Maquisard manqué

It's interesting to see the discussion on traitors from someone whose country was founded by traitors. Tea party anybody? But for clarity I was referring to war memorials and war graves (the Soviet one in Tiergarten is both) and not monuments.
As a reminder, Ukrainian soldiers fought for the Soviets in World War 2 and are almost certainly also buried in Tiergarten.
That means that they share culpability for the crimes of the Soviet armies. I find it prejudiced and dehumanising to try and label an entire people though for the acts of a few. Whatever the war crimes - rape, pillage, torture, shooting POWs in the leg - I fully support prosecuting all of them, whoever committed them, but prosecute the individuals, don't go blaming the innocent people near them.
As Ukraine regains Donbas that's going to be important. Western support will vanish rapidly if Ukrainians embark on a spree of revenge instead of adopting an evidence based approach to actual justice.

Ever heard the saying "Two wrongs don't make a right"?
You said:
"But nobody will object that they had every right to do this in german territory as retaliation ."
Which is categorically untrue. Lots of people object that they had this right for "retaliatory" purposes. It doesn't matter what living under the Nazi boot was like. They did not have that right.
Now, that doesn't mean it's impossible to understand why they felt great rage. Understanding their state of mind isn't the same as condoning their behaviour, though.

ROFL, no, no one has the right to rape and pillage as retaliation. That's the same sort of effed up logic we are seeing the Russians use right now in Ukraine.
C'mon, get your head on straight.

Steve, 
May I suggest that you need a  button?

Ukrainian Air Force bombed Snake Island:

Oh yes. You can even see it from space.

I'm actually pretty sympathetic towards germans. I respect their way of doing things, the traditional economy of family business, and yes a country that had suffered so much is a wiser country. My friends paint me as germanophile because of my obsession with Ww2 history, the German technology, aesthetics etc since I was a kid ignoring the "evil" side of this . I have cycled all their country along the Elba and I buy tons of german Weiss beer every year:)  
But I will never tolerate people whitewashing of crimes of the Nazi period or rewriting history. And I will always be critical on their leading role in EU when it becomes profit over people. 
Things have gotten much better between us since the 2015 crisis, I'm glad we stayed and I hope for a better european future...
Now I'm bittered with all what's happening...Actually my dream was to see the past rivals, that bled each other so much in WW2, Germany and Russia coming closer together in a peaceful way. This is shattered now... 

Maybe I'm missing something here but the removal of the tanks from the Tiergarten didn't literally happen? It looks like a number of cut together clips and then some editing as a sort of ad so I don't quite get why people have been arguing over it for 2-3 pages.

Leaving statues and monuments is a daily act of violence against the affected communities. Just like the statue of Saddam in Bahgdad and the various statues of Stalin and Lenin in the former Soviet bloc, the statues of Colston and all the traitorous US generals can FRO. 
Edit: if you are relying on statues and memorials to provide an education in history, well... /rolleyes

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

Open your eyes. The only reason all those former WP nations wanted to join NATO was because...
Russia was a clear, obvious threat to them.
If they weren't in NATO, they'd be annexed now, like Crimea. Look at Sweden and Finland. Sweden has been an officially neutral country since '45, even though their social and political make up suits them ideally to be members of the NATO bloc. But they've ploughed their own furrow until Russia started making actual moves westward. And now Russia thinks that threatening people who're looking for shelter from their threats is a great way of persuading them that they don't need to worry about the threats. It's the politics of imbeciles.
If Russia hadn't been an existential threat to the Baltic states and Poland and Romania and Czechia and Slovakia and Hungary would not have felt the need to shackle themselves to the defensive alliance which comes with only obligations (if you aren't going to be attacked), not concrete benefits (those largely come from EU membership).
The former Warsaw Pact countries would no doubt have rather ignored their military and "beat their swords into ploughshares". But Russia has always loomed large as the object lesson that "them as beat their swords into ploughshares end up ploughing for them as don't".
Start, as we in the West do, by assuming anything your Government tells you is a lie (or, if you want to be generous, a self-serving shading of the facts on the ground). Your problem seems to be that you only have Government organs telling you anything, so you've nothing to fill in the gaps that ignoring the Government's lies leaves. We over here in the free world (you're not in that, by the way, though you'd be welcome) have the option of listening to other sources. Sometimes, those sources confirm what the Government is telling us, and that does make life easier when that's the case.
Oh, wait: you've access to this forum. Read it. Judge how the information is being presented. Draw your own conclusions. 

