dajo9 said:

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oski003 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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Cal88 said:

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sycasey said:

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I'll just save everyone the time of reading the next several weeks of movielover posts:

"Col. McGregor says that everything is going great for Russia and America is bad."

Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Criticizing bad US policy is our patriotic duty.

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"our"

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Do you want some freedom fries with that?

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I'm an American who was called a traitor for opposing the Iraq War during the time of freedom fries. I dont know what you were doing at that time but you weren't being an American.

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Did you just assume my gender nationality?

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You've discussed being French. Like the fries.

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40 years on this side of the Pond, I even have ketchup with my freedom fries.

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Some people are born in America, spend their whole lives here, and are traitors

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What shall Cal88's punishment be?

2381. Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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The public humiliation he gets on these boards on a daily basis is punishment enough

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It's not easy being right...

Financial Times: Letter: Kennan did not mince his words on Nato expansion

From Armen Martirosyan, Ambassador of Armenia

"...I'm reminded of a 1997 New York Times article by George Kennan, entitled "A Fateful Error". The architect of the cold war policy of containment did not mince words in arguing that "expanding Nato would be the most fateful error in American policy in the entire post-cold war era".

"He predicted that "it would inflame nationalistic, anti-western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion", "have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy", "restore the atmosphere of cold war to east-west relations", and "impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking". "

https://www.ft.com/content/fbfc34eb-d722-43af-b160-63d5cd9604f5

Cato Institute: Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy

"George Kennan, the intellectual father of America's containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate's ratification of NATO's first round of expansion would set in motion. "I think it is the beginning of a new cold war," Kennan stated. "I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else." "

Can Zelensky make rational decisions when his extremist right threatens his life? Really chilling.

Short video.

I'm going to say i really don't like it when people call those they disagree with traitors. I disagree with Cal88 vehemently re Ukraine. I think he's adopted a bizarre pro-russian view/bias.

But I have no reason to think he's a traitor or anti-american. We just have a disagreement as to what is in America's interest. No need to demonize him.

And the funny thing is Dajo of all people started this. His views are often well outside the mainstream (i.e., outside of this Cal bubble) and many many people would think his views/policy preferences are bad for America. He's exactly the type of guy who should be worried about the traitor slur.

Weeb Union video, short, shows 2 potential big breakthroughs for Russia, and one medium breakthrough for Ukraine.

BearGoggles said:

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I'm going to say i really don't like it when people call those they disagree with traitors. I disagree with Cal88 vehemently re Ukraine. I think he's adopted a bizarre pro-russian view/bias.

But I have no reason to think he's a traitor or anti-american. We just have a disagreement as to what is in America's interest. No need to demonize him.

And the funny thing is Dajo of all people started this. His views are often well outside the mainstream (i.e., outside of this Cal bubble) and many many people would think his views/policy preferences are bad for America. He's exactly the type of guy who should be worried about the traitor slur.

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I haven't seen anything to indicate Cal88 is a traitor to Russia - he's make it pretty clear he won't betray them. I'm not sure it's possible to read Cal88's contributions to the forum over the years in a manner that would indicate that his interests are aligned with the US.

Dajo was the first to point this out many years ago, and since he mentioned that I also noticed that everything Cal88 does is consistent with that point. I haven't seen him do anything that would make it fair to accuse him of having any real allegiance to the US. He speaks far more glowingly of Russia and its leadership, economy, etc. than he ever has of the US so I don't think it makes any sense to assume that his pro-Russian view bias is limited to the unprovoked war with Ukraine, as you've done here.

I do agree with you that even if he did somehow care about the US, his ridiculous adoption of Kremlin propaganda hook, line and sinker wouldn't make him a traitor, it would just make him a useful idiot. But to be clear I don't think he's dumb enough to actually believe the firehose of false propaganda he spews here, there is something else going on.

After the enforcer of the Democrats - the crooked FBI - broke down the door of septuagenarian swinger Roger Stone at 4 AM, I knew I had to prepare. So for unathorized intruders on private property, there are rigged sprinklers, video, and pit bulls.

Meanwhile, drinks tonight with Swalwells ex, Fang Fang.

I thought Russia was running out of projectiles?

CNN: "Russian forces struck Ukraine's south and northeast with dozens of missiles overnight into Friday, in what the Ukrainian prime minister called "one of the largest air attacks" to hit Zaporizhzhia since the war began."

