Maquisard manqué
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Posts posted by Maquisard manqué
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22 minutes ago, chris talpas said:
Looking at the footage especially the buildings not showing blast damage but more structural collapse my money right now says structural failure through neglect and incompetence in flow management from the Russian side
I’m sure there is a lot you could do to lead a dam to overtop or fail in other ways. Given time and intentional (or not) neglect it would happen by itself.
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53 minutes ago, billbindc said:
The implications of Patriots being able to handle a complex, dense attack of pretty much everything Russia has contains strategic implications that go far beyond the war in Ukraine. Chinese calculations about Taiwan were just revised negatively yet again.
Yes and no. Where sufficient AD is deployed, it seems to work resoundingly well (if everything was indeed intercepted over Kiev), but other cities were also hit and there were fatalities, which suggests that either there isn’t the same coverage everywhere, or that it didn’t work as well in places other than Kiev.
Can Ukraine/NATO afford to saturate Ukraine with AD to the level it has in Kiev? If not, I imagine the Russians will switch to a wider strategy of secondary or tertiary cities. Less effective in some ways (propaganda not as good), but still likely to cause damage and loss of life - which seems to be all the Russian state gets out of bed for.
Even overmatched systems are still lethal and effective if used intelligently/ruthlessly.
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34 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
I say sounds good but pretty cost inefficient. Finnish XA-185 cost about 0.5million and Stryker costs about 4.5million. Is it 10x more effective?
Better would be to get single type more cost efficient vehigle. But maybe there is none avaivable and USA feels like spending it, is all good.
But the US has the Strikers in stock and wants to get rid of them… perfect opportunity. Another maintenance headache for Ukraine though, unless the vehicle platform has any commonality with anything else given already.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63746304
I can’t imagine how hard it is to live under the bombs with the cold and winter starting. I hope the Eu and US resolve remains strong and support is provided for the civilian population as much as the Ukrainian army.
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4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Wow! Next thing you know a Russian will say "Ukrainians really do seem to think they are a real nation separate from Russia. Was it really worth destroying our nation to prove it?"
How did that (massive) flag make it through the occupation? Quick work if that was made since the Russians left.
Or maybe the crisis actors brought it with them? (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
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Apologies if this has already been posted but the BBC have a documentary series on Russia and the experience of “surviving the fall of Communism and Democracy”. There are no talking heads. It’s basically archive footage with minimal text narration. I’ve found it quite insightful but I also realise BBC access isn’t available for all…
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3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Well, I think we know why Russia let this particular French reporter into Kherson
Steve
Bit of an awkward/clumsy time for the connection to drop though! Very much looks like “Cut!” was shouted by a producer.
Seems the reporter was allowed to say the Russians were having a hard time of it, maybe on the quid pro quo of detailing Ukrainian strikes at civilian infrastructure in their own city.
Question is, is it happening as she said or not? Probably - I can’t see why not. Despite being a bleeding heart liberal I’m not terribly surprised or shocked. I’d presume Ukraine took an informed judgement of who would be in that hospital - I.e not civvies, or not many of them. -
20 minutes ago, kraze said:
But that's the thing. There's no core ethnicity in Russia. Every time some russian "nat" complains about other ethnicities - even I, being their neighbor, have no idea what he's talking about, especially since russian "nats" themselves look like a huge mix of all the ethnicities present in Russia.
But maybe hopefully every and each one of those 20-30 ethnicities in Russia considering themselves the "main" one is what leads to brutal downfall of the empire.
Isn’t it actually a lot simpler and cruder? Whether someone has whiter skin? That’s your common-or-garden racist starting point.
Each country’s own social & ethnic makeup then results in more elaborate definitions of the “ok” group, but it’s always such a flawed definition- e.g. US, UK etc. fundamentally it’s just about people looking different and then a rationale being made to fit.
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4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Sheesh... you know it's a slow day in OSINT combat news when ISW has their daily report out late evening my time instead of into the wee hours of the night.
This interesting bit in a section on Prigozhin caught my eye:
I hope we see Grigb back again soon so he can tell us what this all means
There's a good discussion about how Putin's end to the partial mobilization left things a mess that is providing ingredients for larger social conflict (see above comment by Wagner's PR)
Steve
It sounds like ultra Nationalist/right wing scare mongering about a “great replacement” that has been encouraged by state media and absorbed as fact by broader society. Blaming their state for allowing other ethnicities in - even though they depend on them. So it’s kind of backfiring on the Russian state to have pushed this nationalist & racist crap.
There is a video on bbc (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63237327) of a Russian draft dodger in Istanbul who also talks about it as a current concern - for him more than h the war in Ukraine I think, despite it making him leave his newborn child and cycle to Georgia! -
54 minutes ago, panzermartin said:
What are they hitting with the small kamikaze drones in downtown Kiev? From the start of this war the russian raids seemed to be random and lacked focus.
Pure terrorism.
