Russia Invades Ukraine. Volume 5

[hidetheelephants]

crofty1984 said:

In the spirit of contributing to this thread, I am able to confirm whether I'm in the SAS or not.

I'm not. You're welcome.

That's disappointing, PH used to have several veterans of the balcony at the Iranian embassy.

[Digga]

hidetheelephants said:

crofty1984 said:

In the spirit of contributing to this thread, I am able to confirm whether I'm in the SAS or not.

I'm not. You're welcome.

That's disappointing, PH used to have several veterans of the balcony at the Iranian embassy.

St-John's Ambulance Services get everywhere. Right in the thick of it.

[MesoForm]

Oliver Hardy said:

BBC report on the news seem to suggest Russia is gaining and has learnt how to deal with Ukrainian forces?

Also it suggest these backing Ukraine are loosing interest.

Seems to be the way Russia approaches wars - go in assuming the enemy will roll over, get a mauling, learn, then win. In this case from what I read they send in some suicide teams / meat waves of convicts or foreigners, the Ukrainians shoot them, the Russians learn where the Ukrainian positions are and hammer their positions.

[CivicDuties]

MesoForm said:

Oliver Hardy said:

BBC report on the news seem to suggest Russia is gaining and has learnt how to deal with Ukrainian forces?

Also it suggest these backing Ukraine are loosing interest.

Seems to be the way Russia approaches wars - go in assuming the enemy will roll over, get a mauling, learn, then win. In this case from what I read they send in some suicide teams / meat waves of convicts or foreigners, the Ukrainians shoot them, the Russians learn where the Ukrainian positions are and hammer their positions.

Apart from Afghanistan, where they lost.

[daveco]

crofty1984 said:

daveco said:

sugerbear said:

Hugo Stiglitz said:

Oliver Hardy said:

BBC report on the news seem to suggest Russia is gaining and has learnt how to deal with Ukrainian forces?

Also it suggest these backing Ukraine are loosing interest.

Edited by Oliver Hardy on Wednesday 29th May 00:27

Russia can stick this out for years. Its already been a decade, 2 full war.

Maybe that is exactly what the US wants. A constant and steady war where they can feed enough weapons (most end of life) to just about keep Ukraine afloat but not enough to allow them to make any major push back. There will be a constant destruction of Russian weapons and personnel until at some point Putin is deposed or dies leaving a very much depleted Russia. The war in Ukraine stretches Russia in other regions (Africa/Iran) where the US wants to dominate.

At least that is what it feels like and given their interference in other countries not entirely unrealistic.

This is what I think too.

You'd have to assume that US has the best satellite intel/intel available, which clearly shows that Russia are taking heavy losses on just about every day of this war so far.

Better to bleed them dry over 5-10 years than to defeat them quickly, as that sort of humiliation would be weaponised politically by the Russian media/politicians.

Go Team America. Very easy for them to spend Ukranian lives to their own benefit. I'd like to think you're wrong, but fear you're not.

It's a very effective proxy war, and the US are watching one of their enemies being slowly destroyed by an army that has neither a navy or an air force.

Political instability will start to get much worse within Russia over the next year or two, and there will likely be a civil war before the war ends in Ukraine.

If the war ends abruptly, then not much changes within Russia, politically or otherwise.

[neilr]

I guess it depends how you define 'winning'. If the Russians prevail on the battlefield then they will have defeated Ukraine's military forces. However, losing 500 thousand men, commensurate amounts of military hardware in doing so , all whilst destroying your own economy and making yourselves international pariahs for many years doesn't sound much like 'winning' to me.

Putin (as is said on the cesspit that is twitter) remains a master strategist.

There has been no sensible talk from either side in this war as to what 'winning' would actually look like. Or in the case of the Russians, what their actual real aims are. I know we can make educated guesses but lets face it, everything they have said so far is lies.

[Adam.]

neilr said:

There has been no sensible talk from either side in this war as to what 'winning' would actually look like. Or in the case of the Russians, what their actual real aims are.