Financial Times: "Ukraine pleads for ammunition 'immediately' as Russia steps up attack

"Deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna tells FT that Moscow is better resourced to continue the war"

"...Ukraine is estimated to be firing more than 5,000 artillery rounds every day equal to a smaller European country's orders in an entire year in peacetime."

https://www.ft.com/content/817b7e61-9f09-494c-8f96-934810033b62

Business Insider: Christopher Cavoli, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe: ""The magnitude of this war is incredible. The Ukrainians have 37 frontline brigades, plus dozens more territorial brigades. The Russians have lost almost 2,000 tanks. If we average out since the beginning of the war, the slow days and fast days, the Russians have expended on average well over 20,000 artillery rounds per day."

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-scale-out-of-proportion-with-nato-planning-cavoli-2023-2

Propagandist? Colonel McGregor has for months said Ukraine was sending 6,000 rounds per day, and Russia up to 60,000. These sources confirm his first number.

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters tells the UN Attacks on Ukraine were not 'Unprovoked'

He condemns Russia's invasion, and the "Provocateurs".

He calls for an immediate cease fire and to avoid a game of 'nuclear chicken'.. No ifs, no ands, no butts.

https://www.youtube.com/live/iDJoAlKMNLc?feature=share

BearGoggles said:

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I'm going to say i really don't like it when people call those they disagree with traitors. I disagree with Cal88 vehemently re Ukraine. I think he's adopted a bizarre pro-russian view/bias.

But I have no reason to think he's a traitor or anti-american. We just have a disagreement as to what is in America's interest. No need to demonize him.

And the funny thing is Dajo of all people started this. His views are often well outside the mainstream (i.e., outside of this Cal bubble) and many many people would think his views/policy preferences are bad for America. He's exactly the type of guy who should be worried about the traitor slur.

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First, I'm not worried about the traitor "slur". As I said, I've been called a traitor. It didn't stop me from opposing the Iraq War.

Second, my point wasn't that cal88 is a traitor. You have to have had loyalty to something to betray it. There is no reason to think cal88 has ever had loyalty to America. The mere fact of living here doesn't give you a pass on that.

Third, Trump is a traitor who tried to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power against the will of the American people.

I hope that helps.

Even Russian propagandists like Vladlen Tatarsky (popular pro-Russia blogger) sees some cracks in the Russian mobilization.

"those mobilized from one region of the Russian Federation (I don’t want to say ashamed for almost countrymen) refuse to go into battle. Everything developed successfully, but because of this there was a hitch.

We need to introduce unpopular court-martials to win the war"

— umph (alpha male) (@Umph) February 10, 2023

Not sure anyone here posted about Yefremov - a Russian soldier who recently fled the war and has been giving interviews about the horrors he witnessed.

Quote:

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A senior Russian army lieutenant who fled Russia told ABC News he witnessed his country's troops torture prisoners in Ukraine, including beating and threats to rape them.

Konstantin Yefremov, the most senior Russian soldier to defect and speak out openly against the war, is now in hiding and spoke to ABC News from Mexico. He is currently seeking to apply for political asylum in the United States.

"I want that what I saw, what I was witness to, becomes known to society. So that the truth is uncovered," Yefremov said.

"I know that at home there only awaits me, in the best case, a lengthy prison term and, in the worst, they'll simply execute me," he said. "But to hide at home and wait for them to come for you, that's humiliating. And I can't be silent any longer. I don't want to be silent."

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And more evidence of Russian forces fighting amongst themselves. This was apparently shared by the government of Tuva due to concern about the treatment of its men.

Quote:

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The Russian Ministry of Defense is transferring some mobilized Russian troops out of Donetsk in Ukraine after they reported that the militia of the Donetsk People's Republic beat them earlier this month, according to Vladislav Khovalyg, the governor of Tuva.

The Russian troops, who were trained in the Novosibirsk region of Russia, began fighting at the front in Ukraine in December, according to Novaya Gazeta. But come February, the militia in the DPR began beating them, troops said in a video message shared with Russian news outlets and posted to Telegram.
"On February 4, the military from the DPR arrived. They fired at us with machine guns," said the Russian troops, who came from Tuva, a region in southern Siberia. "The military police came and beat us."

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In case anyone thinks that this would end with Russia erasing Ukraine, think again.

Been watching Moldova (and Transnistria) for years. Putin would have gone after it next had Ukraine not been so strong. https://t.co/JZndQMzCce

— MarkHertling (@MarkHertling) February 10, 2023

Hertling - A CNN regular who wrote this on Rwitter: "My conversation with the great @ErinBurnett tonight."

"Anatoly Salmin, a convicted thief and murderer, is home from prison years ahead of schedule, his reward for volunteering for a suicide mission in Russia's war in Ukraine and then managing to survive.

Hundreds of convicts recruited into the ranks of Wagner, a private military company tied to the businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, have been killed or severely wounded in Ukraine, where the mercenaries have been tasked with some of Russia's most desperate campaigns.