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21 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:
From the article. This seems about right. No matter who next occupies the Russian hot seat, it's a pretty safe bet:
“What I think happens next,” he added, “is probably a time of troubles.” - Laurie Bristow, a former British ambassador to Russia.Given MI6 is running the whole show, he ought to know!
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30 minutes ago, MikeyD said:
I recall ten years ago discussions about what the future Syrian government would look like after the ouster of Assad. That didn't pan out quite the way we hoped, either.
Like?
[edit: I agree but am not sure if a +1 or like quite captures how I feel. I’m not being snarky]
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2 minutes ago, panzermartin said:
To borrow Kraze's phrasing early in this thread, empires either expand or crumble. There is so much to win in Ukraine war for US.
Your main adversary since the end of WW2 will be kaput.
If you achieve this with no nuclear holocaust, a deadly threat of almost a century will cease to exist and rival you.
West for the first time will have the chance to securely expand so deep towards East.
Black Sea no longer primarily a Russian lake.
Containment of China becoming more possible.
A blow to Europe's economical and political strength and thus autonomy.
US returning to the continent and reestablishing itself as the dominant player, like in post WW2.
Gaining the upper hand in the energy game.
Troublemakers Syria, Iran will probably suucumb after Russia's collapse.
Turkey back in NATO yard.
Honestly, the gains are too many to count... And all this without loss of US personnel.
In your opinion why US is that much involved in Ukraine ?
I’d largely agree with the US - Russia bits but the US - EU stuff is pretty off the wall. A peaceful and stronger EU is best for the US, they’re partners and share the burden (ideally!) of the current/US economic and political order (rules based system as some call it, but it’s not like others don’t have rules…).
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6 minutes ago, Huba said:
Regarding UA specifically, they will have to get all this stuff right before they join. I can imagine some shortcuts being taken in economic sphere perhaps, or in some minutiae of the law, but the basics have to be there.
Speaking more broadly, I think we are back to the inherent weakness of democracy as such, namely our ability to vote in some kind of Austrian painter. In essence I don't see how we could save ourselves from that, apart from being a decent people and society. And, as a declared optimist, I think it works pretty good for the West as a whole, with some notable exceptions (Poland included lately
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One positive thought for the near future I think (partially of the tinfoil kind) is that most of greatest insults to the democratic system we chose lately (including Trump, Brexit party, Orban, perhaps even PiS in Poland) were to a degree an effect of RU meddling in our affairs. I don't see how this continue in the future, I'm sure that anybody that can be even remotely connected to Russia will be burned from the get go, at least in general. And especially in CEE - any RU connections are lava around here lately.
Yes, agreed. But I guess that’s why blind faith in “the right thing” happening doesn’t seem wise or appropriate, however great Zelensky and his govt has been so far.
Think the thread has already treated the discomfort of those having taken RU cash, which may remain touchy and I’m happy not to return to!
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53 minutes ago, Huba said:
Sorry but this narrative gets me irritated ( to keep with the allowed vocabulary :P). What stops FR from voting Le Pen into the president's office? The BREXIT people in UK? UE has this general problem with democracy, which unfortunately leads to various non-liberals being chosen ( by the unwashed hoi polloi, I'm first to admit it).
In no way I see UA being more problematic than other members here, why would they? If anything, they are more motivated to keep in line, at least for the time being.Well the point is about much more than elections. It’s the checks and balances that prevent too much power being exercised by anyone, but especially the crackpots, that are what this is really about. What’s so shocking (and unusual) about Brexit and Trump is how far both went/go despite the systems. What the ruling parties, with significant majorities, in Poland and Hungary have done is hollow out the checks and balances that protect minorities and preserve a measure of stability. Lots of the checks in a mature democracy are quite intangible - convention, rather than what’s inked in the constitution.
Edit: War and ‘temporary measures’ are a more respectable justification for checks and balances to be eroded. A further reason for why some of the ideas about the peace are hair raising - what could happen without those protections?
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1 hour ago, FancyCat said:
I don't think there's anything wrong with suspension of normality during war and obviously there will be a period of reintegration. EU influence on Ukraine will keep Ukraine from getting too anti-democratic or repressive, and Ukraine's civil society looks to be holding up well. We have no idea the will of the population in the pre-invasion regions now. I'm not sure how uncertainty about reintegration equals a scenario where the West needs to fret about Ukraine retaking all her territory back.My only thoughts about reintegration stem from American history. Military occupation and administration of the southern states, lasted 12 years and in my opinion should have lasted way longer and been harsher. But comparing reintegrations like that has no value and offers little in the way of lessons.
Not sure the EU has managed to avoid Hungary or Poland’s slide away from democratic liberty. What would make Ukraine different? Tbh the fact Ukraine has currently such a long way to go to acceding to the EU is almost all about it’s systems of governance and their robustness (or lack of) to corrosion/corruption. So I’m not sure there’s a lot of blind faith in Ukraine…
Zelensky and his govt have impressed, but what if the next lot are different?
