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US/ NATO v. Russia - Misperceptions.


Kinophile

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1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Sparta just like many other DPR/LPR battle groups have been quite competent and on there own even if for example they lost a city a major breakthrough towards population centers or the capitals of the regions were not reached and stalled the Ukrainians, and let's not forget most of this fighting force are locals, some volunteers.

Depends on the timeframe, however non-Ukrainian fighters have always been an extremely large part of the separatist forces.  In fact, at the beginning stages they were the majority from the leaders down to the fighters.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

And most of them have no actual military experience beyond conscription.

Which was also true of the Ukrainian forces.  All else being equal, an incompetent defending force should knock the crap out of an incompetent attacker.  That did not happen.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Anyways, this of course played a role in how effective a rebel formation was, but results were achieved not to say Ukrainians weren't able to take locations like Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Mariupol albeit at a high price. 

Actually, the price was very low.  It only started to get costly when the Regular Russian forces became involved on a large scale.  Even then, up until August 2014, Ukraine was still taking ground against massed Russian artillery, at least 4 BMGs, and all the weaponry that the separatists could handle.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Anyways, yes there were polite men deployed to Donbas to assist Militia forces at certain times, however what most of the Militias were fighting with were captured from Ukrainian formations. My evidence being: http://lostarmour.info/analytics/ 

The evidence is not complete.  This shows only what was lost and initially Russia tried to have plausible deniability by inserting Soviet era equipment into Ukraine.  But we've been all over this and the vast amounts of hardware in the hands of the "separatists" is in some cases more than the Ukrainian Army had to start with.  So while you continue to spin the fantasy tail that "separatists" were poorly equipped with only captured equipment, the mountain of evidence accumulated by non-Kremlin sources shows this to be a massive lie.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Yes, Russian weapons did trickle into some Militia hands however those weren't game changers, usually the rare equipment like T-72B3s operated by Russian servicemen were game changers of course. But we can't deny most of the fighting was bared solely on the rebels since the start. So yes there were incompetent and competent Rebel units same as the Ukrainian forces.

Yes, for sure the majority of the fighters to start with were not properly formed Russian units.  But perhaps as many as 1/2 of the separatist forces at the beginning were non-Ukrainians.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

That's contradicting your own arguments from before that the Russian troops reversed the Ukrainian's gains... Make up your mind Russian servicemen are poor, or the show runners? Obviously they had a huge impact because they were so capable. Don't play the Ukrainian cyborgs vs Russian inferior card :D 

I'll remind you again that there are three different types of Russians fighting in Ukraine:

1.  Individual Russians, with or without military experience, who "volunteered" to fight in Ukraine.  They were encouraged and organized to fight in Ukraine by Russian government and government aligned organizations.  They were paid for fighting.  Most of these guys could be considered ideological mercenaries.

2.  Members of the Russian armed forces who were transferred as "vacationers".  The personnel were generally formed into ad-hoc BMGs from their parent Brigades.  These guys could be considered more-or-less pure mercenaries and/or adventurers.  Ideology was not as important.

3.  Russian military forces that fought without modification to their personnel or structure.  These guys were for the most part contract soldiers following (illegal) orders, though a fair number were conscripts.

At first the mix of forces was almost purely #1 and Russian organized/equipped/paid locals.  During the Ukrainian offensive it became clear this force would be defeated, so they sent in #2 in increasingly large numbers.  When it was clear that #2 wasn't enough to stop the Ukrainian offensive, some of #3 was sent in.  When it was clear that even that wasn't good enough, larger amounts of #3 were sent in August 2014.

From the start the Russian organized/equipped/paid locals performed horribly.  They could man checkpoints and retreat when fired upon, that was about it.  The #1 groups tended to perform badly, none more spectacularly than the Chechen police units that were sent in to take the Donetsk airport in the very first assault.  #2 groups tended to perform OK against some forms of Ukrainian units, but generally they weren't plentiful enough to guard their flanks or handle competent Ukrainian units.  #3, on the other hand, were difficult for Ukraine to deal with.  At first their numbers were too small to stop the offensive and even tactically halting it was difficult.  But yes, unit for unit #3 performed well against Ukrainian units.  There simply weren't enough of them and their support units to make a difference until August 2014.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Ukrainian politicians also claimed in Slaviansk 470 rebels died which was total bull crap, and proven to be wrong. In the Airport and Debaltseve the Ukrainians suffered heavy casualties and lost important strategic land, and also the strategic image of the Donetsk airport. The Ukrainian government is suppose to be taken with the grain of salt the same way the Rebel government is in terms of claims... Independent research proves out to be way better than taking the claims of any side.  And you appear to be going by Ukrainian claims. The Separatist terrorists with no support from the local population actually achieved alot by taking those objectives. 

No, I'm going by the fact that it took the "separatists", backed by regular Russian internal troops, special forces, regular units, C2, logistics, etc. took months to take a rather meaningless airport.  Then months later totally failed to defeat the Ukrainians at Debaltseve until major Russian units were committed to the battle.  I also rely upon the Western reporters who were there and interviewed/observed the combat performance on the "separatist" side.

1 hour ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Opinion of one soldier shouldn't be taken as a collective answer to a force with 30K plus men. I'm sure there were incompetent rebel units, but I also know of competent ones. 

