Grifman
21628
Stalemate is a very real possibility:
Grifman
21629
Are you sure about that? What’s the point of conscripting anyone if they don’t have to fight? My understanding is that conscripts can’t be forced to fight outside of Russia, but they can/will fight inside of Russia (defensive war). And since Russia annexed 4 Ukrainian oblasts, the current frontlines are all on Russian territory. So they can be sent to fight in the new supposedly Russian former Ukrainian territories.
Does this tend to happen often?
I said legally. This word is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Legally convicts in Russian prisons can’t get out without a pardon of some sort. Legally no Russian citizen can be hired to fight a war. Of course these conscripts are coerced. After 6 months in the Russian army any of us can make very unexpected choices. Probably much sooner.
Legally PMCs like Wagner can’t exist under Russian law.
schurem
21635
Is Volodimyr crying or cringing at gramps’ joke?
Better than that, Ukraine has already built the command-and-control flexibility necessary for geolocating then attacking targets that aren’t fixed, because that’s how they’re getting best value out of HIMARS and M777. So now they have a new way of delivering precision weapons on to high-value targets.
(There was a section in the RUSI report comparing how the Ukrainian and Russian armies handled fire support requests to higher HQs. Ukraine is now able to feed targeting information direct from a frontline unit with a drone to an artillery battery, or even a single gun, and get immediate fire. Russia feeds artillery requests into targeting queues which are strictly first-in first-out. And hey, if your target has moved in the 8 hours it took for your request to get to the top of the queue? Well, that’s life in the Red Army, comrade.)
schurem
21637
Unless they found either a way to program the weapon from the cockpit of a MiG-29 or they’re getting western jets, the targeting cycle for JDAM will be quite a bit longer than arty or HIMARS.
Still a better time that his last visit!
Calelari
21639
None of your malarkey now.
Timex
21640
Zelensky’s going to go down as one of history’s greatest leaders, I think.
Timex
21642
I was listening to zelensky taking questions from the press, and I liked his response to what he will do after getting the Patriot systems.
“What is going to happen after the patriots are installed? After that, we will send another signal to President Biden that we would like to get more patriots.”
I also liked Biden’s response to the stupid question about whether this will escalate things with Russia. He pointed out that the Patriot system is a defensive weapon. Putin can make them useless by simply not attacking.
abrandt
21643
Considering the house was on holiday break, that’s a pretty nice crowd they’ve got for Zelensky. They were saying that Pelosi was doing all she could to get the Dem reps back to Washington. I doubt McCarthy was putting in that kind of effort, but still 80+ republican reps in attendance too.
And then Pelosi said “The Ukraine”. Sigh.
Grifman
21644
That still doesn’t make any sense. Conscripts are drafted into the army but can’t legally fight a war? Then why are they drafted? What kind of army is it that many of its soldiers can’t fight a war? That’s the whole purpose of an army. Sorry, but I need to see some source for this because it makes no sense.
Now I do know that conscripts cannot legally be sent to fight overseas, but to say conscripts can’t fight in Russia doesn’t make any sense. Why conscript someone that can’t fight?
Grifman
21645
More on the fighting in Bakhmut:
Interesting that Russian artillery fire seems to be significantly decreasing.
KevinC
21646
She’s 82, hopefully people will cut her a little slack. :)
Alstein
21647
My guess is they’ll thread it by using the cannon fodder in the areas Russia “annexed” as cannon fodder.
