Pretty sure that those numbers are inflated to provoke more and faster western support, or it's an estimation of total troops. Meaning with logistic, police and all other kind of personnel. If Russia actually had 100.000 storm troops at the ready somewhere at the front, we would see a big offensive from them. Russia didn't stop advancing since last summer because of good will.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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Pretty sure that those numbers are inflated to provoke more and faster western support, or it's an estimation of total troops. Meaning with logistic, police and all other kind of personnel. If Russia actually had 100.000 storm troops at the ready somewhere at the front, we would see a big offensive from them. Russia didn't stop advancing since last summer because of good will.
Depends on what's in the water though, assuming it is water, could be vodka, I understand Russians are partial to the stuff, might be a quick way of getting them too rat-arsed to fight
There have been a lot of noises from Lyman's front on both sides for a few weeks. Obviously, the numbers sound like BS. But I suspect that the UA is probably keeping the majority of their troops around for the RA's possible offense there.
Yeah exactly. 900 tanks is not realistic
Somehow the Democrats have a bigger fruit loop than even the Republicans:
Something tells me that RFK Jr’s status as a Democrat isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
As democrat as Manchin is.
But Russia is fighting facism in Ukraine according to some
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Did Obi-Wan inspect their drones?
What I love are the Russian bot accounts on Twitter spinning the Star Wars quote as “a perfect quote for the scale of production…”
You've just repeated yourself here without reading my point. Strategic positioning is completely divorced from belief of an impending invasion. Defence budgets are largely predicated on the same concept not of belief that they will be used but a minimum necessity should they need to be.
I don't buy the argument completely but that is what it was and not your invasion scare line. It doesn't really matter if it makes sense in practice because it's based on hypotheticals.
Russia is a spent force desperately trying to appear strong so any imposed weakness to Putin sets him off.
Well, that’s certainly one way to view that battle.
Except you predicate all this on assumption that Ukraine would join NATO, which probably wouldn't happen in any predictable future. There is no chance Germany, Turkey and Hungary would all vote for it if the Russia was opposed. Hell, if Putin didn't seize Crimea, it's likely that Ukraine would voluntarily stay in the Russian sphere of influence.
Ukraine was about 50-50 pro West and pro Russia, before 2013 by seizing Crimea and instigating revolt in Donbas, Putin actually disturbed this balance as he effectively removed pro-russian population from Ukraine and made the rest very anti-russia.
Also by seizing Crimea, Putin effectively prevented Ukraine from joining EU or NATO, unless they cede it. NATO doesn't accept countries with territory disputes and I doubt EU would accept one of the more corrupt countries with such an issue.
Basically, Putin already achieved his goal of preventing Ukraine to join western organizations in 2014. However, Putin doesn't like to compromise, he wants to win. He is a maximalist and he sensed the West was weak and Ukraine was weak and he could have it all, instead of just Crimea.
Also, it baffles me how Putin couldn't have calculated that his actions in 2013 and this invasion would push Sweden and Finland to NATO, effectively increasing his borders with the alliance. His actions smell of stupidity, arrogance and pride. I'm sure that in his mind Ukraine must be a part of Russia whether as a province or semi-independent country in the style of Belarus, he doesn't care, as long as they listen to him. Everything else is just propaganda and excuses for the gullible.
Yeah, apparently Russians threw masses and masses of troops into Bahmut, fought over a year there just to hold UA forces all the while preparing their defenses. Interesting point.
No I read it and understand it mate and it's not an invasion scare line, the discussion I was replying to was literally talking about Ukraine being a threat to Russia because of possible land invasion.
I just don't buy it either to be honest. At least in the context of Ukraine being a threat to Russia and them hypothetically joining of NATO continually trotted out as a reason to explain or justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine (not saying you're doing this).
Countries I'm sure budget/plan (to an extent) for possible invasions from their neighbours. But Nuclear powers probably worry less about that sort of thing considering to my knowledge no one has ever invaded one.
It’s a lot more nuanced than that. It’s not as if people were either pro-West or pro-Russia. Ukraine is sandwiched between the EU and Russia, and otherwise consumes a lot of American culture. People could be pro European integration and still open to engaging with Russia. The Sochi Olympics were a great example when a lot of Ukrainian youth, who either had or wanted to study or work in the West, also took the opportunity to go to Sochi for work or leisure. Ukrainians were recruited because they were considered to be stronger Ukrainian-English bilinguals.
2014 changed all that though. I’ve seen that first hand. It’s embarrassing how it took years and years for the West to actually understand what happened in 2014, and until 2022 for the West to actually respond. I consider myself guilty in that regard.
I'm not making any such assertion I was just explaining the argument was never about threat of invasion (from NATO) as it becomes a whole different thing then.
I agree with almost all you wrote there expect I don't think the position of Ukraine was as set as you state. NATO membership would have been off the table for the foreseeable but Putin had inarguably lost control of Ukraine so it presented him as weak and an instability he seemingly couldn't tolerate.
Whether the motive is a dictator imposing strength whilst appearing weak or a grand vision of a mad man will probably become clear in time. If it's the former he's going to have to manufacture a fake 'win' of some kind soon.
The RA certainly did not throw masses of troops that long. Their intensity started increasing in December. The rest of the front line hardly had any movement at that time while they were busy throwing convicts at the city.