But a video released last month showed several dozen former convicts among them murderers, drug dealers and domestic abusers now heading to their home towns in northern Russia, supposedly having earned pardons by surviving six months in Wagner's ranks in Ukraine."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/10/wagner-convict-soldiers-return-from-ukraine-russia-mercenary-group?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"The first of the warnings is straightforward: leave strategy to your most talented generals. This is a warning Joseph Stalin did not heed. At the start of 1942, and despite having no military training, he ordered a major offensive against the German army around Kharkiv in Ukraine (then known as Kharkov). More gifted military minds including Marshal Zhukov saw the idea as needlessly risky and were against it. Nonetheless, Stalin dismissed these concerns and ordered the general staff "not to interfere" with his decision. Stalin, it would transpire, had made a terrible mistake.

….. Putin, a year ago, was similarly overconfident when the Russians invaded Ukraine. Tens of thousands of his soldiers died, and are still dying, because of his military incompetence. In contrast, from the very beginning of this conflict, Zelenskiy has left the military decisions to his generals.

….. The next warning is this: overpromising in war can have catastrophic consequences. In September 1942, Adolf Hitler made a speech in which he "assured" the German people that "no one can take us away" from Stalingrad. But within months the Red Army had encircled and destroyed the German sixth army, and liberated the city. The loss of Stalingrad was not just a decisive military defeat for the Wehrmacht, but a turning point in the Germans' perception of their leader. Hitler had promised that the city would not fall. He had lied. So how could they trust him next time?

Putin is in a similar position. He keeps reassuring the Russian population that the Ukrainians are about to be crushed. But does anyone now believe him? Zelenskiy has taken the opposite approach. If anything, he downplays Ukrainian successes and sets no specific timetable for military action.

The final warning is simple: make sure you are clear just what constitutes victory. Hitler failed to do this. He never said how much territory his army had to conquer in the Soviet Union before "victory" was won. The result was that German soldiers were always unsure what goal they had to achieve in order to bring the war to an end.

Putin is just as vague about what victory looks like for the Russian army in the current conflict. Is it simply holding on to the territory they've seized so far? Is it overthrowing the current Ukrainian regime? Who can tell?"

Each day, President Zelenskiy reads my book on military history. I hope he heeds these warnings.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/10/president-zelenskiy-book-military-history-ukraine-war-putin?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I commend this NYT piece for being honest about the extent of US involvement in Ukraine. Ukraine is taking direction from America in this war against Russia. https://t.co/hF0lkUdeqo

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) February 7, 2023

HistoryLegends has a new can't-miss video out on Bakhmut.

His analysis of six color-coded roads is excellent, and apparently a big change on the ground the last 48 hours made him scrap the previously prepared video.



Are we not seeing much air power? Why is Russia not using airplanes - is Ukraine strong with air defense?

Big C said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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Ukraine destroyed the "indestructible" Terminator tank that Russian media and propaganda had trumpeted for so long. Russia reportedly only had 10 of these so at most 9 now.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-claims-first-kill-of-russias-prized-terminator-armored-vehicle-2023-2

Quote:

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Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region, shared several aerial photos appearing to show the vehicle being blown up and destroyed on his Telegram channel.

He said that Russian propagandists had boasted about the vehicle and said it was impossible to destroy, and shared a clip from Russian state TV showing off the vehicle in the forest near the Russian-occupied city of Kreminna in Luhansk.

"So many beautiful words about the car being almost impossible to destroy….almost," Haidai wrote on Telegram.

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U2S, I have a question for you (or anyone who is staying clued in): I haven't been following the details of the war too closely lately. How do you think Ukraine is holding out? Think they can remain at stalemate-or-better through the first half of 2023?

Hope so. At some point, internal sentiment against the war should cause Putin to decide he's had enough, but I don't know when that will be.

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Ukraine is suffering badly for Russia's unprovoked criminal war of aggression. Unlike the Russian shills, I won't attempt to estimate the losses on either side but I will say that as far as Russia is concerned they haven't lost anyone because Putin and the Kremlin place no value on life. The fog of war makes it very challenging to know what's really happening and where the upper hand lies in any given battle.

This war has been a bloody stalemate for a while and the upcoming offensive will need to succeed for Putin because his paid propagandists are losing faith. Prigozhin (Wagner leader) thinks it will take multiple years for Russia to capture Eastern Ukraine (and 3 years for Dnipro) and given that most of Russia's success has been a result of Wagner activity, that's not a great sign for Russian prospects of a victory any time soon. Perhaps he's just crapping on Putin and trying to get a bigger contract, I don't know.

