The War in the Ukraine

[anzha]

Lights from Ukraine seen from space before the war and just a couple days ago. It's not just Ukrainian held territory suffering from power outages. In fact, the only place seemingly up affected is Crimea in the conflict zone.

For all the posts here showing trashed Ukrainian equipment, how much has changed since the Kherson evacuation? Has Bakmut fallen? Have the Russians taken Pavlivka?

Speaking of Pavlivka:

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To be fair, the Ukrainians haven't made any successful territorial pushes either. However, for all the pro Russian posts here, I'd swear they were mopping the floor with Ukrainians.

I want people to be cognizant of getting succumbing to confirmation bias. Those online information bubbles and echo chambers are really problematic.

 

[FriedButter]

For all the posts here showing trashed Ukrainian equipment, how much has changed since the Kherson evacuation? Has Bakmut fallen? Have the Russians taken Pavlivka?

To be fair, the Ukrainians haven't made any successful territorial pushes either. However, for all the pro Russian posts here, I'd swear they were mopping the floor with Ukrainians.

I don’t know what everyone is thinking but Surovikin said a while ago in public that they intend to grind the Ukrainians down. So there isn’t really any expectations for some sort of large offensive from Russia anytime soon. Neither has there been really any large offensive operations from Russia since an overall commander was appointed a few months ago.

 

[anzha]

I don’t know what everyone is thinking but Surovikin said a while ago in public that they intend to grind the Ukrainians down. So there isn’t really any expectations for some sort of large offensive from Russia anytime soon. Neither has there been really any large offensive operations from Russia since an overall commander was appointed a few months ago.

That may be. That may be Surovikin's strategy. However, the Russians are still assaulting multiple spots on the front, notably, Pavlivka and Bakmut. These are definitely meat grinders. However, if the point is to ware down the Ukrainians, it must be done in a way to preserve the Russian forces as much as possible.

If the Russian Marine's statements - which originated via the Grey Zone for those who didn't read the article - are accurate, I'm not sure who is grinding who down. From what the soldier said, there are functional BTGs, just company level units left. Breakdown of command and control is very dangerous for armies, especially when an enemy is more organized.

Again, to be fair, this is one soldier's POV. It could also be just his area of the front near Pavlivka. It could also just be the rantings of a pissed Marine with an agenda. However, it could be far more widespread.

 

[FriedButter]

That may be. That may be Surovikin's strategy. However, the Russians are still assaulting multiple spots on the front, notably, Pavlivka and Bakmut. These are definitely meat grinders. However, if the point is to ware down the Ukrainians, it must be done in a way to preserve the Russian forces as much as possible.

And those battles are small when you look at the overall picture. There isn’t 10s or 100s of thousands of Russians storming Pavlivka, Bakmut, and all of these other spots across the frontlines. Both sides has been mostly sitting in their defensive lines ever since the end of the Kharkiv offensive.

 

[Biscuits]

If the West does not send NATO units on a massive scale, the Russians would eventually win this thing. There is no need to use nukes even inside Ukraine. The accuracy of today's weapons has improved so much that for small unit engagement, it is better and cheaper to use non-nuclear means. All the various aid packages from the West prolongs the war, but ultimately it comes down to firepower and armor. The West must send sufficient quantities of it to make a difference. If we send them piecemeal to Ukraine, without air superiority, they will be chewed up and spit out. few tens of thousands of Polish troops and Western "volunteers" will just delay the inevitable.

If the U.S. starts to amass large number of armor divisions along the Ukrainian border, I would be concern of tactical nuclear usage by the Russians. In a conventional war, the Russians will not be able to take on the U.S. led NATO troops and will resort to tactical nuclear to stop these troops. After that it is up to the U.S. to escalate to a full on nuclear war. I am seeing some mission creep like in Vietnam war, but hopefully cooler heads prevail and the U. S. will not pick a direct fight with the Russians in Ukraine.

In this war, China is like the U.S. in WWII, Russia is like Germany and Ukraine and the West is like Russia in WWII. In this case, the Chinese stays neutral but aids Russia in non-military ways. If NATO pick a direct fight with Russia, the Chinese will provide direct military aid to Russia and with the huge Chinese manufacturing base and the various military products, there will be just enough military aid to grind down NATO in a very long stalemate. At the end of this, Europe will be in shambles and the U.S. will be eclipsed by the Chinese without a fight.

It isn't on anyone's agenda to start a nuclear war, except if nato goes crazy and directly attacks Russia. In that case, Russia will recieve everything they can get in order to stop a nuclear exchange, even tactical ones.

