War Invasion of Ukraine News Megathread - Thread is only for articles and discussion of articles, general discussion thread is still in Happenings.

Status
Not open for further replies.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said that the United States will impose sanctions “far beyond” the ones that the United States imposed in 2014 following the annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

“This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Biden said in a White House speech, signaling a shift in his administration’s position. “We will continue to escalate sanctions if Russia escalates,” he added.

Russian elites and their family members will also soon face sanctions, Biden said, adding that “Russia will pay an even steeper price” if Moscow decides to push forward into Ukraine. Two Russian banks and Russian sovereign debt will also be sanctioned, he said.

Also in his speech, Biden said he would send more U.S. troops to the Baltic states as a defensive measure to strengthen NATO’s position in the area.

Russia shares a border with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

A day earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to go into the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine after a lengthy speech in which he recognized the two regions’ independence.

Western powers decried the move and began to slap sanctions on certain Russian individuals, while Germany announced it would halt plans to go ahead with the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

At home, Biden is facing bipartisan pressure to take more extensive actions against Russia following Putin’s decision. However, a recent poll showed that a majority of Americans believe that sending troops to Ukraine is a “bad idea,” and a slim minority believes it’s a good one.

All 27 European Union countries unanimously agreed on an initial list of sanctions targeting Russian authorities, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, and EU foreign affairs head Josep Borell claimed the package “will hurt Russia … a lot.”

Earlier Tuesday, Borell asserted that Russian troops have already entered the Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and Lugansk, which are under the control of pro-Russia groups since 2014.

And on Tuesday, the Russian Parliament approved a Putin-back plan to use military force outside of Russia’s borders as Putin further said that Russia confirmed it would recognize the expanded borders of Lugansk and Donetsk.

“We recognized the states,” the Russian president said. “That means we recognized all of their fundamental documents, including the constitution, where it is written that their [borders] are the territories at the time the two regions were part of Ukraine.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Putin said that Ukraine is “not interested in peaceful solutions” and that “every day, they are amassing troops in the Donbas.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday morning again downplayed the prospect of a Russian invasion and proclaimed: “There will be no war.”

“There will not be an all-out war against Ukraine, and there will not be a broad escalation from Russia. If there is, then we will put Ukraine on a war footing,” he said in a televised address.

The White House began to signal that they would shift their own position on whether it’s the start of an invasion.

“We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia’s latest invasion into Ukraine,” said Jon Finer, the White House deputy national security adviser in public remarks. “An invasion is an invasion and that is what is underway.”

For weeks, Western governments have been claiming Moscow would invade its neighbor after Russia gathered some 150,000 troops along the countries’ borders. They alleged that the Kremlin would attempt to come up with a pretext to attack, while some officials on Monday said Putin’s speech recognizing the two regions was just that.

But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Tuesday that Russia’s “latest invasion” of Ukraine is threatening stability in the region, but he asserted that Putin can “still avoid a full blown, tragic war of choice.”

Article
 
Gun barrels don't have a physics bounding box in world of tanks.

That's all I got.


Every military vet I've encountered has told the story of a challenger, or an abrams, or some other tank that turned its turret and lopped the head off an unsuspecting infantryman who was standing too close. I've seen how fast those things turn. It's only a surprise it doesn't happen more often.
It's usually less about people outside than your own safety, a turret rotates suddenly while you've got your hand out of the basket, you could lose it. Western tanks get around it with crew training and by having proxy switches and emergency stops everywhere. It's a good way for even an officer to get a beating if he rotates a turret without warning and knowing what's happening inside and outside a vehicle.

Also another thing that makes crew careful is the need to re-boresight a gun if the barrel hits an obstruction, which is a massive fuckaround.

Armored vehicles are scary particularly at night and you're moving on foot in a harbor area and you can hear them operating around you. When stuff like this happens, soldiers lose confidence and spend as much time looking out for their own side as the enemy.

