Ukraine: Holding

[Corvinus85]

31 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

No good would come out of this.

If they have any sense, they will destroy it and share the video of its destruction. 

• t would show Russia did indeed deploy those
• Russia couldn'T claim it was used against them as pretext to further escalate things and unleash whatever they could come up with.

Will Isildur have the good sense to destroy the bloody ring? Thus far Ukraine have acted in a way, that they might very well be able to do that.

Could they replace the thermobaric missiles with other missiles and just use it against Russian artillery and tanks?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Question for the military crowd.

Like I said, I'd blow that entire thing sky high for the world to see.

[HoodedCrow]

Pat Robertson, who seems to be still alive, has said that God made Putin do it, to promote End Times. 

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Could they replace the thermobaric missiles with other missiles and just use it against Russian artillery and tanks?

Good question. I've no idea. Also no idea if this kind of equipment requires some sort of passcode or key that the Russians presumably would've taken with them (although you'd think they wouldn't abandon a thing like this either).

21 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I hope they don’t.  The world sees Ukraine as the underdog and the victim, with good cause.  If they use a captured TOS-1A… that will slip.

While true, there is a difference between attacking military and civilian targets, even with a weapon like this. If Ukraine used it only against a Russian military target, they'd still have the relative moral high ground in my mind.

Now if Ukraine started infiltrating saboteurs into Russian cities to blowup metro stations and whatnot, that'd be a different story. But that's not what anyone's talking about.

[rotting sea cow]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Anyone who supports Putin is dead to me.

Tell me, how can I blame my Armenian friend for being ambiguous about the Russian side when a strong Russia is the only thing that might prevent a possible genocide in her country? The West did nothing to stop Azerbaijan during the last war or to pressure Turkey regarding the arms supplies, possibly just to get Russia bogged down there. Now Russia has forced them into alliances, but hatred runs deep between the Azeri and Armenians and if big powers look the other way, things will get bad. Really bad.

Notice, she believes that Russian invasion is a mistake, a big mistake, but she is terribly afraid what it could mean for her country in the future.

[DMC]

18 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

10% killed/wounded/surrendered/fled would be 20k troops, and I haven't seen anything close to that even from Ukrainian sources (which have an incentive to inflate numbers).  Even 5% casualties in the first week feels implausible.  While I agree there is strong evidence that Russian morale is low and some desertion is occurring, it is very hard to know how common that is. 

Yeah I agree that if depletion/attrition was actually anywhere around even 10k troops we'd be hearing much more about it.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, rotting sea cow said:

Tell me, how can I blame my Armenian friend for being ambiguous about the Russian side when a strong Russia is the only thing that might prevent a possible genocide in her country? The West did nothing to stop Azerbaijan during the last war or to pressure Turkey regarding the arms supplies, possibly just to get Russia bogged down there. Now Russia has forced them into alliances, but hatred runs deep between the Azeri and Armenians and if big powers look the other way, things will get bad. Really bad.

Notice, she believes that Russian invasion is a mistake, a big mistake, but she is terribly afraid what it could mean for her country in the future.

The last war. 

Not to derail that thread, however. Armenia held onto a part of Azerbaijan, that they were basically occupying. Usually, I have a quite bit more sympathy for Armenia than I have for Azerbaijan, but there the Azeris basically beat back occupiers. Yes, it was an area were the population was pre-dominantly Armenian, but it was not Armenia.

[rotting sea cow]

1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not to derail that thread, however. Armenia held onto a part of Azerbaijan, that they were basically occupying. Usually, I have a quite bit more sympathy for Armenia than I have for Azerbaijan, but there they basically beat back occupiers. Yes, it was an area were the population was pre-dominantly Armenian, but it was not Armenia.

It's not my intention to discuss the truth of the claims. Just state a reality. I come from the New World, a region where these old unsettled problems do not exist or certainly not a this level. For me is both fascinating and terrifying.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

Pat Robertson, who seems to be still alive, has said that God made Putin do it, to promote End Times. 

Tell old Pat:

”“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” Matthew 24:36.  
 

Evangelical christians who push eschatological predictions always skip that.  They also forget that people have been claiming “we are in the end times” for the entire 2000 years that Christian eschatology has existed.

 

[Lord of Oop North]

Pat Robertson should be sanctioned too. What a fucking tool.

[briantw]

46 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

10% killed/wounded/surrendered/fled would be 20k troops, and I haven't seen anything close to that even from Ukrainian sources (which have an incentive to inflate numbers).  Even 5% casualties in the first week feels implausible.  While I agree there is strong evidence that Russian morale is low and some desertion is occurring, it is very hard to know how common that is. 

According to a military friend of mine, usually the ratio of wounded to killed in a combat scenario is around 4 or 5 to 1, so if we are to believe that over 5,000 Russian troops have died thus far, it's conceivable that the number of killed and wounded combined could be in the 20 to 25 thousand range, and that's not accounting for those who have been captured or deserted. 

And I think we can probably all agree that Russia won't be releasing any sort of numbers confirming these things.

[Varysblackfyre321]

31 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

Pat Robertson, who seems to be still alive, has said that God made Putin do it, to promote End Times. 

Hey maybe this end times prediction will be right.

[Red Tiger]

33 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

Pat Robertson, who seems to be still alive, has said that God made Putin do it, to promote End Times. 

May he roast in Hell.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, Red Tiger said:

May he roast in Hell.

Which one?

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Hey maybe this end times prediction will be right.

Considering Robertson has been making it for - at least - as long as I can remember (so about 25 years), I don't think that'd count as a correct prediction.

[JGP]

This [specifically but not exclusively the last] makes my blood boil. Like, incandescent rage. I'm jumping offline for a bit before I lose my shit. 

Fuck Putin in the head, with a stick. 

[Lord of Oop North]

 

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

Considering Robertson has been making it for - at least - as long as I can remember (so about 25 years), I don't think that'd count as a correct prediction.

That black-hearted fuckface will face his own end-times soon. 

[Ran]

Interesting thread suggesting that Russian communications are a shambles, using analog, unencrypted radios -- sometimes even (allegedly) a civilian radio -- to communicate, and that pretty much anyone can listen in:

They have some clips of recordings from the past days, one of them (allegedly) indicating that one battle outside Kyiv left at least 200 Russians dead. See here for what appears to have been a live translation as it was being monitored on Reddit.

I suspect this sort of signal monitoring is part of why we have the various figures we have for destroyed vehicles and so on -- they're literally letting the Russians tell them.

[Toth]

I'm not a fan of Erdogan at all, but you gotta admit, that's one kickass drone!

[Red Tiger]

30 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Which one?

Well both deserve it, but I meant Robertson in this case.