Ukrainian Defensive War against the Russian Invasion - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

[Not At All A Lizard]

I doubt it's a strategic decision to leave the Kerch bridge up, I think it's more likely that the ukes determined that they can't really hit it again right now. Maybe even the Storm Shadows allegedly blowing up every supermarket from Sevastopol to Vladivostok aren't a good bet if you'd have to hit multiple relatively small targets at that distance. I'm sure it's one of the more protected places in terms of missile defence, too.

And in terms of partisan activity, I'm sure it's under guard to the point where that wouldn't be so easy either. Much easier to blow up a smaller bridge in bumfuck nowhere anyway.

 

[Foltest]

Russia usage of barrier troops is the perfect image of an military that is going downhill fast.
Yes, the USSR used in WWII but they stopped doing it in 42 as the moral took a nosedive among the soliders and the barrier troops.
It was very ineffective

 

[Corette]

I have a trip to yurop and dont want to pay a ton for gas

Doesn't compute even during peace time.
If anything current war has forced them to keep energy prices lower than they want those to be.

 

[Glowie]

My assumption is the Kersch bridge is still standing so Russia can use it for civilian supplies, and possibly so their troops can retreat over it if Melitopol gets taken or threatened. I would have at least tried to disable it to prevent its use for incoming supply, even if temporarily, but I'll have to assume minds greater than mine have a plan.

Ethnic Russians are fleeing en masses, leaving the region barren and empty. Martial law is introduced in occupied region, giving Russia power to change ethnic groups by deporting them or using them as cannon fodder. Kersch was set to blow before the 2014 invasion, corrupt governor of Crimea was ordered to disarm them. Ukraine knows that Russians would leave civilians stranded and let them starve and without electricity. Leaving everyone in crossfire, frankly speaking only reason Ukraine hasn't cut the artery of Crimea is the fact Ukraine and white blue white partisans need a population to meld in.

Also to avoid war crimes. Collapsing a bridge and leaving what is a island with only two viable way for humanitarian aid, sea route and northern sea routes.

Ensuring that Russian ammo depos blow up after mobiks are caught smoking

 

[Corette]

Kersch was set to blow before the 2014 invasion, corrupt governor of Crimea was ordered to disarm them.

We should cut him some slack for keeping timeline intact.
They started building Kerch-bridge 2016.

 

[mindlessobserver]

So is this shit over yet?

I expect it will still be going in 2025. I believe in the first thread I estimated an end date of fall 2025. Needless to say the Russiaboos thought I was very dumb and autistic.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I expect it will still be going in 2025. I believe in the first thread I estimated an end date of fall 2025. Needless to say the Russiaboos thought I was very dumb and autistic.

The dumb and autistic thing about it is how unnecessary the entire war is. Putin could have had Ukraine on a platter, if he'd just slow-rolled cultural and political integrationism, but he just had to go and invade and throw it all away. Guess he decided the slow way wasn't going to pay out before he croaked.

 

[Blatant hypocrite]

I doubt it's a strategic decision to leave the Kerch bridge up, I think it's more likely that the ukes determined that they can't really hit it again right now. Maybe even the Storm Shadows allegedly blowing up every supermarket from Sevastopol to Vladivostok aren't a good bet if you'd have to hit multiple relatively small targets at that distance. I'm sure it's one of the more protected places in terms of missile defence, too.

And in terms of partisan activity, I'm sure it's under guard to the point where that wouldn't be so easy either. Much easier to blow up a smaller bridge in bumfuck nowhere anyway.

Agreed. Quite aside from the ethics or utility of it, it's a target the Russians are prepared for, plus it's a fairly sturdy one. To Ukraine the question would be, do we want to try for the Kerch bridge or hit 5-6 command posts/bridges/depots?

I expect it will still be going in 2025. I believe in the first thread I estimated an end date of fall 2025. Needless to say the Russiaboos thought I was very dumb and autistic.

What are you talking about? Putin would never invade, that's pure NATO fearmongering. He is 4D chessmaster and the west is dum dum.

Whoops, I mean, it's a great success and it'll be over in a week.

 

[Delicious Diversity]

Putin could have had Ukraine on a platter, if he'd just slow-rolled cultural and political integrationism

That contest was already lost after the 2013/2014 revolution. Russia is a dying empire, it's a totalitarian shithole where people are jailed for the slightest wrongthink, nowhere outside Moscow or St Petersburg gets any funding, economy is shit, demographics are worse than China and freefalling into national suicide, and what little wealth there is gets pillaged by corrupt oligarchs.

It's a socially, morally and economically bankrupt state. It doesn't stand for anything. Even the Church is just an organ of state repression. Its only purpose seems to be to continue existing and escape its death spiral. That's not the same kind of visionary idealism that attracts countries to the US and EU, where even if you dislike them, they DO stand for things many people want - freedom, democracy, prosperity etc.

