International Russia/Ukraine Megathread V13

[AWilder]

 

[SandisLL]

Not sure why you think that they would take Avdiivka now after all the loses for almost no gains they will have to keep it going non stop. And with UKR sneaking across the Dnipo river they came exactly pull more resources from elsewhere for more suicide missions.

Putin is sending additional units, a lot of Russians to take Avdiivka....soon will be next big attack.

Actually Putin still might hire next batches with guys so more or lesser losses will not worry him.

 

[SandisLL]

Lavrov will again visit Iran.
Orban looks that most likely will purchase even more Russian crude oil and natural gas.

 

[Hog-train]

I don't think territory is the main focus for Ukraine at this point. If you look at Russia's greatest military defeats; against the Germans in ww1 and the Brit/French/turks in Crimean war.... they were never really about territory. Those victorys were attained by almost entirely removing Russia's ability to wage war.

On the flip side, Russia's greatest military victories were against Napoleon and the Nazis. Both had incredible success when it came to taking territory, and ultimately lost the war overall.

People have already correctly described this as a war of attrition, but less seems to have been said about what it actually takes to win a war of attrition. They're not won by taking territory, they're won by causing more attrition to the enemy than they do to you, until they can't physically hold the desired territory any longer.

Even if we ignore reported casualties as biased propaganda, from the combat videos we've seen, Ukraine appears to have been using Western style "minimise casualty" tactics since the beginning of the war. Russia has been using "we've got the bigger population, we don't need a good K/D ratio" tactics; and they've never really shifted from that, so it's quite possible Ukraine is still on track to achieve total victory eventually.

I think the media we're consuming is underreporting Ukrainian losses of both men and equipment. It is less than the Russians though.

Also the Russians still have a shitload of more equipment and aircraft. Their naval power is still mostly intact as well.

 

[SandisLL]

I think the media we're consuming is underreporting Ukrainian losses of both men and equipment. It is less than the Russians though.

Also the Russians still have a shitload of more equipment and aircraft. Their naval power is still mostly intact as well.

For both sides mass media even doesn't have any verified numbers to report.
Russia and Ukraine had banned military bireucrats and hospitals, morgues to disclose such data.

About technique supplied by west...there yeah, at least ukr is giving classified reports to countries who had supplied said technique unit.
Be it MANPAD or heavy machine gun ...or tank.
Some MANPADs suppliers countries even require to return spent tubes ( used containers ) ....
About equipment from Ukr own arsenal...dunno does have west any realistic reports or no....


The problem is also that even IF really Russia does have there 300 or 1000 casualties on daily basis, Hitler anyway might tackle this war some 12 next months.
Money he does have, propaganda for Russian speakers in Russia works with a glance and is delivering desired results....

 

[Hog-train]

Russians May Have lost 55 Tanks in One Day

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...-failing-to-capture-avdiivka/?sh=a27625069125

Spoiler

The Russians May Have Lost 55 Tanks In One Day Trying, And Failing, To Capture Avdiivka
David Axe
Forbes Staff
I write about ships, planes, tanks, drones, missiles and satellites.
Andrew Perpetua, an open-source intelligence analyst, has verified in photos and videos on social media. Actual Russian losses almost certainly are much, much higher.


The Ukrainian general staff for its part claimed its forces destroyed a shocking 175 Russian armored vehicles just between Thursday and Friday, including 55 tanks. On average, the Russians have been losing just three tanks a day since February 2022; the recent loss rate is nearly 20 times higher. Moscow reportedly also has written off at least five warplanes over Avdiivka.


Manpower losses are commensurate with vehicle losses. The general staff in Kyiv claimed 1,380 Russians died in Ukraine in a 24-hour period ending Friday. That would be one of the greatest single-day losses on either side of the wider war.


It’s obvious what’s driving up Russia’s casualties. For a couple of weeks now, seven or eight Russian regiments and brigades—each with up to 2,000 troops—have been trying, and failing, to surround and cut off one of the best-defended cities in free Ukraine: Avdiivka, which lies just northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.


Day after day, the Russians roll out in long columns of tanks and fighting vehicles. Day and day, they run over mines, wander into missile kill-zones, blunder into artillery barrages and fall prey to explosives-laden drones.