"We liked you until you stopped Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia" is not the own Russians may think it is.

1.  Hmm, while I am not the veteran of two  wars, I have also seen a little of life, including teaching school to war refugee kids for a period (the country in question used to be called Burma).
And getting yourself and your loved ones out of the way of the war (and its devastating aftermath, which was my primary point) if you can possibly do so isn't merely a 'Western' thing.
Meanwhile, the poor or ill informed or merely unlucky suffer what they must.
Standing up to evil like Pastor Boenhoeffer is probably saintly and brave, but also likely to end the way he did. Not everyone is up for that.  But we are all making plans for Nigel here. He should speak for himself
P.S.  I am probably misrepresenting your response, but I think you're misrepresenting my post as well.
2.  So sure, the stakes in a civil war are substantial, possibly existential. What does that imply for the war aims of Ukraine and its Western backers?

Ya, can't let this one slide.  This was a really good post but it fails right about here because it misses a major point.  First off I do not subscribe to the "every able body Russian should take their suitcases of money and flee to a less inconvenient locale (i.e. "sunbelt)".  This is frankly insensitive and demonstrates a serious western bias: when the going gets tough, well just move to Hawaii in your yacht and sip Mai Tais...it will be fine.  What about the rest who cannot afford to move?..."oh I am sure they will figure it out".
You make a solid case for a fracturing of the Russian Federation as a result of this, and a severe risk of "significant civil violence".  I will simply state it, we are talking about a significant risk of another Russian Civil War here.  You note "lack of Moscow military power" as reason this will be avoided, well 1) Will is the primary determiner of civil war, not military power.  Savage civil wars have waged with a lot less than what Moscow will have left, and 2) the unfortunate reality of a civil war in a state that has the majority of the worlds nuclear weapons.  We came close to this during the break up of the Soviet Union but saner heads prevailed; we have no guarantees this time.
I very much think that a NATO v Russia global nuclear war is an extremely low probability.  However, a nation in a civil war, cannot guarantee the security of that arsenal and even a small nuclear exchange has global impacts (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00794-y).  So what?  Well, here we need to recognize a harsh truth - none of us are "safe at our keyboards" in this thing.  The stakes are much higher than the normal western ennuie of "war somewhere over there, donate to charity, feel bad and change the channel).  So, no, do not "move to the sunbelt", try and do something about it.
I am a veteran of two separate wars, both civil in nature, and know exactly what risks we are asking Russian's to take here. However, the risks of "not doing anything" is frankly what got them into this fix in the first place.  And there is a risk of a lot more than "trouble over there" at stake here.  This is why I keep coming back to "Russia needs to figure out how to lose this war and survive".
As to resistance, well simply coming on this board and being exposed to the truth, or at least "other facts" is a first important step.  DMS lives in a country where publicly saying "war" is outlawed and they are being lied to daily on their mainstream media.  My advice is to "get the word out" any way you can as an important first step.  There is opposition to this war in Russia, and there is opposition to the current regime...it needs all the help it can get.
We are a small little wargame forum in a great big dangerous world.  But it is a platform to exchange ideas and voice apolitical opinions freely (well we do have limits), which in this day and age is hard to find.  In a perfect world every Russian would read this website and what we did here and at least a few would go "huh?  Wait a minute."  That would be enough for a start.

PS: the small "4x4" vehicle that you see at the bottom of the video is a PVP (Petit Véhicule Protégé = Small Protected Vehicle), it serves as a liaison vehicle, for observers or command. The observers of my unit previously used AMX-10P (because my unit before the CAESAR used AUF-1 = AMX-30 SPG) and VBL. The funny little thing is that my unit's PVP users nicknamed it the "Petit Véhicule Pourri" (Small Rotten Vehicle) because they found it less good than its predecessors. What is to be taken into account is that it was an all-road vehicle and not an all-terrain vehicle. A vehicle that is not well used is always considered bad but it is the use/doctrine the problem not necessarily the vehicle.

