How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Beleg85]

50 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Yes. The song is hilarious because apart from phrase hinting at Aslin sadness at trial (touching it very lightly) it portrays British as ultimate fighting machine that rolls toward RU. And RU say they are not pussies and as tough as British so lets fight and fittest will survive.

But on top of it the clip that focuses much more on British that on RU as if main characters are British marines/soldiers. And the is icing on the cake is first scene from I believe old British cartoon that evil RU bear attacks unsuspecting neighbor and British lion get his police cap and off to inflict justice on RU evil bear.

It is great honor actually - despite all the claims of fighting with Americans now you cannot fight anything like this about Americans. Still remember the pain of Crimean war.

Russians fixation with Great Britain is something that seems unique to current Russian political culture. Propagandists give UK almost the same amount of attention as to "evil" US. Like they are still trapped in XIX cent. European powerplay with "clueless Yanks" only being  distant factor. I wonder if this tone is decided by twisted Kremlin vision of history, appaling UK esthetics or personal preferences of somebody higher (perhaps Putin himself?).

[chuckdyke]

2 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Russians fixation with Great Britain

Sean Connery as James Bond best movie from Russia with Love. The real McCoy was Sidney Riley, ace of spies. 

 

[Aragorn2002]

8 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Sean Connery as James Bond best movie from Russia with Love. The real McCoy was Sidney Riley, ace of spies. 

 

Loved the series with Sam Neil!

[Letter from Prague]

My hypothesis on Russian (propaganda) obsession with the UK is that they kind of are stuck in the 19th century - not only do they see world in optics of great powers with spheres of influence, they dont see Russia as a country but as a temporarily embarassed empire and great power.

It kind of makes sense they think that way about UK as well, even if modern UK (unlike Russia) doesn't really have imperial appetite.

[Haiduk]

On Donetsk direction operates at least one group of PzH2000 or M109 155mm howitzers. This was found in Kirovskiy district of Donetsk. In comments somebody answered this is submunition for SMART 155 rounds

 

 

 

[G.I. Joe]

20 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Lots of people like airplanes, but they worship a false god. Tanks are God's chosen war machines. 

It is possible to like both...and even to have room left over for submarines.

[Holien]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

Russians fixation with Great Britain is something that seems unique to current Russian political culture. Propagandists give UK almost the same amount of attention as to "evil" US.

Alternatively they could be deeply annoyed at the amount of money wasted on political interference wasted on "Trolley" who they thought would behave differently. So are aiming their angst at our leadership for taking the money and not delivering the goods...

[Haiduk]

Russians are moving to South through Cremean bridge own newest PP-91M (other name PP-2005) pontoon park. Main visual difference - KAMAZ trucks as carriers instead KRAZ or Ural.

PP-2205 can maintain 268 m pontoon bridge (32 pontoon chains + 4 coast chains) for weights in 60-90-120 tons. It's possible to build two lesser bridges from one PP-2005 or to build big britge in 572 m from two PP-2005

Also it can maintain ferries in different configurations for weights up to 720 tons. For this purpose pontoon park has 6 MZ-330 motorized chains

For moving pontoons and other utility purposes PM-2005 has also 4 tugboats BMK-225

Since 2017 at least three PP-2005 were received by Russian army.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Haiduk

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:

My hypothesis on Russian (propaganda) obsession with the UK is that they kind of are stuck in the 19th century - not only do they see world in optics of great powers with spheres of influence, they dont see Russia as a country but as a temporarily embarassed empire and great power.

It kind of makes sense they think that way about UK as well, even if modern UK (unlike Russia) doesn't really have imperial appetite.

I believe this is part of it.  The other part is that the only European country to routinely make major foreign military commitments is the UK.  I'm talking about numerical counts, as other nations make very large contributions relative to their size.  They are, in a way, the United States equivalent within Europe.  It is hard to imagine a major foreign military engagement without both the US and the UK involved.  So, if Russian propagandists are getting bored with American bashing, the next most appropriate target to go after is the UK.

Steve

[danfrodo]

7 hours ago, panzermartin said:

What is a tankie? Mistreating or killing POWS in times of wars like this, is absolutely no surprise sadly. Its a reality but even the good guys commit such crimes on and off the record. But treating your own helpless people like s*** in everyday life hits a different chord.

Well, interesting night of posts last night.  but what is a Tankie?  I happened to get some education on that this very morning.  Markos at DailyKos lets the tankie nutbags speak for themselves.  Talk about seeing the world in black/white like some kind of cultists.  And Noam Chomsky now thinks ....what???? 

LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT OWN RISK:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/6/2114833/-Ukraine-Update-Oh-goodie-the-Tankies-are-losing-their-minds-over-Pelosi-and-NATO

On the Pelosi thing, I think both sides have very good points about whether the timing of this is good or bad.  It does show that US is standing behind Taiwan.  And it does greatly raise tensions.  I dunno which of these matters more right now and going forward.