So, I have no idea for how long it will continue or what the ultimate outcome will be but I do know that Russian war crimes will continue and Ukrainian and Russian lives will be destroyed for this idiotic, senseless war to prop up Putin's shhthole kleptocracy. If there is any justice in this world, Putin will stand trial for his war crimes or will accidentally find himself next to an open window. But if there was any justice in this world, things would be a lot different.

You have to navigate the propoganda / fog of war.

HistoryLegends above gives what appears to be an honest assessment. After a slog in the Dunbas for months, things appear to have changed rapidly. Russia captured Soledar about 3 weeks ago, and appears to now be surrounding a key city in Bakhmut. It could fall the next few weeks.

Christopher Cavoli is a US Army general who serves as the Commander of US European Command in Europe. He recently commented on the massive use of artillery in Ukraine and said Ukraine was launching 5,000 projectiles a day, and Russia 20,000. A 1 to 4 ratio. Multiple sources confirm that both NATO and Ukraine are running low on ammunitions, while Russia is on a war production footing and also buying ammunition from North Korea and China.

Ukraine supposedly bringing 75,000 new men to the battle, Russia 300,000+. How soon will Ukraine get large shipments of military vehicles?

Given the recent gains of Russia, *this* could be their 'spring offensive'. Other prognosticators have always believed their offensive would be now, before Ukraine restocks.

If / when Russia secures Bakhmut, will Ukraine have another fortified position 5-10 miles back, or will there be wide open expanses? Might Russia open up an offensive in the northeast or towards Odessa? Alternately, can Ukraine somehow strike Crimea?

The US Pentagon reportedly told Biden two months ago that Ukraine can't win, but the White House won't accept that.

OK, so what's the truth or fiction about Ukraine and Ukranian military organ harvesting?

DW is a German site. Looks like Colonel Douglass McGregor and Scott Ritter proven correct again.

bearister said:

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Putin's brigade of 5,000 men is all but destroyed in brutal battle



https://mol.im/a/11746903



It was interesting to see in the 2nd photo that the Russians wear a Stahlhelm style helmet like the American military. Who'da thunk that a design by the Germans over a 100 years ago would still be in service.

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CNN had a pretty detailed article about this. This failure ties together so many patterns of Russian failure during this war. First - horrible strategy. Second - troops have no training. Third - Kremlin/Putin place no value on life, either theirs or Ukrainian, so they are fine sacrificing thousands of Russians like a zombie movie if they have a chance to eventually overrun Ukraine. Fourth - lots of firehose of falsehood propaganda. Fifth - notwithstanding pt. 4, even some pro-Russian shills have reached their breaking point and have begun to criticize Russian failures. Sixth - Russia is content to burn Ukraine to the ground in lieu of taking territory.

Select quotes:

Quote:

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About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that's open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

Vuhledar was built for the nearby coal mine (the name translates as "gift of coal") and sits above surrounding plains. Its high-rise buildings give its defenders principally the Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized a significant advantage, as well as hardened underground cover.

Military historian Tom Cooper, who has studied the battle for Vuhledar, describes it as "a big, tall fortress in the middle of an empty, flat desert."

A previously ill-conceived plan in November to take Vuhledar led to heavy casualties and a near mutiny among men of the 155th Marine Brigade.


Critics of Russia's military high command say the handling of the latest offensive is worse still, with one military blogger describing it as a "shameful debacle."

Cooper says the Russians built a formidable force around Vuhledar, "say, a total of about 20,000 troops, 90 MBTs [main battle tanks], perhaps two times as many IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles], and about 100 artillery pieces."

But attacks launched in the last week of January were fatally flawed, he said. "They were advancing along a relatively narrow route, all the time in sight of Ukrainian observers posted atop of high buildings in Vuhledar, and now facing about 500 meters of empty terrain on the eastern side of the town," Cooper wrote on his blog.

"Ukrainian artillery not only caused heavy losses to the advancing units but hit their rear too cutting off both their supply links and their possible withdrawal routes."

A number of prominent Russian military bloggers have been unrestrained in their criticism of the Vuhledar offensive.

"They were shot like turkeys at a shooting range," said former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov, who has become a strident critic of the campaign.

Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, added on Telegram that "a lot of good T-72B3/T-80BVM tanks and the best paratroopers and marines were liquidated."

In another post on Telegram, Strelkov wrote: "Only morons attack head-on in the same place, heavily fortified and extremely inconvenient for the attackers for many months in a row."

Russia's military bloggers have tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their Telegram channels. They have been highly critical of previous episodes in the campaign.

