271–280 of 791 posts
I think we need to consider the possibility that much of the Russian army only existed on paper, and that the true strength was overinflated by trickling up good news only throughout all ranks of the military.[1] Readiness was overstated. Equipment was overstated. Training was for parades, not combat. Everyone in the Russian military had assumed they'd never actually fight a real war, so they could grift and sell rat…
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Ukraine really doesn't want war, the odds are stacked against them and without significant outside ground troops they'll be devastated even if Russia is as incompetent as they currently appear. Killing aggressors is often used as an excuse for the aggressors to be more aggressive and Russia's army is large enough to replace that convoy a few times over without much of a sweat. Violence also helps back the idea that R…
>Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated). It definitely isn't "completely fabricated": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely i…
This cites but doesn't link "The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force", which is a much more thorough treatment: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar... They list three possible explanations: * Too few precision-guided munitions (PGMs) * Risk of friendly fire from surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) due to poor coordination * Lack of experienced Russian pilots
I disagree, they have used their airforce extensively in Syria with precision guided bombs, and I'd be very surprised if that didn't help the pilots gain a lot of experience too. All those reasons might have explained a lower intensity air presence but not the outright absence of russian planes. I think it's mostly due to public perception because air strikes, no matter how precise, cause a lot of collateral damage,…
I guess everyone's weighing in with their view, so why not? Firstly, we should be mindful that the fog of war is now in play, and a good amount of what we think we know is unverifiable. With that caveat out of the way... It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly. Counterexamples exist and could be explained by rogue units, incompetence, or hot-blooded revenge on local…
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>It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump. Were any far-right groups formally integrated into the US military, federal law enforcement, or anything else like that during Trump's presidency? That's the difference here, the Azov battalion was a private militia that was made an actual part of the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine has not such thing as private militia. Azov regiment was made by volunteers: football fans. See them there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvzxM_DbQhw .
As a very young man, my first experience with war that I can remember was my parents watching the reports on the Vietnam war. They were pretty glued to their TVs and unlike the wars before that one, there was video every day and updates every day. They felt they really "understood" what was going on because they were so very well informed. They had seen it with their own eyes after all!
However later, much later, after the war was over and more and more information about the prosecution of the war came out, it became abundantly clear that what they had "seen" was carefully managed by outside forces to convey certain "truths" which were in fact simply narratives drawn from helpful facts with unhelpful facts omitted.
There was of course other news coverage, in China (assumed to be all "propaganda") in Vietnam (presumed to be slanted toward their wants and needs), and so it was widely held by the adults that my parents socialized with (Air Force types) that the US coverage was "best, and most reliable." It was also impossible to get on the spot translations of the other stories so it could take days or weeks before you even got to read the "other side" and by then it was often overtaken by events.
This war is very different. Different even than the recent middle eastern wars of the late 20th and early 21st century. If you were an American you could be forgiven, if you watched the news, for forgetting that the US was even in a war, much less the driving force behind it. This war has an overload of information, from Twitter, to Facebook, to Tik-tok, and of course various media outlets all around the world. It fundamentally changes how one perceives and understands what is going on. While in previous wars the crafting of a narrative was the side hustle of the folks responsible for communications, in this war it is a huge part of the offensive. This "information war" which works to frame the war in a way that is useful to the framer.
Not surprisingly, it isn't nearly so easy to tell only one side of any story. I find this Reuter's story a good example of that. Who are they talking to? What experts are "stumped"? Why is the story they tell important or not important to their intended audience?
The more I read the more I recognize that nobody knows what is "really" going on. Some Russians are deserting but no concept of how many or how fast, Ukraine is winning skirmishes, but again big ones? little ones? How does it inform us on where this is going next? I don't think anyone knows.
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I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.
I'm guessing all the engineers you know are web software pukes. There are loads of people who could build these today.
It's an internal resistance conducted by the military. In the coming days I would expect a coup, Putin's arrest(or worse), the new administration, end of war.
I seriously doubt that this would pan out. I think Putin is definitely losing support internally but the fear is still very much present. All of his political opponents are either imprisoned, exiled or dead. Some are even exiled and dead. No one wants to lose their life going against someone so ruthless knowing they could lose their life... or their loved ones.
So, taking down putin from within is a plausible event.
Could Putin's end game be that he expects Ukraine to strike back inside of Russia, perhaps a missle on the Kremlin? Then that would give him justification to just carpet bomb Kyiv?
Ukraine already struck back inside Russian with a missile attack on an airfield[1]. But I don't think Ukraine has the manpower or the equipment to get munitions anywhere near Moscow. [1] https://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-forces-target-russian-airfi...
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> I wouldn't be surprised if some of the early missile hits on residential buildings were something like this that failed to lock on That or Russian missile attacks.
Some of the residential hits seemed to be cruise missiles that weren't aware that a building was in their path. A case of the height map not being updated correctly in the computer's memory? The Russians seem to be sloppy all over the place, so it wouldn't surprise me. All this lightens my mood, since it's obvious the Russians wouldn't last two months against NATO forces.