And yeah I know the West is hypocritical, muh Iraq muh troons muh blablabla - doesn't matter. The branding is on point. The results are self-evident. Westerners are rich, shit works here, people aren't perpetually afraid of being arrested for fuck all. That's what people in other countries see and that appeals far more to them than muh based dictator who doesn't like ze gays.

Ukraine doesn't want to be another Belarus. They don't want to be a mindless organ transplanted onto a rotting corpse. They DO want what we have in the West. The money, the stability, the freedoms. The right to look down on shithole countries and feel better than them. The shit we take for granted. That's why they drove their Russian puppet out of power and vote for pro-Western leaders.

They've made up their minds, they want to be a Western country. So that card was off the table; the only card left for Putin was force, violence. It was invade and force Ukraine to submit, or accept the inevitable permanent loss of that country. Russia historically is not squeamish about using bloodshed to impose their control where it's not wanted. Just look at Chechnya 20 years ago.

I don't think Putin was necessarily dumb for invading. I do think he was horrendously let down by the system he'd created, which has gutted the nation of any competent institutions including the military. They were woefully unprepared for such a huge operation.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

I expect it will still be going in 2025. I believe in the first thread I estimated an end date of fall 2025.

That was my prediction, revised after the feint failed & the Russians got rolled back past Kharkiv & Kherson, win or lose. But that was without an active Russian partisan element and an opposition to Putin, which now seems to be picking up steam rapidly.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if sometime this year the Russian army decides to fuck off & march on Moscow to toss Putin from a window, or they break & fold entirely, hopefully for a repeat of 1917. It'll definitely be interesting to see if they largely refuse to fight and/or have mass desertion; and if not, who the various elements of the Russian military supports in a coup against Putin.

 

[teriyakiburns]

liveuamap is starting to show more blue on the eastern front.



Same in the south. Just slivers of it at the moment.

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

U.S. Set to Approve Depleted-Uranium Tank Rounds for Ukraine

Archived WSJ article: https://archive.is/xbQaL

 

[Jewthulhu]

View attachment 5162127
Archived WSJ article: https://archive.is/xbQaL

Can't wait for retards to start bitching about "muh radiation" again.

 

[Ghostse]

That contest was already lost after the 2013/2014 revolution.

Solid disagree. Russia lost control of the script temporarily by trying to throttle Ukraine when Lukashaka's hand was forced and he had to start showing a little independence with the EU trade agreement and Russia embargoed them. This should have never happened, and when it DID happen it should have been a temporary blip before getting their hand back up the ass off their puppet.

The reason they weren't having total success reworming their tendrils back into the country was because they kept sending weapons and troops to fuck around in the Donbros areas and countries with a national identity tend to not like that.

They could have let Ukraine have its trade agreement and benefited from a customs bypass for EU goods. They could have not fomented revolution. They could have let that go quiet with some peace deal they actually held to a la Ossentia. but instead Putin lost his fucking mind.

No one wants to be Belarus. Belarus doesn't want to be Belarus. But the Russian autocrat style is very appealing to the oligarchs and Russia would have gotten them back on their side. Putin just forgot the story of the two bulls.

 

[Delicious Diversity]

Solid disagree. Russia lost control of the script temporarily by trying to throttle Ukraine when Lukashaka's hand was forced and he had to start showing a little independence with the EU trade agreement and Russia embargoed them. This should have never happened, and when it DID happen it should have been a temporary blip before getting their hand back up the ass off their puppet.

The reason they weren't having total success reworming their tendrils back into the country was because they kept sending weapons and troops to fuck around in the Donbros areas and countries with a national identity tend to not like that.

They could have let Ukraine have its trade agreement and benefited from a customs bypass for EU goods. They could have not fomented revolution. They could have let that go quiet with some peace deal they actually held to a la Ossentia. but instead Putin lost his fucking mind.

No one wants to be Belarus. Belarus doesn't want to be Belarus. But the Russian autocrat style is very appealing to the oligarchs and Russia would have gotten them back on their side. Putin just forgot the story of the two bulls.

I don't think Russia could gradually hoodwink the Ukrainian people into becoming a Russian puppet state again by that point, the fact that a revolution happened as a backlash to Yanukovich's broken promise and subsequent tyranny shows the culture in Ukrainian society had drifted substantially from what we see in Russia for the most part. After Yanukovich passed the laws banning protests and authorizing lethal force and shit they didn't give up, they stood their ground.

Maybe you could delay revolution for some years by encouraging Yanukovich to concede on a few things, but some other catalyst would occur. Some other red flag that Ukrainians were losing their country to corrupt Russian pawns. And they'd hit the streets of Kyiv to put a stop to it. At some point there would come a moment where the government either has to shoot people dead to break their resolve and force them back in line, or back down and accept inevitable change.