"How are blind, deaf tanks, armored personnel carriers, with equally blind, deaf infantry supposed to fight without columns? And then how to coordinate any actions if there is no communication and situational awareness?" he wrote.

"If the Russian Armed Forces try to disperse, they will shoot each other, because they do not understand who is in front of them."

In an expletive-laden post, the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone said of Muradov: "This coward is lying down at the control point and sending column after column until the commander of one of the brigades involved in the Vuhledar assault is dead on the contact line."

The commander killed was a special forces colonel, Sergey Polyakov, according to unofficial Russian sources.

Another Russian blog with more than 500,000 followers said of Muradov's team: "These people killed a significant number of personnel and equipment [in November] and did not bear any responsibility. After which, with the same mediocrity, they began to storm Ugledar [Vuhledar]. Impunity always breeds permissiveness."

But the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that poor leadership is only part of the problem: the "highly dysfunctional tactics are far more indicative of the fact that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is likely comprised of poorly trained mobilized personnel than of poor command."

The UK defense ministry reported Sunday that an uptick in Russian casualties in places like Vuhledar "is likely due to a range of factors including lack of trained personnel, coordination, and resources across the front."

Analysts say the challenge for the Ukrainians is to resupply frontline units with shells and anti-tank missiles fast enough.

Russian forces continue to have a distinct advantage in firepower. On Saturday they launched a barrage of thermobaric missiles at Vuhledar, a reminder that they are more capable of inflicting destruction than taking territory.

---

Unit2Sucks said:

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bearister said:

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Putin's brigade of 5,000 men is all but destroyed in brutal battle



https://mol.im/a/11746903



It was interesting to see in the 2nd photo that the Russians wear a Stahlhelm style helmet like the American military. Who'da thunk that a design by the Germans over a 100 years ago would still be in service.

---

CNN had a pretty detailed article about this. This failure ties together so many patterns of Russian failure during this war. First - horrible strategy. Second - troops have no training. Third - Kremlin/Putin place no value on life, either theirs or Ukrainian, so they are fine sacrificing thousands of Russians like a zombie movie if they have a chance to eventually overrun Ukraine. Fourth - lots of firehose of falsehood propaganda. Fifth - notwithstanding pt. 4, even some pro-Russian shills have reached their breaking point and have begun to criticize Russian failures. Sixth - Russia is content to burn Ukraine to the ground in lieu of taking territory.

Select quotes:

Quote:

---

About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that's open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

Vuhledar was built for the nearby coal mine (the name translates as "gift of coal") and sits above surrounding plains. Its high-rise buildings give its defenders principally the Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized a significant advantage, as well as hardened underground cover.

Military historian Tom Cooper, who has studied the battle for Vuhledar, describes it as "a big, tall fortress in the middle of an empty, flat desert."

A previously ill-conceived plan in November to take Vuhledar led to heavy casualties and a near mutiny among men of the 155th Marine Brigade.


Critics of Russia's military high command say the handling of the latest offensive is worse still, with one military blogger describing it as a "shameful debacle."

Cooper says the Russians built a formidable force around Vuhledar, "say, a total of about 20,000 troops, 90 MBTs [main battle tanks], perhaps two times as many IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles], and about 100 artillery pieces."

But attacks launched in the last week of January were fatally flawed, he said. "They were advancing along a relatively narrow route, all the time in sight of Ukrainian observers posted atop of high buildings in Vuhledar, and now facing about 500 meters of empty terrain on the eastern side of the town," Cooper wrote on his blog.

"Ukrainian artillery not only caused heavy losses to the advancing units but hit their rear too cutting off both their supply links and their possible withdrawal routes."

A number of prominent Russian military bloggers have been unrestrained in their criticism of the Vuhledar offensive.

"They were shot like turkeys at a shooting range," said former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov, who has become a strident critic of the campaign.

Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, added on Telegram that "a lot of good T-72B3/T-80BVM tanks and the best paratroopers and marines were liquidated."

In another post on Telegram, Strelkov wrote: "Only morons attack head-on in the same place, heavily fortified and extremely inconvenient for the attackers for many months in a row."

Russia's military bloggers have tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their Telegram channels. They have been highly critical of previous episodes in the campaign.

"How are blind, deaf tanks, armored personnel carriers, with equally blind, deaf infantry supposed to fight without columns? And then how to coordinate any actions if there is no communication and situational awareness?" he wrote.

"If the Russian Armed Forces try to disperse, they will shoot each other, because they do not understand who is in front of them."

In an expletive-laden post, the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone said of Muradov: "This coward is lying down at the control point and sending column after column until the commander of one of the brigades involved in the Vuhledar assault is dead on the contact line."

