How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[BFCElvis]

1 minute ago, Mft004 said:

Yes I read what you wrote. Yes I'm aware of the vacations. And the first post is illustrating a 2-sided coin rather than going after one poster or another. If there's a line or two omitted to prevent the latter risk, that is not a problem.

Kind regards,

Mark

Again, it's the part of your post that I quoted that was the problem. As long as you understand why that is then we're cool. 

  

22 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

This is one of the best things of the Battlefront Forum: you can post whatever you want. Unless you cross every border of decency and/or common sense, you are TOTALLY FREE to express your opinions.

 

[GAZ NZ]

Thanks for the information posted

This whole war is bizarre 

My mate and me, being long term cm players and military history buffs cannot understand how Russia is not using airsupport / Air defenses or decent equipment and using weird tactics and running out of logistics 

They are either incompetent or this is a tactical ruse

My thoughts on a ruse would be to use weak forces, lose them, appear incompetent, enemy feels confident and overextends and masses to attack you and you commit all your awesome units tech and cut them down / surround them

Putin is using this as a time to access his opponents capabilities 

Russia has extensive experience in Syria war and they have done ok there , so I don't get what is going on in Ukraine 

Just doesn't make sense 

It has to be a ruse else Russian cmd are completely stuffed and this is the biggest incomprehensible useless command of an invasion force ever

I note loss of Chechen general which may have been intentional to inflame the Chechens 

They are very good fighters 

I note several country's in middle East use them as protection detail

Here are some links I watched for general overviews. 

Ex us marine 

 

Ex US? intelligence analyst and his team. Very interesting info but can take a while for updates

Weird times 

Thanks for everyones comments 

 

[danfrodo]

That is some grade A #1 best quality propaganda manure.  But interesting that Putin's declaring victory.  I think Hitler did that about Stalingrad in october.  (He was later shown to be mistaken in his assessment)

[Mft004]

1 minute ago, BFCElvis said:

Again, it's the part of your post that I quoted that was the problem. As long as you understand why that is then we're cool. 

  

 

Yes if you're leaving my first post intact that's even better. It gets the message across without hate.

[danfrodo]

ooops forgot to quote -- previous post about the Putin stuff a few minutes ago

[akd]

3 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

Putin's (not entirely unreasonable) position and worldview is that it doesn't matter what NATO's intentions are. It only matters what capabilities are. Intentions can change very quickly.

France and Russia were allied in the 18th century. And then the French revolution happened, Napoleon ended up in power, and then ended up in Moscow. Briefly.

The German Weimar Republic was on good terms with the USSR in the 1920s. But the rise of the Nazis was pretty rapid, and a de facto alliance turned in a few short years in to Operation Barbarossa.

So Putin's view is that it doesn't matter what anyone's intentions are. Just the idea that the Russian defensive line starts 300km from Moscow on the Ukrainian border is what matters. Strategic depth is what has saved Russia in the past, and what it lacks without control of Ukraine. Ukraine might not intend any hostility to Russia, but give it a few years and changes of leadership, and what if there is am aggressive, beligerent ruler with the capability to use eastern Ukraine as a starting platform.

This is all so dumb.  Nuclear weapons make such depth entirely irrelevant except for the deployment of nuclear weapons.  Negotiate on that issue alone and leave out the sovereignty of non-nuclear states.

[BeondTheGrave]

2 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

That is some grade A #1 best quality propaganda manure.  But interesting that Putin's declaring victory.  I think Hitler did that about Stalingrad in october.  (He was later shown to be mistaken in his assessment)

For context, I assume youre referring to the @akd post. This document was posted by mistake by Sputnik (I think, state media), its thought it was set to a scheduled release and that nobody remembered to turn it off. The Russian version posted and was quickly taken down, this is a translation of the archive.

This was the victory speech in the even Ukraine had fallen quickly. 

More details can be found in another post of mine upthread. 