From Haiduk's post above, it looks like RU thinks it can keep supplies going to Kherson.  I hope this has same success as flying supplies into Stalingrad.

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by danfrodo
typo

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, G.I. Joe said:

It is possible to like both...and even to have room left over for submarines.

OK, I gotta give you that.  After much praying and reading of scripture, it appears I overstated my case.

I agree w you that airplanes are not false gods.  They are gods but are lesser gods relative to The Most Exalted High Gods (tracked armored vehicles).    Wheeled armored vehicles are the offspring of High Gods w mortals, so are demi-gods. 

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Russians are moving to South through Cremean bridge own newest PP-91M (other name PP-2005) pontoon park. Main visual difference - KAMAZ trucks as carriers instead KRAZ or Ural.

PP-2205 can maintain 268 m pontoon bridge (32 pontoon chains + 4 coast chains) for weights in 60-90-120 tons. It's possible to built two lesser bridges from one PP-2005 or to built big britge in 572 m from two PP-2005

Also it can maintain ferries in different configurations for weights up to 720 tons. For this purpose pontoon park has 6 MZ-330 motorized chains

For moving pontoons and other utility purposes PM-2005 has also 4 tugboats BMK-225

Since 2017 at least three PP-2005 were received by Russian army.

For all the talk about Russia's "endless" amounts of equipment to draw from, there's a lack of analysis of the systems which are absolutely not sitting around in large numbers.  Like the West, Russia can't easily replace these systems if lost.  Even without sanctions, the amount of time it takes to manufacture such equipment is too long to have an impact on the war being fought now.

Russia has already lost significant amounts of bridging equipment since the war started.  How much do they have in inventory that can bridge the Dnepr?  Seems like they're going to need most of what exists in order to bridge that distance.  Any losses are going to be problematic for sure.

Here's a Russian article on the PP-2005 that was written only last week.  Comments have some interesting information in them as well.

https://en.topwar.ru/198708-pontonnyj-park-pp-2005m.html

Steve

[theFrizz]

9 hours ago, panzermartin said:

The visit was an unnecessary move and not that smart amidst Ukraine war.

??? 

[Harmon Rabb]

Double post...Sorry.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Harmon Rabb

[Harmon Rabb]

2 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Sean Connery as James Bond best movie from Russia with Love. The real McCoy was Sidney Riley, ace of spies. 

 

Pierce Brosnan will always be my favourite Bond.

Seriously, who doesn't love that tank chase sequence from GoldenEye?

 

[Battlefront.com]

I'm not being critical of any one person, but a common misconception of the United States' capabilities is that it can only focus on ONE thing at a time.  Even many in the US have this perception, with both the extreme right and extreme left consistently arguing that the nation shouldn't do X because it needs to do Y.  This runs contrary to US history and is absolutely not consistent with how the US government and military is structured.  In short, everything about the US is designed to handle at least two major foreign needs at the same time.

Think back to WW2.  Hitler made a really bad assumption that the US would be fully invested in the Pacific against Japan and, therefore, would not be much of a bother for Germany.  Many within the US, mostly because of political and/or racial beliefs argued the same thing, so it's not like Hitler was wrong to think it could go that direction.  Fortunately for the US, and very unfortunately for both Japan and Germany, this was not how things went.

In relation to China, it's similar to WW2.  The US government (and military) is designed to deal with major issues in Asia and in Europe concurrently.  China needs to be convinced that invading Taiwan is a bad idea, Russia needs to be isolated from Chinese aid.  It is not an either or choice.

Ensuring China understands that the US is both capable and willing to defend Taiwan is essential if the world is to avoid yet another asinine war.  Criticism that the US did not make a similar statement abundantly clear to Putin about Ukraine, years before he got ready to invade, is a lesson we should learn from.

Steve

 

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Holien said:

Alternatively they could be deeply annoyed at the amount of money wasted on political interference wasted on "Trolley" who they thought would behave differently. So are aiming their angst at our leadership for taking the money and not delivering the goods...

Yup, it seems UK is also finally delivering serious crackdown on "Londongrad" and assorted Russian influences. This may have some longer real repercussions for Russian business-political elites than just loosing some houses, bank accounts, yachts etc. Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov may bragg about how he don't care about it and wave his spent NLAW tube as long as he wants, but I bet his pals are much more concerned than they officially admitt.

 

Some details from Dymitiy about brutal mobilization in LDPR.

https://wartranslated.com/so-called-dpr-citizen-keeps-a-blog-about-the-horrors-of-mobilisation-in-the-republic/

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Beleg85

[Huba]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm not being critical of any one person, but a common misconception of the United States' capabilities is that it can only focus on ONE thing at a time.  Even many in the US have this perception, with both the extreme right and extreme left consistently arguing that the nation shouldn't do X because it needs to do Y.  This runs contrary to US history and is absolutely not consistent with how the US government and military is structured.  In short, everything about the US is designed to handle at least two major foreign needs at the same time.