The commander killed was a special forces colonel, Sergey Polyakov, according to unofficial Russian sources.

Another Russian blog with more than 500,000 followers said of Muradov's team: "These people killed a significant number of personnel and equipment [in November] and did not bear any responsibility. After which, with the same mediocrity, they began to storm Ugledar [Vuhledar]. Impunity always breeds permissiveness."

But the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that poor leadership is only part of the problem: the "highly dysfunctional tactics are far more indicative of the fact that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is likely comprised of poorly trained mobilized personnel than of poor command."

The UK defense ministry reported Sunday that an uptick in Russian casualties in places like Vuhledar "is likely due to a range of factors including lack of trained personnel, coordination, and resources across the front."

Analysts say the challenge for the Ukrainians is to resupply frontline units with shells and anti-tank missiles fast enough.

Russian forces continue to have a distinct advantage in firepower. On Saturday they launched a barrage of thermobaric missiles at Vuhledar, a reminder that they are more capable of inflicting destruction than taking territory.

---

---

This war is baffling to me. I don't understand why Russian troops have the will to keep fighting against their Ukrainian brothers who have done no wrong. It is senseless. Maybe that is why so many prisoners and mercenaries are being used.

However, the weapons and tactics being used are equally confusing. Who sends columns of tanks and infantry vehicles to take a city without any helicopters or other close air support? Russia is fighting the war as if Ukraine was a bunch of Afghan tribesmen and not a well-trained army manning some of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world.

Russia will prevail militarily because they are just too powerful, but the longer this goes on the worse it looks for them as far as being able to conduct a large scale military operation against a peer. These battles will be used as case studies in military academies around the world, and not in a complimentary manner.

So Ukraine won a battle. Good for them.

Your reasoning on having a proxy war with a super power is to "make them work hard for this"? Oh, that's brilliant. s/. Inept American leaders have said similar things, weaken Russia, remove Putin, etc.

But Russia isn't even a top-3 priority of ours. Unless we think by weakening Russia, we weaken China?

Except it appears the opposite has happened. Decades of lax (liberal) military non-investment has resulted in NATO and EU ammunition stockpiles running very low. Per DW from Germany today. Colonel McGregor proven right again that Russia is able to unleash a 4-to-1 artillery advantage (Allied Commander, 20K vs 5K) or possibly up to a 10-to-1 advantage (McGregor, 60k vs 6K per day claim) per day. Punishing.

Even worse, DW media claims NATO hasn't signed long-term contracts for ammunition, meaning production and even raw materials haven't been secured. This could be disastrous. Russia in wartime production mode, and buying supplies from China, North Korea (China), and Iran. (Russia is rich in natural resources.)

Russia arguably is stronger, military growing, lessons learned and experience gained. And building up to a military of 1.5 million trained personnel. While NATO wobbles.

Do we really think the USSR is going to be reborn? Col. McGregor claims Putin has said this: "If you (Russian) don't miss the USSR, you have no heart; if you want to bring it back together, you have no brain."

Sky News, short.

movielover said:

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Sky News, short.

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This is perhaps the most crucial aspect of the war, from a purely military perspective. It illustrates how Russia has escalatory dominance in an artillery-dominated conventional war.

Russia has a stockpile of around 3 to 4 million shells, and a current production capacity of 400,000 shells/year, that they might still scale further up. The Russians, should they need more ammunition, also have access to the two other largest ammunition stockpiles in the world, those from China and North Korea.

I think the reason Russians haven't yet mounted any large-scale offensives since they've ramped up their army size to around 550,000, up from 200,000 is that they might be waiting for Ukraine to completely run out of shells, and run lower on other military hardware (tanks, AA systems etc) which could happen sometime this Spring. Ukraine has had a recent respite with the transfer of a large stockpile of ammo based in Israel. That however might have been the last remaining such stockpile accessible to NATO.

Ukraine's inventory of tanks, AA missiles is also dwindling, being attrited at a faster pace than can be replaced, and the replacements going forward will be in the form of NATO weapon systems that require a lot of training, vs what they have had so far, Soviet-sourced equipment provided from Poland, Roumania etc. Talks of hundreds of Leopard tanks being transferred to Ukraine anytime soon is turning out to be a bit unrealistic, as both the condition of these tanks, the size of the fleet and the timing of their arrival to the Ukraine front are well short of expectations.

That is the reason why serious analysts don't think that there is a military solution for Ukraine, and why realists within the US administration and the Pentagon have been floating the notion of a land for peace settlement with Russia, knowing that Russia`s negotiation position will only get better as the war unfurls.