Sure, but overall the non-regular Russian forces in Donbas have performed poorly.  And in a pitched battle, my money is on the Ukrainians if they "separatists" aren't backed by significant Russian regular forces.  Which is understandable because the "separatists" are mostly there for the money and therefore when the going gets tough, the tough get going (back to Russia).

Steve

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32 minutes ago, Krater said:

Also - let's examine some statistics.  According to LostArmour, there are documented losses of 178 Ukrainian tanks.  Add some tanks whose losses are not documented, subtract some tanks which are beyond repair and I'm guessing it's still around 175 tanks maximum that separatists could've captured.  From that we subtract 94 documented tank losses by separatists, and we arrive at 75 tanks that could've been captured by separatists and are still in service.  Given that in 2015 tank strength of DNR/LNR was estimated to be around 500-700 tanks, it's pretty clear that most of the tanks that they received didn't come from Ukraine.

Now, now, now... don't start doing math like that!  That's only going to confuse Vladimir's argument :D  Plus, we've been over this before.  I showed the documented evidence of the "separatists" having a full brigade of self propelled artillery in prefect combat ready condition.  To think they manged to secure that much stuff intact while they were losing massive amounts of ground is absurd.  I guess Vladimir has forgotten how badly I poked holes in his arguments the last time or thinks that somehow I (or others) can't do it again.

21 minutes ago, JUAN DEAG said:

Separatists practically routed from these positions so the Ukrainians did not pay much of a price at all. If you watch watch videos of those battles you will see separatists exhausted and panicked. Where they did pay a price was when Russian line units were involved.

Yup.  In Debaltseve there was a scene where a Western journalist was interviewing the survivors of a "separatist" unit that had been almost completely wiped out.  A few stated, in the most direct terms possible, that they had been used as cannon fodder to make things easier for the Russian army forces.  This was at the same time that Russia was trying to solve their Cossack problem.  Part of the solution, it turns out, was to give the units a choice... go back to Russia or go into the fight.  The ones that went into the fight were used in a way that was either extremely incompetent or was a deliberate attempt to get them killed.  This was standard practice in WW2 as Soviet Army units encountered partisans.  If they were suspected of being a trouble, they were deliberately used as cannon fodder.

21 minutes ago, JUAN DEAG said:

This argument itself isn't very convincing. During 2014 there was not a single military base or military stockpile or military factory in Donbass. There is no way that the separatists could have possibly acquired an upwards estimate of 700 tanks and many more APCs, the majority of which were never in the Ukrainain arsenal without extensive Russian support.

Not to mention ammo!  Girkin's infamous 2S9 Nona would have had a handfull of shells on board if fully stocked when it was captured.  Yet that thing pounded Ukrainian positions for weeks.  It's just idiotic for someone to claim that even early on the "separatists" were only using, or even largely using, captured equipment.  It defies the laws of physics, not to mention rational thought.

21 minutes ago, JUAN DEAG said:

I think he means the vacationers (Russian far-right groups with military background that were mixed in with separatists), not the official Russian troops.

Yes, both "volunteers" and "vacationers".  In terms of organization and composition they were different, but in terms of combat performance they weren't.  They both had very limited capabilities and generally performed poorly vs. Ukrainian forces.

21 minutes ago, JUAN DEAG said:

For both airport battles the claims made by both sides are similar: Ukraine lost 200 with about 300 wounded (contentious figure and should be taken with a grain of salt) and the Russians lost 800+ with about 2000 wounded. The land itself is not strategic as the Ukrainian army has line of sight over almost the entirety of the airport and the buildings themselves are practically rubble and the runway is no longer a runway. This is reflected by the fact that both sides are not willing to fight over it in its current state.

Let's also not forget that the Ukrainians were mostly surrounded for most of the time, which reduced their abilities to push in reinforcements or take pressure off by pinning down "separatist" flanks.  One clear example of this was a Ukrainian relief force that got lost in fog and took heavy casualties, including the Battalion commander IIRC.  Yet the Russians could not take it.  Not with all the inherent advantages at their disposal, not with the large amount of regular Russian special forces (including Interior Ministry, VDV, and Marine units).

Steve

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4 hours ago, kinophile said:

@Battlefront.compointing out the inherent advantages of killing the off enemy leadership does not equal a blanket assumption that leaders are the only, or primary reason for success/defeat. 

Sure, which gets back to Pzkraut's excellent description about the different reasons and outcomes of leader targeting.

4 hours ago, kinophile said:

Do we always need to jump to WW2 for comparisons? Germany's defeat is way too large a sample set, with so many factors. I'm not saying killing Motorola's death is critical to winning the war. What would be a better and more appropriate comparison would be the US campaign against Iraqi insurgent leadership, or Israeli targeted strikes against Hamas. Constant attrition of capable enemy leaders is a very effective strategy. 

Effective?  I'd say the evidence suggests it is not.  If it was, Hamas would not be continuing it's ability to challenge Israel.  The only reason the insurgency in Iraq died down to a dull roar is the Sunni Awakening which basically kicked Al Qaeda out of Iraq.  In Afghanistan the Taliban is still plenty strong in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The PKK is still a major problem for Turkey.  Etc. etc.

One of the problems with taking out leaders is that if you don't also crush the organization (usually by taking away its base of support) the leader will be replaced.  Sometimes the leader who takes over is BETTER than the one just killed.  Of one finds out that the leader wasn't the one calling the shots, but rather a subordinate was.  Because I do love WW2 examples, if someone deliberately murdered Patton the combat performance of his 3rd Army would likely have been the same since Patton was not the one doing all the serious military planning.  Further, the soldiers of the 3rd Army would likely be pretty pissed and would fight even harder.