Just because the pro-UA media stated how much the RA troop lost at the battle for months didn't mean it was true. Just like how pro-Russian sources exaggerate the UA loss in this counterattack.
I just mean, Russians helding UA forces in Bahmut rather than vice versa is one way of looking at it and an interesting point.
Of course every side will want to portray they're losing far less forces but Russians braking their teeth in Bahmut and throwing everywhere there, even if its just from December, just so they can fortify defensive lines in other areas doesnt sound so logical.
It was an awful battle for both sides, of course RA lost a good number of troops and equipment whatever pro-Ua media says.
Also Wagner itself confirmed it suffered insanely high losses in Bakhmut - think it was 20k
Even if the RA hadn't initially intended to do it, it offered them the chance to do so because the UA troops' attention was diverted by their efforts to prevent Bekhmut from falling, leaving the Southern front line largely untouched. Even Zelensky made this point repeatedly, and he really meant it with the way they fought for that city.
The Svatove axit even lost momentum after Kharkiv's quick counterattack because the UA had to keep sending their reserve for the Bekhmut. In that post, I noted that hindsight is always 20/20. I wonder whether the RAs would have less time to prepare the defense if UA had conducted a few more operations in the South over the course of those months.
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My point was to refute the ridiculous claim that the RA throw masses at the city over a year to build the defense at the South. The casualty started increasing by a large number at the end of the year by both sides, which indicated that UA put a lot of effort there, giving the RA time to prepare the rest of the frontline for the UA counterattack in that period.
And most of their casualty were convicts, meaning dispensable, and their normal soldiers were mostly untouched except for one other front.
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Sure, the RA really needed to be all in in Bakhmut in order to prevent the UA from attacking the deffensive positions they were fortifying, which weren't being attacked anyway due to winter. Also, they probably didn't lose so many people. In trench warfare. In the winter. Attacking with poorly covered human waves.
The goalposts moving here can be unbelievable sometimes.
The goalposts moving here can be unbelievable sometimes.
Example of not being able to discuss different points or opinions in this thread without getting ridiculed. I mean, what goalposts are there to move here? It was just an observation. Do people really think that battles turned out exactly as generals predicted and that one side (that you actively support for) is always the mastermind and has an advantage over the other?
Unbelievable sometimes.
No one denies that Bakhmut was a terrible meat grinder for both sides. The open question is - was it worth it?
It is likely that an earlier retreat could have saved a lot of Ukrainian lives, but it also is clear that they made Russia pay for it.
But considering that Russia basically used Bakhmut to execute convicts while Ukraine did lose professional troops there means that one has to make a quite cynical calculation to answer whether it was worth it. The number of lost lives alone doesn't answer this question. One might consider this to be moving goalposts, but when we are talking how much this battle affected the combat power of both sides this has to be considered.
It's worth remembering that Bakhmut may have contributed a lot to the infighting between the Russian MoD and Wagner. That may be the most important result of that battle. But that's for history to figure out I think.
When Iraqi and coalition forces attacked ISIS inside Mosul back in 2016-2017 it took them 9 months to drive the ISIS fighters out of the city despite having a numerical advantage of between 10-1 and 20-1and total air supperiority over the city.
This gives a good picture of just how hard it is to conduct offensive operations in urban areas. There is no doubt what side had to commit more troops and took more cassulties in the battle for Bakhmut.
This gives a good picture of just how hard it is to conduct offensive operations in urban areas. There is no doubt what side had to commit more troops and took more cassulties in the battle for Bakhmut.
I am not sure that their infighting gave any advantage to the UA side whatsoever, as they eventually lost the city with huge numbers of casualties, and there will be more from trying to retake it now. In fact, the city lost most of its areas to the Wagner Group a week after their leader cried about how they didn't get ammunition. The rest of the battle fields do not seem to have had any impact from their mutiny or infighting as well. Of course, we will have to wait, as you said, for the full impact, but it's possible that we wish to see a bigger impact than what actually happened.
You've been moving the goalposts concerning Bakhmut for about a year at this point. Concerning ridicule, just a few posts above you were talking about a ridiculous claim that no one did.
But regarding the topic in question, please explain how Bakhmut held Ukraine of making all of these offensives in the other fronts (most of which were covered in snow or mud and were therefore impenetrable during winter), giving the RA time to dig in. Instead of, of course, the obvious explanation of winter.
I find that some type of critical thinking or reading comprehension is hard to come by. Maybe my writing is bad. People generally just cut the sentence out of context to come at me for oh, I gotcha stuff. It is pretty annoying, and it is hard to start some constructive and informative (as much as we can) discussion about the field situations.
What are you talking about? These last posts were about how I thought UA might have committed a strategic blunder (hindsight) by using too many resources to defend (and attack again) that city against the RA's dispensable force, which likely gave the RA time to prepare for their defense elsewhere. Preparation just did not include digging the trench. It could mean planning where to put mines when they can, where to set areas as death traps, where to put obstacles, more time to train their troops, moving heavy equipment, resources, foods etc. . As for UA's winter, it was stated that it was not even as cold as normal (?) and that since it was in the south, the temperature would have warmed up again quickly than the North and East?
I hope you get what I am trying to say here. Otherwise, I am not exactly sure how to explain that to you.
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