Big C said:

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dimitrig said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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bearister said:

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Putin's brigade of 5,000 men is all but destroyed in brutal battle



https://mol.im/a/11746903



It was interesting to see in the 2nd photo that the Russians wear a Stahlhelm style helmet like the American military. Who'da thunk that a design by the Germans over a 100 years ago would still be in service.

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CNN had a pretty detailed article about this. This failure ties together so many patterns of Russian failure during this war. First - horrible strategy. Second - troops have no training. Third - Kremlin/Putin place no value on life, either theirs or Ukrainian, so they are fine sacrificing thousands of Russians like a zombie movie if they have a chance to eventually overrun Ukraine. Fourth - lots of firehose of falsehood propaganda. Fifth - notwithstanding pt. 4, even some pro-Russian shills have reached their breaking point and have begun to criticize Russian failures. Sixth - Russia is content to burn Ukraine to the ground in lieu of taking territory.

Select quotes:

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About 20 videos geolocated by CNN show basic tactical blunders in an area that's open and flat, where Ukrainian spotters on higher ground can direct artillery strikes and where minefields are worsening Russian casualties.

Vuhledar was built for the nearby coal mine (the name translates as "gift of coal") and sits above surrounding plains. Its high-rise buildings give its defenders principally the Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized a significant advantage, as well as hardened underground cover.

Military historian Tom Cooper, who has studied the battle for Vuhledar, describes it as "a big, tall fortress in the middle of an empty, flat desert."

A previously ill-conceived plan in November to take Vuhledar led to heavy casualties and a near mutiny among men of the 155th Marine Brigade.


Critics of Russia's military high command say the handling of the latest offensive is worse still, with one military blogger describing it as a "shameful debacle."

Cooper says the Russians built a formidable force around Vuhledar, "say, a total of about 20,000 troops, 90 MBTs [main battle tanks], perhaps two times as many IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles], and about 100 artillery pieces."

But attacks launched in the last week of January were fatally flawed, he said. "They were advancing along a relatively narrow route, all the time in sight of Ukrainian observers posted atop of high buildings in Vuhledar, and now facing about 500 meters of empty terrain on the eastern side of the town," Cooper wrote on his blog.

"Ukrainian artillery not only caused heavy losses to the advancing units but hit their rear too cutting off both their supply links and their possible withdrawal routes."

A number of prominent Russian military bloggers have been unrestrained in their criticism of the Vuhledar offensive.

"They were shot like turkeys at a shooting range," said former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov, who has become a strident critic of the campaign.

Strelkov, also known as Igor Girkin, added on Telegram that "a lot of good T-72B3/T-80BVM tanks and the best paratroopers and marines were liquidated."

In another post on Telegram, Strelkov wrote: "Only morons attack head-on in the same place, heavily fortified and extremely inconvenient for the attackers for many months in a row."

Russia's military bloggers have tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their Telegram channels. They have been highly critical of previous episodes in the campaign.

"How are blind, deaf tanks, armored personnel carriers, with equally blind, deaf infantry supposed to fight without columns? And then how to coordinate any actions if there is no communication and situational awareness?" he wrote.

"If the Russian Armed Forces try to disperse, they will shoot each other, because they do not understand who is in front of them."

In an expletive-laden post, the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone said of Muradov: "This coward is lying down at the control point and sending column after column until the commander of one of the brigades involved in the Vuhledar assault is dead on the contact line."

The commander killed was a special forces colonel, Sergey Polyakov, according to unofficial Russian sources.

Another Russian blog with more than 500,000 followers said of Muradov's team: "These people killed a significant number of personnel and equipment [in November] and did not bear any responsibility. After which, with the same mediocrity, they began to storm Ugledar [Vuhledar]. Impunity always breeds permissiveness."

But the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that poor leadership is only part of the problem: the "highly dysfunctional tactics are far more indicative of the fact that the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is likely comprised of poorly trained mobilized personnel than of poor command."

The UK defense ministry reported Sunday that an uptick in Russian casualties in places like Vuhledar "is likely due to a range of factors including lack of trained personnel, coordination, and resources across the front."

Analysts say the challenge for the Ukrainians is to resupply frontline units with shells and anti-tank missiles fast enough.

Russian forces continue to have a distinct advantage in firepower. On Saturday they launched a barrage of thermobaric missiles at Vuhledar, a reminder that they are more capable of inflicting destruction than taking territory.

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This war is baffling to me. I don't understand why Russian troops have the will to keep fighting against their Ukrainian brothers who have done no wrong. It is senseless. Maybe that is why so many prisoners and mercenaries are being used.