Ukraine have - winning means booting the Russians out and re-nistating the borders including Crimea.
But winning will be determined by the US/EU and Russia - neither are going to state their arms as this provides a measure against which you can fail, and poiliticians dont want to be seen to fail

[simo1863]

neilr said:

I guess it depends how you define 'winning'. If the Russians prevail on the battlefield then they will have defeated Ukraine's military forces. However, losing 500 thousand men, commensurate amounts of military hardware in doing so , all whilst destroying your own economy and making yourselves international pariahs for many years doesn't sound much like 'winning' to me.

Putin (as is said on the cesspit that is twitter) remains a master strategist.

There has been no sensible talk from either side in this war as to what 'winning' would actually look like. Or in the case of the Russians, what their actual real aims are. I know we can make educated guesses but lets face it, everything they have said so far is lies.

Perun's recent video puts a good analysis on Russia's recent gains (something like 200 years at current rate to take all of Ukraine).

And a good analysis (if you can stomach him) on Putin by Lazerpig recently, on why he isn't a genius and why authoritarian states in general cannot adapt as well as democratic nations.

[isaldiri]

Adam. said:

neilr said:

There has been no sensible talk from either side in this war as to what 'winning' would actually look like. Or in the case of the Russians, what their actual real aims are.

Ukraine have - winning means booting the Russians out and re-nistating the borders including Crimea.

the poster above said 'sensible'......

[BikeBikeBIke]

CivicDuties said:

Apart from Afghanistan, where they lost.

And Chechnya where they handed the whole place over to an Islamist Warlord and pay him billions in exchange for him remaining on their side- for now.

[Adam.]

isaldiri said:

Adam. said:

neilr said:

There has been no sensible talk from either side in this war as to what 'winning' would actually look like. Or in the case of the Russians, what their actual real aims are.

Ukraine have - winning means booting the Russians out and re-nistating the borders including Crimea.

the poster above said 'sensible'......

True, that’s unrealistic (though some of the more jingoistic posters on here might disagree) but Ukraine are the only one stating what a win is.

[nikaiyo2]

paulrockliffe said:

Report today in the press that after Ukraine snuck that Patriot forward and downed 5 aircraft over Russia a few weeks ago both the US and Germany went mental and that's why it hasn't happened again, and also why Russia is able to fly planes to the border, launch glide bombs at Kharkiv and fk off home again the tts. How many more civilians need to be blown up in supermarkets?

In other news, the US is refusing to sign-off various bits of kit going to Ukraine, kit that Sweden has on it's Grippen's that were going to Ukraine, so those aren't happening now. Of course Sweden isn't restricting the use of their kit so they would have been able to shoot down stuff over Russia, whereas the F16s that might show up eventually won't be able to do that.

So no matter how good those F16s are, they can't achieve air superiority anywhere in Ukraine that is in range of missiles fired from planes that can stay in Russia because they can't be shot down.

The whole thing is pathetic, naive and embarrassing.

It reminds me of Vietnam and Afghan repeating itself, give your enemy a safe haven to shelter, prepare attacks, arm and regroup. Then wonder why they keep giving a bloody nose.

[Talksteer]

Captain Obvious said:

Talksteer said:

We don't know it's SF and in fact I would doubt that is who you'd send.

The Ukrainians have plenty of well trained and motivated soldiers and the sort of missions you'd send SF on are the sort of missions where there is a good chance of them being captured or killed.

Instead what you send is staff officers and technical experts. They observe and advise at higher echelon level then they report back to the UK how tactics and operations are evolving which weapons are effective what new capabilities they need.

They can then reach back into the UK to get those capabilities and information. It is likely that a fair amount of intelligence analysis and mission planning is being done back in the UK for Ukraine's benefit again it's useful to have some liaison people on the ground to help with that.

First of all they've suffered alot of losses holding back the flood gates. They need replacing, secondly, you're actually accurate as to what kind of British SF forces are on the ground in Ukraine. They're not all door kickers. There is a mix, it was recently confirmed by a US general accidentally who mentioned he'd observed the successes of how the UK SF teams in Ukraine are working really well and he wanted to adopt the same structure in US units...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/14/ihqb-m...

