abrandt
20039
Just like anything on the internet, take any and every video with a massive heaping of salt. That said, there is useful information to be gleaned from the videos that get released. The fact that you don’t see an equal number of videos of captured Ukrainian troops is a pretty good indication that there aren’t many Ukrainians surrendering at present. Like I said the other day, the difference in what Russian troops post to social media vs what Ukrainian troops post is a pretty big indication of a major gulf in discipline between the two militaries.
On top of that you have intelligence professionals(including the impressive OSINT community) who can pull out all kinds of specific and unintentional details from videos. The first step in being able to do that is to be able to do some reasonable validation of the location/date/content of those videos. They’ve seemingly been doing a pretty solid job of that over the past 9 months.
dtolman
20040
Absolutely - but there are plenty of examples of Russian soldiers who are NOT captured saying the same thing. Examples from the excellent wartranslated twitter feed from just the past week…
Many more Posts
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1588642624067743744
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1588507055983276032
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1588267678430543876
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1587890581308669953
jpinard
20041
@Janster is and always has been a great guy here, and just firmly believes what he’s saying. Nothing wrong with that. The issue here is that no one knows how many troops are being conscripted and also sent to the front. Putin could have conscripted a million new bodies and it could be disguised as 100,000 recruits. Why? Because people forget most of the regions where they take the most individuals from are very poor, uneducated, yet extremely oppressive zones. They don’t have any way to get the word out, let alone have people believe them.
Russians can’t get real news about the war into them. How hard do you think it is to get real “coordinated” news out of Russia with accurate numbers of conscripted? Locals could say, "Hey, 20,000 of our 200,000 population are gone, and the officials could counter saying, “You are mistaken, only 5,000 have been sent to the front. Talk more and you go to jail. Discussion over.”
Furthermore, not all of the conscripts are going to the front. They have a massive, broken supply infrastructure that needs bodies as well.
So all I’m saying is, don’t believe any figured coming out of Russia. Putin could be trying to look less tyranty but not conscripting as many as he claimed he would to settle the masses with his “generosity”, while the real numbers could be massively inflated. We don’t know, and probably never will. You can’t believe a word coming out of the Kremlin.
> What you see is mobilization areas, they might have old shit, but the first lot of 300k was dudes that had done service in the last 2 years, so little if no training required → shipped.
I don’t think so, this source says that tranche of reservists were already called up in April and have been fighting for months already. Around 90% of those being called up now have probably had no refresher training for around 5 years and have never had large scale unit or inter-arm refresher training.
Janster
20043
Does Russian think like most on this board does ?
Check the age of those, and I’m pretty sure they will send 18 year olds without training to the front + ak 47.
abrandt
20044
In what way?
What am I supposed to be seeing in that video? I see a bunch of kids forced to attend a speech who pretty clearly don’t want to be there. I don’t see a lot of patriotic zeal or bloodlust in that video. It’s funny how much you dismiss as Ukrainian propaganda and then you come in and drop a literal Russian propaganda speech without context as if it’s proving some point you’re trying to make. At least explain what you’re trying to say.
You frequently make posts that seem to imply that Russia will do well by just massing poorly equipped mobilized troops at the front. And while bodies at the front are better than no bodies, you’re not going to be able to supply an effective offensive with all those extra mouths to feed. A better supplied veteran force is what would make a real offensive possible. They’ll never have that with their logistics limitations with hundreds of thousands of mobilized troops clogging up the works. Sorry, it didn’t work that way in WW1 and it won’t work that way now. So the best they can really hope for is to prevent Ukraine from overrunning them along a broad front with a bunch of defensive cannon fodder. Ukraine will be limited to one or two careful offensives every few months when conditions are favorable.
Putin could very well think he’s conscripted a million new bodies, when really his generals are just disguising 100,000 physically questionable people they abducted off the streets. The lies go both ways and the rot runs deep. Putin is in a very isolated information bubble so won’t have any real information on most of these details. Up and down the chain people will record and report what their superiors want to hear and try to hide the truth. This was clearly true at the start of the war and the Russians have done nothing to even begin to fix their corruption issues since.
Don’t you remember? That’s the easy part.
Houngan
20046
Probably worth reiterating that Russia relies very heavily on officer classes to make any actual decisions and those have been hit hard, by most reports, over 2022. Throwing a bunch of conscripts into a winter campaign against a blooded and motivated force is a recipe for chaos inside the lines, much less on the battlefield.
abrandt
20047
I’m pretty sure my takeaway from debate class was that you can just handwave away all of the hard stuff by fiat. See? Easy.
Timex
20049
Janster, you need to really redskins where you are getting your information. You are being suckered by some really bad sources of disinformation, just like Trump voters in the US.
Your sources are lying to you, intentionally.
My thoughts on information coming from Russia: there are a lot of very brave journalists who risk harassment, imprisonment, beatings, torture and death doing their job. Their reports using internal Russian sources aren’t saying very different things about supply, morale, training and casualties.
Autocorrect strikes at Timex yet again!
Timex
20053
The Washington commanders are liars!
Houngan
20055
But the Senators are going to win the NBA just as soon as they can figure out why the refs keep getting hit with buckets full of glitter.
This is why plugging the line with conscripts isn’t viable. I don’t see how Russia can sustain losing 1k troops a day without unrest at home
jpinard
20058
Absolutely true. When you can’t tell Putin the truth, and most of the news is lies, what is even real anymore?