Think back to WW2.  Hitler made a really bad assumption that the US would be fully invested in the Pacific against Japan and would, therefore, not be much of a bother for Germany.  Many within the US, mostly because of political and/or racial beliefs argued the same thing, so it's not like Hitler was wrong to think it could go that direction.  Fortunately for the US, and very unfortunately for both Japan and Germany, this was not how things went.

In relation to China, it's similar to WW2.  The US government (and military) is designed to deal with major issues in Asia and in Europe concurrently.  China needs to be convinced that invading Taiwan is a bad idea, Russia needs to be isolated from Chinese aid.  It is not an either or choice.

Ensuring China understand that the US is both capable and willing to defend Taiwan is essential if the world is to avoid yet another asinine war.  Criticism that the US did not make that abundantly clear to Putin years ahead of the invasion is a lesson we should learn from.

Steve

 

To add to that, from military standpoint Taiwan and Ukraine need different resources. In a very unlikely case  of shooting war breaking at the seas around China, Ukraine wouldn’t compete with ROC for US aircraft or warships, and vice versa. If anything, I’d expect that US would take off the proverbial gloves, wanting for RU war do be concluded faster and decisively.

[dan/california]

 

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

For all the talk about Russia's "endless" amounts of equipment to draw from, there's a lack of analysis of the systems which are absolutely not sitting around in large numbers.  Like the West, Russia can't easily replace these systems if lost.  Even without sanctions, the amount of time it takes to manufacture such equipment is too long to have an impact on the war being fought now.

Russia has already lost significant amounts of bridging equipment since the war started.  How much do they have in inventory that can bridge the Dnepr?  Seems like they're going to need most of what exists in order to bridge that distance.  Any losses are going to be problematic for sure.

Here's a Russian article on the PP-2005 that was written only last week.  Comments have some interesting information in them as well.

https://en.topwar.ru/198708-pontonnyj-park-pp-2005m.html

Steve

The most interesting thing I learned from the Russian article is that the French have a really well thought out bridging system. If, and it is a big if all those lovely and hydraulic and pneumatic systems actually work.

The thing I don't understand is how the Russians plan to do ANYTHING on the west/north side of the Dnipro when Ukrainian PGMs are spelling bleep you down every bridge. Someone is very wrong about something.

[Huba]

8 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

The most interesting thing I learned from the Russian article is that the French have a really well thought out bridging system. If, and it is a big if all those lovely and hydraulic and pneumatic systems actually work.

The thing I don't understand is how the Russians plan to do ANYTHING on the west/north side of the Dnipro when Ukrainian PGMs are spelling bleep you down every bridge. Someone is very wrong about something.

I was always the most impressed by these self contained bridging units. Poland, after deliberating about it for two decades, recently purchased $350M worth of different French bridges. While not as neat, these are also quite impressive:

 

[Letter from Prague]

Have we seen this last update on barbarity?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/06/footage-appears-show-head-ukrainian-pow-stuck-pole

Quote

The Ukrainian governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, posted the gruesome photo on his Telegram channel. It has since been widely shared on social media. Ukrainians have accused Russian troops of barbaric medieval behaviour and likened the image to Lord of the Rings.

“They really are orcs. Twenty-first century, occupied Popasna, human skull on the fence,” Haidai wrote. “There is nothing human about the Russians. We are at war with non-humans.”

I'm sure some "respectable" western organization will take that quote and start reporting on "Ukrainian racism" or something.

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Yup, it seems UK is also finally delivering serious crackdown on "Londongrad" and assorted Russian influences. This may have some longer real repercussions for Russian business-political elites than just loosing some houses, bank accounts, yachts etc. Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov may bragg about how he don't care about it and wave his spent NLAW tube as long as he wants, but I bet his pals are much more concerned than they officially admitt.

Similar to the great video posted yesterday about Russia's flawed thinking about its leverage with energy, it is also wrong about its leverage over European and US politics.  All the money spent on supposedly buying protection from Western retaliation for Russian crimes was wasted.  Bribes, threats, funding useful idiots, etc. all worked pretty well for Russia when Western national interests weren't overtly threatened. 

Since Russia is a criminal state, it's not wrong to compare it to criminal gangs operating in urban areas.  Bribes, threats, blackmail, petty crimes, etc... work pretty well.  Authorities might nibble at the organization here and there, but by and large it gets to do what it wants to.  However, once the gang starts killing people in broad daylight, threatens the lives of cops, goes after judges, etc... well... the authorities don't just slam down on the specific activity that crossed the line, they tend to go after the entire enterprise.  Almost overnight illegal operations that authorities have known about for years suddenly get raided, people at the top find themselves arrested for crimes committed over a long period of time, financial assets seized, etc.