Anyway, the point here is that decapitating leadership isn't necessarily a bad idea, but there's a very credible argument that it's not on Ukraine's priority ToDo list.

4 hours ago, kinophile said:

Degrading overall enemy leadership over time would serve Ukraine well both militarily and politically - it would reduce the cumulative command experience pool, cause a constant churn of instability within the leadership, stress out new commanders (Igor died six months, how long will I last...?) and strain command relationships between HQ and front line units. It could draw in more and more overt Russian command, who (while certainly up to the job)  would not be locals. This would be a subtler effect,  attempting to disconnect the Donbass command (forcing replacement of Donbass leaders with Russians)  from the rank and file. Currently Donbass militia are OK with Russian control,  but several defeats,  heavy casualties would cause strain on the relationship,  with Russian officers being blamed by Donbass soldiers. 

In theory, but not at the rate of 1 commander per year.  As Pzkraut said a while back, this sort of strategy requires a huge effort that involves knocking off multiple leadership targets in quick succession as part of a larger offensive action that can take advantage of the deaths.  Knocking off Motorola at a time when neither side is looking to conduct serious offensive actions is not such a setting.

4 hours ago, kinophile said:

This possibly on of th emore complex strategies available,  but it's a long term one that could bear real gains. 

Rate is important.  Kinda like the concept of slowly bleeding someone to death.  The old expression "death from a 1000 paper cuts" is what you're talking about, and it's valid.  However, there is no expression "death from a couple of paper cuts" :D

4 hours ago, kinophile said:

My angle is not that Ukraine killed  Motorola  (weight of evidence says no, ro me,)  but that they SHOULD start killing Donbass military leaders, say over a years time frame - if they intended/suspected an escalation in the war. Ukraine has a far larger pool to draw on for replacing leaders counter-assassinated by Russia, which themselves could save a propaganda value towards Western countries.  

 

As part of a general offensive, yes Ukraine would likely benefit from a "blitz" on Russian leadership in Donbas.  The best time to cause chaos and morale damage is while running over poorly motivated fighters with tanks.

Steve

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4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Depends on the timeframe, however non-Ukrainian fighters have always been an extremely large part of the separatist forces.  In fact, at the beginning stages they were the majority from the leaders down to the fighters.

Come on Steve, you do know that Ukrainians in east Russia could have easily pulled the maidan ousting in Donbas right? If you really think more than 20% of the forces in Ukraine started off with non-Ukrainians then I believe there are issues in your case, however of course you aren't totally wrong, and there was support coming in for the rebels from Russia of course, but if you think that all of this happened and the people of Donbas just let it be, that's a miscalculation.

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Actually, the price was very low. 

It was low compared to the rest of the conflict when Russkii intervention geared up, but losing more than 4 choppers and quite a few armored vehicles in Slaviansk is still a high cost. The rebels of course operating solely on Ukrainian equipment at the time was not going to stand to fight against the fully equipped Ukrainian troops. Considering also that in Slaviansk some Ukrainian troops switched sides after meeting the locals protesting them. (Vice news video) rebels did what they could and stalled the Ukrainians, anyways the rebels now have been formed into better shape, and they constantly have drills and are more cohesive and organized. Same thing could be said for our Ukrainian friends.

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The evidence is not complete.  This shows only what was lost and initially Russia tried to have plausible deniability by inserting Soviet era equipment into Ukraine.  But we've been all over this and the vast amounts of hardware in the hands of the "separatists" is in some cases more than the Ukrainian Army had to start with.  So while you continue to spin the fantasy tail that "separatists" were poorly equipped with only captured equipment, the mountain of evidence accumulated by non-Kremlin sources shows this to be a massive lie.

The most Russia could have snuck in are older T-72Bs, our reserve tank fleet is a mess and I highly doubt that they could restore whole battalions worth of tanks from the T-64 fleet that's decaying and I'm not even sure if it's in reserve-reserve so to speak. LostArmor provides many info on how much vehicles were taken and solely based on photos, unconfirmed raids to capture vehicles should add little more onto their lists. 

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

No, I'm going by the fact that it took the "separatists", backed by regular Russian internal troops, special forces, regular units, C2, logistics, etc. took months to take a rather meaningless airport.  Then months later totally failed to defeat the Ukrainians at Debaltseve until major Russian units were committed to the battle.  I also rely upon the Western reporters who were there and interviewed/observed the combat performance on the "separatist" side

Of course I never argued the miilita's of that time could launch a effective counter-offensive like in Debaltsevo with the success it was done, however even then most of the units in terms of manpower used were locals/volunteers. Anyways, I think we agree on the main point that Russian intervention whether in smaller or greater amounts than claimed propelled the rebel forces, which could have been in great danger. But my point is locals and volunteers have shared most of the weight of this war. And let's be honest, the Ukrainians launched short ranged ballistic missiles at rebel targets, some of them killing innocents of course, but that beside the point, if you could not sweep up the whole problem which started in May and geared into Russian offensives in middish August then that says some things about the local force's capabilities. And my main point was NOW the rebels have been formed into a good enough force to do good enough to meet the demands thrown against them if Ukraine uses their right on launching another anti-terrorist operation. 