@billbindc @dan/california
Yes the video previously shown is that of a CAESAR. For me, it's almost certainly training. I will even tell you that it seems to be in Canjuers in the south of France.
What can demonstrate that it is a practice is the fact that there is no crew around the piece whereas the goal of the CAESAR is speed so the loader should be right next to the breech on the right. In addition, the aimer triggers the shot remotely thanks to a remote-controlled box. The funny thing is, I've NEVER used this remote control box and the shot was always fired from the baseplate. The advantage of firing from the baseplate is that the aimer is directly next to the control box and allows it to immediately re-aim the barrel. (and it's safe this way because he is not just behind the breech)

You can see from the video that this is a shot with probably the maximum amount of propellant charge (considering the blast from the muzzle and the height at which the front of the truck rises). In Afghanistan, we were pulling maximum load and the front was rising well a meter high. This would explain why the firing would be done from a distance (safety, training) because the load is maximum and the crew is not used to it. But in practice there is no need at all (it is even useless and a waste of time) to shoot from a remote box.
For a bit more detail and in real engagement there would be 1 to 2 loaders on the right, 1 pilot/assistant loader on the left, 1 aimer just aft left and finally the leader on the rear as seen on the video.
The range of the CAESAR is indeed 42km (by adding kits on the shell reducing the drag added on the back of the shell "RTC : Réduction de Traînée de Culot"). It can go up to 50km with rocket shells apparently (I didn't know those).
Honestly, I think Western artillery will be much superior to Russian ones. One of the comments earlier said they had special shells with comparable range but honestly the russians are already struggling to get normal shells which I'm sure not the case with the west which is full of shells specials. I'm not saying we really have a lot of them but the normal shell to special shell ratio is higher. The Russians claim a lot of things (large reserve of tanks, high-tech missiles, T-90M, T-14) but in the end, there are hardly any or they don't work. Moreover, the western artillery is very experienced by all the previous conflicts and the materials have been perfected. Even if we accept that the Russians obtain an identical range, they will not in all cases have the precision and the intelligence that Western systems use. So UKR will be better than russian in counter-battery. As a reminder, the CAESAR uses a navigation system derived from a nuclear submarine... It hits hard, far and precisely (while for the Russians I have doubts on the last point).
Finally a short video so that you can see a little bit of the handling of the vehicle.
 
 

A extremely important thread, where the NCO training provided by the West is actually less impactful than stated by some, if already posted, should be posted again to emphasize the agency of Ukrainians independent of the west in warfighting. 
Interviews with members of the Ukrainian military emphasize that the model of NCOs was too early to be widespread, and that the model of rotating units and conscripts and specialists allowed widespread training to be undertaken despite being a weaker country than Russia for example with more resources and manpower, Ukraine has been able to seemingly equalize the equation. In this sense I think emphasis on unity of purpose and morale is very important.
Russia and Ukraine both have conscripts, but so far the reserves Ukraine is bringing up are showing higher quality than that of Russia's contract personnel.
 
 

@akd
Follow up to your video of the Avian Air Assault Brigade. Here the operations staff is seen in the field conducting Battle Damage Assessments of earlier strikes:

Frankly, I'm curious how sustained, at a large scale, this Ukrainian "counteroffensive" can be. Their operational logistics process still seems very ad hoc and often driven by local demands, rather than operational plans determined by clear strategic principles and objectives. Failure to professionalise their materials supply chain will undermine and retard any theater level offensives, giving them to short lived gains then stalemate, then another short attack grinding into yet another stalemate. 
This will doom any national victory as it will give RUS strategic breathing room. 
All these Spanky New Fisher Price Nato toys are nice, but if UKR logistics are not up to snuff and dont drastically improve very rapidly then RuA will get the stalling of the war's momentum that it so desperately needs.
Russia is on the operational offensive but on the strategic back foot. Now the strategic imperative and pressure is on UKR to keep unbalancing Russia.
But half assed UKR logistics will only give half-victories.
@Haiduk or @akd can you shed some light on the UKR logistics state, process and capabilities?
...
Ref this new UKR offensive itself, I suspect it will be series of reinforced localised offensives, shoving and pushing at battalion level, seeking the weaker (low morale) units and breaking them in the hopes of a domino morale collapse.
In comparison the RUS offensive needed to physically destroy UKR formations, as their morale is rock solid, a much harder task. They needed to blow up/kill/capture a lot of UKR gear and troops, very quickly, to have any chance of success.
They failed (indeed a plodding, arty-driven pace was the deliberately chosen tactical approach). In the process Dvornikov hollowed out his larger formations as he attempted to maintain a sharp edge against a highly mobile, tactically flexible and determined resistance. 

