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Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

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Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#121

Post by glogla »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #116
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any discussion as to who is winning is meaningless without defining what victory means. And apparently it not only means something very different for each side, but also changes with time. Suppose Ukraine manages to push Putin's army back to original pre-2014 borders. Is this victory? With a large part of the country in ruins, a terrible GDP decrease, thousands of men with PTSD, not to mention those dead. There is si…

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, it's a fair discussion. You can question these choices without going 'rah rah go putin!'. Ukraine may win... after 5+ years of brutal war and heavy destruction. Is that better than a life back under Moscow's rule?

Sometimes, people just say things that are utterly vile and disgusting, and then they get downvoted.

> Ukraine may win... after 5+ years of brutal war and heavy destruction. Is that better than a life back under Moscow's rule?

Hey that's a good example!

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#122

Post by willcipriano »

piva00 wrote: post #120
willcipriano wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't a single parameter where things doesn't look bad for them. In the media you are allowed to see.

I'm so tired of this take. It just reads like a massive cop-out, a "you are misinformed, sheeple"-style of empty platitude trying to sound somewhat smart, or deep, or "more informed". One of the worst things I've seen happening in my lifetime is this transition to a post-modern, post-truth world. It's just exhausting that people feel it's ok to say "you are misinformed" in different ways, without ever providing a dif…

I'm sure there are zero positive signs for the Russians and they are all just idiots instead of your media claiming any they find are russian disinformation and not reporting on it. Same way the Taliban was one the ropes for two decades.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#123

Post by foverzar »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103
codedokode wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comparison is not fair because tank's performance doesn't double every year.

Tanks' performance has improved a lot since the 1960s, though.

The platform is still largely the same though. Fancy Abrams tanks are of 1970s designs with modern modifications.

T-72s and such are also kept updated with modern gizmos like reactive defense, etc.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#124

Post by piva00 »

willcipriano wrote: post #122
piva00 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so tired of this take. It just reads like a massive cop-out, a "you are misinformed, sheeple"-style of empty platitude trying to sound somewhat smart, or deep, or "more informed". One of the worst things I've seen happening in my lifetime is this transition to a post-modern, post-truth world. It's just exhausting that people feel it's ok to say "you are misinformed" in different ways, without ever providing a dif…

I'm sure there are zero positive signs for the Russians and they are all just idiots instead of your media claiming any they find are russian disinformation and not reporting on it. Same way the Taliban was one the ropes for two decades.

Or perhaps there's an issue with truthfulness coming from Russian sources that makes them an unreliable source for proper journalistic reporting?

You aren't making your point clearer, you are just repeating "wake up, sheeple" with a different word salad...

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#125

Post by rospaya »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #116
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any discussion as to who is winning is meaningless without defining what victory means. And apparently it not only means something very different for each side, but also changes with time. Suppose Ukraine manages to push Putin's army back to original pre-2014 borders. Is this victory? With a large part of the country in ruins, a terrible GDP decrease, thousands of men with PTSD, not to mention those dead. There is si…

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, it's a fair discussion. You can question these choices without going 'rah rah go putin!'. Ukraine may win... after 5+ years of brutal war and heavy destruction. Is that better than a life back under Moscow's rule?

> Ukraine may win... after 5+ years of brutal war and heavy destruction. Is that better than a life back under Moscow's rule?

Considering the treatment they experienced in occupied cities - yes, it might be. Being under Moscow's rule won't be an occupation like Eastern Europe had under USSR, but a brutal regime made the extinguish the concept of "Ukrainians". Putin is clearly signaling that.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#126

Post by red-iron-pine »

smcl wrote: post #49
codedokode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks I'm curious why they have chosen not to deploy them, then.

Tank boneyards. Thousands of tanks but many in disrepair; the US has similar.

Corruption and mixed priorities meant that most of the storage depots didn't see regular maintenance done, so vehicles that should have been "mostly workable" were basically rust-buckets. However estimates put the stockpiles at like 8000 T-72s, 10000 BMPs, etc., and even if only 1/3 of them are viable that still represents thousands of vehicles.

Logistics are another problem though. Even if only 1/3 are viable you have to ship repairs, replacement parts, and the entire vehicle across huge distances and that takes a lot of time. If there is a T-55 in a depo that's closer and it doesn't need parts -- great, get that to the front now; it'll do rear-line duty or something.

"High Quality" is also relative -- virtually all of NATO's, and Russia's, tanks are upgraded late-Cold-War models, but there is a non-trivial difference in the late-Soviet vs. post-Soviet era developments. Getting an old T-72 working might be easy enough, but getting that upgraded to the T-72B3M edition is a different story.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#127

Post by red-iron-pine »

codedokode wrote: post #53
smcl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks I'm curious why they have chosen not to deploy them, then.

Because tanks are expensive and sending prisoners with AK-47 to storm enemy trenches is much cheaper.

Storming the trenches implies they're actually there to fight and win.

In most cases they're there to get shot at enough while drones watch and tag enemy positions for artillery strikes.

In peer- or near-peer conflicts arty accounts for a high, often monumentally high, number of casualties -- easily 75% or more. The prisoners aren't expected to win, that would require lots of training, trust, gear, and planning; they're expected to draw fire, and the VDV or main-line regulars will clean up the rest.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#128

Post by red-iron-pine »

glogla wrote: post #90
codedokode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're framing it as if it's China vs Belgium but Russia has about three times the population of Ukraine. And literally millions of Russian men already fled Russia rather than be conscripted. Looking at current ratio of Russian and Ukrainian losses, having three times the soldiers is not going to be enough.

Not millions. That number is probably closer to 800k.

Still a lot, esp. you consider the primary draftable age groups (e.g. 18-30), and that not all males in that group would be military worthy, i.e. medical or mental disabilities, etc.

Also a big deal if you consider that most of them are the wealthier, smarter, more mobile parts of the population, which will exacerbate the brain-drain and impact the economy. A lot of those guys aren't gonna go back anytime soon, or at all.

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#129

Post by red-iron-pine »

viraptor wrote: post #82
medo-bear wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that agressive bully was much further west 30+ years ago and western europe managed fine then

Not very aggressive in practice at that time. And the eastern Europe did not manage very well, which western Europe paid for for quite a long time.

Most of that aggression was targeted at Eastern Europe, such as putting down uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Which is, go figure, why Poland, the Baltics, the Czechs, etc. are so eager to support Ukraine...

Re: Russia confiscates passports of senior officials to stop defections

#130

Post by red-iron-pine »

smcl wrote: post #9

I commented somewhere a few weeks back[0] that we should probably be making it easier for Russians who are vulnerable (those who left during the mobilisation push, are vocally critical of Putin, or who simply want to not be part of it) and want to defect. There's not a great deal we can do to make it easier on their end - presumably there are some controls on the Russian side on the way out - but if someone does make…

I'm in Canada and there has been a big push to help Ukrainians flee... but also one to take in Russians seeking asylum. The Ukrainians are the ones helping with that, funny enough, via Orthodox Churches.
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