[Discussion] Ukraine - Russian Invasion and Discussion

A place for aggregated discussions of a possible conflict, it’s implications and effects, news updates and personal accounts if any. If the expected conflict kicks off, I will change the title but the function will stay the same.

Prederick wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

I think the tactic now is to just stall and stall and stall, hoping that the West gets tired of providing support. Maybe get some more stooges elected in those Western democracies who can try to undermine and halt that support from within.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban wants EU sanctions on Russia lifted by the end of the year, a pro-government daily newspaper said Thursday.

To be fair, this isn't really new. Orban's government has tried to reduce the scope of one sanctions package after another (often with success), has refused to let weapons transfer through Hungary, and just signed a new contract with Russia to import even more natural gas.
Orban's has been called "Putin's man in the EU" from several opinion outlets around here.

I asked my nephew the brand new 11a 2nd Lt how many weeks of training it took to be a US Army infantryman. He answered that the most basic 11b osut was 22 weeks of training before he or she could even be assigned to a combat unit and no sane NCO would trust them to do anything without supervision. And an 11c would take a bit more. In either case, significantly more than the four weeks a Wagner prison wanker gets before becoming cannon fodder.

If the Ukrainians are being trained to NATO standards, it is no mystery why they are destroying the Putinites.

Ukraine has been actively trained by NATO since July 2013 under the Defense Education Enhancement Program (NATO DEEP Ukraine). This is a "Train the Trainer" program designed to upgrade and enhance Ukraine's soldier and officer/noncom training pipeline, and it seems to have worked. Interestingly, Ukraine's SOF were founded in 2007 and have been funded by the US, with continuous training through to the current day.

NATO wrote:

Stakeholders
DEEP has a real impact on transforming the mindsets in Ukraine due to the implementation of
30 workshops and seminars within first year that involved 122 NATO experts and targeted some
900 faculty and students. Also, the programme is led and executed by Ukraine’s neighbours
(Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) with others
in support (Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovenia, UK, US, and Switzerland). Both the
targeted institutions’ faculty and MOD have proved eager to reform and become intellectually
interoperable with the NATO peers.

What's interesting to me is that no matter where the Russians would have poked their nose into NATO or its territorial neighbors, they were likely to encounter relatively highly trained units able to stymie the advance of a modern military for a time. Ukraine took advantage of 9 years of fighting and had a surplus of trained, well-led and motivated troops only needing weapons and systems upgrades, while the Russians were under-prepared, demotivated and poorly supplied and led. While first-line NATO armies would have more thoroughly and quickly defeated Putins paper tiger, Ukraine has out-performed expectations and I think that shows in part the superiority of NATO military training and theory over Post-Soviet Russia's failure to move forward with the times.

Robear wrote:

Ukraine has been actively trained by NATO since July 2013 under the Defense Education Enhancement Program (NATO DEEP Ukraine). This is a "Train the Trainer" program designed to upgrade and enhance Ukraine's soldier and officer/noncom training pipeline, and it seems to have worked. Interestingly, Ukraine's SOF were founded in 2007 and have been funded by the US, with continuous training through to the current day.

NATO wrote:

Stakeholders
DEEP has a real impact on transforming the mindsets in Ukraine due to the implementation of
30 workshops and seminars within first year that involved 122 NATO experts and targeted some
900 faculty and students. Also, the programme is led and executed by Ukraine’s neighbours
(Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) with others
in support (Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovenia, UK, US, and Switzerland). Both the
targeted institutions’ faculty and MOD have proved eager to reform and become intellectually
interoperable with the NATO peers.

What's interesting to me is that no matter where the Russians would have poked their nose into NATO or its territorial neighbors, they were likely to encounter relatively highly trained units able to stymie the advance of a modern military for a time. Ukraine took advantage of 9 years of fighting and had a surplus of trained, well-led and motivated troops only needing weapons and systems upgrades, while the Russians were under-prepared, demotivated and poorly supplied and led. While first-line NATO armies would have more thoroughly and quickly defeated Putins paper tiger, Ukraine has out-performed expectations and I think that shows in part the superiority of NATO military training and theory over Post-Soviet Russia's failure to move forward with the times.

