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Русский корабль - иди нахуй


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10 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

If you follow the Killed in Ukraine account, as well as some of the other similar accounts, you'll notice that a lot of the junior officers (lieutenants/sr lieutenants) who were killed over say the last 6 months or so, were mobilized/conscripted well after the general invasion in February of last year, with many, maybe most, having been mobilized since the start of this year (or at least entering service).

This applies both to the old guys (like the retired police officer above) as well as the young guys who came out of actual, formal military schools/academies.  A lot of these older officers actually had professional backgrounds (dentist, engineers, and retired police officer on this page), which means they had "decent" jobs, and many had families (wife/kids).

I'd be curious what the data folks are making of all of this, but it's just interesting that so many junior officers who were killed over the past 6 months or so had entered service this year.  That tells me that they are losing a shitload of officers if they are having to rely on newly-minted officers to fill the junior commissioned ranks with recently-mobilized (and many are company commanders or in similar levels of responsibility), and it also means that either most of the junior officers who entered prior to February of 2022 were killed last year, or the ones that weren't, are now field-grade officers.

I mean, we know they are losing a shitload of officers (see below) as they've lost 2,100 junior officers, but it's still wild to think of how many platoon and company-sized units are relying on commanders who weren't in uniform a year ago.

I also wonder if those older junior officers that we are seeing killed were forcibly mobilized, or were lured in with promises of a decent paycheck.  A part of me thinks that the older guys probably know how bad things are, and given how many have families, were forced to join, especially since the ages have been steadily raised.  Just using the examples above, there can't be much that's appealing to an engineer or dentist with a family, or a guy who was retired.

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And the numbers above are the ones that have been formally verified - the Russian government is constantly forcing people and local governments to take death notices down.

Another aspect to consider is the Darwinian selection process of war.  Statistically, if you can survive your first five or so engagements, your odds of overall survival increase greatly.  As you gain experience, you take fewer chances and do fewer stupid things as you learn the ropes.  The newbs always die at higher rates.

Combat, of any sort, punishes stupidity and mistakes in the most brutal way possible, so you don't get many chances to make mistakes.  That is so for even the best trained, led, and motivated militaries.  We are seeing how disastrous that is in a poorly led, poorly trained army with low morale.

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https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/24660

highlights:

When it comes to winning wars, quality and effectiveness rather than quantity and bluster, are what counts – be it in relation to fighters, machinery or strategy.



All too often, one hears claims that, in the long run, Russia will win over Ukraine because it has a much larger economy and population. Historically, that is a flawed conclusion. Historical precedence suggests that Ukraine is more likely to win, so let’s take a look at the reasons why.

Motivation

This is the most important factor in a war. Ukrainians know why they are fighting. They are defending their nation's existence. If they stop fighting, Ukraine will cease to exist as an independent state.

Russians, by contrast, don't really know why they are fighting. Most seem to fight for fear of being killed by their own, while their families are supposed to be richly paid if they die. Some fight for their country, but many Russian soldiers are not even free. Russia's prison population has declined from 420,000 to 260,000 during the war, with some 160,000 prisoners being thrown into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

Ukraine’s democracy

That matters in war. Most Ukrainian soldiers, unlike their Russian counterparts, are volunteers. The Ukrainian military command is, on average, about two decades younger than the Russian military command and they behave far more democratically than their Russian colleagues. As far as possible, they try to spare the lives of their soldiers, and they pursue a much more decentralized – and more effective – command structure.

The last count I saw is that Ukraine has around 800,000 men and women under arms, while Russia has 420,000 soldiers in Ukraine. Ukraine has more, better and more motivated soldiers than Russia, and twice as many as Russia has in Ukraine.

Historical precedence

It is strange that so many Westerners expect Russia to win in the long run. In the 1970s, the FNL defeated the mighty US in Vietnam. In the 1960s, Algeria defeated France in the long Algerian war. In 1967, still poor Israel defeated a broad coalition of Arab countries. In the Finnish Winter War of 1939-40, tiny Finland held off Joseph Stalin’s Soviet onslaught, etc.

Size has not turned out to be decisive in many wars. Large but poorly motivated countries usually lose wars against smaller and more motivated countries, especially if the aggressor’s objective is colonial. It would be strange if the authoritarian kleptocracy Russia were therefore to win in Ukraine. Precedence suggests that Ukraine is more likely to win this war than Russia.

