They don't actually need to enter it or even commit that many troops, i.e. Bakhmut 2.0; just make it unusable & uninhabitable for the Ukrainians; although even a small breakthrough certainly would offer the opportunity for an end-run around that part of the Ukrainian lines.
these things are over 40 years old and somehow they still manage to hit moving targets in the air from several kilometers away with autocannon fire
The ECM developed for Afghan and Iraq will kill any drones command link depending on the distance.
No way those chinese hobby drones could work after that given that all targeting was done with the gimbal cam since the payload was just a grenade with a 3D printed tail glued to it.
I don't need any of that shit if I can put thousands of those in the sky for the price of the cheapest fighter out there. Good luck shooting at a thousand drones when all it takes is one to blow your SPAAG (and your legs) out.
Why not? are they there illegally? how many were living in the area before the fall of the wall?
Putin is burying an entire generation, on a country with already fucked demographics.
Why use SAM's when you could saturate the area with dumbfire rockets? Its not like there's anything new there since stuff like that was talked about during WW2. A mix of VT and MT fuses would be sufficient to ensure a blanket barrage. You don't even need anything fancy for fuel since WW2 rockets all used bitch-basic gunpowder for their propellant.
USSR citizenship was technically divided into different SSR citizenships, and the soviet state routinely moved people from one SSR to live and work in another SSR. that's how a lot of russian SFSR citizens ended up living in places like estonian SSR, latvian SSR, lithuanian SSR, etc.
They need to go back. Latvia should build a wall and have Russia pay for it.
The Gepard is a vehicle that doesn't make a lot of sense. It has two seperate radars one for search one for targeting (it'll follow the rounds fires as well as the target). It was horrendously expensive and extremely difficult to maintain. Compared to something like a ZSU-23-4 which just has a simple range only radar, that lets the gunner line up the target.
That is a rather bold claim. What about the tank makes it so good then?
Russian expats tend to be like the worst expats, grotesque ultra-nats somehow not back in Russia fighting for their patria, but still dangerously loyal to the Putin vertical. They're basically a fifth column to a very great extend.
The design allowed for constant upgrades to gunner and commanders sights. As a comparison the British Challenger 2 doesn't and to upgrade it they have to replace the turret.
Changing administrative borders is easier than changing borders between independent states.
scenario, but not dealing with our glowies carries serious risks of autocratic rebound.To be fair, unexploited wilderness is unexploited for a good reason. People who tried to exploit it (communists) did so with forced labor, killing hundreds of thousands in the process, and built cities and infrastructure that's nothing but a money drain under market economy conditions. I live 200-300km south from permafrost zone and having 6 months of below zero temps sucks. Things only get worse if you go north.
but those chekists are the only thing that hold the state together, no? without their glowniggery nothing would prevent a descent into warlordism that would tear the country apart.The most important and the hardest task will be to dismantle current state security apparatus and rebuild it in less ugly form. The succession chain from VChK/NKVD/KGB to FSB should be broken. I'd do that by declaring aforementioned organizations criminal, banning their members from taking positions in government and, in general, presuming them guilty until proven innocent (i.e. holding them to the same standard they held us for 100 years). Then, declassify their archives, tear down Dzerzhinsky's busts and portraits and kick whatever successor organization from Lubyanka building. It's an
If Germany, Japan, Italy and Ukraine as well as the Warsaw Pact nations the Soviets enslaved for decades could dismantle their secret police and move forward after their respective wars, so can Russia.
germany, japan, italy were completely destroyed and ruined by foreign enemies. this is not something that can or will or should happen to russia.
They build their influence networks on top of existing structures, there's still functional bureaucratic machine underneath and it will continue to function without glowies. It will be rough transition, yes, but in the grand scheme of things the current state security apparatus does more harm than good.
True, but that makes Russia look even worse. Why can't you get your own house in order when you have no credible foreign threat?
No argument there, they brutally suppressed the Germans in 1953, the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968.
Unfortunately I suspect a lot of Russians just accept it as part of life despite the fact their level of corruption is worse than most sub-Saharan African countries. And it shows in how dirty and run-down the country is despite a nominal GDP per capita above the global average.
If you are implying those are Russian soldiers, seems you fell for a Dvach prank on Труха, who has since deleted the post claiming those are dead Russian soldiers, as those are dead Ukrainians KIA from Bakhmut/Artemovsk which Wagner is preparing to repatriate.
t.me
t.me
And when the Russians haul a WW2 85mm or 100mm out of storage the Leopard will be at risk of getting cored by that. Even if you can't armor against what the enemy has on the front lines, you can armor against what he was in reserve, and considering what the Russians are hauling out it appears to have been a smart move and precisely why the Leopard's contemporary of the M60 had relatively heavy armor. Couldn't stop a T-64's 125mm but it could laugh at a T-55's 100mm, which is something the Leopard 1 will struggle with, even the upgraded Leopard 1A5 which entered service in 1987, two years after the M1A1.
