Russian Invasion of Ukraine Megathread

[Feline Supremacist]

You had a personal beekeeper? Sweet!

I was going to get into bees before the coof, he's a cool guy. He taught me a lot. But's he's not my personal beekeeper, he sells to everyone.

 

[None More Black]

re: Bucha

March 30th:
Russian forces move out

March 31st:
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3445989-bucha-liberated-from-russian-invaders-mayor.html
"March 31 will go down in the history of our Bucha community as the Day of Liberation. The liberation by our Armed Forces of Ukraine from Russian orcs, from Russian occupiers. So today, I state that this day is joyful. Joyful and this is a great victory in Kyiv region! And we will definitely wait so that there is a great victory all over Ukraine," Fedoruk said.

April 1st/2nd:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/0...he-russians-retreat-from-suburbs-outside-kyiv
Azov moves in

https://en.lb.ua/news/2022/04/02/12441_special_forces_regiment_safari.html
"Special Forces Regiment SAFARI Begins Clearing Operation in Bucha from Saboteurs and Accomplices of Russia"

April 3rd:
All the stupid shit you've been seeing drops, and this:

Lat night, Sergey "Boatsman" Korotkikh, infamous Neo-Nazi & member of Azov, posted a video titled "The BOATSMAN BOYS in Bucha". At the 6 second mark you can clearly hear the dialogue: "There are guys without blue armbands, can I shoot them?" "Fuck yeah"

re: the "fuck yeah" part there's debate on whether he says "fuck yeah" or "try it" either way this shit stinks

 

[MrJokerRager]

These dead bodies in Bucha look fake as fuck. They are all facing away from the cameras and just do not have that omfg somebody was shooting at me and i was running, got shot, stumbled and ended up all twisted on the ground with the contents of my bag all over the road. Shoes always fucking come off and trousers come down etc.
There are absolutely going to be war crimes on both sides becquse that shit happens but the common pics from Bucha look staged by someone who hasn't actually seen a street of people that have been perforated.
The media are all over this just the same as Saint George, BLM, Trump, Covid etc and i fully expect big names to start getting behind this. Nike, Playstaion etc will be hash fucking tagging nowarcrimesputin and instead of taking the knee it will be taking the lay down, or Do the Bucha. There is probably a team of advertising consultants working on the catchy parts right now. Maybe football matches will start with 22 players laying down on the pitch for some minutes!

I am getting Syrian Civil war vibes at this point, well some things never change.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

They don't actually have many, we haven't seen any deployed yet. The Israelis on the other hand already have a system in service, and it has been successfully used in combat.

Their Trophy/Windbreaker system seems to be solid, and it supposedly doesn't endanger dismounted troops when triggered.

Far as I can tell, we really haven't seen Russian active-protection systems in action yet. Or we have, except it's shit & gets obliterated along with the rest of the tank.

 

[The best and greatest]

That is indeed a wild card and would overturn a lot of current military realities but I don't think the current roster of powers will make it there. The US and China may prototype some of this technology but I don't feel they will get to the point of production. Calling it a dark age would be extremely overblown language, but I get the sense that globally we're in for a downturn that will probably take a good 50-100 years to shake out. China and the West have their demographic time bombs, population and racial demographics respectively to sort out over the course of this century. Russia has been in decline since the USSR collapsed and even if they did have a few upticks here and there along the past 30 years their country is not doing well. Most of Africa's growth is tethered to the current banking and global order that seems to be very much on the ropes since covid hit the scene. South and Central America have always been a mix of gold and shit for the past century and nothing seems to be on course to change. I feel we're in for a situation akin to the General Crisis in the 17th century or the period immediately after the Black Death in Europe where everything in society gets restructured, often at the point of a sword. Some nations will do extremely well navigating the chaos and others eat shit. The covid response caused a lot of turmoil in the waters and this Ukraine war has only made said waters even more choppy.

The US will be fine. Maybe we'll decline, or maybe we won't. But we for certain wont face collapse in the same way the USSR did. Absolute worst case scenario our ability to project force globally fades away as the rest of the world slowly comes into its own consolidating into new co-operative or hegemonic blocs for survival.

But I don't foresee the demise of our nation. Quite the contrary, if we get our priorities right we could conceivably inherit the solar system. Few nations outside our own are in a position to begin exploiting and colonizing space in earnest. Securing the moon as American clay would more or less cement American relevance if not global dominance for the foreseeable future...IF we get our priorities straight.