Once again proving that Authoritarians suck at everything. Particularly, though, the demands of a modern military where reducing the distance between circumstance and decision is key make the sort of apathy, corruption, and incompetence rampant in Authoritarian states simply unaffordable. When the difference between mission success and failure is a targeted strike where seconds count, a Russian artillery strike is only days away (in most cases, quite literally).

There has been a lot written about the unlikely efficacy of this recent Russian mobilization, but it is worth taking a particularly hard look at the cannibalization of Russian training cadres. As I mentioned above, the average training time for NATO standards infantry is roughly 22 weeks. Work in admin slack and you are looking at 6 months to turn a civilian into a standard leg 11 bulletcatcher. And that presupposes that you have the facilities, the qualified trainers, the transportation and logistics, and the administrative expertise to perform all of those tasks (and haven't cannibalized them to form their own combat units). Specialized MOS's like 13F (artillery observer) or 14B (air defense artillery) can often take as much as a YEAR in training to be sufficiently qualified for combat duty. The Russians lack both the time and resources to equip and train an army capable of doing more than soaking up shrapnel.

The question many are, of course, asking is "how could Putin be this stupid?". And the answer is a lot more straightforward than you might think. It is that he didn't really have a choice. He was and is stuck in the same resource vise that faced Hitler in 1939. The decision to start the war in the first place resulted in a predictable cutoff from necessary external industrial inputs. In Hitler's case, it was food and oil. In Putin's it is mostly chipsets and engines, but there is lots more to list. Hitler recognized that it was a race to the Caucasus oil fields and Ukrainian grain. If he could get to both by June of 1942, he would have all the resources he needed to defeat the USSR. If he didn't, training cadres wouldn't matter because the Reich was finished anyway.

I feel there is a similar decadent math going on in Putin's head and it appears evidenced by the steps he has taken. The aforementioned cannibalization of the training cadres is one indicator. Another is the massive spending on REALLY short term military contracts (some as short as 3 months). These are not the actions of a leader preparing for a long war of attrition. This is someone who recognizes that the wheels are falling off the cart and soon.

"Brennt Paris?"

Near the end, remember, Hitler ordered the burning of Paris. His generals refused but lied to him. Perhaps the same thing will happen to Putin.

I have decided that from here on out, every time Putin panders to the crazy milblogger set, it shall heretofor be referred to as "Jerkin' Igor's Gerkin".

Who needs 22 weeks of training. Vasya's dad used to be a major and Pasha brought the hooch. Let get this party... I mean war going!

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/st...

There, now you're a soldier.
https://twitter.com/Reevellp/status/...

Whole mood.
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdVyy4HX0AIXlgy?format=png&name=small)

Again, it's one thing to hear about it in history.

It's another to see, in real-time, Russia just huck thousands of bodies into the grinder, not even to "win" just to muck things up.

Like, these dudes quite clearly know, their job isn't to fight and win, it's pretty much just to die.

Prederick wrote:

Again, it's one thing to hear about it in history.

It's another to see, in real-time, Russia just huck thousands of bodies into the grinder, not even to "win" just to muck things up.

Like, these dudes quite clearly know, their job isn't to fight and win, it's pretty much just to die.

The video game equivalent would be a late game Starcraft player only able to produce zerglings, only this zerg rush is going to be made up of sons, fathers, brothers and grandfathers.

maverickz wrote:

Who needs 22 weeks of training. Vasya's dad used to be a major and Pasha brought the hooch. Let get this party... I mean war going!

Alco-battalion. Jesus.

They'd probably do more damage if they just dropped the soldiers from planes (sans chutes) than to have them sit on the line.

maverickz wrote:

Who needs 22 weeks of training. Vasya's dad used to be a major and Pasha brought the hooch. Let get this party... I mean war going!