Anyways, I'm not trying to hype up the DPR/LPR, Ukraine has also reformed and increased combat effectivity, and even with their conscripts (I think of conscripts as capable troops regardless honestly) can put up a fight, but you're throwing out the local/volunteer force out the window now. There is another point you can get across in criticizing the DPR/LPR government. I'm sure you know some volunteer units pillaged and looted, and were corrupt. But it was largely solved after rebel commanders killed the corrupt units off, largely they are reformed now.   

 

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4 hours ago, JUAN DEAG said:

Separatists practically routed from these positions so the Ukrainians did not pay much of a price at all. If you watch watch videos of those battles you will see separatists exhausted and panicked. Where they did pay a price was when Russian line units were involved.

They weren't routed in the sort of "OMG IM GETTING DESTROYED WAY" but they did withdraw from many places after putting up fights, let's face it getting to form a local force isn't easy on your own, you need to get everything together, train men find veterans in the region, capture vehicles, train your troops. The rebels still put up fights in many cases.

4 hours ago, JUAN DEAG said:

This argument itself isn't very convincing. During 2014 there was not a single military base or military stockpile or military factory in Donbass. There is no way that the separatists could have possibly acquired an upwards estimate of 700 tanks and many more APCs, the majority of which were never in the Ukrainain arsenal without extensive Russian support.

Incorrect, multiple raids onto Ukrainian positions to capture bases and the vehicles in them were conducted bro. You could easily find a base raid from the Donbas war if you search it up man, I'm too lazy to link you up since I'm sleepy, I'll try to tomorrow if you can't find anything. The Separ terrorist thugs didn't have 700 tanks man, that would have changed the outcome of this war hugely if that was true. Majority of the thugs' equipment is from Ukrainian forces, and I'm sure wiki could show you a raid incident

4 hours ago, JUAN DEAG said:

I think he means the vacationers (Russian far-right groups with military background that were mixed in with separatists), not the official Russian troops.

Yeah, I assumed he meant actual evil Russian troops my mistake.

5 hours ago, JUAN DEAG said:

For both airport battles the claims made by both sides are similar: Ukraine lost 200 with about 300 wounded (contentious figure and should be taken with a grain of salt) and the Russians lost 800+ with about 2000 wounded. The land itself is not strategic as the Ukrainian army has line of sight over almost the entirety of the airport and the buildings themselves are practically rubble and the runway is no longer a runway. This is reflected by the fact that both sides are not willing to fight over it in its current state.

Ukraine lost around 200 men killed which is confirmed, the rebels are around the same as the Ukrainians in losses for the battle until the end phase of it where Somali and Sparta held off quite a few assaults. Anyways the casualties on both sides are in the hundreds and around the same for that battle. The thing with taking the airport is it was a propaganda victory, it hit Ukrainian morale hard. Plus in event of ATO 3.0 it can serve as a strategic point. The battle for the airport was mostly volunteers and local troops, Luhansk airport however confrimed even seeing a T-90 which probably Russian troops took part of. Anyways, I'm not roasting you bro :D you always get me when you say that I let out a good laugh.

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@TheForwardObserver Thanks for the laugh :)  Actually, I'm still chuckling.  I have always admired the Russian army's ability to improvise original engineering solutions.

I was curious what size of country it would take to maintain a standing army the size of DPR/LPRs if they didn't have Russia's help, to kinda get a handle on the scale of financial aid.

Like from an economics perspective, DPR/LPR can't be making much money, and they must have no foreign currency by now.  Their industry is coal mining and heavy industry, and I believe a lot of this has been damaged or shut down.  Not only do they have the constant military expenditures of salary, ammo, fuel, rations, etc, but they also have to pay for things for the 2 million people that live there, like  teachers, police, firefighters, staff and maintenance of infrastructure like water and sewage, electricity, natural gas, and the million other government expenses we never notice.

So if DPR/LPR has a military of about 50k people, here are other countries that can afford a military about that size:  Kuwait, Netherlands, Tunisia, Estonia, and Oman (but I think these last two are getting big help from others as well).

Man, Russia is spending a lot of money on this, I bet they'll be happy once oil starts going back up.

 

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3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Come on Steve, you do know that Ukrainians in east Russia could have easily pulled the maidan ousting in Donbas right? If you really think more than 20% of the forces in Ukraine started off with non-Ukrainians then I believe there are issues in your case, however of course you aren't totally wrong, and there was support coming in for the rebels from Russia of course, but if you think that all of this happened and the people of Donbas just let it be, that's a miscalculation.

We've been over this before.  It was a Russian operation from the very start (i.e. February 2014).  *ALL* the evidence supports this.  Ukrainians definitely did join, but Russians kept pouring in over the border.  The primary fighting forces were heavily Russian, sometimes in whole units (Cossacks and Chechens, for example).  Locals were mostly there to man checkpoints.

The combat performance was, and still is, poor.  What percentage is Russian vs. Ukrainian doesn't affect their rather poor combat record.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

It was low compared to the rest of the conflict when Russkii intervention geared up, but losing more than 4 choppers and quite a few armored vehicles in Slaviansk is still a high cost.