But they keep coming.

It’s unclear why the Russians are willing to expend so many troops and vehicles in a failing effort to flank, cut off and ultimately defeat the Avdiivka garrison, which includes at least two brigades and regiments as well as attached battalions.

It’s possible Russian commanders hope to draw Ukrainian brigades into a costly fight in order to prevent those brigades from reinforcing Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive, which kicked off in June and has seen Ukrainian troops advance at least 10 miles on each of two major axes: one north of Russian-occupied Melitopol, the other farther east along the Mokry Yaly River Valley.

The Ukrainians also are advancing on the left bank of the Dnipro River as well as south of Bakhmut in the east.

If the Avdiivka assault indeed is a fixing effort, it probably has failed. “Ukrainian officials have already identified the Avdiivka push as a Russian fixing operation, and they are unlikely to unduly commit Ukrainian manpower to this axis,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. noted.

Maybe the assault isn’t a fixing effort. Maybe, instead, the Kremlin simply is desperate for a late-season win as the weather grows colder and wetter and opportunities for major offensive action dwindle. Maybe the Avdiivka fight isn’t really about Avdiivka at all.

Which makes sense, in a nonsensical sort of way. After all, “the hypothetical capture of Avdiivka will not open new routes of advance to the rest of Donetsk Oblast,” ISW explained.

But if the Kremlin targeted Avdiivka for its symbolic value, it badly miscalculated. The only thing Avdiivka stands for, two weeks into the bloody campaign, is dead Russians and wrecked Russian tanks.

The Russians could have quit after the first day of attacks cost them, in ISW’s estimation, at least 45 tanks and other armored vehicles. But they have persisted, their commanders apparently unbothered by the wholesale loss of entire companies and battalions.

In that sense, the Russians’ Avdiivka campaign eerily echoes their campaign around Vuhledar at the beginning of 2023. For weeks on end, Russian marines stormed the Ukrainian garrison in the settlement, 25 miles southwest of Donetsk.

The Ukrainians bombarded the assault columns. One road intersection in particular testified to the Russians’ refusal, or inability, to adapt. After weeks of Ukrainian ambushes, the intersection was littered with the hulks of a dozen or more destroyed tanks and fighting vehicles.

Today, Vuhledar is free. And so is Avdiivka, despite the Russians’ best efforts to bring the city under occupation.

Where this ends is hard to say. The Russians wasted the better part of two marine brigades failing to capture Vuhledar last winter. But an even costlier campaign around Bakhmut ended in a pyrrhic Russian victory this spring as Ukrainian brigades, having traded space for time and Russian casualties, ultimately quit the city 30 miles north of Donetsk.

If the Russians keep shoving regiments into the Avdiivka meatgrinder, they might eventually capture the city. But the losses they’re suffering could impair Russian operations across the 600-mile front line in Ukraine.

“So long as this high casualty rate can be maintained,” the Royal United Services Insitute in London pointed out, “it becomes possible to suppress Russia’s ability to train sufficient new troops to the standard needed to effectively conduct offensive action.”


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David Axe
I'm a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina.

 

[SandisLL]

Some beautiful uncle wants that Iran should host Armenia - Azerbaijan peace talks<45>.

So yeah, Iran's geopolitical influence is increased thanks to Minsk and Kremlin.....

 

[Hog-train]

Life Inside a Trench.

 

[PEB]

The iranian drones actually have very high tech nazi seeking warheads. it only LOOKS like they are attacking civilians indiscriminately.

Iran lacks the software an hardware to avoid jamming technology so they are used indiscriminately. The orgs an Iran/terrorist fully understand this fact an see it as a benefit.

 

[Videer]

First time I see black hornets used. Very accurate mortar fire from spanish NTGS Alakran mobile mortar system. Also how many russians did their own BMPs crush?

 

[AWilder]

First time I see black hornets used. Very accurate mortar fire from spanish NTGS Alakran mobile mortar system. Also how many russians did their own BMPs crush?

Whoever is "leading" these troops might be a bigger asset to Ukraine.