The irony is that the most brutality supporting church in Russia is Christian.
They give out flyers to russian soldiers demanding them to "exterminate Ukrainian nation from the face of the Earth".

I'm pretty sure russian muslims say the same things in their meetings but it has to do with them beeing russian, not muslim.
Bonus - that "holy image" is of a russian invader that got killed during the first Chechen war. I hope they will have a lot more to put on icons in the months to come.

Gotta take a quick dig at Muslims huh? Good one. Being Muslim has nothing to do with Russian brutality in the war. There are white Muslims too. And if a Muslim soldier commits a crime it’s an individual issue not a religious one. I’m astonished someone put Russian brutality on Islam when the Russians been killing Muslims for a long time 😂

You're going to get pounded on here mate, but in consideration of your good service to this community, I will say the following:
1. Most of us here know a fair number of decent Russians (most of them, in fact), and nobody has any doubt you are a decent (Russian) guy. And yes, there are no doubt many decent Russians in the ranks of the invading forces (just as there were in the 1941 Wehrmacht).
2. There are also a fair number of trigger happy "Git Some!" jerks and occasional sadists in the ranks of any army, no matter how highly organised, supplied and disciplined.
3. And, sure, juvenile trash talk on Twitter needs to be substantially discounted unless there's reason to believe it is manifested in action.
.... But Russian soldiers in Ukraine also have many strong incentives to behave brutally and murderously, and few restraints (although there is doubtless also decent behaviour, and probably a fair amount of simply minding one's own business):
a.  weak unit cohesion, bullying NCOs, lack of respect for officers and these days, for the Army itself, given the across the board lousy military performance;
b. Widespread drunkenness in all ranks, including while on duty, with only arbitrary punishments;
c. ranks drafted from the poorest segments of society, not across economic classes and regions (Moscow has suffered few dead, and most are officers);
d. Many of the draftees are Asian and Muslim, with little love for whites, including Russians, who call them 'чурка' (churkas, which is roughly 'wood chips'). It's easy for them to Other the occupied population (and vice versa). That said, the brutality seems to be an equal opportunity recreation; 
e.  the nonstop dehumanising 'Khokol' propaganda being pushed by RU media, probably more on the families than on the soldiers who are in the line. Yeah, that happens in war, even civil wars;
f.  Finally, said pig farmers have caused  many soldiers' comrades know to die horribly, often burning to death in vehicles. Partisan attacks and ambushes -- actual or rumoured -- are particularly resented, as they always are, and used to justify vicious 'reprisals'.
(Yes, of course, they're defending their homeland, but as a combat soldier, you aren't inclined to see things the enemy's way)
g.  I expect the troops get away with war crimes with impunity; there are no disciplinary consequences and officers have more pressing concerns anyway. Feel free to cite counterexamples though, if that is incorrect.
So you'd need to be wilfully blind not to see the toxic mix that makes this behaviour all entirely credible. May this war end swiftly.

Must be hard to be a Russian  and   watching this thread  DMS  . Your attempts to rationalize  or explain away the behaviors of your countrymen is a Herculean task indeed - I don't envy you it .

No, Russia is being judged by it actions, not what it says.  We have a saying in the west.  "Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck.... therefore it is a duck."   The acts of Russia in Bucha, Maruipol, all over Ukraine are in full display for the world to see.  Ergo, if Russia troops acts like uncouth, uncivilized barbarians, we are within our rights to call them out for it.

not to get too snarky, but I suppose if LePen were elected these weapons would've been sent to the Russians?  I thank all the gods she did not win, both for Ukraine and for the world.