Sure, but that's what happens when "coal miners" suddenly have huge amounts of SAMs delivered by Russia.  But overall, Slavyansk was a major rout for the Russian led "separatists" that were there.  Girkin was soundly defeated and the "separatists" have been claiming they will return ever since.  Not going to happen.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

The rebels of course operating solely on Ukrainian equipment at the time was not going to stand to fight against the fully equipped Ukrainian troops.

Since they NEVER relied solely on Ukrainian equipment (see previous reference to SAMs for example), this is just nonsense.  That said, they were definitely armed worse than the Ukrainians for the most part.  That did not apply to the Russian units operating in Ukraine or firing artillery from the Russian side of the border (both started in June/July 2014).

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Considering also that in Slaviansk some Ukrainian troops switched sides after meeting the locals protesting them. (Vice news video) rebels did what they could and stalled the Ukrainians, anyways the rebels now have been formed into better shape, and they constantly have drills and are more cohesive and organized. Same thing could be said for our Ukrainian friends.

Very, very, very few Ukrainian military defected to the Russians.  What did happen was a carefully, and well executed civilian ambush that resulted in an unwinable situation where either the Ukrainians had to start killing civilians to escape or they had to effectively surrender.  This was the result of poor Ukrainian leadership and good Russian special ops.  IIRC almost all of the Ukrainian soldiers of the VDV unit (25th Air Mobile, IIRC) returned to Ukrainian lines without their equipment.  They were definitely demoralized because Ukraine had not gotten it's act together yet.  After that disaster the Ukrainians understood what not to do and for the most part avoided losing units to civilian ambushes.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

The most Russia could have snuck in are older T-72Bs, our reserve tank fleet is a mess and I highly doubt that they could restore whole battalions worth of tanks from the T-64 fleet that's decaying and I'm not even sure if it's in reserve-reserve so to speak.

Correct.  Which is why only a few T-64s showed up from Russia.  There was plenty of photographic evidence of T-64s being transported within Russia on trucks and trains, either out of Crimea or from a base somewhere in that area, into Ukraine.  But as you said, they quickly ran out of "plausible deniability" tanks and instead went with older T-72s.  Therefore, obviously, all T-72s were from Russia.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

LostArmor provides many info on how much vehicles were taken and solely based on photos, unconfirmed raids to capture vehicles should add little more onto their lists. 

And from that subtracted Russian fantasy.  Because that accounts for the majority of "captured" equipment.

Now, let's just remember what we're arguing here.  And that the poor, independent "coal miners" desperately fought back against the mighty Ukrainian Army with nothing more than the shirts on their backs and pointy sticks.  That's the official Russian story.  The truth, though, is Russian weaponry flooded into Ukraine from the start and escalated in both quantity and quality as the Ukrainian offensive gained speed.  And that a large portion of these "captured" weapons were in the hands of Russians and not Ukrainians.  Especially the line units sent in from Russia with modern Russian equipment.  The evidence that Russia has always lied about this war is so painfully obvious.  Yet here we are, having yet another debate where it's being argued that the world is flat and pigs fly because Moscow said so.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Of course I never argued the miilita's of that time could launch a effective counter-offensive like in Debaltsevo with the success it was done, however even then most of the units in terms of manpower used were locals/volunteers.

Agreed, if by "volunteers" you mean Russian Federation citizens, many of whom were currently serving in the Russian Armed Forces but were on "vacation".  If that's what you are talking about, we have no disagreement.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Anyways, I think we agree on the main point that Russian intervention whether in smaller or greater amounts than claimed propelled the rebel forces, which could have been in great danger. But my point is locals and volunteers have shared most of the weight of this war.

No, they've suffered most of the pain of the war that Russia insists on continuing.  The important fighting has mostly been determined by Russian units, be they tank or artillery or communications or electronic warfare or special forces.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

And let's be honest, the Ukrainians launched short ranged ballistic missiles at rebel targets, some of them killing innocents of course, but that beside the point, if you could not sweep up the whole problem which started in May and geared into Russian offensives in middish August then that says some things about the local force's capabilities.

Yes, and that something is "their performance was overall not very good, which is why Russian had to send in it's regular military starting in June".

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

And my main point was NOW the rebels have been formed into a good enough force to do good enough to meet the demands thrown against them if Ukraine uses their right on launching another anti-terrorist operation. 

Based on what evidence?  The only offensive operations I know of in the last year were defeats for the "separatists".  In fact, after one fairly major one there was some evidence that Russia forbid more offensives.

If Ukraine wanted to take back the Donbas they could do it in 2-3 months if Russia didn't put in significant regular forces to stop it.  If Russia withdrew all Russian equipment, units, logistics support, and Russian citizens I think it would take about 1-2 weeks to defeat what remained.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Anyways, I'm not trying to hype up the DPR/LPR,

Yet you are.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Ukraine has also reformed and increased combat effectivity, and even with their conscripts (I think of conscripts as capable troops regardless honestly) can put up a fight, but you're throwing out the local/volunteer force out the window now.

I am indeed doing that.  Why?  Because the only evidence they have improved comes from Moscow's propaganda mills.  The evidence on the ground has been fairly consistent... the units that are more local than Russian are not very good.  The biggest reason to suspect this is true?  There's still a heavy presence of Russian military and "vacation" forces in Ukraine.  If the mostly-Ukrainian units were capable of defending themselves, Russia would withdraw it's forces and press the EU to remove sanctions.  But Russia is still in Donbas in very large numbers, therefore they clearly don't have the same level of confidence in mostly Ukrainian units defending Donbas successfully that you do.