———

ironically, or maybe bot, he left out the Soviets bailing on Afghanistan, although he’s talked about it elsewhere (and I think one of his books is about it) 

Edited by atomheartbevo
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yeah, feel a lot of similarities to Bakhmut, some differences due to it being a front-line stronghold since at least 2014.  the overall scale, though it hasn't gotten much press over here, has seemed a lot higher (jesus there's been a lot of 1000+ removed from action days over the past month).  on a long enough timeframe with ongoing western support it seems like an unfortunate blip, but idk i'm feeling a little bit negative about its place in time/momentum compared to bakhmut or prior and with the seemingly current wane in material support.

not trying to be a little bitch - i know this effort has come at the expense of a ton of of russian resources, but i'm getting a bit bummed out thinking about the fact that we don't seem to have the stomach/support to take russia down to whatever number is close enough to 0% capacity to make it all meaningful.  for the guys over there fighting their asses off, i think i'll be a little sick if the reality ends up being that this adds to shit freezing and ceding donetsk/luhansk on apparent momentum

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2 hours ago, Tobias said:

not gonna be a popular comment, but Avdiivka situation seems not ideal, particularly last few days?  talk me down

Russia has been actively trying to take it for the past 21 months (and they tried prior to 2022 as well).  What @BamaATL said - it’s not really worth it for what the Russians have lost (and that they will need elsewhere but won’t have as a result).  If Ukraine backed out of it tomorrow, it will have served its purpose, which is a cold-blooded observation, but true.

And because the Russians have been trying to take it since February of 2022, the losses include Russian troops and officers that had actual full Russian Army training (measured in months, not a few weeks or even days like late 2023). And some of those officers and senior enlisted would have had experience prior to 2022   

Battles that have raged since the beginning of 2022 such as this one, or Bakhkut which went on for a year are the reason why mobilized Russian troops have just a few weeks or even days of training and are bitching on Telegram, and why there are lieutenants in their 30s, 40s, and 50s commanding companies and/or are dying. 

For the Russians they are very scared that if they don’t take it, Ukraine will have easier access to the areas east of it.  Russian losses are so great though, they will be felt in places like Crimea in the long run, and cutting off and taking Crimea is far more important to Ukraine.   If Putin lost/conceded DPR/LPR, he could probably survive. Crimea?  Nope. 

As mentioned, it’s fucking stupid for the Russians to still be throwing meat at it after 21 months.  

Edited by atomheartbevo
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If you're into older women, she lost two sons..

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Wait, what if her son on the right deserted, and he put on a wig and some makeup and lipstick and is pretending to be her......

 

"Hey kid, learn some English, because that's probably what your new middle-aged daddy will be speaking when your mom takes you to the West"

 

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It's probably too much to ask for this to grow into a groundswell of support for stopping the war, but some Russian soldiers' wives and relatives are starting to object to (not the war) indefinite mobilization in small regional protests. 

Russian Women Protest Long Deployments for Soldiers in Ukraine
“Make way for someone else,” a new grass-roots movement demands as women challenge the official argument that the mobilized troops are needed in combat indefinitely.

The woman in the video, her face blurred, gave a blunt assessment of Russian military policy: Soldiers mobilized over a year ago to fight in Ukraine deserved to come home. Why weren’t they?

“Our mobilized became the best army in the world, but that doesn’t mean that this army should stay there to the last man,” she said. “If he did something heroic, spilled blood for his country sincerely, then maybe it was time to return to his family, make way for someone else, but that’s not happening.”

The speaker was part of a new, grass-roots movement that has been gathering steam in Russia over the past several weeks. Women in various cities are seeking to stage public protests, challenging the official argument that mobilized troops are needed in combat indefinitely to secure their Russian homeland.

Hand-lettered posters behind the speaker in the video echoed that sentiment with slogans like “Do only the mobilized have a homeland?” A video of the speech, delivered at a rally in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on Nov. 19, was released online.

The nascent movement is a rare example of public displeasure with the war, the kind that the Kremlin has sought to suppress through draconian laws meant to stifle antiwar demonstrations. The women and the government officials have been involved in a delicate dance, with the protesters trying not to trigger those laws while the authorities seek to avoid hauling the relatives of active duty soldiers off to jail.

The authorities have so far stepped lightly, using intimidation and cajoling rather than detention or arrests. Permits to hold rallies in several major cities were denied, for example, and women in chat forums have complained about harassment.

cont'd

Spoiler

Some said law enforcement officers visited them at home to inquire about their online activity and to warn them of the legal consequences of attending unauthorized rallies.

One main outlet for the protest movement has been a channel on the Telegram messaging app called “Put Domoy” in Russian, or “The Way Home,” which has attracted more than 14,650 participants since it was founded in September.

The channel’s organizers published a manifesto pressing for mobilized soldiers to be sent home after a year in the combat zone. “Military servicemen and their families — unite and fight for your rights,” the manifesto said in part.