Edited February 27, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[Bulletpoint]

4 minutes ago, GAZ NZ said:

My thoughts on a ruse would be to use weak forces, lose them, appear incompetent, enemy feels confident and overextends and masses to attack you and you commit all your awesome units tech and cut them down / surround them

Putin is using this as a time to access his opponents capabilities 

I think this idea doesn't make much sense either, because in that time your initial forces are destroyed, you lose the initiative, you lose the propaganda battle, and you lose the morale factor.

Just look at how in a few short days, Western support to Ukraine has swelled, and recruits queue up in long lines to help defend the country. Support inside and outside Ukraine is snowballing.

This could have been avoided by striking a decisive blow in the beginning, making civilians think twice about getting involved, but everyone wants to be part of a success story.

Also Western governments might have concluded that Ukraine was lost, and no amount of weapons shipments would change that, so better to be on decent footing with Putin after the war.

[Bulletpoint]

Here's another theory about why the Russian invasion seems to be a total clown show: It's being sabotaged from within.

Either some top generals are actively trying to make it fail, as a covert coup to bring down Putin.

Or the Russian military has been infiltrated by agents and/or backdoor software that makes it possible for the someone from the outside to modify orders and throw a spanner in the works, without it being immediately apparent that this is done remotely.

It could be that this is based on a spy network that has been in place for a long time but is only being activated now.

[Baneman]

1 hour ago, Cpl Steiner said:

... I've seen captured Russian soldiers being paraded before the cameras and asked why they are there, which breaches the Geneva Convention, without so much as a peep out of the Media....

Given the amount of dis/mis-information floating around in this day and age, compared with when the GC was drafted, this actually prevents any wild claims of POW's being mistreated and/or "disappeared".

[DesertFox]

15 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

This was the victory speech in the even Ukraine had fallen quickly. 

Yeah that is some megalomaniac drivel. Gives a good impression, how screwed up the mind of the kremlin lunatic really is.

[Bulletpoint]

RT.com is no longer available to me. I was looking at the site once two hours ago to see how they would spin the war, but now, it says "suspicious activity has been detected from my network". I assume this means somebody is launching a DDOS attack on them.

 

[TheVulture]

3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

RT.com is no longer available to me. I was looking at the site once two hours ago to see how they would spin the war, but now, it says "suspicious activity has been detected from my network". I assume this means somebody is launching a DDOS attack on them.

 

No, it means your network hasn't produced enough pro-Kremlin propaganda, which they find suspicious

[Erwin]

Re the video... if this guy's maps are correct, it does seem to indicate an attempt at a land bridge to link Crimea with Russia.

 

[DesertFox]

2 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

MiG-29s from Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria

and don't count out volunteer pilots. They are no different from other volunteer fighters

Well looks like the jets will be in Ukraine within the next hours:

 

 

[Seedorf81]

36 minutes ago, akd said:

A new world is being born before our eyes. Russia's military operation in Ukraine has ushered in a new era - and in three dimensions at once. And of course, in the fourth, internal Russian. Here begins a new period both in ideology and in the very model of our socio-economic system - but this is worth talking about separately a little later. Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but would also be cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land. 

 Nationalists in Ukraine are fighting on the recommendation of foreigners, Putin said. Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them. The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the insane versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. And in the event of the consolidation of the full geopolitical and military control of the West over Ukraine, its return to Russia would become completely impossible - it would have to fight for it with the Atlantic bloc. 

Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what boundaries, in what form will the alliance with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end. And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia's relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe. And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise. 

Russia formed a delegation for negotiations with Ukraine Did someone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which took place according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools. More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin's Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning. 