Also I've said this before, T-72 and T-80's are horrible vehicles, the designers seemed to have gone out of their way to make the vehicle as difficult as possible for the crew to operate. The Driver, and Commander really need to know what they're doing, I'm willing to bet there's been a shed load of messy accident other than this.
 
leopardpanzer-101__v-mittelgross16x9.jpg
Export license for Leopard 1 approved by Germany:
Military aid to UkraineExport license granted for "Leopard 1" tank
Status: 03.02.2023 3:57 p.m
The federal government has issued an export license for Leopard 1 battle tanks to Ukraine. This was confirmed by government spokesman Hebestreit without giving details. Ukraine welcomed the decision but criticized the timing.
The federal government has approved the transfer of "Leopard 1" battle tanks from industrial stocks to Ukraine. Corresponding media reports confirmed government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit in Berlin. He did not give any details about the approval, such as the number of tanks. This will become “more concrete in the next few days and weeks”.

Apparently problems with ammunition procurement​

According to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", the armaments group Rheinmetall and the Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG) want to prepare dozens of "Leopard 1" tanks and could supply them to Ukraine for the fight against Russia. Accordingly, Rheinmetall has 88 "Leopard 1".
The repair is likely to take many months . "Even if the decision is made tomorrow that we can send our Leopard tanks to Kyiv, delivery will take until the beginning of next year," Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger told "Bild am Sonntag" in mid-January. "The vehicles are not only repainted, but have to be converted for a war effort. They are completely dismantled and then rebuilt."
According to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", there are also problems with the procurement of the required 105-millimeter ammunition. Although Brazil still has large stocks of ammunition due to the delivery of around 250 "Leopard" tanks from Germany, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has so far refused to pass it on, as it did with the ammunition for the "Gepard" anti-aircraft tank.

The "Leopard 1" is the first main battle tank built for the Bundeswehr after the Second World War. It was produced between the mid 1960s and mid 1980s. The Bundeswehr had already retired the "Leopard 1" in 2003. Compared to the "Leopard 2", the previous model "could not keep up at all," said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Defense.
Last week, the federal government decided to deliver 14 Leopard 2 A6 main battle tanks to Ukraine. They come from the stock of the Bundeswehr. Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has promised to retrofit the tanks with more modern Type 2A7s as soon as possible.

Melnyk: Tanks already offered in April​

The Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, welcomed the government's decision, but at the same time criticized the late timing. The Düsseldorf-based company Rheinmetall had already offered to deliver 88 "Leopard 1A5" to the Ukraine in April, he told the dpa news agency. Valuable time was wasted. "We are calling on the federal government, and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius personally, to really step on the gas after breaking the Leo taboo," demanded Melnyk.

And in other news, an update from Madyar:
 
Last edited:
It uses regular 105mm NATO ammunition so I'm not sure how sourcing ammunition would be a problem. Germany still manufactures it for export, the US use it for the MGS, the French use it on the upgraded AMX 10RC.

Greece and Turkey still use large amounts of them, so there are plenty of spares. Fucking shit defense journalists not doing basic research. Even Wikipedia is repeating the bullshit about lack of Ammunition, because it comes from a 'reliable source'.
 
If you are an American, then you must be aware of American history, like how the United States only won independence due to the direct intervention of the French and Spanish Empires.
And if you are aware of world history, you'll know what happened to France as a direct result of spending oodles of money helping the Americans.
 
And if you are aware of world history, you'll know what happened to France as a direct result of spending oodles of money helping the Americans.
Incidentally it brought down both colonial empires. The Spanish colonies were also inspired to seek independence due to the American example, and France ended up selling its off (or lost it outright like Haiti).
 
Okay fine. But why is the USA responsible for their freedom to do stupid slav shit? Why can't I file it under not my fucking problem, I don't live in shitty-ass Ukraine and don't want anything to do with their retarded power struggle.

Somehow the American taxpayer is still on the hook for it though huh?
Russia considers us an enemy state. Therefore we should fuck them over in every conceivable way before they fuck us. Hence it’s in our interests to create as many Russian widows as possible.

They gave weapons and aid to our enemies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. They’ve indirectly killed Americans for generations. We’re just returning the favor 10 fold. I’m perfectly ok with sending Ukraine our second rate gear if it stacks Russian bodies.
 
Incidentally it brought down both colonial empires. The Spanish colonies were also inspired to seek independence due to the American example, and France ended up selling its off (or lost it outright like Haiti).
The Spanish colonies got their independence because Napoleon conquered Spain.
 