3 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

There is another point you can get across in criticizing the DPR/LPR government. I'm sure you know some volunteer units pillaged and looted, and were corrupt. But it was largely solved after rebel commanders killed the corrupt units off, largely they are reformed now.   

For sure in the DPR things have been improved over the last year. The Russian government had to kill, arrest, deport, and otherwise frighten a lot of people (including large numbers of Russian citizens) into doing what it wanted, but in absolute terms it is still a criminal organization that is there mostly to serve itself first, Russia's interests second, and not the interests of the people last.  LPR is far worse.

Steve

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4 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

They weren't routed in the sort of "OMG IM GETTING DESTROYED WAY" but they did withdraw from many places after putting up fights, let's face it getting to form a local force isn't easy on your own, you need to get everything together, train men find veterans in the region, capture vehicles, train your troops. The rebels still put up fights in many cases.

The separatists that retreated as well as Russian media claimed that they were fighting "foreign mercenaries" when the freshly mobilized Ukrainian National Guard arrived. They didn't get super wrecked as you think I'm claiming but they were shocked to say the least.

4 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Incorrect, multiple raids onto Ukrainian positions to capture bases and the vehicles in them were conducted bro. You could easily find a base raid from the Donbas war if you search it up man, I'm too lazy to link you up since I'm sleepy, I'll try to tomorrow if you can't find anything. The Separ terrorist thugs didn't have 700 tanks man, that would have changed the outcome of this war hugely if that was true. Majority of the thugs' equipment is from Ukrainian forces, and I'm sure wiki could show you a raid incident

You ever watched a drone fly over of military stockpiles near Donetsk? They have f#cking a$$ loads of equipment---rows and rows and rows of Russian T-72 variants, Kamaz trucks, sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, command and control vehicles, systems of electronic warfare etc, etc, etc. It's makes it really difficult to justify that it was all recovered or stolen or raided or teleported or whatever.

4 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Ukraine lost around 200 men killed which is confirmed, the rebels are around the same as the Ukrainians in losses for the battle until the end phase of it where Somali and Sparta held off quite a few assaults. Anyways the casualties on both sides are in the hundreds and around the same for that battle. The thing with taking the airport is it was a propaganda victory, it hit Ukrainian morale hard. Plus in event of ATO 3.0 it can serve as a strategic point. The battle for the airport was mostly volunteers and local troops, Luhansk airport however confrimed even seeing a T-90 which probably Russian troops took part of. Anyways, I'm not roasting you bro :D you always get me when you say that I let out a good laugh.

You make a good point. The destruction of the control tower was the destruction of a symbol of Ukrainian resistance much like the liquidation of the Zaphorizhian Sich by Catherine the Great in 1775 was. Still has zero strategic value though.

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20 hours ago, VladimirTarasov said:

Incorrect, multiple raids onto Ukrainian positions to capture bases and the vehicles in them were conducted bro. You could easily find a base raid from the Donbas war if you search it up man, I'm too lazy to link you up since I'm sleepy, I'll try to tomorrow if you can't find anything. The Separ terrorist thugs didn't have 700 tanks man, that would have changed the outcome of this war hugely if that was true. Majority of the thugs' equipment is from Ukrainian forces, and I'm sure wiki could show you a raid incident

 

If these videos are well-known, they should already be included in totals on LostArmour.  If not, let's get them added to the database.

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I have no wish to advertise here, but it seems the CMANO team have come up with their own counterpart to CMBS, to be released on November 2. And they're starting the action on November 8, 2016. :P I would be curious if Steve or anyone else would care to comment on their back story - that Moldova is the new Ukraine. Sounds like a stretch to me.

Since we have CMANO players on the forum ( @Raptorx7 ), I would also be interested to hear how they matched the NATO and Russian air and SAM forces to give the Russian player a chance to win. It could serve as fluff for Russian air support in CMBS (they have a screenshot with Russian Su-25s going to bomb something with iron bombs).

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1 hour ago, Machor said:

I have no wish to advertise here, but it seems the CMANO team have come up with their own counterpart to CMBS, to be released on November 2. And they're starting the action on November 8, 2016. :P I would be curious if Steve or anyone else would care to comment on their back story - that Moldova is the new Ukraine. Sounds like a stretch to me.

Since we have CMANO players on the forum ( @Raptorx7 ), I would also be interested to hear how they matched the NATO and Russian air and SAM forces to give the Russian player a chance to win. It could serve as fluff for Russian air support in CMBS (they have a screenshot with Russian Su-25s going to bomb something with iron bombs).

CMANO is a great sim.  Harpoon on steroids.  I haven't purchased any of the campaign DLC's as of yet, tempted though and only a few bucks.  The supplied and community made scenarios are plenty for me so far though. 

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21 hours ago, JUAN DEAG said:

The separatists that retreated as well as Russian media claimed that they were fighting "foreign mercenaries" when the freshly mobilized Ukrainian National Guard arrived. They didn't get super wrecked as you think I'm claiming but they were shocked to say the least.

Ah, the old days when every second post out of a Russian was about "Polish snipers" and "Blackwater mercenaries".  Not to mention that every single separatist unit was heavily engaged by Right Sector pretty much every day.  Ah... that was such a fun time!

