Russia invades Ukraine

[blankall]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Apparently Israel is pretty put off with Russia's growing alliance with Iran. There is increasing talk that if Russia keeps using Iranian made drones, missile components, and other weapons against Ukraine, that Israel is going to increase their support for Ukraine.

The main issue with Israel is that they made a deal with Russia, whereby Israel would not provide weapons to Russia's enemies and Russia, in return, would supply fewer weapons to Syria and allow Israel some operating room in Syria.

Generally, it was not a good idea to break this agreement, as it would potentially result in a pretty major flare up between Israel and Russia's allies (Syria, Iran, and indirectly Hezbollah).

The issue becomes if Iran is providing help to Russia now, eventually Iran will demand a quid pro quo from Russia, which will result in weapons filtering their way to Syria and Hezbollah. So whatever agreement the Israelis and Russians had may be, in effect, useless. So the talk in Israel of moving from supplying everything but weapons, to actual weapons is heating up. Also, does Russia have any extra weapons to give to Syria right now anyways? They seem to be running out of them themselves.

[Ugly Kid Joe]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Apparently Israel is pretty put off with Russia's growing alliance with Iran. There is increasing talk that if Russia keeps using Iranian made drones, missile components, and other weapons against Ukraine, that Israel is going to increase their support for Ukraine.

It looks like Israel is finalizing a deal to export about 200 Mk II and MkIII Merkava tanks to Cyprus and Morrocco. Cyprus currently operates ~80 T-80U's and Morocco has a fleet of ~160 T-72's. Thoughts are that the T-80's and T-72's will be then donated to Ukraine.

Interesting in that Merkava's have not been exported from Israel to date. The US has to give approval (which I think it already has) as the tanks have US made engines. Also interesting is that Morrocco operates ~400 M1A1's and is rumoured to have already sent some T-72's to Ukraine.

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/0...-morocco-will/

[IliketoPuck]

Trent Telenko, who seems to know his stuff on the logistics side, with an interesting analysis of the implications of the Rykove ammunition depot destruction on the Russians.

https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/sta...987058688?s=46

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by IliketoPuck

Trent Telenko, who seems to know his stuff on the logistics side, with an interesting analysis of the implications of the Rykove ammunition depot destruction on the Russians.

https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/sta...987058688?s=46

https://twitter.com/user/status/1670891658332844033

Jesus, the surrounding buildings are destroyed too. I hope to god no Ukrainians civilians were in those units. Damn, what the hell hit that place?

[nik-]

Less of what hit that place and more of what it hit.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

https://twitter.com/user/status/1670891658332844033

Jesus, the surrounding buildings are destroyed too. I hope to god no Ukrainians civilians were in those units. Damn, what the hell hit that place?

Storm Shadow missile + massive ammunition depot = extreme fireworks

[Old Yeller]

6+ hours of secondary explosions must have been quite the show... to anyone that survived it.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

I hope to god no Ukrainians civilians were in those units.

Fixed, innocent people are innocent people, no matter what side of the imaginary lines they were born.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Fixed, innocent people are innocent people, no matter what side of the imaginary lines they were born.

All civilians should be presumed innocent, but not all civilians are innocent just by virtue of being civilians. The ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine who helped facilitate the invasion of Russian forces for example, I don't consider to be innocent civilians. The pro-Z Russians cheering it on in Russia aren't innocent either.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

All civilians should be presumed innocent, but not all civilians are innocent just by virtue of being civilians. The ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine who helped facilitate the invasion of Russian forces for example, I don't consider to be innocent civilians. The pro-Z Russians cheering it on in Russia aren't innocent either.

Yup, and guess what? There are evil Ukrainian civilians too.

I just find anything taking us down the path of how innocent Japanese people were treated during WWII in our own backyard very uncomfortable.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Fixed, innocent people are innocent people, no matter what side of the imaginary lines they were born.

Since Rykove is a Ukrainian village on Ukrainian land, I sincerely hope that no innocent Ukrainians living in their own homes in that village were harmed. But sure, if there were any " innocent" russians illegally occupying those residences that they stole from Ukrainian civilians living in Rykove, I guess I hope they are fine too.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Ugly Kid Joe

It looks like Israel is finalizing a deal to export about 200 Mk II and MkIII Merkava tanks to Cyprus and Morrocco. Cyprus currently operates ~80 T-80U's and Morocco has a fleet of ~160 T-72's. Thoughts are that the T-80's and T-72's will be then donated to Ukraine.

