That’s true, but then they shouldn’t paint the Z on it (examples from today had the Z, clearly marking them as Russian).
vyshka
6398
I don’t know what difference that will really make. Either Russians already believe what they are being told or they can see the Z painted on the civilian vehicles as well.
Dejin
6399
Ukrainian forces will have to decide whether to just hit suspicious “civilian” vehicles in the war zone, or stop them (or at least get a lot closer to them) to determine if they are really civilian or Russian military. So I can definitely see how that will make things harder for the Ukrainians.
On the other hand, the Z is a great reinvention of the Swastika that will make it easier to identify assholes in the coming years.
I just assumed they were conscripted forces from Zubrowka.
Dejin
6402
Stars & Stripes Pentagon Reporter — I assume these are from regular Pentagon briefing, although it’s not specified. This is the same language that’s been used in past “official” briefings.
aeneas
6403
i am just constantly amazed that all of these places where the fighting is happening is where battles in WW2 were occurring. I mean Kursk is just across the broder!
Tweeter is Reuters Pentagon correspondent.
I read guesses that Z stands for Zapad (West) and V stands for Vostok (East), according to the area of Russia from where troops where pulled.
It’s about people.
I assumed it’s because that way people know Russians are Z’s and Ukrainians are "Not"Z’s…
I wish we knew more about what the resistance looks like. I assume it’s not tank battles or air power being projected, are all of these stalls more or less man-portable weapons and tough fighters?
Some day we will, so far the mystery of all of that seems to be an impressive feature. Occasionally informational tweets will reference Ukrainian armor or real AA systems and yet I only ever see infantry.
Lurb
6410
Probably lots of situations like this one that has been making the rounds today.
If this happens in such open ground, approaching any built up area must be a nightmare.
I also guess that if you have to stick to the main roads, guys like these can literally walk around, pop a couple vehicles and just walk away.
In fact the video yesterday of that manpad plucking the helicopter out of the sky was geolocated to an area that all maps paint in russian “control”.
Something something star-bellied ssneetches
The worst joke I saw so far was that it’s WWZ.
Djscman
6413
You beat me to it and with better screencaps. Hopefully we get to the beginning of the middle of the end of all this soon.
Houngan
6414
I also wondered so Googled, how many flare deployments can each aircraft trigger? Seems like around 6 per aircraft is typical. Watching the videos of the soldiers shooting Stingers (which I think are radar) or MANPADs (which I assume are thermal?) The flights of helicopters, which were usually a dozen or more, all trigger their flares when the shot happens, I assume because they have sensors that tell them a missile is in the air. If you could stagger a single attack several times, you could run them out of flares and then devastate the aircraft once you reached that point. Probably not so effective against jets since they can extend out of the range once things got dicey, but I had a vision of those helicopters being out of flares and then it’s a duck shoot.
Im missing Baldwin but this thread needs a bit of humor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc9dlPlOH3Y&t=479s
