Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Ragnar123 said:
Putin will go all-in in this war aside from nukes. Until their people start to revolt or the country is broke. The west needs to prepare for a long support if Russia is to be defeated.
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The people will never revolt. They are too conditioned to accepting the Soviet/Russian way and will also not want to end up in prison. The country is not for saving.
 
Afghanistan, from what I've read, was very ambush focused from afghanis. Ukraine is all open fields and heavy drone usage and all other tech really eliminates that aspect and makes it head on fighting.
 
Looks like Ukraine destroyed the next S-400 battery, this time in Belgorod. Russia really has trouble operating a multi-layered air defense. This kind of drone attack should be prevented by putting a Pantsir or similar system next to the long range S-400.

 
calodo2003 said:
S-400s cost over a billion each?
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At least as export price, yes. India bought 5 batteries for 5.5 billion shortly beforebthe war started.

Each includes a radar, control vehicle, several launch vehicles and a bunch of ammunition. You can be sure that Russia itself has to pay much less than export customers, and also that not everything was destroyed (simply because most of the missiles included in that $1.1b will be in storage because they simply don't fit all into the launchers). Nonetheless it is a very valuable asset for Russia.
 
VorZakone said:
Popular current narrative is that Russia is "losing" or has "lost" the war from a strategic viewpoint.

Personally, I think the situation remains rather dire for Ukraine nevertheless. Putin will continue the war and the Russian military is far from defeated yet. So I don't see a scenario in which Ukraine defeats Russia on the battleground. Not without both countries going absolutely all the way, risking major economic/demographic collapse while losing millions of men.

There is this weird notion on Reddit sometimes of Russia being just on the brink of collapsing. It's just not true. There are, depending on your source, about 200,000 to 400,000 Russian troops still present in Ukraine and they can throw in more if they want. The usual arguments about "logistical problems" and such may be valid but Ukrainians are still getting killed everyday so evidently Russia is arming its troops. If you think there'll be a moment in the short term where the Russians will be without weapons or ammo, I got a bridge to sell you.

With all that being said, we should keep supporting Ukraine. But unless we increase both the pace and amount of aid we deliver, this will remain a grinding attrition war that could last a couple of years more. And Putin will be all to happy to turn this into a frozen conflict and keep Ukraine unstable, scare investors away from Ukraine, and destroy hopes of Ukraine joining EU or NATO.

I hope I'm wrong but sadly it seems Ukraine would need a miracle for this war to end quick, like Putin getting overthrown or dying from natural causes and his successor blaming it all on Putin and withdrawing.
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Or is the status quo what Putin wants?

No major defeats or victories. The war rumbles on and each month the West pours more of their money into Ukrainian aid whilst the West's unity starts to crumble.
 
Russian Troops Cede Ground and Strike Back, Frustrating Ukraine’s Counteroffensive

But one unusually daunting obstacle to Ukrainian troops is a tactic adopted by Russian forces: ceding ground and then striking back.

Rather than holding a line of trenches at all costs in the face of Ukraine’s assault, security experts say, Russian commanders have employed a longstanding military tactic known as “elastic defense.”

To execute the tactic, Russian forces pull back to a second line of positions, encouraging Ukrainian troops to advance, and then strike back when the opposing forces are vulnerable — either while moving across open ground or as they arrive at the recently abandoned Russian positions.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/...c-defense-counteroffensive.html?smid=tw-share
 
utdalltheway said:
Are there any parallels to the Russian/Afghan war?
Russia didn’t really lose that one iirc, just got worn down from the casualty rate and probably more importantly for them, the cost of it.
Different stakes here alright though.

So, how long till Russia goes broke?
Is that what the west wants?
And then what - a power vacuum in Russia? That may not suit the west.
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Aside from America supplying some manpad type munitions, Afghanistan was a very different conflict.

Russia seized all the key assets quickly but then faced a sort of insurgency once they were in place.

The difficulty they then faced was occupation of this territory, which has hundreds of avenues of attack along remote mountain roads, almost purpose built for ambush attacks.

Afghanistan also has a history of various tribal warlords exercising power in a few locations. These warlords have had a history of creating loose alliances, and then changing allegiances if a better offer came along.

I suppose the main similarity would be that Russian propaganda meant few Russians were aware of how bad the occupation was going.
 
VorZakone said:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blo...at-the-us-military-should-learn-from-ukraine/
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Is this really that surprising? NATO is meant to be a purely defensive alliance, by some distance the most powerful on the planet, with the world's sole superpower. Ukraine is not a member.

The kind of war Ukraine is fighting is never a war that NATO would fight. Its either going to be a war where they win overwhelming air and naval superiority within a short time, they're the aggressors ( a la Iraq/ Afghanistan) or it escalates to nuclear war.
 
I probably missed a tweet or article here about these UKR operations in the sea near Crimea recently.



I am not sure how accurate the information in that clip but I thought it was interesting if true.
 
The lack of ammunition, especially for artillery, is an immediate concern, even before the mess in the U.S. house. A few posts ago, a post stated that RA's fire rate had been down. But apparently, in one of the newer CNN clips, one of the UKR commanders said RA still shoot about 10 times more than they can.
 
The United said:
The lack of ammunition, especially for artillery, is an immediate concern, even before the mess in the U.S. house. A few posts ago, a post stated that RA's fire rate had been down. But apparently, in one of the newer CNN clips, one of the UKR commanders said RA still shoot about 10 times more than they can.
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Russian fire rate really differs a lot between locations, simply because Russia doesn't have a lack of ammunition but a lack of logistics - where they can successfully get ammo to, they are still comfortable firing a lot of shells, but they can't do that at every point of the front currently.
 
calodo2003 said:
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It is a show of strength to the west. He shows us he can tell the most obvious lie and his people gonna suck it up, so we don't have any hopes he'll lose support. He could also tell them a feckin star destroyer shot him down, built in american-ukrainian underground labs and they would simply nod. Irradiated and frightened people ruled by a bloodthirsty neo tsar.
 
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