The authorities in Moscow and in Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, rejected recent requests for a rally permit, with officials citing as the reason a restriction on public assemblies that was created to combat Covid-19. In Moscow, about 20 demonstrators unfurled posters with slogans like “No To Indefinite Mobilization” at a Communist Party rally on Nov. 7. The police led them away but did not detain them.

Maria Andreeva, who helped organize the Moscow protest, said that the government had largely responded by offering more money and benefits to families of soldiers. “They agree to pay us even more, but only if we keep quiet,” she said in an interview. “Many women need their husbands and sons, not payments.”

Participants in protests across the country are fed up, Ms. Andreeva said. While crowing that more than 410,000 men have signed contracts to join the military this year, the government has brushed aside demands from the families to demobilize those drafted in 2022.

The rally in Novosibirsk, held by a different organization, was the result of a compromise between organizers and the local authorities. Instead of a demonstration on the streets, local civilian and military officials gathered in a government auditorium. The press was largely banned, and participants had to prove that they had a relative serving in Ukraine.

Chelyabinsk, a major Russian city in the center of the country, held a similar meeting in its City Hall.

In Novosibirsk, the organizers said that countless women across Russia were “boiling” because all their quiet appeals and petitions fell on deaf ears. “The situation drove us, our relatives, to despair, and those mobilized to a critical degree of fatigue, both physical and moral,” the group said in a statement.

The groups protesting take pains to stress that they are not unpatriotic and that they strive to respect the law. They say they are simply asking that the Kremlin introduce troop rotations.

When the Russian government implemented what it called a “partial mobilization” in September 2022, calling up 300,000 men, it said those conscripted would have to stay in the military until Mr. Putin decided that they could be discharged.

Having already enacted one mobilization, ordering another one would be politically unpopular. In the meantime, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed and wounded, including many in ongoing assaults in Ukraine at places like Avdiivka.

The official response to the demand for rotation has been indirect at best. Protest organizers noted that Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, made a statement last December saying that replacing the mobilized troops was one reason to raise the number of soldiers overall.

But this past September Andrei Kartapolov, the chairman of Parliament’s defense committee, said there would be no rotation for troops in Ukraine, noting that “They will return home after the special military operation is completed.” A petition with tens of thousands of signatures sent to the Kremlin evoked a similar response, Russian press reports said.

“Our men are already physically and mentally tired of being there,” said Ms. Andreeva. “That’s enough! We must act!”

A generation ago, an antiwar movement that coalesced around mothers opposed to the war in Chechnya was a significant factor in prompting the Kremlin to end the war there. The authorities have tried to ensure that no similar national movement emerges out of the current protests.

The subject of rotations is a delicate matter for the Kremlin, which is seeking to make sure that any protests remain a regional issue and do not become national news that Mr. Putin would be forced to address, said Tatiana Stanovaya, who recently wrote about the subject in her analytical newsletter, R.Politik.

“The Ministry of Defense is cautious, preferring to boost soldier numbers whenever possible and keep them at the front,” wrote Ms. Stanovaya. She said any decision on a new mobilization wave “would be especially undesirable in the run-up to the presidential election next year.”

At a recent seminar focused on the presidential election in March, held in a town called Senezh, near Moscow, regional officials received specific instructions to prevent the women’s protest movement from metastasizing into something larger, according to Russian press reports.

The authorities said a demonstration could provide an opening for foreign powers to sow chaos, according to the business daily Kommersant, which is sympathetic to the Kremlin. But in a nod to the protesters’ frustration, the officials were told that they needed to stay in touch with the women, to pay attention to their problems and to help solve them, the report said.

Another Russia publication, the independent online newspaper The Insider, quoted an unidentified regional official as saying the preferred strategy was to “persuade, promise, pay” to avoid any kind of displeasure to be expressed on the streets.

Some participants hoped that the protests would spark a wider questioning of the war.

One woman in the chat group described herself in text messages as a longtime participant in antigovernment rallies. Although she does not have any relatives fighting in Ukraine, she believes that the women’s anti-mobilization movement has real potential to grow.

Communicating anonymously to avoid criminal charges for questioning the official narrative of the war, she said she hoped to seed the online discussions with information that depicted an alternative to the rosy official picture of the war, to “sow doubts about the truthfulness of the words of officials and the president (well, he’s lying all the time).”

By raising doubts, she said, she hoped “that people begin to ask questions, to be interested in politics, to be interested in what is happening in the country.”

 

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9 minutes ago, bolverk said:

It's probably too much to ask for this to grow into a groundswell of support for stopping the war, but some Russian soldiers' wives and relatives are starting to object to (not the war) indefinite mobilization in small regional protests. 

