual 'evidence'. There's no way to win that game, so just don't play.
...If a drone operator comes across a group of prisoners being gunned down in the woods, well that's a whistleblowing situation and rather different.  A well run military will  investigate that, even if it chooses not to try it in the court of public opinion in the moment.

Are we talking the grenade tossing episode or combat coming from outside the incident?
“The LOAC states that as soon as those RA troops came “into the hands” or “under the power” of then UA troops the combat between these two parties was over because the RA troops were legally POWs.  Once the grenade was tossed the central question to be answered is whether that lone soldier was re engaging in combat in an act of perfidy? And/or was the rest of that RA soldiers unit also re engaging or had the intent to re-engage.
If the UA unit were to come under fire from a third RA unit, they actually have the obligation to protect and extract the RA POWs. And nothing in LOAC says they can mow them down because a third party is shooting at them.
Look, I get it.  Ukrainian members on the forum really want to promote that the UA kept its hands clean. However, unrighteous shoots happen in warfare all the time - this the a harsh reality of combat.  How a nation is judged is by how it responds to and ensures that any party who engages in these actions is prosecuted under a military legal system.  Here they are afforded full legal protections under domestic law and a fair trial that will take into account all factors.  
Now if the UA is smart - and frankly I really think they very much are, far smarter than a few posters on this board - they will conduct an investigation etc with transparency etc, and the news cycle will move on with the footnote “Ukrainian authorities are investigating the incident in full and will share the results with its western partners”.  These sorts of investigations can take freakin months or years so we will be on to a new crisis before long while whatever this is fades to the background.
Or you can make a ton of counter-productive noise, bite the hand that is trying very hard - against some it it’s own electorates - to keep you from becoming a Russian province and provide a steady stream of sound bites for the pro-Russian crowd who are circling.

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. 

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 this was not a shot at you personally.  More the love-hate relationship with the western military industrial complex.  When aligned with military strategy industry can do (and has) amazing things - like win the Cold War.  However, these guys are in this for additional reasons outside defending national interests, like their own interests.  So we have been on the receiving end of more military snake oil in the last 30 years than I care to remember.  
Add to this the deep internal resistance to change by both the industrial complex and militaries themselves and we have a recipe for truly epic screw ups in the next 10-20 years.  Warfare is moving - I, and others in the business, have felt the trembles for years.  And I suspect it is not incremental shift we are talking about. The militaries on top, who are heavily invested in a certain paradigm, do not historically do well in times of major shifts...we shall see. 

I agree with this.  Look, we are talking about thousands of pounds of HE being flung around that theatre on nearly an hourly basis.  Although we talk about precision and its effects on the modern battlespace a lot here, the reality is that warfare is still a human activity and as such will be prone to human error in either the manufacture or employment of weapon systems.  
It is tragic that two innocent people in Poland got killed in this strike but people do not need to do a Zapruder Film level of analysis here - a weapon system went way off target (experts are leaning toward a UA GBAD system) and landed where it was not supposed to.  This validates The_Capt's Rule of War #18 - in war things get broke - if you don't want things to get war-broke, don't go to war.  How many incidents of US/western "whoopsies" with long range fires are out there from Afghan weddings to the freakin Chinese embassy on Belgrade?
These are not an international conspiracy or complex disinformation operation - a freakin missile went off course and landed on a farm.  Again, this really sucks for the victims and their families, but this is not a strategic turning point etc.  What this does do is highlight just how dangerous this stupid war is, and how easy it would be for mistakes to lead to uncontrolled escalation. 

Nice clip (in english).
 

It's war.  Unexpected consequences occur in war all the time.  This is one.  It's sad, but I wouldn't expect anyone with half a brain to jump off the Ukraine side in terms of full support who wasn't already looking for excuses (Hungary) to do that.  
Most countries will remember that Ukraine was trying to defend itself from a missile attack by Russia.
This, while unfortunate, will be looked at that way by all of Ukraine's allies.

WHOA!  wants to live in an evidence-based reality???  and willing to change his beliefs based on evidence?  Excellent example to those who live in a belief-based reality, where when evidence/reality conflicts w belief one simply denies reality.  

Zelensky seems to be back on the right track already:
 

With all due respect kraze, this one thing is not about Ukraine, and taking this position only harms your cause at the moment. What happened, happened, nobody will hold it against you, but avoiding responsibility and hiding behind a conspiracy is 100% counterproductive, and can quickly lead to a diplomatic crisis with far going consequences.