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You ever watched a drone fly over of military stockpiles near Donetsk? They have f#cking a$$ loads of equipment---rows and rows and rows of Russian T-72 variants, Kamaz trucks, sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, command and control vehicles, systems of electronic warfare etc, etc, etc. It's makes it really difficult to justify that it was all recovered or stolen or raided or teleported or whatever.

The ability to deny extremely large shipments of Russian equipment into Donbas has vanished.  Anybody arguing this point now is either willfully ignorant, biologically incapable of even simple abilities to reason (i.e. stupid), or deliberately lying.  There is no other possibility out there.  Vladimir is not stupid and I don't think he is lying, however I also know he is not ignorant.  I've shown him enough evidence to know that he's informed enough to know that the official story from the "separatists" and Russian media is a total and utterly obvious lie.

However, there's still a tenacious grip on the lie from the time period when Russia was conducting a more careful "plausible deniability" operation (May through July 2014).  However, those of us who knew Russia was involved from the start were not fooled for a minute.  Even in the early days there was plenty of evidence that large amounts of common Soviet stuff was coming in from Russia right from the start, including the separatists directly saying so (the infamous "sewing machines" comment, for example) and even complaining about it when the stuff didn't work (that was a fun video!).  Then Russia stopped caring about fooling anybody since even fools couldn't possibly overlook all the evidence.

From what I can tell the reason why people like Vlad can't admit to this very simple fact is because:

1.  Admitting that Russia was involved from the start poses lots of problems for a supporter of the Russian point of view.  First, it proves that the Russian government has absolutely no concern for the truth.  Second, it shows that it was the Russian government that created this war and not a bunch of "coal miners".  That then means the blood is on Russia's hands.  Third, it shows how easily they can be fooled for so long when others weren't ever fooled even when information was not plentiful.  Fourth, I think it is very disturbing to Russians that Westerners who don't speak or read Russian could be so much better informed about this war than they were.  It raises further uncomfortable questions about what else Western sources might be right about (like Russian casualties, MH-17, etc.).  Lastly, it indicates that maybe the whole "the war was started by a coup by CIA backed Nazis who wanted to enslave ethnic Russians" was just a crock of crap.

2.  It's embarrassing for the Russian state to have invested so much into Donbas and to have almost lost it in 2014 to what Russians view as an incompetent armed force.  The argument that Ukraine had good success because they were fighting "coal miners with pointy bits of wood" excuses the losses.  Showing pictures of Girkin's men leaving behind a pile of brand new condition AT-4s and a slew of destroyed armor undermines the excuse.  Instead, the truth shows that flooding Donbas with well armed Russian "volunteers" and "vacationers" produced a really crap fighting force that even the moderately organized and equipped Ukrainian Army was able to brush aside with regularity.  Which is also why it's been so hard to get Russians to admit how significant the role of their regular military forces was in stopping Ukraine's 2014 offensive, taking the airport, and taking Debaltseve.  It's one thing for an incompetent bunch of Nazis to do well against coal miners, it's another thing for it to do well against Russians with Russian equipment under Russian leadership and backed up by significant regular Russian military units.

In short... there is a very strongly conceived lie that is deeply entangled with Russian pride and nationalism.  It is not easy to combat such beliefs with facts.

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You make a good point. The destruction of the control tower was the destruction of a symbol of Ukrainian resistance much like the liquidation of the Zaphorizhian Sich by Catherine the Great in 1775 was. Still has zero strategic value though.

For sure the loss of the airport was ultimately a blow to Ukraine's morale.  But that's not the full story.  First, it allowed the Ukrainians to recover their morale from defeat of their summer offensive.  Ukrainians were able to see that their forces could stand up in a pitched battle FOR MONTHS, no matter what Russia threw at them.  IMHO Ukrainian morale did not drop that much when the airport fell because they never thought it was going to hold out so long.  What hurt their morale was the feeling that the higher levels of leadership screwed up.  Which means, if I am correct, that the entire battle at the airport was a net benefit to Ukrainian morale.

To separatist morale it was the opposite.  They assaulted day after day, suffered large numbers of casualties, and came away with nothing.  Even when backed up more directly by Russian forces they came away with nothing.  On several occasions they claimed to have taken the airport, only to find out they hadn't.  This must have brought their morale DOWN from the high of August/Sept 2014.  After the airport fell I am sure their morale went up.  However, so many separatist units were hollowed out that for them it was most likely not a positive experience in the end.

For Russian citizens, whatever morale boost they felt from this battle is likely higher than it should be because Russia has not allowed them to know the truth about the battle.  That Russian special forces were involved for months and failed to get the Ukrainians out certainly doesn't fit the Russian government's narrative of it's forces.  On top of that, the real casualty figures for the Russian side of the battle is almost for sure far lower than it really was.  Because Russia controls all information, this is very easily done.

One of Ukraine's estimates is that 800 "separatists" died and up to 2000 were wounded.  While this number is likely larger than the reality, it is probably closer to the truth than the extremely low figure that Russian media claims.  My guess is it's more like 400 dead and 1200 wounded.  That's roughly twice what Ukraine says it suffered, which is logical since Russia was on the offensive and for months their attacks were failures.  The thought that they suffered the same or less than Ukraine is not likely.