 Russia brought to Ukraine an agreement to organize negotiations, said Peskov Now the West is trying to punish Russia for the fact that it returned, for not justifying its plans to profit at its expense, for not allowing the expansion of the western space to the east. Seeking to punish us, the West thinks that relations with it are of vital importance to us. But this has not been the case for a long time - the world has changed, and this is well understood not only by Europeans, but also by the Anglo-Saxons who rule the West. No amount of Western pressure on Russia will lead to anything. There will be losses from the sublimation of confrontation on both sides, but Russia is ready for them morally and geopolitically. But for the West itself, an increase in the degree of confrontation incurs huge costs - and the main ones are not at all economic. Europe, as part of the West, wanted autonomy - the German project of European integration does not make strategic sense while maintaining the Anglo-Saxon ideological, military and geopolitical control over the Old World. Yes, and it cannot be successful, because the Anglo-Saxons need a controlled Europe. But Europe needs autonomy for another reason as well — in case the States go into self-isolation (as a result of growing internal conflicts and contradictions) or focus on the Pacific region, where the geopolitical center of gravity is moving.

Russia's rights in the Council of Europe suspended But the confrontation with Russia, into which the Anglo-Saxons are dragging Europe, deprives the Europeans of even the chances of independence - not to mention the fact that in the same way Europe is trying to impose a break with China. If now the Atlanticists are happy that the "Russian threat" will unite the Western bloc, then in Berlin and Paris they cannot fail to understand that, having lost hope for autonomy, the European project will simply collapse in the medium term. That is why independent-minded Europeans are now completely uninterested in building a new iron curtain on their eastern borders - realizing that it will turn into a corral for Europe. Whose century (more precisely, half a millennium) of global leadership is over in any case - but various options for its future are still possible. Because the construction of a new world order - and this is the third dimension of current events - is accelerating, and its contours are more and more clearly visible through the spreading cover of Anglo-Saxon globalization. A multipolar world has finally become a reality - the operation in Ukraine is not capable of rallying anyone but the West against Russia. Because the rest of the world sees and understands perfectly well - this is a conflict between Russia and the West, this is a response to the geopolitical expansion of the Atlanticists, this is Russia's return of its historical space and its place in the world.

No one in Europe wants to fight Russia,  China and India, Latin America and Africa, the Islamic world and Southeast Asia - no one believes that the West leads the world order, much less sets the rules of the game. Russia has not only challenged the West, it has shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over. The new world will be built by all civilizations and centers of power, naturally, together with the West (united or not) - but not on its terms and not according to its rules.

As a non-American, who worries a bit about the recent state of Putin's psyche, I haven't forgotten that the USA had it's fair share of leaders with peculiar behaviour. Bush jr. and Trump had some moments that baffled me, to say it kindly.

But this is even more worrying. How in the name of #*^*# can any intelligent person believe this nonsense? If they really think this is true, they are in need of a serious conversation with a psychiatrist. 

 

[BeondTheGrave]

21 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Here's another theory about why the Russian invasion seems to be a total clown show: It's being sabotaged from within.

Either some top generals are actively trying to make it fail, as a covert coup to bring down Putin.

Or the Russian military has been infiltrated by agents and/or backdoor software that makes it possible for the someone from the outside to modify orders and throw a spanner in the works, without it being immediately apparent that this is done remotely.

It could be that this is based on a spy network that has been in place for a long time but is only being activated now.

Its not unbelievable to think that NATO has broken into Russian communications and fiddled with their C2 network. I could think of no better way of grinding an offensive to a halt than sending out erroneous reports or shuffling logistics trains this way and that to no effect. We know that the US has been very concerned about China doing exactly this to us. Anyone notice how few Russian drones there have been in the conflict? Maybe the US sabotaged the network there on the first day(unconfirmed speculation, dont @ me) 

But ultimately I think too that the problem is systemic. It is as much at the point of the spear as at the shaft. Its not just that the supply chain broke down, or that intel didn't do its job, or that the men at the front have been employed poorly. Its everything all at once. That says, to me, that the problem is with the whole of the Russian national security establishment and in ways that a few 007s or a well placed malware attack could create.

I suspect though that NATO EW/Cyber activities arn't doing the Russians any favors. 

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

I could think of no better way of grinding an offensive to a halt than sending out erroneous reports or shuffling logistics trains this way and that to no effect.

Also it could explain the seemingly many cases of entire Russian columns driving straight into ambushes. They might have been given bogus orders to move fast to a location that was deemed "safe".