 

[Fanatical Pragmatist]

i know these things exist in, but i'm not convinced of how well they perform in practice. people in this thread earlier talked about how the soviets were making systems like that already in the 80s, yet here we are 40 years later and russian tanks are getting blown out by missiles left right and center. active protection idea to stop missiles has been around for a while, but in practice we're not seeing a lot of missiles being stopped, so there must be some big drawback about it that prevents people from deploying it in large numbers.

Russia actually hasn't been using that many hard-kill (i.e. blow up or hit the missile/shell before it hits you) systems; and shit like the Javelin and SPIKE missiles are basically designed to ignore Russian soft-kill (i.e. confuse, nullify or divert the guidance of the missile) from the 90's.

Additionally, considering we have seen pictures of Russian "ERA" that's not actually fucking ERA its empty boxes full of sand because some crooked commander embezzled funds instead of slapping real Kontak-5 on his tanks, I would imagine there are less Russian APS systems in Ukraine in reality than on paper.

That being said, expect more and more ATGMs & even tank shells in the future to start adapting features to better nullify APS, as always is the running arms race.

 

[Cold Root Beer]

Their Trophy/Windbreaker system seems to be solid, and it supposedly doesn't endanger dismounted troops when triggered.

Far as I can tell, we really haven't seen Russian active-protection systems in action yet. Or we have, except it's shit & gets obliterated along with the rest of the tank.

Or, you could say is that we haven't, because they're working.

As the Chieftain touched on in his "Don't make early judgements " video about Ukraine, since the Russians are better about OpSec than the Ukrainians who TikTok every military action, the lack of APS systems on Russian losses could indicate that the Russians do have APS systems, and the vehicles that have them are the ones that aren't getting taken out because they're effective. The lack of APS on the wrecks is because those that don't are still vulnerable and get boomed. Like a form of survivorship bias mixed with the lens of Ukie propaganda. Or something like that.

 

[Equivocal_Iki]

Tbf the only Reason Ukraine is faring as well as it has is due to considerable support from the lynchpin members of NATO

I should've worded it better. But this blows the Neocon's interpretation "if you don't actively encroach upon your enemies, they'll encroach upon you" out of the water. If NATO never expanded past the Cold War's end and the eastern bloc just went into the EU (or some European defense alliance) everything would've been fine without America meddling around for 30 years.

 

[A_throwaway_name62919]

There's one thing that occurs to me regarding the reports of random Russian warcrimes that don't seem to have much rhyme or reason to them. Specifically that as far as I know, Russian propaganda has been telling both civilians and troops that the invasion is in part to "de-Nazify" Ukraine. They provided no guidance as to who or what constituted "Nazis". Nor did they say they'd wait until Ukraine was in their control to start the process. Nor did they say anything about peaceful deprograming, or even about trials. Just the vague "de-Nazify".

That makes a prime scenario for soldiers to kill anyone offering too much resistance with the justification that they're nazis. Whether they're actually fighting, or just protesting. On the ass end of the supply chain they wouldn't have good options for holding prisoners either. Making summary executions of "nazis" an attractive proposition. It probably wouldn't take much in the way of rumors about civilian's helping the military or fighting directlty themselves to make troops trigger happy towards anyone who got too close in the wrong way, or seemed to suspicious, and write it off as them being "nazis".

I'm not saying that's what happened for sure or anything, but it is one scenario that could partially explain some of the deaths.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

I should've worded it better. But this blows the Neocon's interpretation "if you don't actively encroach upon your enemies, they'll encroach upon you" out of the water. If NATO never expanded past the Cold War's end and the eastern bloc just went into the EU (or some European defense alliance) everything would've been fine without America meddling around for 30 years.

Maybe, maybe not. There was always going to be tension between the two countries given their history.

 

[A_Callow_Youth]

re: Bucha

March 30th:
Russian forces move out

March 31st:
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3445989-bucha-liberated-from-russian-invaders-mayor.html
"March 31 will go down in the history of our Bucha community as the Day of Liberation. The liberation by our Armed Forces of Ukraine from Russian orcs, from Russian occupiers. So today, I state that this day is joyful. Joyful and this is a great victory in Kyiv region! And we will definitely wait so that there is a great victory all over Ukraine," Fedoruk said.
View attachment 3142992

April 1st/2nd:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/0...he-russians-retreat-from-suburbs-outside-kyiv
Azov moves in

https://en.lb.ua/news/2022/04/02/12441_special_forces_regiment_safari.html
"Special Forces Regiment SAFARI Begins Clearing Operation in Bucha from Saboteurs and Accomplices of Russia"

April 3rd:
All the stupid shit you've been seeing drops, and this:
View attachment 3143009

re: the "fuck yeah" part there's debate on whether he says "fuck yeah" or "try it" either way this shit stinks

>Messages have been posted since you loaded this page
Oh, boy, I can't wait to see how this suddenly goes from the most fake and gay shit anyone's ever seen to "ahaha filthy fucking holhols shooting their own for propaganda wins"

Also, gas Azov.