My point here is if Russians saw the real casualty figures and the real level of their government's involvement in that battle, I don't think they would be positively impressed by their side's performance.  I know I'm not :)

Steve

 

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3 hours ago, Machor said:

I have no wish to advertise here, but it seems the CMANO team have come up with their own counterpart to CMBS, to be released on November 2. And they're starting the action on November 8, 2016. :P I would be curious if Steve or anyone else would care to comment on their back story - that Moldova is the new Ukraine. Sounds like a stretch to me.

Since we have CMANO players on the forum ( @Raptorx7 ), I would also be interested to hear how they matched the NATO and Russian air and SAM forces to give the Russian player a chance to win. It could serve as fluff for Russian air support in CMBS (they have a screenshot with Russian Su-25s going to bomb something with iron bombs).

I don't suppose there is anything in the works covering the ground conflict in the operational scale?  I had some hopes for CommandOps, but their engine is really limited to WW2 stuff.

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On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

We've been over this before.  It was a Russian operation from the very start (i.e. February 2014).  *ALL* the evidence supports this.  Ukrainians definitely did join, but Russians kept pouring in over the border.  The primary fighting forces were heavily Russian, sometimes in whole units (Cossacks and Chechens, for example).  Locals were mostly there to man checkpoints.

The combat performance was, and still is, poor.  What percentage is Russian vs. Ukrainian doesn't affect their rather poor combat record.

Yes I wasn't actually disagreeing about there being poor performance, but I'm just bringing to light the good performance record because you were making it seem as if the local force is totally incapable of anything. 

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Sure, but that's what happens when "coal miners" suddenly have huge amounts of SAMs delivered by Russia.  But overall, Slavyansk was a major rout for the Russian led "separatists" that were there.  Girkin was soundly defeated and the "separatists" have been claiming they will return ever since.  Not going to happen.

Who said they were all "coal miners" anyone who said that obviously has no clue about the separ formations. Without the proper evidence we'll have to assume the MANPADs that the separatists started off with were captured from Ukrainian stock, since they did raid military positions at the time. However it is most likely that later on Russia supplied SAMs, but it is also recorded the separatists captured AA weaponry from Ukraine's army. 

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Very, very, very few Ukrainian military defected to the Russians.  What did happen was a carefully, and well executed civilian ambush that resulted in an unwinable situation where either the Ukrainians had to start killing civilians to escape or they had to effectively surrender.  This was the result of poor Ukrainian leadership and good Russian special ops.  IIRC almost all of the Ukrainian soldiers of the VDV unit (25th Air Mobile, IIRC) returned to Ukrainian lines without their equipment.  They were definitely demoralized because Ukraine had not gotten it's act together yet.  After that disaster the Ukrainians understood what not to do and for the most part avoided losing units to civilian ambushes.

Correct very few not like hundreds switched over. Anyways, we have seen the result of Ukraine's response to these "civilain ambushes" intensity on how they treated the local populace increased folds over.

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Correct.  Which is why only a few T-64s showed up from Russia.  There was plenty of photographic evidence of T-64s being transported within Russia on trucks and trains, either out of Crimea or from a base somewhere in that area, into Ukraine.  But as you said, they quickly ran out of "plausible deniability" tanks and instead went with older T-72s.  Therefore, obviously, all T-72s were from Russia.

Could be, Russia did supply weaponry I don't recall disagreeing with you recently on that topic, but we can't find an accurate number for those supplies, but we do have accurate numbers on how much weaponry and equipment have been captured from Ukraine don't we agree? So I'm just going against the claims that DPR/LPR totally operated or even mostly operated with Russian supplied weaponry which is not true for the most part.

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Now, let's just remember what we're arguing here.  And that the poor, independent "coal miners" desperately fought back against the mighty Ukrainian Army with nothing more than the shirts on their backs and pointy sticks.

The way media shows a certain belief should not lead you to judge the conflict. There were rebels which at the start and I have video proof if you want that can show locals with their regular clothes fighting. 

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Agreed, if by "volunteers" you mean Russian Federation citizens, many of whom were currently serving in the Russian Armed Forces but were on "vacation".  If that's what you are talking about, we have no disagreement.

We'd have to go into statistics for that one to make any viable judgement on the performance of volunteers. 

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

No, they've suffered most of the pain of the war that Russia insists on continuing.  The important fighting has mostly been determined by Russian units, be they tank or artillery or communications or electronic warfare or special forces.

So Yanukovych gets kicked out by Ukrainians because he abused them, yet Ukrainians of Donbas let Russia forcefully insist this war on them? I think you're denying the majority local support for DPR/LPR or Russian involvement or what say you. 

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, and that something is "their performance was overall not very good, which is why Russian had to send in it's regular military starting in June".

Which I've said... I think we're lost in our argument. My point from the start was locals now are capable, I never denied Russia sending in the military to propel those locals. I was trying to imply that locals have had effective cases before (even when lacking the superiority the Ukrainian military had over them) when equipped and in formation (why I said NOW the DPR/LPR can handle a next hypothetical offensive better than previously) 

On 10/23/2016 at 0:50 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Based on what evidence?  The only offensive operations I know of in the last year were defeats for the "separatists".  In fact, after one fairly major one there was some evidence that Russia forbid more offensives.

Look at the improvements and training standards they have now, they also have battle experience against Ukrainians and their formations are not under-strength. In 2015 there was a battle for Marinka I believe and it was the rebels who launched an offensive where they were repelled, but then the rebels repulsed the counter-offensive following. I'm not sure of any other battle that year or I can't remember one. 

 

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