This is what has happened to Russia.  The network of influence Russia paid for over the last 20+ years is decimated because of the war in Ukraine and ONLY because of the war in Ukraine.  I don't know how that benefits Russia, but Putin is the master strategist so I'm sure this is all going according to his plan

Steve

[Vet 0369]

On 8/4/2022 at 10:19 AM, paxromana said:

Almost certainly, Russian WW2 120mm (and, from memory, even their 82 mm ones) were based on French Brandt designs - so I presume the current generation would be backwards compatible, ammo wise (unlike their artillery!)

Not necessarily so. While the tubes might have been based on the Brandt design, as was the U.S. 60mm M2 mortar, the Soviet/Russian tones use ammunition that is about 2mm larger than the Western designs. That allowed them to use captured ammunition, but prevented their opponents from using captured Soviet/Russian rounds.

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, Huba said:

I was always the most impressed by these self contained bridging units. Poland, after deliberating about it for two decades, recently purchased $350M worth of different French bridges. While not as neat, these are also quite impressive:

 

No offense to the French, but when it comes to engineering there are the Germans   Check out the time lapse at the end.

However, this thing can only do something like 150m maximum and, like I was saying about the Russian capacity, it would be easily taken out of the war because.  Germany supposedly has 30 in service which is a total capacity of about 400m of bridging total.

Steve

[Machor]

FancyCat already posted a tweet linking to this, but I think it's worth posting more detail: The Bellingcat report on the latest Russian torture/murder videos is out. I'll quote the introduction as a summary; TL;DR:

1. The primary suspect is a Siberian ethnic minority fighting alongside Chechens.

2. It looks like the Russians considered charging him, but changed their mind and claimed that it was Ukrainian soldiers who tortured and murdered the Ukrainian victim.

Tracking the Faceless Killers who Mutilated and Executed a Ukrainian POW

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/05/tracking-the-faceless-killers-who-mutilated-and-executed-a-ukrainian-pow/
 

Quote

 

On July 28, a series of horrifying videos circulated on pro-Russian social media which depicted an act of sexual violence and execution of what appeared to be a Ukrainian prisoner of war. Bellingcat has not linked to these videos due to their extremely graphic nature.

The three videos (hereafter ‘the violent videos’) were initially posted on a Russian telegram channel whose name translates as ‘Cargo 200, death to Ukrainians’, which extolls casualties among Ukrainian armed forces. The videos were subsequently reposted on the popular Rosich Telegram channel run by a nationalist Russian mercenary group.

The videos were initially celebrated by the channel administrators and most of the commenting users, until several hours later they were suddenly disowned by the same as “likely forgeries”, allegedly planted in the pro-Russian channels by agents of Ukraine aiming to discredit the Russian army.

A description of the act in the videos, which each show a part of the same sequence of events, follows in the closed drop-down box below.

The footage shows a soldier approaching a figure wearing Ukrainian military fatigues and the blue and yellow patches worn by Ukrainian servicemen. The identity of the victim, whose face cannot be seen clearly in the videos, remains unknown.

In the first video, two accomplices were seen restraining the man while the cameraman and a man in a cowboy hat looked on.

In the second video, the presumed Russian soldier in the cowboy hat then castrates the captive, who is mocked by the group of soldiers watching.

In a third video, the captive is executed with a gunshot to the head, presumably by the soldier in the cowboy hat.

...

Bellingcat’s investigation into visual clues in the videos using the available open source evidence corroborates the authenticity of the three violent videos and indicates that fighters from ‘Akhmat’, a Chechen paramilitary formation serving with the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, were present at the scene of the murder.

The link to ‘Akhmat’ was uncovered while investigating a man who appeared in multiple news broadcasts about the group who wore the same distinctive hat, bracelet and military fatigues as seen worn by one individual in the mutilation video. Several visual clues in these news broadcasts also suggested that they could have been filmed near, and in the same time frame, as the murder videos, including one filmed at the same location in July of this year.

The identity of the individual who wears the cowboy hat in the videos of the ‘Akhmat’ fighters is known to Bellingcat. However, Bellingcat has obscured his image and name as while there are numerous commonalities, the face of the alleged perpetrator cannot be clearly seen in the videos of the act itself.

Bellingcat contacted this individual to offer him a right of reply. In a conversation with reporters, he acknowledged that he had been deployed to Ukraine as a member of the ‘Akhmat’ group, and that he was “the man in the cowboy hat” seen in the news broadcasts. While he denied that he appeared in the mutilation and execution videos, he did confirm that he had been detained and questioned by the Russian security services over the footage, who had told him that it actually depicted Ukrainian soldiers mutilating one of their own comrades.

 

And a new atrocity: