The Political Correctness Haters' Club

[Sensual]

2 minutes ago, Cult Icon said:

 

Ukraine has less than mediocre military performance.  They have 700,000-600,000 troops yet fail to eject 200,000-150,000 Russian and separatist troops from their territory.  

 

The performance of their propaganda, however, is extraordinary.

Most of the personnel Ukraine has mobilized have not yet finished through training. So throughout the war Ukraine hasn't had the numerical personnel advantage and certainly not through equipment and they still don't for the most part now. 

Additionally if Russia was holding back, then then they wouldn't have put themselves in the position to have lost thousands of men and equipment.

[Cult Icon]

Russia is still somewhere in the first 1/3rds of their escalation ladder. 

 

Putin was only able to get 200,000 troops into the Ukraine on Feb 24th.  All the Battalion tactical groups of Armored and Motor-rifle brigades were missing 3 infantry battalions.  They attacked Ukraine while being outnumbered 2-3 to 1.

 

By Russian law and combat doctrine, to fill these infantry units they need to perform mobilization of reservists.  This can only be done if legally they are fighting an anti-terrorist campaign or have declared war on Ukraine.  So politically it was not possible to escalate until now.

 

As for the current situation, Ukraine will have the upper hand as long as the Russians hold Ukraine with a skeleton crew.  They will no longer have the upper hand when the Russians return with 370,000 new troops.

[Sensual]

Its actually quite funny you accuse me of being propagandized when you claim Russia is invading Ukraine out of some toxic concept of brotherly love when that is quite literally Russian propaganda. The real reason Russia wants Ukraine is because of geopolitics and imperialism. There is nothing more to say you, you've been objectively incorrect on various facts here.

[Cult Icon]

1 hour ago, Sensual said:

Its actually quite funny you accuse me of being propagandized when you claim Russia is invading Ukraine out of some toxic concept of brotherly love when that is quite literally Russian propaganda. The real reason Russia wants Ukraine is because of geopolitics and imperialism. There is nothing more to say you, you've been objectively incorrect on various facts here.

 

Your posts are mainly unmilitary fiction to me (Ukrainian propaganda).  The Russian politics will be Russian politics, that's what they are.

 

There are pre-war literature on the Russian army and their escalation strategies, unsullied by contemporary propaganda and misinformation.

 

The goal of the SMO is to de-militarize Ukraine.  Territorial objectives are secondary.  If they can't hold it with their small forces, they withdraw.   If the enemy ground force is weakened, they can advance again.  This is a basic military concept.  The russians obviously have strategic failures.  But their strategic depth is much more than Ukraine/NATO.

 

[Cult Icon]

23 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

 

If Russia win they will continue with large scale war crimes and de facto acts of genocide, how is that good for anyone?

 

And why would anyone assume that Putin would be content with just Ukraine or some chunks of Ukraine?

 

Well you should be aware that a portion of the claims of Russian war crimes are fake news spammed into our media, created by Ukrainian psych-ops units.  But certainly, they have committed war crimes.  But not as much as they could (kill hundreds of thousands of civilians).  This recent move, attacks on Ukraine's energy grid is likely the worst war crime they have done so far.

 

Ultimately, it's Ukraine and Europe's problem, not so much America's. 

 

Like the endless wars in the middle east and Africa.  

 

As demonstrated the Russian people are not that even that interested in the war in Ukraine, even a partial mobilization has been difficult for Putin to get going.  To my understanding the Russian youth are more anti-Putin, while older Russians are more pro-Putin.  

 

Besides Ukraine being an economic and humanitarian disaster zone, the Russian people expect Putin to rebuild and integrate Ukraine into the federation like they did to the Chechens and the rebuilding of Grozny.  However Ukraine is much larger than Chechnya.  This is the very definition of poison chalice.  

[Enrico_sw]

16 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

It's not about the illusion of the U.S. being perfect or the U.S. not serving their own interests. Obviously they are doing some war profiteering with their gas deliveries to the EU as well.

 

Yes. See, we can agree on some things, when there's nuance.

 

16 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

But can any sane person truly say they would rather live under the sphere of influence of Russia than of the U.S.? I know which of the two I prefer.

 

It's a false dichotomy. You don't have to chose between the two. You don't need to chose a master, you can choose to be free.

 

Obviously, there's always going to be a some sort of influence from other countries (US, Russia, China, Qatar, etc.), but you can try to minimize it (wherever it comes from) and stay as much free as you can.

[Enrico_sw]

16 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

This has been a discussion for literal decades, with many other European countries criticizing Germany for their choices. In truth it's not hard to see how that happened, Putin bought lots of soft power by reeling in the likes of Schröder & co.

That's why it's dangerous to allow Russian money to pour into our democracies, as I stated some posts back.

 

Yes. And it's the same with Qatar's money, Turkey's money, Saudi Arabia's money, China's money (and also the US influence/money).

 

On the energy topic, we should've decreased our dependence on fossil fuels, given that we don't produce any. By producing our own renewables (not with Chinese's suppliers, but European ones) and our own nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, the EU technocracy failed on these issues.

[Enrico_sw]

 

[Cult Icon]

 

[Sensual]

On 10/20/2022 at 6:41 PM, Enrico_sw said:

 

Yes. And it's the same with Qatar's money, Turkey's money, Saudi Arabia's money, China's money (and also the US influence/money).

 

On the energy topic, we should've decreased our dependence on fossil fuels, given that we don't produce any. By producing our own renewables (not with Chinese's suppliers, but European ones) and our own nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, the EU technocracy failed on these issues.

I don't believe it has much to do with the EU, the EU doesn't control national energy policy for the most part, and additionally the EU is largely influenced by the nations that reside with in it. This almost entirely due to the failed geopolitical policy by France and Germany of trying to be friends with Russia and try to prevent another collapse of Russia, the problem is those bridges got burned the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and Russia is of course not the Soviet Union. The same attempts at peaceful coexistence were never going to work. Either through corruption or that Putin just plain fooled us, the attempt at integrating Russia economically was never going to work, Russia was far too humiliated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos that resulted for over a decade afterwards for that resentment to not have take center stage. The continued prevalence of this idea even now is likely purely because of self-benefit at least it certainly is likely the case with Schroder.

As for the US, we're hopeless addicted to oil because we don't have extensive transportation networks, what we do have is a mess of privately owned infrastructure and basically endless consolidation and power-sharing between companies, its all automobiles and largely nothing else, which makes us hopelessly addicted to oil. There is also plenty of classist and cultural mythology involving that as well. 

[Cult Icon]

The Russians are currently preparing for the second invasion of Ukraine.  In reading up on Russian mobilization, it appears that they will continue to collect people into November. So the anticipated 'winter offensive' with up to half a million men will be slated into 2023. The unlucky conscript class of 2022-2023 (130,000 young men, a decrease of 30,000 from 2021-2022- odd?) would also be training. So this group of reservists will be somewhere under 300,000 men in addition to the 70,000 volunteers already collected.

The Russians claim that they have already collected 220,000 men. If they manage to reach their 300,000 target by December 1st that means that the reservists will have to conduct various layers of unit (platoon, company, battalion, brigade) training. The 70,000 volunteers on the other hand have been collected since the beginning of the war and should be more advanced in their training. There were also some separate volunteer units being spotted in the Ukraine already.

As for Round 2 of this war, I'm thinking late winter at the earliest or early spring.

[Enrico_sw]

[Cult Icon]

I believe that the force composition for the second invasion of Ukraine will be significantly different.  The Russians already have superior self-propelled artillery and missile forces installed in Ukraine.   Instead of an artillery army with tanks, this second invasion will have significant infantry forces.  So the invasion force would have a much higher infantry to support ratio.  The original force had perhaps only 15% professional/contract infantry.  This new force would have a ratio several times larger but its infantry quality would not be professional, but would be a reservist/volunteer force.