Ukraine tried the half in half out thing with Russia and the West for as long as it could. But that wasn't viable in the long-term. It was not best for the economic prospects of the country, nor was it enough to satisfy Russian irredentism. A choice had to be made, geography mandated that. And that choice was made in late 2013. Russian actions in Crimea and Donbas obviously didn't garner any goodwill from Ukrainians but there was no aspiration to become Little Russians regardless.

Suppose Putin had not pressured Yanukovich to U-turn on the EU association agreement with energy embargoes - ok, Ukraine moves towards EU membership. That nullifies any prospect of integration with Russia. Suppose Putin agrees to withdraw the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol and leave Crimea and Donbas alone - ok, Ukrainians don't hate Russia. They still don't want to be under its control. Nothing really changes except Russia has to ultimately accept Ukraine moving West.

Putin knew the revolution meant politically Ukraine saw Russia as a dying country and the West as a vibrant, booming opportunity. He knew war was the only way to restore Moscow's control and he's been planning for it ever since he seized Crimea. His major miscalculation was that Russia's modernisation has failed, his corrupt system fucks everything it touches, and the West turned out to be far more committed to Ukraine than he expected. Now it's just a land grab.

So I don't think he's stupid, but rather, he's completely amoral and he's ill-informed of vital factors that would be necessary to correctly anticipate the outcome. Most likely by design; no one wants to be the guy to tell Putin that Russia's military is a rusted carcass.

 

[Ghostse]

I don't think Russia could gradually hoodwink the Ukrainian people into becoming a Russian puppet state again by that point

The people? Probably not.
The powered elite? Yes.

edit: I think the other thing you're forgetting is no one in the west wanted the BSF out of Svastopol. Everyone was completely fine leaving that situation as-is as a vise that could be tightened in the future to squeeze Russia's balls, but a Russia who can counter weight China is the global strategic interest.
Ukraine would have never joined NATO before Euromaidan. Even after, it was more of a stick to try to get Russia to stop propping up insurgents. Until Russia went full-force over the border, everyone who wasnt a baltic state was questioning NATO's need to exist. IT would have been something always discussed and then forgotten again as soon as token concessions wrung from Russia. And no action would have been taken until Russia went full retard.

 

[Cool Dog Returns]

I expect it will still be going in 2025. I believe in the first thread I estimated an end date of fall 2025.

Why 2025? whats with that year?

if he'd just slow-rolled cultural and political integrationism

How? the ukies dont want to be dragged down by vatnik bullshit anymore, every time they could they tried to get away from russia be it during the commie revolution or the nazi invasion, and every time the vatniks came back no amount of flowery shit got the ukies back in line, they had to beat/starve them into bending over backwards and just let it happen

 

[Delicious Diversity]

The people? Probably not.
The powered elite? Yes.

edit: I think the other thing you're forgetting is no one in the west wanted the BSF out of Svastopol. Everyone was completely fine leaving that situation as-is as a vise that could be tightened in the future to squeeze Russia's balls, but a Russia who can counter weight China is the global strategic interest.
Ukraine would have never joined NATO before Euromaidan. Even after, it was more of a stick to try to get Russia to stop propping up insurgents. Until Russia went full-force over the border, everyone who wasnt a baltic state was questioning NATO's need to exist. IT would have been something always discussed and then forgotten again as soon as token concessions wrung from Russia. And no action would have been taken until Russia went full retard.

The powered elite ran the government, didn't matter. They shot people and then the people kicked them out. Oligarchic totalitarianism only works if you make the people passive and apathetic, as Russia under Putin has successfully done. Clearly they were not passive in Ukraine.

Regarding the BSF I only meant as a gesture of goodwill, Russia leaves Sevastopol. Obviously that was not a realistic suggestion or anything, just me trying to lend as much credence to your idea of Russia keeping the new government in Kyiv on side as I can.

Wouldn't matter, it's not about who's nice and who's not, it's about which side has something to offer Ukraine and its future. The West has money and notions of rule of law and democratic society; Russia has delusions of imperial grandeur and little else. Hardly appealing.

I agree Russia's decision was ultimately foolish; they have indeed revitalized NATO. At this point I assume the mission is to keep some strategic land and claim a cope W so Putin can stay in power. Essentially the Ralphamale way of war.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Upload speeds have considerably increased, but here's a short video of some mechanized infantry on the move.

Edit: dual M2s on a HMMWV of the "RUG" Group, 59th Motorized Infantry Brigade; which was a wet dream of mine the years I rode in a ring mount.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

View attachment 5162127
Archived WSJ article: https://archive.is/xbQaL

Can one of you military autists explain why DP rounds would be useful(not what DP rounds are)? Is Russian armor hard enough to justify its use?