20681

That doesn’t look like anything to me.

20682

Oh, I know, I’m just trying to put the best spin on it. I mean, it’s Thanksgiving and all!

20683

I did mean to address that, actually! I’m really slow typing on my phone and by the time I finished what I wrote I forgot. :) In any case, I meant to say that I appreciated the positive spin and the effort at thread diplomacy!

20684

Is that what you think you are doing!? Arguing “realities”?

You keep using that word…

20685

It seems like video game reasoning. It’s a gaming site after all, so maybe it’s not that surprising. You build 1,000,000 troops at the barracks, click-drag to select and send them to the front line. Attrit until victory. Video games usually forsake modelling real-world stuff like logistics, so maybe a simplistic processing of war is what is going on here where sufficient numbers are all that matters.

20686

Logistics is easy! Just ask your regular Shadow Empires player. ;)

In other news, Russia continues to double down on the terrorism. We’ll stop firing rockets into your maternity wards as soon as you cave to our demands!

20687

That’s on you for ignoring the Prigozhin’s sledgehammer news from me.

20688

Worst. Beatles Remix. Ever.

20689

These sources don’t agree with you.

20690

It will never be as well received as Mannheim Steamroller.

20691

Okay, so lets see, the question of mobilisation has been my position for a long time now, lets sum up what I think and give some clarity.

The number 1 million, is ofcourse aprox, I’m worried it actually might be more, what task and force and Perun say, which is where I back my claims from, is that the mobilisation is in NO WAY limited to 300k, its open ended and ongoing, and I know, and probably the Ruskies know, 300k won’t cut it, its not enough to win the war, they might still be outnumbered. They’re going to need a million men…

You can argue that they don’t have the blah blah to do that, but I’m telling you, they do, and they WILL, of course it may be a shitshow, and the casualty list on the front might be horrendous, I’ve seen them lose 1000 men a day on the front, and they are STILL attacking.

I’ve seen numerous accounts of Ukrainians saying they are mowing down Russian troops daily and they just keep coming.

As some may know, the frontlines are actually very sparsely populated, by both sides, compared to WW2 there are hardly any troops at all on the frontlines…this creates large gaps that can be exploited once you get the manpower to do so.

So to iterate, I believe firmly Russia can and will field a ton more troops soon, and its not going to be impossible at all, I don’t care for what a few TikTok videos say, they will get this done.
Their infrastructure is not shit like pre-ww2, and they STILL did it back then…why not now?
Their stocks of weapons go deeeeep guys, I mean, they still have 60% of their tanks left after losing 1500-2000 of them…which other country would be able to say that?

Lastly, the economical fallout and damage, to specify, I live in Norway, our power is solely electrical, so normally I pay very little for power, but now, the prices have been up to 1 dollar per KWT…and remember where I live, its cold here, I cannot turn heating off, that would be dangerous…its fucking cold here.
That goes for quite a few countries in Europe too…and Russia still has a few pipelines going…and oil coming in…that can and WILL change the second January cold sets in…

I don’t advocate stopping help to Ukraine, I do advocate some fucking sense in how we deal with things, and perhaps giving Putin that offramp he desperately seeks at some point in time.

However, right now, I doubt the Ukrainians would ever consider peace, they are just too hurt, and not enough blood has been spilled yet…and I’m talking about Russian blood.

To sum up, I’m happy getting some counterarguments and will adjust if I think I’m wrong, but nothing anyone has said here makes me think that just yet…I have stated one thing though, I was wrong to think Ukraine would instantly lose this war, but so was just about everyone else…

I’m happy they didn’t.

20692

I don’t think anyone is going to argue against the notion that Putin desires to raise as many men as possible. Sure, if he could he would raise a million, ten million, every able bodied man in Russia. People, including your own sources, keep pointing out that wishes and the reality aren’t exactly aligned.

20693

Kind of hard to argue with a Point of Faith. We’ll just have to wait and see.

20694

I was curious about the claim about $1 per KWh prices for electricity as that is crazy, and Norway has indeed had a huge spike in their normally super low rates. Though it is less a story about gas prices and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but more of a lack of normally plentiful hydropower.

An interesting parallel to how here in the western US hyrdopower seemed like an eternal source of power once and now not so much.

20695

I’m not sniping, just asking for clarification to help me follow along. I read the TikTok video comment as being directed at the conversation/debate in this thread. I haven’t seen anyone post TikTok in this thread or use it as a source (the thread is moving fast, I’m asking this because maybe I missed it!). Was this comment directed towards other things/conversations you’re seeing online or was it saying that we get our views from places like TikTok?