A piece headlined, “US special operations, learning from war in Ukraine, have to do more with less”, raised proposals by US Army Special Operations Command to increase the size of its Green Beret teams—usually about 12 members—to bring in people with more specialized and technical abilities.

Forbes comments, “A 12-person detachment might be upgunned,’” to include an Air Force pilot, Navy ship driver, cryptologist or cyber expert. In the key passage he explains how:

“The United States is ‘taking a lot of lessons learned out of the experience in Ukraine, mostly through the eyes of our U.K. special operations partners, who not only have done that in their formations, but they’ve also learned very quickly that they needed other elements of their joint force.”

AP’s report continues, “As an example, he [Fenton] said British commandos needed Royal Air Force pilots to help advise on drone operations and Royal Navy teammates ‘to help them understand, more than a SOF (special operations forces) teammate could, the way a ship in the Black Sea navigates.’”

If we want to run the semantics on it any British soldier in Ukraine is SF because they are on a clandestine mission outside of normal military operations. To clarify I suspect that the number of people who have passed Super Army Soldier selection will be a low % of those deployed, I'd be surprised if any of them have engaged in an actual kinetic mission in Ukraine.

Organisationally it would make sense to pull technical specialists and liaison officers into UKSF as their cap badge units won't have the security apparatus and training to operate in a clandestine manner (by which I don't mean hiding in a ditch but just not leaving a paper and electronic trail). The more typical SF personnel would be there to handle force protection of the liaison officers which is a niche skill that wouldn't normally be applicable in a conventional conflict.

[Iamnotkloot]

Another interesting piece on the outcome for the world if Russia wins.....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/29/putin-...

[SlimJim16v]

Iamnotkloot said:

Another interesting piece on the outcome for the world if Russia wins.....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/29/putin-...

Thanks, interesting and the first of 5. A frightening and pessimistic, but plausible outcome should Russia be allowed victory in Ukraine.

[jeff666]

hidetheelephants said:

crofty1984 said:

In the spirit of contributing to this thread, I am able to confirm whether I'm in the SAS or not.

I'm not. You're welcome.

That's disappointing, PH used to have several veterans of the balcony at the Iranian embassy.

I thought it was several hundred

[MonkeyHanger]

Tu-95s in the air again.

[bmwmike]

Iamnotkloot said:

Another interesting piece on the outcome for the world if Russia wins.....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/29/putin-...

Interesting : "Hungary, it is safe to presume, may be the first European nation to turn on its allies."

Also ”Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war".

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-still-...

It's all starting to sound rather grim and risky

Edited by bmwmike on Wednesday 29th May 22:41

[Captain Obvious]

Talksteer said:

I'd be surprised if any of them have engaged in an actual kinetic mission in Ukraine.

Again, I think the US General hinted that we had been (in reference to the use of drones to attack the Black Sea Fleet). Suppose it depends how kinetic you consider planning and executing a drone attack is.

Intel gathering can always go kinetic (Bravo Two Zero). I reckon if anyone SAS or otherwise is caught in Ukraine and survives, they'll likely be able to claim they're just a foreign volunteer, infact they probably have all the paperwork in place to make the cover believable.

[sisu]

Russia changing the tax laws that effect over 2 million people, increasing tax on companies who are not military and the wealthy. In his speech to the nation he explained that everyone should be working to help the special military operation.
We are almost at the Bingo card slots of 1917/1989 Russian state failure.
The idea that Europe is losing interest is a surprising one, I would say given the rhetoric of the countries supporting strikes on Russian territory, Sweden's heavy aid package. The momentum is not slowing. Britain will take a pause with the General election, but everyone else is quite happy to keep up the pressure.

As for the troops on the ground, well I don't think this will be the taboo that the Kremlin would hope for. As stated, there will be mine clearing and other logistical and structural troops there. The service hub for the European F-16s are based in Poland, I don't see Russia striking this any time soon.
From what I understand here in Finland, we would want to send our professional level troops at some point on rotation to improve our response when Russia makes a move in the North of Europe.
As our General pointed out "we have sent our troops to Iraq/Afghanistan with less political steam for Finnish interests, this is quite simple". So no I don't see any Eastern European country shrugging at this point.