Russia Invades Ukraine 2022

[mike]

Possible decisive situation developing.

[Soloist]

Possible decisive situation developing.

None of those weapons will likely end up being that helpful. All of them require too much supporting infrastructure and training. The S-300 would be pretty useful.

[mike]

Possible decisive situation developing.

None of those weapons will likely end up being that helpful. All of them require too much supporting infrastructure and training. The S-300 would be pretty useful.

They are asking for them regardless. Maybe if for no other reason than to blame the west if they fail.

[Soloist]

They are asking for them regardless. Maybe if for no other reason than to blame the west if they fail.

well looking for a scape goat only goes so far. It will be interesting to see what happens, nothing is clear in war and despite the encircling, they could hold out for quite some time even with small arms.

[Ken]

Possible decisive situation developing.

That is a distance of over 100 miles. I wonder if the Russians have anywhere near enough troops to successfully pull off such a maneuver. Even if all the Russian troops redeployed from the northern Ukrainian offensive get re-equipped and re-deployed to this region that gives them something like 70,000 troops in that theater and a very large number of those will be dedicated to maintaining all of their very long supply lines on every offensive front and maintaining all their other positions and rear assembly areas from attack. They still have to maintain control over all the vast pink areas on the map which will suck up a lot of their existing invasion force. So they might only have maybe 1/4 their total troop strength available for the "tip of the spear" in such a maneuver. Maybe 20,000 troops? That would be about 40 Battalion Tactical Groups which would amount to about 400 tanks and another 600 or so armored personal carriers and other tracked vehicles so maybe 1000 armored vehicles total They will be spread so thin across a 100 mile front that there will be enormous holes and lots of isolated pockets of Russian troops vulnerable to counter-attack.

By way of contrast, when when the Soviets enveloped the battered German and Romanian armies at Stalingrad in November 1942 they used 1.1 million troops and that was to close a pocket about 1/4 the size of what is shown on the map. And in that case the Germans were operating 2000 miles from home while the Ukrainians are home.

Or another example in Normandy, when the allied armies encircled the Germans in the Falaise pocket in August 1944 they used 17 divisions or about 300,000 troops to encircle a pocket of German armies about 1/10 the size of the one above.

It is one thing to drive two tank armies at each other from north and south as shown there. It is another thing entirely to defend in both directions across the new 100+ mile front that such a move would create. If they managed to bring 1000 tanks and armored vehicles into such a maneuver which might be nearly all they have functional at this point as a lot of them are going to start breaking down after a month of war, that would mean at best a 100 mile front with 4 tanks per mile to defend against attacks from both directions if they are evenly spaced which they won't be. That is a whole lot of sitting ducks waiting to be picked off by drones and Ukrainian foot soldiers carrying anti-tank missiles. And they will have 200 mile supply lines in both directions over which they will need to resupply all their fuel, food, and ammunition. Which will be hugely vulnerable to counter-attack. You don't need sophisticated missiles to take out trucks. ordinary machine guns or mines will do the trick. All those tanks won't be of any use if they run out of fuel. They will be running out of fuel without resupply via many hundreds of fuel trucks constantly running back and forth from fuel depots back to the front line that will be vulnerable to any random squad of soldiers with a machine gun hiding in the bushes along side the road along those 200+ mile supply lines.

It looks like the Russians are trying to use WW2 tactics but without WW2 armies.

[Ken]

Possible decisive situation developing.

None of those weapons will likely end up being that helpful. All of them require too much supporting infrastructure and training. The S-300 would be pretty useful.

The Ukrainian Army already has and uses all those weapons now. They probably don't need any training.

They certainly aren't set up to effectively use current NATO equipment like Abrams tanks and F-16s but all that old Soviet stuff? Certainly. A lot of it was actually made in Ukraine and Ukrainians know how to use it.

[Soloist]

The Ukrainian Army already has and uses all those weapons now. They probably don't need any training.

They certainly aren't set up to effectively use current NATO equipment like Abrams tanks and F-16s but all that old Soviet stuff? Certainly. A lot of it was actually made in Ukraine and Ukrainians know how to use it.

I know you hand wave away any expression of negativity about the Ukrainian army, but a simple fact is that you have highly trained specialists for each one of those pieces of equipment. That training is not easily replaced. For example if you have no currently trained fighter pilots you can't take a guy who flew Cessna's and expect them to be fine in a Mig.
Sure maybe you or I could fire a heavy artillery, or even drive a tank but to have a crew with a commander who effectively can use those pieces effectively for more then just lobbing shells in the direction of the enemy? I think you have an inflated view of how flexible military forces are.

For example, I was highly specialized in the military and there was 8 places in the world I could be stationed. They trained 6 at a time for my specialty that took 4 months to train in. How long do you think it takes to train a tank driver? Just look up any military school... It takes at least 6 weeks to train someone in our forces for infantry. Takes 14 weeks for basic medical training. My point is they don't have the resources to train people well on any of these pieces of equipment and if they lose the high trained people these machines are useless.

[Ken]

The Ukrainian Army already has and uses all those weapons now. They probably don't need any training.