This is very much my approach as well. I’m no subject matter expert, there’s a lot of fog of war at play, and given that this war is likely to drag on for a while yet that means that situations on the ground might change. Russia could drop a nuke tomorrow, that would dramatically change things. Putin could get assassinated or otherwise die tomorrow, that would dramatically change things. Russia was running out of precision weapons, so they import Iranian drones and attack Ukrainian infrastructure, that has changed things.

What I’m not terribly interested in is “You’re all wrong, I’m right, and I know I’m right because I’m confident I’m right” which is how it feels like you’ve come across here in this thread. You have posted some sources, but those sources don’t seem to be saying what you advertise them as saying. When people ask you how Russia is going to supply a million men on the front I don’t think they’re doing so as a way of attacking you, they want you to lay out how it will work. Just saying Russia will have a million men on the front because they want a 3:1 ratio is meaningless in terms of argument. I want to know HOW they are going to do that. I know they WANT to do that. Ukraine wants Russia out of Crimea, I’m interested in HOW they can get them out of Crimea.

Fact: Russia has had serious logistical problems in this war. This was evidenced when they attempted to take Kyiv and the massive convoy of stranded vehicles and armor. Also evidenced by them withdrawing those forces, unable to maintain the offensive. If Russia is having trouble supplying the forces they currently have (see the withdrawal from Kherson as another recent example), I would sincerely be interested in hearing how they are going to resolve that going forward. What plans are they putting in motion? How are they changing their operations to better supply a massive influx of additional troops to the front? If Russia has things in motion to address those shortfalls I would be very interested in reading about them!

I’m not asking those things to be argumentative, I really would like to hear because I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I see a lot of analysis explaining the problems Russia has been facing in this area and it seems to have played out on the ground. If they’re wrong, I want to know how they’re wrong.

20696

They don’t and they won’t, and moreover there’s no evidence anywhere that they even can without their whole system collapsing.

So barring drastic changes on the Russian side, which HAVE NOT been happening, they will continue to feed poorly trained troops piecemeal into the fray just to cling to what they have.

This is what the people who know what they are talking about are saying is happening. Including Perun.

20697

Which is why the force projection is so powerful.

Nearly every soldier I know looks down a little on the average US soldier.

I.e. all other things being equal, individual soldiers here are “better.”

Now I dont know if that is accurate, nor do I much care, but for sureI think we all know that we would lose a war, even us on an island, eventually.

20698

Sure, you can assert that all you want. But an assertion unsupported by facts or credible analysis is not very compelling.

this creates large gaps that can be exploited once you get the manpower to do so

Ok. So how do you reckon that untrained troops with no food, winter gear, medical supplies, ammo or transport would exploit a gap? You know, all that blah blah blah that you think we’re nitpicking about, and that Russia is clearly (according to your own sources!) not capable of supplying.

Their stocks of weapons go deeeeep guys, I mean, they still have 60% of their tanks left after losing 1500-2000 of them…which other country would be able to say that?

If they have that equipment in a usable condition in these deep stockpiles, why are the recruits being given rusted guns, buying their own body armor, etc? If they have combat-effective tanks available somewhere, why are they activating some rusted Korean-war era hulks?

This is a fascinating window into your psyche though: according to your numbers Russia has lost 40% of their tanks achieving basically nothing, and you think it is a sign of strength. Is there any course of events that would convince you that they are not winning?

I don’t advocate stopping help to Ukraine, I do adocate some fucking sense in how we deal with things, and perhaps giving Putin that offramp he desperately seeks at some point in time.

Ok, so can you be more concrete here? What do you think the west should do / stop doing?

(Putin already has his offramp - just pull out the troops - and is not taking it. So I assume you’re looking to sweeten the pot a little bit for him.)

20699

Obvious based on what evidence?

Military history says otherwise. As do some simple thought experiments. What happens when a company of men with rifles meets their first tank? What happens to that company with no winter gear after spending a week in the snow?

20700

I just saw a video asking basically: “Where are all the T-80s at?”

They proposed that most of them don’t have working engines because they required so much maintenance, training and fuel and most of them probably ran through the things and they never got replaced, since the turbine engine’s lifespan is significantly less than diesels.

Russia on paper had at least 4500 of the things, but 3000 of them are listed as in storage. At the same time Russia is pushing out refurbished T-62s. Which says those T-80s in storage aren’t working and can’t be easily made to be working.

Yet another example of “strong on paper, mostly paperweights in reality” seems likely given all we’ve seen. T-80s are probably being refurbished, but they also take over ten times as much to keep running as T-72, and that’s before you get into the logistics of maintaining the things. And Russia can barely keep their T-72s running.