Houngan
22312
Quick and dirty though, Russia hasn’t taken Bahkmut yet, despite it being a focus. I think we’re armchairing over something that is basically rumor right now.
KevinC
22313
Aside from the YouTube video Janster linked, I haven’t seen any other source corroborating a Ukrainian retreat from Soledar either. It doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened and it’s certainly plausible, I just haven’t seen it anywhere else. The UK MoD had an update this evening and it didn’t mention it and ISW says there’s still ongoing fighting.
For all we know, it could be all those Ukranian commanders saying that they can’t keep this up is maskirovka. They can keep this up and they’re egging the Russians, who are desperate for any victory, to commit more. The Ukrainians were pretty good about doing stuff like this when they launched their counterattack last year.
Or the alternative is that they indeed can’t keep this up.
Thrag
22315
Drone dropping supplies rather than grenades.
I have a sudden urge to play Factorio.
ddtibbs
22316
The Germans bled France at Verdun to the point they couldn’t attack for the rest of WW1. Russia might not be mobilizing a million men, but they can still throw more bodies at a front right now than Ukraine.
Once the summer comes and Ukraine gets trained up all the new armor the west is throwing at them, they’ll have the initiative. Russia needs to grind on their terms while they still can.
Houngan
22317
Yeah, I was wondering if regular hobby drones were relevant, way up thread I pondered on how cheap they are and how easy to put together. Looks like that’s in full force. (Read my blog!). ((I have no blog.))
I think the proper measurement, is the cost ratio of the antitank weapon vs the tank. My guess is that cost of a bazooka/cost of a panther is probably lower than $javelin/$T-80. However, the most important variable is the willingness of find an infantryman team that will use the weapon. Very few soldiers are brave enough and skillful enough to maneuver within 100 meters of German tank (and on the side or rear for the Tigers and Panther) and then hit the target.
It requires considerably less skill/courage to shoot a TOW missile from a couple of KM away, and then guide the missile to the target, and even less to use a fire and forget weapon like a Javelin.
M1 has proven to be quite survivable in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I think it is virtually impossible to extrapolate how the Russian infantry armed with Russian anti-tank weapons would do against NATO tanks manned by Ukrainians.
I haven’t heard about Russian AT weapons a lot or their effectiveness. Do they have enough and in the right places to prevent an armored thrust? I wonder if any of the new recruits even know how to use an ATGM.
Janster
22320
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx2pR31Sbsc
Shorter version of the shitshow earlier, I gotta send Laserpig some more wine, he took one for us all.
In the scheme of things, consumer, home built drones are cheap as chips and available in vast quanities.
Aliexpress/Goodgear et al have been selling a vast, vast plethora of available componentry for DIY drones for years. The skill and knowledge to build them is readily and easily attainable. The most difficult thing would be adding methods for payload delivery, but I am sure that would not have been too much a challenge with off the shelf components and controllers. The drones being assembled in the video above are probably no more than USD$200-300 a pop, if that. Extremely cheap for their potential battlefield value.
Absolutely gamechanging, as we are seeing in this war.
ShivaX
22322
My understanding is that Russian doctrines (or at least Soviet ones) counted on them having the advantage in armor. You don’t need a lot of infantry AT weapons when you have twice (or more) as many tanks as the other guy.
So odds are they don’t have a whole lot of them and aren’t well trained with them. I’m sure the majority are more akin to RPG-7s than Javelins as well, which take some real nuts to use effectively. Which is generally in short supply for conscripts that don’t want to be there.
There are plenty of capable Russian AT weapons because, inevitably, Ukraine is using them. The problem of course is how many Russian soldiers are left who’ve had real training in how to use them.
Why do you use Russian word for “concealment” here? Does it have a special meaning here?
If Russia takes something bigger than a bus station after mobilization and months of fighting “now for real” - this might be a victory for morale but, like, it’s a small town you’ve never heard of. I’ve been near it and I didn’t know it was ever there, it’s that insignificant.
There are at least two groups who are pro-Russian for rational reasons, even if their rationale is completely batshit or disgusting.
One is the anti-establishment crowd, which is largely owned by the right. If the establishment says vaccines are good, they assume they’re bad. If the establishment says Ukraine are the good guys, they assume Ukraine are the bad guys. The only thing they trust is divine inspiration, psychics and youtube videos, made by “real people”.
The other is the ideological far right. They don’t have to be paid off to be pro-Russian. The Russians are against human rights, they hate gays, they hate women, they pretend to be serious about religion, and they favor using their military to win glory and riches for their country. That is the country many on the far right want to live in.
It’s a reference to this:
Grifman
22326
There’s a third pro-Russian group that I have come across. This group is very anti-US. They considers it an imperialist power responsible for much of the evil in the world. NATO and Ukraine have no wills of their own, they are just tools and puppets of the US empire. They see the US imperial project as fragile, and that a defeat in Ukraine will lead to the collapse of the US empire and NATO, and the rise of a true multi-polar world. Amazingly, the ones I have come across are all Americans and live in the US. They seem to be a mix of the far right and far left.
Absolutely! Those guys also have an overlap with the anti-establishment crowd. The anti-establishment used to be mostly hippies, who were perhaps wrongly seen as being left wing, when possibly their left wing tendencies was a part of their reaction against the establishment.
It’s pretty bizarre how many former hippies are now staunchly right wing, even though the right wing used to want to kill them.
Before the war I voted for a far left party that represents a coalition which includes former communists, who have similar ideas about the US. I voted for them because they were reliably and strongly anti-racist and anti-inequality, but I never agreed with the pacifism, or the kneejerk anti-americanism.
Those anti-american elements equivocated on Ukraine, so last election I voted for a party called “No thank you” which doesn’t exist.
On the flip side, the Germans lost the war.
Yeah, these assholes can DIAF. I mean, I am a fairly strident critic of a lot of American foreign policy, and have made no secret of my belief that many of our actions have been more in the service of global capitalism than anything else. At the same time, I recognize that things are not 0s and 1s. Even considering all that, there is a ton of good the USA has done and could do in the future. The two are not mutually exclusive; we are a very imperfect society but we’re not one-dimensional.
The folks who take their hatred for (admittedly worth of hate) American transgressions and extrapolate that into a visceral, unequivocal refusal to see any good in anything the USA does or supports, to the extent of supporting what by any rational standard has to be seen as a far worse offender against human rights and most everything else, these folks need to be beaten with sticks.
Aceris
22329
Yes this viewpoint is very common in the British far-left, and, unsurprisingly, backed by Russian disinfo and media efforts (RT etc.) just as much as the far-right crazies.
Grifman
22330
Not so soon, says Germany:
JonRowe
22331
Germany is right, the US has given Ukraine nothing!, when are we gonna send them some aid?