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/st...

There, now you're a soldier.
https://twitter.com/Reevellp/status/...

Whole mood.
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdVyy4HX0AIXlgy?format=png&name=small)

Don't forget the guy who's so impressed with the number of conscripts that he thinks they're going to "stomp [Ukrainians] with their feet" with their advanced training of, checks notes, walking to the drill grounds.

Never mind that the entire training cadre represents maybe a few days worth of Russian causalities.

Love the discipline and OPSEC of taking your phone on a training exercise and capturing the fact that Russia can't even kit its conscripts out in complete and matching gear.

At some point i hope recruits realize it's better to risk their life fighting for regime change than it is as cannon fodder in a pointless war.

Prederick wrote:

Again, it's one thing to hear about it in history.

It's like we're watching a 19th century colonial empire implode on TikTok.

The cognitive dissonance, for me, has just been nuts, ever since this started becoming a potential thing back in January. Like, WTAF?!

Here's the Kaiser, waddling around, reviewing the troops and rubbing elbows with the little people. And then he breaks out a monocle to look "serious business" when his generals wave their hands and whisper in his ear about their amazing new cannon or ship of the line.

And then the Kaiser speaks! On a magic box that transmits his image and voice to the little people in their hovels after they have come in from tilling the land!

Followed by a town crier shouting about news from the war...but the town crier is paid by the Kaiser to let the little people know that everything will be ok, even though their coins are worth less than before and the general store is running low on things like wagon wheels and horse cart carriages.

And then the aristocrats! They continue to summer in Paris and float on their boats in the Mediterranean and keep talking about how the Kaiser's court is such a fine place to gossip and be somebody who is somebody, while they look down at the little people and laugh at their poverty.

And the conscripts (!!!) are out in the war, raping and pillaging and committing atrocities in the name of genocide like it's 1943!

And all of this is happening live, in real-time, on TV, YouTube, Twitter and all the socials.

I can't make sense out of how our modern world has reverted back to the absolute worst aspects of our history THIS quickly.

maverickz wrote:

Who needs 22 weeks of training. Vasya's dad used to be a major and Pasha brought the hooch. Let get this party... I mean war going!

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/st...

There, now you're a soldier.
https://twitter.com/Reevellp/status/...

The drunken dialogue from the first tweet's video sounds like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. chatter.

Badferret wrote:

The video game equivalent would be a late game Starcraft player only able to produce zerglings, only this zerg rush is going to be made up of sons, fathers, brothers and grandfathers.

I think the video game equivalent is more like DDoS-ing your opponent until they quit. You don't "win" exactly, you just maintain the status quo for so long that everyone else gives up.

Top_Shelf wrote:

I can't make sense out of how our modern world has reverted back to the absolute worst aspects of our history THIS quickly.

doesn't repeat, it rhymes, etc.

*Legion* wrote:
maverickz wrote:

Who needs 22 weeks of training. Vasya's dad used to be a major and Pasha brought the hooch. Let get this party... I mean war going!

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/st...

There, now you're a soldier.
https://twitter.com/Reevellp/status/...

The drunken dialogue from the first tweet's video sounds like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. chatter.

Badferret wrote:

The video game equivalent would be a late game Starcraft player only able to produce zerglings, only this zerg rush is going to be made up of sons, fathers, brothers and grandfathers.

I think the video game equivalent is more like DDoS-ing your opponent until they quit. You don't "win" exactly, you just maintain the status quo for so long that everyone else gives up.

That might work, except that these million men are going to freeze to death, long before they can soak up Ukrainian ammo. The low tonight in Belgorod is 43 and 41 in St. Petersburg. Have already seen video of Russian conscripts just being dumped in "training" fields without even a single tent.

Madness.

Kind of amazing to see them rushing out an idea so badly executed that "starting a nuclear war" might actually be the better option.

EDIT: Saw someone point out online, it could be feasible that Putin is using this as a means to thin out Russia's population of fighting-age men from minorities/poor rural areas/his opposition who may otherwise have turned that fighting ability towards Moscow in the near future.