 

[Equivocal_Iki]

Maybe, maybe not. There was always going to be tension between the two countries given their history.

Yes, but they only wanted to invade after Zelinsky kept pushing for joining NATO. If the point of NATO is to take over the world before Russia does, then of course Putin's going to want to get as much land as he can before NATO gets to it.

But, this failure proves that Europe was never under threat. We kept drumming up the Soviet Union as the great big bad that'll take over all if we don't actively stop them, until they imploded in on themselves. And we've been doing the same with Russia afterwards. Fuck NATO, we have no business on this side of the world.

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

They provided no guidance as to who or what constituted "Nazis".

to kill anyone offering too much resistance with the justification that they're nazis

Welcome to use of the word "Nazi" for the last 50+ years, and exponentially so in this decade.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Some of the "civilian corpses" wear white armbands - this is the distinctive sign of the Russian troops
View attachment 3141624

---

View attachment 3141625

According to the national police of Ukraine, a sweep is underway in Bucha from "saboteurs" and those whom they consider to be accomplices of the Russian Federation.
Does anyone else have any doubts about where those shot with white armbands on their sleeves came from in the streets and basements, who are being tried to pass off as victims of Russia?

While this is horrible on Ukraine's part, this was a fumble on Russia's part too imo. If there were pro-Russian civilians there, Russia really should have evacuated them. Contrary to Ukie propaganda, the Russian fall back from the outskirts of Keiv did not seem all that rushed so they should have had plenty of time to do so.

 

[Ancient Pioneer]

They provided no guidance as to who or what constituted "Nazis". Nor did they say they'd wait until Ukraine was in their control to start the process. Nor did they say anything about peaceful deprograming, or even about trials. Just the vague "de-Nazify".

Svoboda, Right Sektor, Azov Battalion, and thats just off the top of my head. There is shitloads of these groups in Ukraine and Russia has made it clear who they want removed from the political sphere and punished for the genocidal conduct they've done in the past 8 years in the donbass. Zelensky himself has had extreme trouble keeping these guys in line, when he was first elected he proclaimed that he was going to pull troops out of the donbass and there was a revolt. To his credit Zelensky went to the donbass and spoke with the units there and in this video he meets with Denys Yantar, a member of Azov. The units in the Donbass effectively told Zelensky that if he gave the order to pull out of the Donbass they would follow it by heading directly to Kiev and overthrowing the government. Ukraine has way too many paramilitary groups that can muscle the state into doing what they want, and they're all some sort of neo-fascist flavor that revere Stepan Bandera. Problem is Ukraine has no say in the matter, these groups are supplied, trained and funded by the CIA, Israel hilariously enough and other NATO members like Britain. These paramilitary groups are how NATO keeps the leash on Ukraine's puppet government.

 

[3-2-1836]

The modernized T-80 variants are the best tanks they have but its gas turbine engine has a lot of problems. The T-72 was developed alongside the T-80 and was designed to be a cheaper and easier tank to mass produce, on paper it was worse than the T-64 but its bigger hull design made it an overall better tank to upgrade, also the T-72 factory is located in Russia while the T-64 and T-80 one was located in Ukraine when the USSR fell so it made sense economically and logistically for Russia to concentrate on the T-72 and T-90.
The T-90 itself is just a T-72 variant but rebranded for marketing purposes, it was originally called T-72BU.

Yeah the Russian rebranded the T-72 specifically due to how disastrous the monkey models exported to Iraq were against Western Forces.

Some of the "civilian corpses" wear white armbands - this is the distinctive sign of the Russian troops
View attachment 3141624

God damn Bulgarian style Cyrillic is so cancerous

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

Yeah the Russian rebranded the T-72 specifically due to how disastrous the monkey models exported to Iraq were against Western Forces.

I have a feeling they're going to be doing another rebranding soon. Even if their tank losses have been greatly exaggerated, the appearance of them being shit is definitely there, and that will affect future sales.