The Spanish colonies got their independence because Napoleon conquered Spain.
Right, that weakened their control over the colonies allowing the independence movements to flourish. Kind of unfortunate most of those countries never really succeeded in establishing democratic governments like the US.
 
And if you are aware of world history, you'll know what happened to France as a direct result of spending oodles of money helping the Americans.

its much more complicated than that.

France spent money on the Americans, and more importantly than money deployed their fleet in support. They did this for revenge; they had already depleted the royal treasury getting sack-tapped by the brits and losing Canada & the fur income. Thus with the fleet forward deployed, the seeds were sown.
All of this would have been immaterial if not for the extreme levels of French economic inefficiency - AKA rampant, naked corruption.
To over simplify, the French government didn't directly collect taxes or tariffs (or many other state functions), they sold the right to do these things to individual nobles (and later on businessmen), somewhat based on the earlier Roman model. Thus if you granted a writ to collect taxes, and the royal bean counters figured a 15% tax on the areas output, if you could squeeze the peasants for 20%....
These corruption levels not only squeeze the lower, middle, and mercantile classes directly, but also made businesses more expensive to start and operate - leading to reduced capital investment and economic opportunity, which caused the extremely high unemployment that fed into the Revolution.
And even THAT might not have been a problem if Louis had started a terrestrial war to give those employed peasants something to do.
If not for bloodsucking nobels, the French-British Wars in North American and support of the American revolution would have been negligible expenses easily handled.


tl;dr: It wasn't supporting the Americans that imploded the Monarchy, it was the decades of other expensive adventures and structural corruption.
 
There are no Americans fighting in Ukraine. We are just giving the Ukrainians weapons. And it wasn't America that started this war, it was Russia.

I'm pretty sure I read an article a few months ago that stated at least there are American Soldiers training the Ukrainians on the new weapons they sent over. And rumors of possibly some smaller tactical units on the ground there.
 
Okay fine. But why is the USA responsible for their freedom to do stupid slav shit? Why can't I file it under not my fucking problem, I don't live in shitty-ass Ukraine and don't want anything to do with their retarded power struggle.
Because 1. You're a bitch and nobody cares what you want or what you think.
2. America is not a bitch, it's the most powerful nation in human history.
3. Say Russia runs over Ukraine, what do you think those 40something million civilians will do, especially when there's no ebil kik Zelensky forcing the guys to stay and fight? Maybe you won't live in Ukraine, but Ukraine will live close by you.
 
And if you are aware of world history, you'll know what happened to France as a direct result of spending oodles of money helping the Americans.
Exactly!
Incidentally it brought down both colonial empires. The Spanish colonies were also inspired to seek independence due to the American example, and France ended up selling its off (or lost it outright like Haiti).

Mike Duncan (podcaster) has done a series on all the revolutions From The English civil war thru the Bolsheviks in Russia and it is free and long for those history sleuths out there. Revolutions Podcast Website

Imagine having 31 trillion in debt, but funding a new nation, a new army, and a war, while your own people are loosing there jobs, there currency, and there way of life.
I think King Louis fucked up by supporting The Colonies, But as an American am thankful he did.
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
 
I'm pretty sure I read an article a few months ago that stated at least there are American Soldiers training the Ukrainians on the new weapons they sent over. And rumors of possibly some smaller tactical units on the ground there.
American troops are not deployed in any real capacity, but I've seen a few of volunteers from all over the world doing all sorts of things there, everyone with their own personal stories and reasons why. Though prior to the war US did help training their soldiers, but it was limited.
If NATO deployed its forces in full, this would've been an entirely different story.

The rumors of some kind of super-duper deep undercover American spec-ops being deployed is just that, generally pushed by Russian propaganda as an excuse to being owned by Ukrainians on the battlefield. That's the claim though, that NATO is secretly fighting on Ukrainian side with boots on the ground, entirely unsubstantiated.
 
The rumors of some kind of super-duper deep undercover American spec-ops being deployed is just that, generally pushed by Russian propaganda as an excuse to being owned by Ukrainians on the battlefield. That's the claim though, that NATO is secretly fighting on Ukrainian side with boots on the ground, entirely unsubstantiated.

Why do they have to be super deep undercover? There's former military volunteers openly fighting right now with their countries flags on their helmets. You could just slip right in with them. And whos gonna substantiate it CNN? BBC? Theres no way they'd report on that anyway even if it were true.
 
