Dejin
6052
Okay, this just popped up at the top of my YouTube feed. Contrary to the title though, it’s mostly about Ukrainian ex-pats returning to defend Ukraine. It does verify that 16,000 number previously mentioned from a clearly legit news source.
A bit creepy, since I was just searching for an article on this in the web browser, not logged in to any account, so I’m not quite sure how my YouTube app knows what I was just looking for in the web browser.
A good article about Ukraine preparing for war from back on February 11th, which now seems like an eternity ago. It gives an overview of some of the prime players in the government and some insight into why Zelenskyy was unpopular before the invasion (Ukraine has its oligarchs and corruption as well.) But the main thing it conveys is that Ukraine was very ready for this war, as in the eyes of many there they’ve been fighting it since 2014.
This bit also explains a lot about how things have gone since the invasion began:
For Kostenko, the next few weeks is a question of mathematics and demography.
“In the West, you like to give Ukraine’s order of battle at 260,000 combined armed forces,” he says. “But you don’t take into account that 420,000 of our people have fought in this war for almost a decade — that is about 1% of our population, a reserve force that will absolutely fight again if they need to. You also forget that we have a territorial army in the process of recruiting 140,000, a national guard of 50,000, a border guard of 35,000, militarized SBU forces of 30,000. Even if the Russians take out our command-and-control capabilities with airstrikes and rockets, we still have a large segment of the population with military training that will take up arms.”
“So 935,000 against 175,000,” I say.
“Yes. And that does not even get into the number of ordinary civilians who will resort to partisan warfare if their country is occupied. It’s one thing to penetrate Ukraine, quite another to hold every village and every town when the locals are shooting at you. You’ll need to create some sort of administrative units, police units and counterintelligence units. Our doctrine is one of comprehensive defense — the entire nation goes to war. Even though Russia has more resources than we do, our goal will be to bleed them to such an extent that their losses outweigh their gains.”
Thrag
6054
Something I had been wondering about. The sailent toward Kiev and the supply train are kind of begging for SOF night attacks. Among captured Russian equipment I haven’t seen any night vision gear shown.
pyrhic
6055
man, how many eyes do those soldier have?!
Dejin
6056
That was a pretty surreal read! So much they got right and so much that they got completely wrong.
Dejin
6058
UK Ministry of Defence Update:
While the roads certainly aren’t great, driving a military convoy over any road isn’t going to do it much good.
Dejin
6060
I can’t 100% vouch for the source, but they’re followed by a bunch of people that seem to know what’s what.
In response to someone’s question:
Quaro
6061
Netlix uploaded all of Winter of Fire to YouTube:
In just 93 days, what started as peaceful student demonstrations became a violent revolution. Netflix documentary Winter on Fire brings you the story of Ukraine’s fight for freedom from the frontlines of the 2014 uprising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzNxLzFfR5w
We’re getting announcements on Twitter for when the amphibious assault can be expected to happen.
This is a very weird war.
Lurb
6063
The occupation of Kherson seems it’s going swimmingly.
In fact I think the tweet is wrong and there are russians inside the BTR (another video had a protester wrecking the “support van” mirror), but I’d be wary about parking that BTR anywhere with the huge carjacking problem in Ukraine.
That describes northern Vermont very well, especially the dirt road near which my house sits. Well, we have somewhat fewer convoys or mired tanks here at least.
Not for the better for whom?
That’s a great piece, thanks!
And that one as well!
Lurb
6068
Airliner from the russian presidential fleet currently flying from St. Petersburg to Washington (and having to take a crazy detour).
Speculation is that it’s picking up the diplomats expelled last week. Seems reasonable, I guess it’s quite hard to get them back any other way.
This is just visually confirmed loses
But even if there are no more loses than these in the last 24 hours, it’s kind of unsustainable.
I suppose this counts as visually confirmed as well:
Tim_N
6071
This has got to be the most convincing answer to the question ‘where is the Russian air force?’
They know they will take serious losses and don’t want to lose the planes.