 

[A_throwaway_name62919]

Yes, but they only wanted to invade after Zelinsky kept pushing for joining NATO. If the point of NATO is to take over the world before Russia does, then of course Putin's going to want to get as much land as he can before NATO gets to it.

But, this failure proves that Europe was never under threat. We kept drumming up the Soviet Union as the great big bad that'll take over all if we don't actively stop them, until they imploded in on themselves. And we've been doing the same with Russia afterwards. Fuck NATO, we have no business on this side of the world.

The Soviet Union imploded in part because they couldn't make their economy keep up with Europe and the US. While this invasion is failing in part due to NATO members spending a bunch of time acting as trainers for Ukraine, and currently serving as "No money down" arms dealers for Ukraine. If Ukraine had been left entirely to its own devices since 2014, Russia likely would have succeeded by now.

Plus without NATO we'd probably have had a few more wars ongoing in the region. Either between Greece and Turkey, or between parts of the former Yugoslavia. As someone said previously, NATO kind of doubles as a force that's sitting on old European grudges and discouraging people from resolving them by shooting at each other lest the US get involved.

Edit to avoid double post:

Svoboda, Right Sektor, Azov Battalion, and thats just off the top of my head. There is shitloads of these groups in Ukraine and Russia has made it clear who they want removed from the political sphere and punished for the genocidal conduct they've done in the past 8 years in the donbass. Zelensky himself has had extreme trouble keeping these guys in line, when he was first elected he proclaimed that he was going to pull troops out of the donbass and there was a revolt. To his credit Zelensky went to the donbass and spoke with the units there and in this video he meets with Denys Yantar, a member of Azov. The units in the Donbass effectively told Zelensky that if he gave the order to pull out of the Donbass they would follow it by heading directly to Kiev and overthrowing the government. Ukraine has way too many paramilitary groups that can muscle the state into doing what they want, and they're all some sort of neo-fascist flavor that revere Stepan Bandera. Problem is Ukraine has no say in the matter, these groups are supplied, trained and funded by the CIA, Israel hilariously enough and other NATO members like Britain. These paramilitary groups are how NATO keeps the leash on Ukraine's puppet government.

View attachment 3143215

Yeah, I know there's a lot of groups. Part of my point is that it's not like Russia's specifically listing them or providing its troops with criteria. They're just gesturing vaguely in the direction of various nationalist groups and screaming "Nazis!". Which makes it real easy to label anyone who wants Russia's invasion to get the fuck out of Ukraine as a "nationalist" and therefore a "nazi". Providing soldiers with instant justification to themselves and their comrades if they feel a need to shoot them.

 

[Smity Werbenjagermanjensen]

Yeah, I know there's a lot of groups. Part of my point is that it's not like Russia's specifically listing them or providing its troops with criteria. They're just gesturing vaguely in the direction of various nationalist groups and screaming "Nazis!". Which makes it real easy to label anyone who wants Russia's invasion to get the fuck out of Ukraine as a "nationalist" and therefore a "nazi". Providing soldiers with instant justification to themselves and their comrades if they feel a need to shoot them.

Speaking of nationalist, I've noticed a lot of Russian and very pro-Russian sources label the UAF in general as "Ukrainian Nationalists", labeling the entirety of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as Nationalists, wording clearly designed to conflate them with the Nazis with Russian rhetoric on Ukraine, is a recipe for labeling all of Ukrainians in general who even peacefully resist occupation as Nazis, so you got a good point there.

 

[Borscht]

Speaking of nationalist, I've noticed a lot of Russian and very pro-Russian sources label the UAF in general as "Ukrainian Nationalists", labeling the entirety of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as Nationalists, wording clearly designed to conflate them with the Nazis with Russian rhetoric on Ukraine, is a recipe for labeling all of Ukrainians in general who even peacefully resist occupation as Nazis, so you got a good point there.

Not that I supported blatant pro-Russian rags, but it should be noted that when an Ametican interviewer asked Zelensky what the American people needed to know about Azov, he literally replied "they are what they are" and said they disseminated group members all over the Ukrainean army.

Also, Russian media has a very easy time selling all Ukraineans as nazis when their minister of healh goes on record saying Russian prisoners must be castrated so the scum doesn't breed on live TV and their mayors post on Facebook that all Russians must be exterminated regardless of where in the world they are or what their actual stance on the war is and FB jannies do not delete it.

It is one thing to hear the genocidal rhethoric from random trolls in youtube comments (and God knows there were plenty of them even before 2014) and another to hear them from people who shape Ukraine's political landscape.