They certainly aren't set up to effectively use current NATO equipment like Abrams tanks and F-16s but all that old Soviet stuff? Certainly. A lot of it was actually made in Ukraine and Ukrainians know how to use it.

I know you hand wave away any expression of negativity about the Ukrainian army, but a simple fact is that you have highly trained specialists for each one of those pieces of equipment. That training is not easily replaced. For example if you have no currently trained fighter pilots you can't take a guy who flew Cessna's and expect them to be fine in a Mig.
Sure maybe you or I could fire a heavy artillery, or even drive a tank but to have a crew with a commander who effectively can use those pieces effectively for more then just lobbing shells in the direction of the enemy? I think you have an inflated view of how flexible military forces are.

For example, I was highly specialized in the military and there was 8 places in the world I could be stationed. They trained 6 at a time for my specialty that took 4 months to train in. How long do you think it takes to train a tank driver? Just look up any military school... It takes at least 6 weeks to train someone in our forces for infantry. Takes 14 weeks for basic medical training. My point is they don't have the resources to train people well on any of these pieces of equipment and if they lose the high trained people these machines are useless.

My understanding from what I have read is that the Ukrainians have plenty of trained personnel who already know how to use all that old Soviet equipment. They just don't have enough of it. For example, they apparently have a lot of fighter pilots but nowhere near enough aircraft to put them in. I'm no expert on any of this. But it is my spring break so I have time off and I'm keeping up with reading about this conflict for lack of anything else to do since my wife is working this week. But I will fully admit I'm just winging it.

[temporal1]

I know you hand wave away any expression of negativity about the Ukrainian army, but a simple fact is that you have highly trained specialists for each one of those pieces of equipment. That training is not easily replaced. For example if you have no currently trained fighter pilots you can't take a guy who flew Cessna's and expect them to be fine in a Mig.
Sure maybe you or I could fire a heavy artillery, or even drive a tank but to have a crew with a commander who effectively can use those pieces effectively for more then just lobbing shells in the direction of the enemy? I think you have an inflated view of how flexible military forces are.

For example, I was highly specialized in the military and there was 8 places in the world I could be stationed. They trained 6 at a time for my specialty that took 4 months to train in. How long do you think it takes to train a tank driver? Just look up any military school... It takes at least 6 weeks to train someone in our forces for infantry. Takes 14 weeks for basic medical training.

My point is they don't have the resources to train people well on any of these pieces of equipment
and if they lose the high trained people these machines are useless.

Soloist,
i put much hope into the recent Gravitas report about possible resolutions coming from talks.
Since, all the rhetoric i see on this forum and elsewhere indicates escalation (which the Gravitas report fairly noted/warned about from the West).

i don’t know what to believe.
in any conflict, i’m not satisfied with, “we are justified - it’s all his fault!” this is Primitive Reasoning 101.

Was the Gravitas report false? Mistaken? Not relevant? Was it real, unwanted, ignored?

March 30:

(9 hours ago)

Gravitas: Donbas rebel republics to join Russia?

The latest round of talks between Ukraine and Russia has raised hopes for a peace deal.
Will Zelensky's concessions be enough to end the war? What will determine Putin's response?
Palki Sharma tells you.

approx 5 min.


i wish there were a transcript.
paraphrasing:
this describes Ukraine’s problem with the U.S., saying “biden doesn’t care if the war continues.”
U.S. rep Blinken, Sec of State (begrudgingly) says the U.S. will respect Ukraine’s decisions in negotiations. i hope that sticks.

it grieves me to wonder if bloodshed could have been avoided, there are indications it could have been, in two ways:
1) diplomacy before invasion; 2) the U.S./West not immediately jumping in, giving Ukraine+Russia time+space to negotiate without high escalation.

this will never be known.

now, the question is, how stupid can the U.S. be from this point? there is room for more errors.
this is NOT a done deal.

[Dan Z]

As the war progresses - there seems to be a bunch of war-crime "bad" going on here (BTW - I think the idea of "war-crimes" is somewhat ironic):

First are atrocities on the ground like the executions of civilians, apparently by the Russian forces, in the towns around Kyiv. Similar are the awful videos we are seeing of Ukrainian-aligned soldiers torturing and executing Russian soldiers. This type of "bad" is a result of the undisciplined hate and ugliness of war, and is probably the result of weak command and control on the part of the Russian and Ukrainian leadership. The videos and photos of these atrocities are unhelpful to either country's image and will feed into the propaganda machines of both sides in ginning up more hatred and support - a vicious cycle.

Second is the bombing of civilian targets like train stations, theaters, hospitals, apartment complexes and the like - resulting in vast destruction and the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians. The "bad" at this scale is not likely the result of unruly and angry troops, or mistakes in aiming (modern weaponry is amazingly precise) - instead, it is strategic, calculated, and probably comes from the top of the military command (including Mr. Putin). In this case, the international outrage is justifiably growing, and the "bad" lands in the lap of Putin and his entourage. Sadly, this will ripple out well beyond the war - at least in the heart of Ukrainians, and perhaps in Russia's ongoing relationship with the rest of the world. Dark days are ahead.