No commentary from me, all I could muster is "Bro, what the fuck"
Dual turret controls in a T-72 for commander and gunner, shit optics, and Russian doctrine says the commander has to stay buttoned up.

In the West the first few weeks of training crews on AFV's is to scare the shit out of them, about how easy it is to die. Lack of fuel and training means shit like this is probably happening all the time.
At least in video games we can pretend the Russians are still competent.
I'm pretty sure I read an article a few months ago that stated at least there are American Soldiers training the Ukrainians on the new weapons they sent over. And rumors of possibly some smaller tactical units on the ground there.
I doubt there are any American soldiers over there fighting in Ukraine. That's just dumb shit spread by Russian propaganda and vatnigger retards.
 
Why do they have to be super deep undercover? There's former military volunteers openly fighting right now with their countries flags on their helmets. You could just slip right in with them. And whos gonna substantiate it CNN? BBC? Theres no way they'd report on that anyway even if it were true.
There's probably a bunch of glows doing intel gathering on everything the Russians use. But fighting (in serious capacity) would be another matter entirely.

First is escalation risk. The US and other western countries have been holding off certain things, such as long-range missiles, because they don't want to do too much and give Russia a reason to lob missiles at them. Sending Seal Team Six to shoot some Russian soldiers would defeat that purpose entirely.

Secondly it's just dumb to use special forces in that way. Why order your special elite force to stand in a ditch and eat mortar fire when you could have a battalion of AFU do the same?
 
There's probably a bunch of glows doing intel gathering on everything the Russians use. But fighting (in serious capacity) would be another matter entirely.

First is escalation risk. The US and other western countries have been holding off certain things, such as long-range missiles, because they don't want to do too much and give Russia a reason to lob missiles at them. Sending Seal Team Six to shoot some Russian soldiers would defeat that purpose entirely.

Secondly it's just dumb to use special forces in that way. Why order your special elite force to stand in a ditch and eat mortar fire when you could have a battalion of AFU do the same?

Good point.
 
There's probably a bunch of glows doing intel gathering on everything the Russians use. But fighting (in serious capacity) would be another matter entirely.

First is escalation risk. The US and other western countries have been holding off certain things, such as long-range missiles, because they don't want to do too much and give Russia a reason to lob missiles at them. Sending Seal Team Six to shoot some Russian soldiers would defeat that purpose entirely.

Secondly it's just dumb to use special forces in that way. Why order your special elite force to stand in a ditch and eat mortar fire when you could have a battalion of AFU do the same?
I would add an third reason to these:
They will stand out like a pig market in a islamistc country.
The volutentars that are there, they are armed with what they got (brought with, looted from the battlefield, donations, hand downs from Ukraine army) while if you had western specs ops there, you will notice them right away.

Anyway, the war is good for those who are selling Tanks:

Norway is ordering 54 Leopard II

Tanks are suppose to start arrive in 2026 and be fully part of the army in 2031.
OSLO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Norway will order 54 new German-made Leopard 2 tanks for its army from the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Group, and will get an option to buy a further 18 tanks at a later time, the government said on Friday.

"We ensure that we have the same tanks as our Nordic neighbours and many key NATO allies," Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference.

"This further strengthens our relationship with Germany," he added.


The Nordic NATO member, which shares a 196 km (122 miles)Arctic border with Russia, had planned to choose either German-made Leopard 2 A7 tanks or the rival Korean-produced K2 Black Panther, made by Hyundai Rotem (064350.KS).

Norway had originally planned to acquire 72 tanks, but in recent months discussed a scaled-down purchase after the country's chief of defence recommended spending more funds on helicopters, drones and long-range artillery.

This war has shown Western Europe that when it come to defense, you need to put serious money down.


shit, I just noticed that part of the story is behind a paywall, so here is Bloomberg:
 
Russia considers us an enemy state.

Russia considers globalism its enemy. The "eat bugs, own nothing, and be happy" crowd. The US happens to be the largest proponent of that ideology, but it's important to see the difference. Many of us would argue the US shouldn't be the GLOBOHOMO capital of the world and that maybe this one world government bullshit should fuck right off.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back