What do you think is more politically acceptable to China? A) Let Russia end the world by throwing around nukes randomly. Or, B) arm them with latest PLA weapons so they can push nato army back to the polish border?

There is a reason nato won't put soldiers on the ground nor planes in the air, nor even give ancient mig29s from Poland to Ukraine. The situation is stacked against them and they cannot move freely, despite what US govt online army likes to claim on the twitter oblast.

 

[pmc]

Eggs I buy still cost the same (2,19€) they did back in 2021 and Russia has lost up to million people who have left after Russia invaded Ukraine and most have been younger working age people including many IT professionals, etc.

Example: Gas prices in Finland are now lower than they were three months ago because new logistics lines were put on place.

they may be some lower quality stale eggs that you found at this price. or they are on sale as people cannot afford them.
IT is not a scientific profession. the rest is not scientifically proven.

Why are you so fixated on tb-2? There just isn't that many of them to give out and if you didn't notice, both sides have been losing an astronomical amount of equipment in this war.

There is no single silver bullet to modern warfare and different platforms would have their niche to fill. Heck we have seen small quad copters successfully drop anti tank grenades on main battle tanks and APCs aplenty, does that mean ka-52s are useless because they get shot down doing the same job? No, it's not that simple.

In fact a suicide Alibaba drone struck the black sea fleet headquarters earlier in the war and would've probably just been slightly smaller than a tb-2, small/mid size UAVs will have a role on the battlefield, IF they have the numbers.

TB2 potential is finished for this conflict permanently prematurely. there is no upgrade path for TB2 or anything similar.
while era of Ka-52 just beginning. according to Ukrainian 450 attack choppers in the battlefield. these are operating round the clock and with further newer models like Ka-52M with multi-target engagement and standoff multi seeker weopons its effectiveness is beyond doubt through out the campaign. whether one year or 10 years. Ka-52 does not care about air defense.
the rest are one off attacks taking advantage of lack of air defense the time. it has nothing to do with permanent effectiveness of engineering product.

 

[FriedButter]

Reportedly, The Ukrainian Deputy PM has said all the Thermal / Hydro power plants has been hit by missiles. No idea on the severity of the damage or if they are still operational.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1596185011673214977

 

[Anlsvrthng]

They even have dual core and quad core versions of these. Of course since they are made for the state they are gold plated. A lot of these military grade chips are like that just so they cost more. The main advantage of using ceramic packaging is temperature resistance. But you do not need that kind of temperature resistance on most products and ceramics do worse in high vibration environments like inside missiles. When these suppliers do have plastic packaging these chips cost like 10-20x less.

Just to clarify and compare the Russian missiles with the USA ones.

USA Hellfire missile from Ukraine.

Same vintage electronics like in the Iskander. However the Iskander has higher quality components.

 

[Atomicfrog]

Reportedly, The Ukrainian Deputy PM has said all the Thermal / Hydro power plants has been hit by missiles. No idea on the severity of the damage or if they are still operational.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1596185011673214977

The time spent to repair and missiles used in vain to protect them result at less pressure to the front and more internal pressure for Ukraine.

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Right now, the ''we shot them all'' lyrics don't fit even on western media. At least 50 of 70 is less than 100%.

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[Phead128]

Russia deserves to lose this war. Look at this. Ignore the statement. Just look at the video, which is not unique.

These men are tired, cold and sleep deprived. They should have been resting behind the lines instead of holding the line. That rotation should have happened long ago. The fortification here is very weak. It wouldn't be effective against WW1 artillery. You can easily interpret gross institutional dysfunction from this footage. You could ignore it if it was the only such video. But there are many.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1596017726212169728

That video perfectly explains all the (very) slow progress in the past few months... shortage of manpower, and exhaustion among frontline soldiers. That's why Russia should have mobilized a lot sooner to rotate fresh men (even if they are lower-quality reserves).

Indeed, you can argue the same exhaustion issues afflict Ukraine, but they have >900K mobilized, so they can rotate fresh men, whereas Russia actually lossed men when their contracts expired.

I'd argue that manpower shortage and troop exhaustion is the single biggest factor limiting Russian advances, not even HIMARS or second-hand equipment donated by NATO. A properly full-manned Russian invasion force (with full-scale mobolization) should have steam-rolled Ukraine, but now we see the result of a stalemate due to Russian manpower shortage and exhaustion among frontline troops.