Interesting in that Merkava's have not been exported from Israel to date. The US has to give approval (which I think it already has) as the tanks have US made engines. Also interesting is that Morrocco operates ~400 M1A1's and is rumoured to have already sent some T-72's to Ukraine.

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/0...-morocco-will/

Side note, I find it fascinating how this is probably going to effect Russia's arms export industry. This is a major cash cow for the Russians, even under sanctions.

But countries have to be looking at the exceedingly poor performance of Russian armor, aircraft and naval assets and be thinking twice about how good they actually are.

Russian tanks especially have to be looked at poor performers, The Russians never committed the T-14 Armata's their next generation tanks for anything but indirect firing missions, not using them in assaults.

The Russian airforce failed to gain advantage in the sky against what was originally called a 2nd rate Ukraine airforce.

Also the Russians are getting some pretty big lessons around the poor training of their soldiers. They're learning the same lessons as Afghanistan provided and Vietnam provided the Americans'. After the Soviet Union fell and Russian defense dollars were slashed they talked about a professionalization of a smaller military. Clearly they got the second point right in the wrong way and failed on the first part.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Also the Russians are getting some pretty big lessons around the poor training of their soldiers. They're learning the same lessons as Afghanistan provided and Vietnam provided the Americans'. After the Soviet Union fell and Russian defense dollars were slashed they talked about a professionalization of a smaller military. Clearly they got the second point right in the wrong way and failed on the first part.

The Russian kleptostate is working as designed where the rich elites can siphon off all of the state resources. Even by their own internal audits were showing 30%+ of their budget grifted away, and that was what auditors could find. Chances way higher portions of that were grifted away in the downsizing and only the VDV and a show platoon per regiment was actually professionalized.

[FlameOn]

One of the things constantly brought up is how Putin is making all of his decisions since Covid in an information bubble where he is only being told everything is going fine by Yesmen. Shoigu is one of the worst doing this, just look at this clip of what he's telling Putin about the state of the war. This coupled with Putin's current Covid isolation induced illusions of restoring Russian Imperial grandeur, and you have leadership that won't be budging on peace any time soon.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671823634552299520

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671824073482018817

[curves2000]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

One of the things constantly brought up is how Putin is making all of his decisions since Covid in an information bubble where he is only being told everything is going fine by Yesmen. Shoigu is one of the worst doing this, just look at this clip of what he's telling Putin about the state of the war. This coupled with Putin's current Covid isolation induced illusions of restoring Russian Imperial grandeur, and you have leadership that won't be budging on peace any time soon.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671823634552299520

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671824073482018817

I do wonder if this is just TV and internet propaganda for the masses as opposed to legit information being sent to Putin. Regardless, I do think he lives in an information vacuum but even that has limitations as things eventually turn, questions get asked and you can only continue to BS someone in Putin's position for so long.

On a side note, Putin will eventually need to be stopped by more than just Ukrainian armed forces inflicting losses on Russian troops.

[Firebot]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671967259466579968

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671918145659863041

Just in case some have started believing Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed or stalled. A lot of strategic targeting behind the lines including the Crimean bridge to Kherson.

[Firebot]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1671949760725491712

So...why would Russia release their own video of a Pantsir-S missing twice (the missile that hit the Chonhar bridge)? That's the weirdest flex ever.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by curves2000

On a side note, Putin will eventually need to be stopped by more than just Ukrainian armed forces inflicting losses on Russian troops.

Yup. Russia theoretically can last almost forever this way. Sure Ukraine may get all it's land back, but so long as Putin is alive, there'll still be conflict

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Yup. Russia theoretically can last almost forever this way. Sure Ukraine may get all it's land back, but so long as Putin Russia is alive, there'll still be conflict

It was a mirage to think the cold war was over. Russia will always be an enemy of freedom and democracy.

Their impending demographics catastrophe might help bring them about, but I doubt this.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

It was a mirage to think the cold war was over. Russia will always be an enemy of freedom and democracy.



Their impending demographics catastrophe might help bring them about, but I doubt this.

I don't think there's anything that makes Russians genetically predisposed to State aggression, but decades of information war will do what we're seeing. One can hope that modernization and destruction of the hold on information could spell the end of the aggressive nature of Russia