The Ukraine war thread
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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Russia hunts Ukraine’s US-made HIMARS
A Ukrainian soldier fires a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher during a training exercise in Donbas region, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters
A Ukrainian soldier fires a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher during a training exercise in Donbas region, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered generals to prioritise destroying Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery weapons after Western-supplied weapons were used to strike Russian supply lines.
Nearly five months since President Vladimir Putin ordered the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces are grinding through the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and now occupy around a fifth of the country.
Shoigu, one of Putin’s closest allies, inspected the Vostok group which is fighting in Ukraine, the defence ministry said.
Shoigu “instructed the commander to give priority to the enemy’s long-range missile and artillery weapons,” the defence ministry said.
The ministry said the weapons were being used to shell residential areas of Russian-controlled Donbas and to deliberately set fire to wheat fields and grain storage silos.
Ukraine says it has carried out a string of successful strikes on 30 Russian logistics and ammunitions hubs, using several multiple launch rocket systems recently supplied by the West.Yeah...
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Something you might find interesting...
Link to video -
"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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Kind of skipped through the video, but did learn more than I knew about radar identification!
@George-K I agree. 5555 Invest in a green screen. Even I have one of those and do not do any videos.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in The Ukraine war thread:
Well, when you’re manning anti aircraft emplacements with guys that were in prison last week, shit happens.
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The Chechens are not too keen on Putin either.
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Reckon the CIA is shaking that bag?
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Not sure I buy all this, but an interesting take.
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After the Russian military failed to take Kyiv in the opening weeks of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine and refocused, at least for now, on eastern Ukraine, they have made modest gains, while reports of Ukrainian casualties and alleged poor morale proliferated. Some even concluded that the Russians finally had momentum. Ten weeks later, it is again obvious that momentum favors the Ukrainians—and the Russians’ desperate attempts to mitigate the problem will only exacerbate it.
Case in point: British intelligence believes that Russia has lost over 50,000 men, more than a quarter of its original invading force, and the Russian military (or, more precisely, its mercenaries, the Wagner Group) is reportedly enlisting prisoners for reinforcement. This is not an original gambit, which is why the Russian high command should know that it will backfire...
If Putin were willing to mobilize the Russian economy fully, Russia could conquer Ukraine, at least on paper. But to do so would require acknowledging that he has started a “war,” a word he continues to imprison people for using, instead of “special military operation,” which is a polite little euphemism for something going on a very long way away and don’t you worry about it. But this technical euphemism has real world effects. A declaration of war, under Russian law, would unleash enormous resources, from people (non-convicts) subject to conscription to industrial mobilization. Those resources could be sufficient to win the war. But unlocking those assets would require the government to come clean about the scale of the war. A legal declaration of war would also give extraordinary wartime power to the security ministries in Russia, which could be used against Putin in a coup. Unlike Volodymyr, Vladimir is not too confident about where he stands domestically. He’s signaling that, if he doesn’t end this war soon, the war will end him. So, at least politically speaking, time is not on his side.
Which brings us to the last Ukrainian advantage: judgment. Rushed and panicked leaders, like anyone else, make mistakes. Out of fear, desperation, or impatience, they make bad decisions. After the disaster in Russia, a desperate Napoleon made every wrong decision, violating his own military maxims. In a crunch and fearing he’d lose his moment, Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union too early. Even cruel tyrants are still human, made of flesh and blood, susceptible to all human flaws like the rest of us, prone to bad judgment under duress and stress. If it is true that Putin is under treatment for cancer and has survived an assassination attempt, then how much energy and focus must he have to focus on turning around a military calamity? Even if he is healthy, Putin turns 70 this October and lacks the physical stamina of his 44-year-old Ukrainian counterpart to be a wartime leader the Russian military needs.
President Zelensky has pledged that his country will fight until the full territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored. Getting Crimea back might be too ambitious. But as for the rest, why not? Everything is in his favor.
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HIMARS Destroy More Than 100 'High Value' Russian Targets
Ukraine has successfully used High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to take out more than 100 "high value" Russian targets including ammunition depots, long-range artillery positions, command posts, air-defense sites and radar and communications nodes, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters.
The U.S. provided Ukraine with HIMARS as part of billions of dollars in military assistance to support the Eastern European nation as it defends itself against Moscow's invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the internationally condemned war nearly five months ago on February 24, bizarrely claiming that Kyiv's government is led by Nazis. In reality, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish and had family members killed in the Holocaust.
Speaking to journalists on Friday, a senior U.S. defense official cited by reporters with Reuters, PBS, CNN and Fox News said that the HIMARS were having a significant impact in Ukraine's fight against Russia. The official said that more than a hundred "high value" targets had already been taken out by Ukraine's military with the weapons system.
Additionally, the official said that Ukraine has managed to take out "hundreds" of colonels, "many" generals and "thousands" of lieutenants and captains.
"They can't keep it up forever," the official said of Russia's aggression against Ukraine. "They have expended a lot of their smarter munitions....Their capabilities are getting dumber."
On Wednesday, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that Ukraine's use of the HIMARS was "degrading" Russia's capabilities.
"These strikes are steadily degrading the Russian ability to supply their troops, command and control of their forces, and carry out their illegal war of aggression," Milley said. He also said that Moscow had thus far failed to destroy any of the rocket systems. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that more HIMARS would be sent to Ukraine as well.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine's Luhansk region, told Newsweek last week that Russia's forces have been in "panic mode" since the HIMARS arrived in Ukraine.
Despite Russia's substantially larger military and its apparently more advanced stockpile of weapons, Ukraine successfully repelled Moscow's initial invasion. Putin and other Kremlin officials reportedly incorrectly believed that their military could quickly take control of the Eastern European nation and topple Zelensky's government.
Russia was forced to walk back its ambitions and focus on the east of the country. Putin's troops have made more significant progress there. But military analysts have said that Russia continues to make blunders and is taking heavy losses for such relatively minimal success.
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Very quietly, the Ukrainians are tightening the noose on Kherson and the 2000 Russian troops in the pocket. Other reports say that the two bridges can no longer support heavy armor.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion.