 

[AWilder]

At the Mearsheimer event in Brisbane Australia, I asked John Mearsheimer why anybody should ever listen to him about Ukraine ever again considering he has been wrong about Ukraine every single time and now quotes Russian military bloggers like “Big Serge,” he just dodged response and claimed he has been proven correct in Ukraine because Ukraine is still suffering against Russia.

I’ll try get video up as soon as I get a hold of it.

Text of my full question:

In your infamous 2015 University of Chicago lecture, you dismissed the idea that Russia would ever try to ‘’conquer Ukraine’’ — arguing ‘’Putin is much too smart for that.’’

Then, in the lead up to the 2022 invasion, you argued, and I quote you word for word: ‘’What the Russians are going to do is CRUSH the Ukrainians. They’re going to bring out the big guns. They’re going to turn places like Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine into rubble. It will be like Fallujah, Mosul, Grozny.’’ You argued Western intervention would be pointless because Russia would level Ukraine and go nuclear against the West.

Then, in an interview with Chinese Communist Party controlled media outlet CGTN on February 23rd this year, you said, and again, I quote you word for word: ‘’Conventional wisdom in the West has long been that Vladimir Putin was an imperialist and he was determined to conquer Ukraine and make it part of a Greater Russia. There is NO evidence to support that.’’

So first, we were told that Russia and Putin will NEVER try conquer Ukraine.

Then you told us that Russia will CRUSH the Ukrainians.

Then, when Russia invades but fails to take Kyiv, you argue there is NO evidence Russia ever wanted to conquer Ukraine.

Your claim that there is NO evidence for that Putin is an imperialist completely beggars belief.

ONE, Putin claims Ukraine is not a country and has never existed as a country. He openly compares himself to Peter the Great while musing on territorial conquest. Here is a Putin quote: ‘’What was Peter doing? Taking back and reinforcing. That’s what he did. And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well.’’ And while he muses about taking back Russian land, Russian military recruitment ads show Russian soldiers talking about the flats they will buy and occupy in Kyiv and Odessa.

TWO, Russian forces have systematically executed all Ukrainian cultural and civic leaders in every Ukrainian town that they have occupied. They leave behind mass graves, torture chambers and death pits.

THREE, Putin was indicted by the International Criminal Court for forcibly transferring hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be raised as Russian. Some three million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia, this is an act of genocide, an attempt to wipe out Ukraine as a nation and incorporate its children into Russia. For comparison: Nazi Germany deported about 200,000 Polish children for assimilation during the entire Second World War.

FOUR, Russia targets civilian energy infrastructure in Ukraine with the goal of making the country uninhabitable and ungovernable. They spent months last year boasting that they would freeze millions of Ukrainians to death.

So, my question. John, You have been wrong over and over and over again on Ukraine, blatantly wrong. You hang out with Victor Orban and quote crazy sleazy Russian military bloggers named “BIG SERGE” in your writings.
You’ve claimed to the New Yorker that Putin has never lied to other world leaders, you even said that Hitler only ever lied once or twice to other world leaders? You’ve burnt your credibility, why should we take anything you say seriously ever again?

 

[AWilder]

 

[SandisLL]

At the Mearsheimer event in Brisbane Australia, I asked John Mearsheimer why anybody should ever listen to him about Ukraine ever again considering he has been wrong about Ukraine every single time and now quotes Russian military bloggers like “Big Serge,” he just dodged response and claimed he has been proven correct in Ukraine because Ukraine is still suffering against Russia.

I’ll try get video up as soon as I get a hold of it.

Text of my full question:

In your infamous 2015 University of Chicago lecture, you dismissed the idea that Russia would ever try to ‘’conquer Ukraine’’ — arguing ‘’Putin is much too smart for that.’’

Then, in the lead up to the 2022 invasion, you argued, and I quote you word for word: ‘’What the Russians are going to do is CRUSH the Ukrainians. They’re going to bring out the big guns. They’re going to turn places like Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine into rubble. It will be like Fallujah, Mosul, Grozny.’’ You argued Western intervention would be pointless because Russia would level Ukraine and go nuclear against the West.