Wonder if that ties into the photos above (and there's a lot more on the Russian Officers killed in Ukraine account on twitter) of women and kids posing in or with the uniforms of their dead sons/husbands/dads.  Those photos were done together, by a professional (and the mothers/widows clearly had their makeup/clothing done by somebody).  Seems pretty organized.

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3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Wonder if that ties into the photos above (and there's a lot more on the Russian Officers killed in Ukraine account on twitter) of women and kids posing in or with the uniforms of their dead sons/husbands/dads.  Those photos were done together, by a professional (and the mothers/widows clearly had their makeup/clothing done by somebody).  Seems pretty organized.

Dunno.

Long thread on specific complaints.

 

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On 11/25/2023 at 5:03 PM, atomheartbevo said:

This right here shows he's either a dumbass or in Putin's pocket, or both.   Putin and his cronies (especially Russian state media) have publicly made it clear that they will not stop until they take over all over Ukraine, and that once they are finished with Ukraine, they will go after other European countries.  Putin is publicly telling everybody what he intends to do.

They are on a war footing, yet they've spent 21 months trying and failing to capture Avdiivka.  That's some war footing.

watching arrested development GIF

Russian war footing?

 

F0855DF1-5648-4F16-AD7B-2E89F105090E.jpeg

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12 hours ago, BamaATL said:

It doesn't look good for it to hold, however, that's really if you only look at it as in some way decisive, which it isn't.  Much like Bakhmut last year, the Russians will have sacrificed untold thousands and lots of critical equipment to win what is in reality smoldering ruins in a place that isn't overly tactically important (though it is considered a road into Donetsk).  If the Ukrainians are able to get out with minimal casualties, given the amount of punishment they have inflicted, I wouldn't say it's really a huge loss.  

If you look at the conflict in totality, the question you have to ask is losing Avdivvka worth it if at the same time you can take the remainder of Kherson and cut Crimea?  I think the answer would be easily yes, and that's exactly what is happening. The Russians diverted lots of manpower in an attempt to take this area, and in turn it would appear that the Ukrainians are taking full advantage (Mind you, I don't expect the results of these to things to timed to each other).  

The reality is that Putin has lost 300k plus people, a good 50% of Russia's ground capability, around 40% of his air capability, a significant chunk of the Black Sea Fleet, and much of his munition stores in order to take what amounts to 1.5 Oblasts (of course none of that takes into account economic losses incurred).   The 2 Oblasts in the far east Russia more or less controlled prior to last years invasion.   He only has part of Kherson, and with everyday that gets more tenuous at best.  

In essence, imagine if we invaded Mexico, and 2 years later we had those kind of losses (add to it the home of the Pacific Fleet in San Diego being untenable), and all we had to show for it was Chihuahua?  That's actually fairly close to where they are at.  

I wish like hell there was a quick a way the Ukrainians could have a decisive strike that won this and put it to bed for good; but unfortunately we don't live in that world.  In reality, making strategic trades are going to be part of this.  In this instance again, the quote seems to apply, "We are so very lucky they are so fucking stupid".  

+1

The Alamo didn’t work out too well for Santa Anna either as I recall.

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On 11/25/2023 at 4:28 PM, BearSchlong said:

Laser blasters.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, BamaATL said:

Jokes on them, the Maga folks that might go couldn't fix a toilet.  

 

I hate to tell ya, but professional licensed plumbers and other home contractors definitely veer towards the MAGA line.

Probably not enough to go to Russia over it, though.

 

4 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Russians have taken to posing with photos and uniforms of their dead soldiers.....this guy out kicked his coverage, and his widow will be needing a Westerner to take care of her.

 

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F_3V7xXXEAA_v-X?format=jpg&name=large

 

 

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah, the younger widow is quite nice.

But also certainly crazy Russian, stabby, and insufferable.  So, nope.

 

i can fix her

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7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

F_3V7xXXEAA_v-X?format=jpg&name=large

 

 

5 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah, the younger widow is quite nice.

But also certainly crazy Russian, stabby, and insufferable.  So, nope.

 

5 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

woah, woah, woah, lets not be hasty here.

 

 

5 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

Right. I can take a couple of non lethal stabbings before breaking up.

 

IMG_0641.webp

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12 hours ago, bolverk said:

It's probably too much to ask for this to grow into a groundswell of support for stopping the war, but some Russian soldiers' wives and relatives are starting to object to (not the war) indefinite mobilization in small regional protests. 

It doesn't help that this stuff is apparently all over the place, reminding everybody of the deaths, combined with the numerous funerals, and all of the wounded that have to come back and be treated within Russia.  War dead is a serious fetish with them.  Nothing wrong with creating memorials (even if it's a big banner made by their version of Kinkos), but they do it to justify this shit, a "they made the sacrifice, why won't you?" kind of thing.

 

Edited by atomheartbevo
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