341–350 of 791 posts
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Yeah I can't help but wonder if Putin is trying to run a playbook that worked in parts of Georgia and "worked" in Chechnya (eventually remaining Russian territory, at great cost), but doesn't scale to major Ukranian cities.
Russia's only possible 'winning' outcome at this point is to subjugate and murder huge numbers of Ukrainians under a brutal police state, if Putin wants to hold most of the population centers. It'll take a very long time before they'll stop fighting back, Russia will have to debase the culture (they might try it China style, bring in a lot Russian citizens to live in those cities and begin a full, forced transformati…
> If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach
Ukrainians are used to living in a democracy though, so it may not be easy/possible.
> bring in a lot Russian citizens to live in those cities and begin a full, forced transformation, while you violently try to strip away Ukrainian culture
That's what they did back in the 1930s in East Ukraine. They had to starve out/relocate the locals to make room for the "colonists". But doing this in the 21st century? I shudder to think how this would go down. And if they don't do this, anyone who comes over to settle will be met with extreme hostility.
I believe Putin lives in the past when it comes to understanding Ukraine and Ukrainians. It looks like he might actually believe (have believed?) his own propaganda.
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You may be exaggerating but there is some truth in it, and it applies to many areas of science. The growing specialization means your knowledge is deeper but lest vast. For many classes of problems you just use a pre-built solution as this is the easiest and most common way. But rest assured, the people who work on defense system know very well what they are doing.
Are these engineers paid well compared to standard web stack engineers now?
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…
> It seems that the Russian soldiers are making efforts to avoid attacking civilians directly This is my take as well. The obvious contrast is their handling of Kiev versus how they utterly flattened Grozny. It's clear to me that in the early days Russia was hoping for a quick and decisive win. They'd decapitate the government, install a puppet regime, and then hope the public would roll over. That hasn't happened an…
The Russian Army didn't initially flatten Grozny with artillery either. It was only after a failed assault that they switched to methodical urban destruction.
Which is why racheting up sanctions and worse ASAP is important...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80...
They are afraid of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them wa…
Considering the lack of coordination of their ground forces and their absurd OPSEC, it might simply be communication issues. Fuel and maintenance issues are also a safe bet with Russia. The Russian Buks also seem to be having a bad time against the Bayraktars.
Why? Small radar signature?
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> I don't understand why people just don't believe Russia is being literal with their intentions They are. You are just listening to the wrong articulation of their intentions. > They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine, They have said multiple times that they do want Ukraine, view it's separation from Russia as a crime against Russia and Russians committed by those in the past with control over Russia in the…
* Russian state media even released than silently deleted a premature victory announcement for the current invasion declaring the establishment of a new union state of all the Russias (Russia [Great Russia], Ukraine [Little Russia] Do you have more information about this?
> A Russian state-run news agency prematurely published an article that said Russia has taken back Ukraine.
> "Ukraine has returned to Russia," said the article, which ran on RIA Novosti and has since been taken down. "The West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe."
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I'm not sure if that makes sense. The goal is not to shoot aircraft down, the goal is to prevent them from coming in the first place. Wouldn't you want to disclose the hell out of your extremely effective anti-aircraft weapons so you don't have to use them as much? Obviously not the positioning or numbers but just that you have them...
Not if early disclosure accelerates the development of countermeasures! Nor if you’re worried about a wider conflict - perhaps also involving Asia – & want both maximal degradation of Russian capabilities, & “mystery” advantages for as long as possible. Surprise is a force multiplier, but a new capability is only a surprise for a short period. And a simplistic model assuming the Ukrainian allies are optimally pursuin…
Also, the risk of deploying secret weapons into a state with significant corruption would have been much too high.
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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 talked to a guy a few weeks ago who worked for a company that developed a guidance system before GPS that used stars like a sextant to navigate. Pretty crazy to think about.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3865/this-is-likely-wh...
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Buk isn't a "cheap and cheerful" alternative to S-300. Soviet air defense doctrine was a multilayered approach featuring systems at almost every organizational level from infantry squad up to theater. Buk and S-300 serve at different organizational levels. Both are competent systems and ironically are probably more effective against Soviet derived air forces than western ones. Starting in WW2 and moving forward each…
You are right about more emphasis on fighters in the U.S. Also the U.S. put its best anti-aircraft missiles on ships.
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…
Iirc Ukraine had a government that was subordinate to Russia as recently as 2014. Belarus is still a Russian puppet. The Transnistria region of Moldova to Ukraine's south is largely welcoming of Russian military control.
Doesn't seem too outlandish for them to assume that to me.