Then, in an interview with Chinese Communist Party controlled media outlet CGTN on February 23rd this year, you said, and again, I quote you word for word: ‘’Conventional wisdom in the West has long been that Vladimir Putin was an imperialist and he was determined to conquer Ukraine and make it part of a Greater Russia. There is NO evidence to support that.’’

So first, we were told that Russia and Putin will NEVER try conquer Ukraine.

Then you told us that Russia will CRUSH the Ukrainians.

Then, when Russia invades but fails to take Kyiv, you argue there is NO evidence Russia ever wanted to conquer Ukraine.

Your claim that there is NO evidence for that Putin is an imperialist completely beggars belief.

ONE, Putin claims Ukraine is not a country and has never existed as a country. He openly compares himself to Peter the Great while musing on territorial conquest. Here is a Putin quote: ‘’What was Peter doing? Taking back and reinforcing. That’s what he did. And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well.’’ And while he muses about taking back Russian land, Russian military recruitment ads show Russian soldiers talking about the flats they will buy and occupy in Kyiv and Odessa.

TWO, Russian forces have systematically executed all Ukrainian cultural and civic leaders in every Ukrainian town that they have occupied. They leave behind mass graves, torture chambers and death pits.

THREE, Putin was indicted by the International Criminal Court for forcibly transferring hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be raised as Russian. Some three million Ukrainians have been deported to Russia, this is an act of genocide, an attempt to wipe out Ukraine as a nation and incorporate its children into Russia. For comparison: Nazi Germany deported about 200,000 Polish children for assimilation during the entire Second World War.

FOUR, Russia targets civilian energy infrastructure in Ukraine with the goal of making the country uninhabitable and ungovernable. They spent months last year boasting that they would freeze millions of Ukrainians to death.

So, my question. John, You have been wrong over and over and over again on Ukraine, blatantly wrong. You hang out with Victor Orban and quote crazy sleazy Russian military bloggers named “BIG SERGE” in your writings.
You’ve claimed to the New Yorker that Putin has never lied to other world leaders, you even said that Hitler only ever lied once or twice to other world leaders? You’ve burnt your credibility, why should we take anything you say seriously ever again?

Who is listening this old idiot ?
Hitler had lied each day ....also to Germans and his best friends. Not alone to talk about politicians......

 

[SandisLL]

If this is war for exhausting stuff Zelensky administration is doing is completely wrong ....
Why?
Then you can't order to assault heavily mined and reinforced areas. Then you need to encourage enemy to attack YOUR heavily mined and reinforced areas in order to wash out their technique and manpower....not to talk that forces should move forward each day even if it will be 10 or 500 meters etc....

 

[SandisLL]

Avdiivka area.
Armed forces of Russia had managed to establish artillery fire control over supply routes.

So there are 2 solutions: to get that you can't keep this area and slowly to remove troops etc...

Or to reinforce this area but then most likely Ukr will not be able to cut supply routes for south and Crimea.
Basically Bakhmut retake episode No2.

 

[AWilder]

Avdiivka area.
Armed forces of Russia had managed to establish artillery fire control over supply routes.

So there are 2 solutions: to get that you can't keep this area and slowly to remove troops etc...

Or to reinforce this area but then most likely Ukr will not be able to cut supply routes for south and Crimea.
Basically Bakhmut retake episode No2.

if russia is stupid enough to commit to bakhmut 2.0 ukraine should invite them.

 

[SandisLL]

if russia is stupid enough to commit to bakhmut 2.0 ukraine should invite them.

In this area number of mines is xx more than Bakhmut area....so losses they will have damn a lot.
While they are shelling supply routes to this area and it isn't fun.

Looks that it might be cos political propaganda reasons and to release ukr pressure in south....IF Ukr will relocate some units to this area.
Will die 1 or 1000 each day ....Hitler will not care. He still does have money and propaganda does works well so next replacement will be hired ....

 

[Hdfi]

LOL at NATO cucks pretending to give a shit about civilian casualities while supporting the genocide going on right now in Palestine and Syria.

 

[AWilder]

LOL at NATO cucks pretending to give a shit about civilian casualities while supporting the genocide going on right now in Palestine and Syria.

at least you aren't a fake fence-sitter anymore. congrats!