However, the weapons and tactics being used are equally confusing. Who sends columns of tanks and infantry vehicles to take a city without any helicopters or other close air support? Russia is fighting the war as if Ukraine was a bunch of Afghan tribesmen and not a well-trained army manning some of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world.

Russia will prevail militarily because they are just too powerful, but the longer this goes on the worse it looks for them as far as being able to conduct a large scale military operation against a peer. These battles will be used as case studies in military academies around the world, and not in a complimentary manner.

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I think you just touched on our motivation in all this: Make Russia work hard for this and also expose their ineptness before the entire world.

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Unclear how much of this is a primary vs secondary goal. Russia seems to be doing a good job on their own exposing the ineptness of their kleptocracy and military to the world.

From Mark Milley earlier today:

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"Putin thought he could defeat Ukraine quickly, fracture the NATO alliance, and act with impunity. He was wrong," the top US general said. "Ukraine remains free, they remain independent. NATO and this coalition has never been stronger, and Russia is now a global pariah. And the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience. In short, Russia has lost they've lost strategically, operationally, and tactically, and they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield."

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From CNN today on Russia's genocidal child trafficking. As I have noted repeatedly, all of Russia's talk about suppression of Russian culture is really just a distraction to cover for one of Putin's aims: erasing Ukraine and its culture/identity.

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he Russian government is operating an expansive network of dozens of camps where it has held thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of the war against Ukraine last year, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report contains disturbing new details about the extent of Moscow's efforts to relocate, re-educate, and sometimes militarily train or forcibly adopt out Ukrainian children actions that constitute war crimes and could provide evidence that Russia's actions amount to genocide, it said.

"All levels of Russia's government are involved," Yale Humanitarian Research Lab's Nathaniel Raymond told reporters Tuesday.

"Consider this report a gigantic Amber Alert that we are issuing on Ukraine's children," he said.
The report found that found that more than 6,000 children ranging in age from mere months old to 17 have been in Russian custody at some point during the course of the nearly year-long war, although the "total number of children is not known and is likely significantly higher than 6,000."

It identified 43 facilities that are a part of the network, which "stretches from one end of Russia to the other," including Russian-occupied Crimea, the "eastern Pacific Coast closer to Alaska than it is to Moscow," and Siberia, Raymond said.

"The primary purpose of the camps appears to be political reeducation," he said, noting that at least 32 of the facilities identified in the report "appear to be engaged in systematic re-education efforts that expose children from Ukraine to Russia-centric academic, cultural, patriotic, and in two cases, specifically military education."

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that "Russia's system of forced relocation, reeducation and adoption of Ukraine's children is a key element of the Kremlin's systematic efforts to deny and suppress Ukraine's identity, its history and its culture."

"The devastating impacts of Russia's failing war of aggression will be felt for generations to come," he said at a State Department briefing Tuesday.

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Wagner's Prigozhin is getting more and more public. Today he offered that Russia isn't taking Bakhmut anytime soon (which is counter to Russia's official propaganda) and he took credit for part of Russia's interference in the 2016 election, which again is counter to Russia's propaganda.

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Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian private military company Wagner, admitted on Tuesday to founding the Internet Research Agency, a notorious troll farm that the US government has sanctioned for interfering in American elections.

A Wagner Telegram channel on Tuesday published a statement from Prigozhin, asking him to react to the suggestion that he was the founder of the agency.

"I react with pleasure," Prigozhin said in the statement. "I've never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was founded to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the West."

Prigozhin's comments on Tuesday come several months after he admitted to interfering in the US democratic process and pledged to do so again, in what appeared to be the first admission of a high-level meddling campaign from someone close to the Kremlin.

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere," Prigozhin said in November, one day before the US midterm elections. "Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

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MR Online: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted on Thursday that he had previously told German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron that the Minsk agreements were "impossible", and he did not plan on implementing them...."

"..."As for Minsk as a whole, I told Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel: we will not be able to implement it like that," Zelenskyy said in an interview with Spiegel published on Thursday.

"According to Zelensky, he said the same thing to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the first and last meeting with him in the Normandy format in 2019.

" "I told him the same thing as the other two. They were surprised and replied: 'If we knew in advance that you would change the meaning of our meeting, then there would be problems even before the summit,'" Zelenskyy added.

"The Ukrainian president said Kiev used the agreement only for the exchange of prisoners of war.

"Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was in office from 2005 to 2021 said in an interview published in early December that the Minsk accords were signed to "give Ukraine time" to strengthen itself..."

""...We all endured, endured, endured and hoped for some kind of peace agreement, but now it turns out that we were simply fooled," Putin told reporters."

https://mronline.org/2023/02/11/zelensky-admits-he-never-intended-to-implement-minsk-agreements/