[BeondTheGrave]

Just now, Bulletpoint said:

Also it could explain the seemingly many cases of entire Russian columns driving straight into ambushes. They might have been given bogus orders to move fast to a location that was deemed "safe".

Maybe. This is what I mean by a systemic failure. A few platoons riding in and getting creamed I would believe. But whole battalions and regiments just charging in penny packets and getting picked apart piece meal? At some point the commander needs to turn on his thinking brain and order his men to dismount or move with overwatch. 

That this hasn't happened suggests that this is a doctrinal failure. That is the Russians were taught this was how they should fight, and are now paying the price for that mistake. 

[John Kettler]

9 hours ago, akd said:

That is obviously not Ukraine. Think before you post.

Mods,

Please remove my incorrect post referenced above. Thanks!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Bulletpoint]

3 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

That this hasn't happened suggests that this is a doctrinal failure. That is the Russians were taught this was how they should fight, and are now paying the price for that mistake. 

I can hardly believe they would be that incompetent. A country that has so much pride about its WW2 achievements.. and with several recent modern wars and conflicts behind it... surely any Russian military leader must have studied history and tactics.

[arkhangelsk2021]

4 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

For all those who don’t know history, Arkhangelsk was the location that a joint British/US expeditionary force landed to help the White Russians defeat the reds. They failed of course, which is why the World order is as it is today.

Name choice seems to have symbolism in this forum.

So, instead of countering points, talk about names, eh? If you must know, "arkhangelsk" has been around since something like 2000. The main advantage is that not many people would take that name, so I can expect to retain the name on any forum I don't use my real name on. Of course, it can imply I have slight Russophilia, but by the time I touched the Internet, Russia has already turned from that threat "always ready" to invade NATO into the underdog.

[danfrodo]

I'm with beondTheGrave on this, though I am focusing on the logistics side.  There's so many simple, straightforward ways to explain this and fit all the facts.  A corrupt, incompetent command structure would lead to an inefficient system.  Bad higher ups want good news.  Lower downs provide it.  Higher ups pass the good news up and everyone is happy.  But if no audits or checks, systems look one way but are actually another. This is especially true in organizations that punish bearers of bad news.

If the logistics system is not actually very good and you have very large numbers deployed into nowheresville for weeks on end, the system might already be failing before you even start.  Then war happens.  Convoys start getting burned, or bad comms lead to missed connections, things start falling apart.  And maybe because everyone assumed fast campaign so no one actually stockpiled enough supplies, or the supplies were slow in arriving and they had to go into battle partially unsupplied already.

Picture Case Blau, 1942.  In hindsight, tt's easy to see that the germans were woefully under-resourced for that operation relative to its goals.  BUT!  if the assumption going in was that the enemy would fold up after the first couple punches, then the resources were just fine. 

So I'd say mix of corrupt/incompetent system plus assumptions of easy victory.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

Why would we assume the Belarus forces would do any better than the Russians?

Oh, they would do sooooo much worse.  The general professional opinion about Belarus' fighting abilities are quite low.  And with all the turmoil in the country over the past year, I doubt their morale is very good.

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

I'm personally not that worried about Ukraine holding on, but I must say I'm worried about what Putin might do in a rage if he doesn't get what he wants. Until recently, I thought he was a dictator but a predictable one.

Yes, this.

An hour or two ago I was driving and heard about Putin increasing the threat level on the nukes.  About 5 minutes later my phone, in my chest pocket, gives me an emergency broadcast alert tone.  I get maybe one of those every few years where I live (folks out in Tornado Alley probably get them enough to lose their hearing) so it was very unusual.  Part of my lizard brain thought "this is the big one!", so I stopped and looked.  Snow squall producing sudden high winds and near zero viability.  Ah, much better I thought.

Steve

[John Kettler]

8 hours ago, Haiduk said:

During the battle for Hostomel airfield this beauty was lost  

That's the one used to transport the Buran space shuttle. During the Cold War, I saw a satellite photo of it with the Buran aboard after the combo had skidded off the runway. Spectacular bird!

Regards,

John Kettler