 

This would effectively bridge the combined arms gap that have greatly reduced Russian offensive operations so far.  As far as Tanks and IFVs go the Russians have been performing large scale refurbishing of armored vehicles taken from Soviet stockpiles.

 

Besides new T-90 production contracts, approx. 800 T-62 tanks have been taken out of storage to be refurbished in a 3-year modernization contract with the 103rd Armored Repair Plant in Chita, Russia.  

The upgrade of the T-62 will include modifications to their sensors, thermals, armor, and armament. The T-62 will no longer just be for the Separatist army and separate volunteer battalions. There may be more Russian tank plants with major contracts like this for their armored vehicles.  

 

 

[Cult Icon]

 

The refurbishment of T-62s at the 103rd Armored Repair Plant.

 

 At the training ground of the Coastal Troops of the Pacific Fleet, mobilized servicemen of Primorye training on T-80BV tanks and BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles.

 

Военный Осведомитель | VK

 

Training of mobilized servicemen at the Krasny Yar training ground in the Trans-Baikal Territory.

 

Военный Осведомитель | VK

 

These reservists are training with T-62 Modernized (including dug in T-62), T-72, mortars, CQC, and towed artillery. 

 

 

Basically, with frontline combatants the Russians have moved on from a war with small numbers of elite professionals-contract infantry to one of a mass people's infantry army, with the professionals/contract troops concentrated in non-frontline roles (Artillery, logistics, command and control, intelligence).  It is too early to judge how these forces will be used.  If they are used in the East and South, they would effectively allow the Russians to make a general advance. Or the Russians could try to re-open the Northern theater again through Belarus and attack Kyiv.

 

The combat tactics would become dramatically different.  Instead of trying to attrit the Ukrainian army to death with firepower, the Russians would actually be able to assault with massed infantry in conjunction with the fire support.  This would result in much higher human losses on the Russian side but much higher territorial gains and defeats on the Ukrainian units.

 

This is what Russian leadership most fear; the political backlash from high reservist and conscript losses.  It remains to be seen if these potential losses would outweigh the higher potential for victory for the Russian public.

 

Russian reservists in training.

 

 

[Cult Icon]

Pretty interesting:  

 

US and Russian troops meeting in Syria on 10/10/22 (and not trying to kill each other😛)

 

[Cult Icon]

 

T-90 M tanks.  They appear to be 'factory fresh', and need to prepared before use.

[Cult Icon]

 

Dmitry Medvedev visited Uralvagonzavod, accompanied by Alexander Potapov, General Director of the UVZ Concern.

The head of the UVZ Concern reported to the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on the progress of the state defense order for the production of T-90M "Breakthrough", T-72B3M and other special equipment.  Besides the T-62 modernization program there were also contracts for T-90M and T-72B3M.

 

 

[Cult Icon]

 

Videos and photos of T-14 - Russia's supertank have been taken at a base for the first time.  This tank is supposed to have a particularly advanced defense system, that interferes with the guidance of modern ATGMs, leading them to miss their target.  It remains to be seen if the Russians will actually sent some into Ukraine for testing and whether or not the technology actually works.  More or less than 100 have been produced in early production runs.  

 

This would also be the first war where a next-generation tank would be used.  The US is still using the dated Abrams, and the Abrams X is more of an prototype rather than a production model.

[Cult Icon]

Xi is basically God-emperor now.

 

 

 

[Cult Icon]

Russians training newly mobilized reservists as replacement paratroops (VDV):

 

Military Informant | VK

 

"The governor of the Pskov region, Mikhail Vedernikov, visited the Zavelichye military training ground and monitored the progress of combat training of those mobilized by decree of the President of the Russian Federation.  On this day, classes of the parachute battalion on fire training were held at the training ground, it included reservists from the Pskov, Novgorod and Saint Petersburg regions."