NATO membership is in some ways much simpler. Who are your troops going to fight and how reliable are they? How much do we need you? (Why yes please join us Turkey)
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10 minutes ago, acrashb said:
And in other, non-political news:
Russia removes submarines from Crimea to avoid Ukraine’s firepower, UK says – POLITICO
Kilo-class submarine - WikipediaUkraine must have something that threatens shallow-water subs and gets more threatening as the front moves closer to the black sea. I thought the only things that threatened submerged subs were other subs and ships, so either the RA expects Ukraine to soon increase it's surface fleet presence (which seems unlikely), or there is some land air launched missile that can hit a sub.
Could be one of those stealth deployments that we hear about after something goes boom, because I've not seen anything in the news.
Surely it’s about the risk of the subs being hit in port?
Huba got there first.
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2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:
Sure, and Dem Deutschen Volk, similarly, had no excuse not to know better before enlisting en masse in Hitler's death cult.
That all had little to do with my original point, but our friend chose to beat his usual drum, as he does on cue whenever anyone suggests some kind of future where any (*shudder!*) Russians might actually dig out of their current civilisational rut.
It’s quite predictable and invariably one dimensional. Almost like what an algorithm might generate. Content seems to tend to two classifications: Russians are subhuman evil things, or jokes about Russian incompetence.
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2 hours ago, chuckdyke said:
If there were free elections in Russia even a German Shepherd would beat putin.
Depends what you mean by “free”! As others have said, tomorrow you’d not get much difference from the last election. There’s been decades of propaganda and oppression undermining the freedom and fairness of debate in Russia politics. So what people think and know is so conditioned they couldn’t really vote otherwise.
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1 hour ago, kraze said:
I mean there was a video where one of those teachers boldly stated that if need arises he will take a sniper rifle and go kill some Ukrainians.
So russians said: OK.
Best part is that these bastards can't be considered POWs according to international law, just criminals.
Isn’t that the same logic for Russia’s treatment of reputedly (contested by Russia) humanitarian aid workers being killed in Ukraine?
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3 hours ago, The_Capt said:
To be honest the simplest answer to most of these points has been staring us in the face this entire war - precision indirect fires. I have seen no heavy assaults on RA strong points but we have seen a near endless stream of precision strikes on everything.
If a hybrid light infantry force meets a strong point - one that ISR somehow missed - the answer so far seems “call in Excalibur”. If indirect is becoming so precise, why drag a bunch of heavy metal along? Add to this indirect fire ranges are getting really long. Steve makes a good counter-factual analogy, here is a pro-factual; what if the UA had 400 HIMARs systems? Each light Bn had a battery on call…do I need to bring steel to strongpoint now?
Not thought/seen that comparison before… So what is the relative cost and logistics or maintenance tail requirement for precision indirect fire vs armour?
Can armour be realistically defended against such weapons through inbuilt systems? Or would it require combined arms to resist precise indirect fire (as has been discussed here already)?
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12 minutes ago, Cederic said:
Sorry, but that's a weird interpretation.
This is not forced migration. This is not genocide.
As for nationalism, Russian nationalism led to this war. You're not going to convince me that Russian nationalists are the victims here.
Well, given that a significant proportion of eastern Ukrainian people identified as Russian in the last few decades of census’s, and that there have been plenty of collaborators for the Russian invasion, it’s quite likely they are fleeing more than just the immediate fighting.
As the people who identified more with Ukrainian than Russian Nationality fled the Russian occupation, those who maybe were happy to be Russian will now flee the Ukrainian reconquest.
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8 minutes ago, Cederic said:
That would be utterly insane.
Forcibly evicting a civilian population is a UN definition of genocide.
Managing a highly pro-Russian civilian population (e.g. Crimea with all its Russian occupiers) is a miserable nightmare.
Letting pro-Russian civilians peaceably return to Russia before you even regain administrative control of the areas in which they live? It's an utter no-brainer. Let them flee! Allow them to return to the country to which their heart belongs.
I can't see a downside either.
They may not see much difference between being evicted or moving because they are afraid of reprisals. They’ll certainly think they had no choice but to leave.
That can look like forced migration, arguably is, and will get stretched to genocide too.
Another sad part of the human tragedy of this stupid war, and another reminder of why nationalism is so toxic to peace and prosperity.
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1 minute ago, The_Capt said:
So I am not going to reopen the "tanks are dead...no they are not" debate...please gawd no.
However, is it just me or do light forces seem to be leading on this whole thing again? I am sure there has been some heavy action but we still are not seeing big armor from the UA - unless I am missing something?
Maybe they’re too busy (or wise) to fight one handed, with their phones held outside the tank?
).
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
There are Gurkhas and Gurkhas. The UK takes the best, then India. Pretty much anyone from Nepal or adjoining areas of India could call themselves Gurkha soldiers, but they might not be actual Gurkhas, let alone from Nepal - or even Gurkhali.