Prederick wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

I can't make sense out of how our modern world has reverted back to the absolute worst aspects of our history THIS quickly.

doesn't repeat, it rhymes, etc.

Isin't it clear by now? Humanity doesen't *change*. All this progress we supposedly made over the last century? It's just vapor.

Hold on tight. We are about to lose another 1600 years.

Prederick wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

I can't make sense out of how our modern world has reverted back to the absolute worst aspects of our history THIS quickly.

doesn't repeat, it rhymes, etc.

Seriously.

One of the best accounts of the Holocaust is Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning (top US scholar on the Holocaust), about a police battalion in Poland in 42-43.

I read that over two decades ago and to come across accounts of Bucha and Izium now is just heartbreaking.

And yes, we have had other awful crimes over the last 80 years (Uighurs, Chechnya, Rwanda, Serbia, Cambodia, etc etc etc). But I just couldn't believe a war for conquest would be undertaken and modelled on the Nazi crimes.

Top_Shelf wrote:
Prederick wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

I can't make sense out of how our modern world has reverted back to the absolute worst aspects of our history THIS quickly.

doesn't repeat, it rhymes, etc.

Seriously.

One of the best accounts of the Holocaust is Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning (top US scholar on the Holocaust), about a police battalion in Poland in 42-43.

I read that over two decades ago and to come across accounts of Bucha and Izium now is just heartbreaking.

And yes, we have had other awful crimes over the last 80 years (Uighurs, Chechnya, Rwanda, Serbia, Cambodia, etc etc etc). But I just couldn't believe a war for conquest would be undertaken and modelled on the Nazi crimes.

I see that video of Prigozhin recruiting at a prison and all I can think of is Oscar Dirlewanger.

maverickz wrote:

This always goes well.
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdZFoqfXEAIpLEY?format=jpg&name=900x900)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/u...

If, after the sham referenda, Ukraine uses the heavy equipment the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 3rd Army Corps donated to the armed forces of Ukraine to retake territory in the annexed oblasts, does Russia have to nuke itself?

Stills from a couple of videos of the AKMs (last manufactured in 1977) being handed out to tanker conscripts.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/ZOMqKSr.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/hAXEBu9.png)

According to a partial translation the logic of the Russian quartermaster was that the tankers will have tanks so they don't need functional rifles.

OMG is this one good.

Reports (social media) are that Russians with machine guns are going door-to-door to round up Yes "votes" in the occupied territories.

Yet another blatant war crime.

Article 47 wrote:

“Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.”

Again, this is not a bunch of uneducated people from nowhere who have never heard of the Geneva Convention being directed by some local warlord who is so far removed from any kind of view from the rest of the world that they could think, "I'm out here doing my Might Makes Right thing in the near-literal state of nature and no one with any power to stop me will care or even learn about this."

It's a member of the god damn UN Security Council openly flaunting the formal rules in plain view of everyone else.

f*ck every one of those guys that end up in UKR and didn't refuse orders. Not even asking them to take positive action and turn their weapons on their gauleiters. Just f*cking say, "No. I'm not going to point machine guns at grandmas for Hitler."

Top_Shelf wrote:

f*ck every one of those guys that end up in UKR and didn't refuse orders. Not even asking them to take positive action and turn their weapons on their gauleiters. Just f*cking say, "No. I'm not going to point machine guns at grandmas for Hitler."

Graffiti in St. Petersburg. It says "First, indifferent to politics. Now, cannon fodder."

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/R9r6PM2.png)

OG_slinger wrote:

Stills from a couple of videos of the AKMs (last manufactured in 1977) being handed out to tanker conscripts.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/ZOMqKSr.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/hAXEBu9.png)

According to a partial translation the logic of the Russian quartermaster was that the tankers will have tanks so they don't need functional rifles.

Not to worry, comrade. There will be plenty of rifles on the ground when you get there.

Yeah, I'm not sure even AKs are that resilient.