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

[World in Scarlet]

>invade Kharkiv
>immediately aurora lights across the world

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Situation in Kharkiv as of 11 May

The advance of Russian troops has been stopped at the 2-5 km from the border, our defence is deployed and effectively working against the Russians. At the moment, Russian attacks have been repelled. Our reserves are being deployed in one of the areas where the enemy managed to advance.

The Russians are trying to use infiltration tactics, i.e. they are looking for gaps in our combat formations with independent infantry groups that are supposed to flow around our resistance nodes with the support of air and artillery strikes. However, the enemy has not managed to get far, all attempts to infiltrate have been detected, and our artillery and drones are actively working on the enemy. Our artillery is currently supplied with ammunition.

During the day of the Russian offensive on the northern borders of the Kharkiv region, up to 20 units of Russian armoured vehicles were destroyed, this is only what was confirmed on the video.

It is worth noting that Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has appointed one of our most competent and energetic commanders to head the Kharkiv military unit, so our assessments of the situation are objective, and our brigades receive realistic tasks and act confidently. Where there are problems with combat capability in some units, we are reinforcing them. The battle is ongoing, and reserves are being brought in from both sides.

I would like to remind you that we discussed the situation near Kharkiv in detail and analysed the map of events on the Butusov Plus YouTube channel. Here is the link to the recording, and I invite you to watch it - https://youtube.com/live/YeyT7ib0rE4

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Russians took five prisoners yesterday and destroyed like two bridges during Thursday night. As far as I can tell they haven't published any Ukrainian losses beyond that.

Ukrainians published a couple pictures and videos of destroyed vatniks and vehicles from yesterday.


(I saw them somewhere yesterday but I forgot where.)

One guy was apparently ran over by the vehicle before it was destroyed.

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Russians used one of their most modern tanks for this.

Kharkiv Oblast, Russian forces attempted to use a turtle tank to push into Ukrainian territory at the Vovchansk checkpoint.
The tank never made it into Ukraine, hitting a mine 1000 feet from the border inside of Russia, with Ukrainian FPV munitions finishing it off.

link
full video

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Maybe Mother Nature being upset has something to do with the Russians destroying another dam, this time the Staryi Saltov dam & bridge in Kharkiv yesterday:

Cue vatnigs claiming Ukraine blew it up themselves & Russia stronk, simultaneously.

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Edit: the new symbol being used by the Russian troops assaulting Kharkiv:

It looks like the friendly-target HUD icon from DCS.

Like a certain other crooked-cross symbol, just with extra lines.

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

Source.

Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

Ukraine Fact Sheet - May 10

 

[Willie B. Hardigan]

More than you have been lead to believe. The war industries in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were back up an running inside of a week iirc.
Blast casualties when you drop a bomb into the middle of a dense urban core like NYC or San Fransisco lead to large death tolls but little in the way of immediate fighting capability - there's no army bases on Mahattan.

I highly doubt that the arms and manufacturing industries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were back to full effective operational capacity within the week after it was nuked as you stated. It probably would have taken another few months to get the logistics back to the level before the bombings and I think that was the whole point. Strategic bombings, even with nuclear payloads, aren't going to completely shut down the production of wartime materials because to do so would require impossible levels of accuracy and ordinance. There will be factories that get spared or the work taken underground but the level of output is diminished significantly just from having to rebuild everything back up again. Anything that was missed would have been firebombed or hit with a third nuke had the war continued with little in the way of retaliation for the Japanese. That lack of ability to prevent themselves from getting pelted along with the Soviet horde now coming for their East Asian holdings meant all they could do now was either go out in a blaze of glory leaving little left or swallow their pride and surrender, which they did.

Now on the topic of how devastating an all-out nuclear exchange between America, Russia, or China would be, we frankly just don't know exactly how it would pan out besides educated theories based on simulations and lengthy military assessments that may leave out key variables not accounted for in said evaluations. I've noticed two camps always form whenever the subject is brought up with those who vastly overestimate and underestimate the destruction the conflict would bring to the warring countries.

We have a group that thinks everything would be turned into an inhospitable wasteland with it taking thousands of years to recover, which isn't true due to the relatively quick dissipation of the heaviest radiation to livable levels along with the simple fact massive chunks of land would still be untouched even if the entire stockpile of nuclear missiles from the height of the Cold War were launched solely to dot the lands with mushroom clouds. Society would not be pushed back to the Stone Age with little left to fight over but, there would be enough destruction to destroy the federal power of governments to wage any war abroad, at least until the domestic situation can be stabilized. An effort that could take a decade at the minimum. The group who think nuclear weaponry has little real impact forget that almost all the state apparatuses that make fighting possible would either fracture under the stresses of the aftermath or at the very least be unwilling to give themselves to a now worthless cause as their self-preservation supersedes any plans to conquer Moscow or Washington DC. I'm sure a decent chunk of the world's militaries would survive but they would be used at home to try and prevent the instant collapse of all authority.

It's not like any campaigns would last very long or have clear winnable goals besides killing them all or putting more salt in the nuclear wound by sprinkling in some extra damage. You pushed into Eastern Europe/Western Russia, good for you, now what? Go home to a country-wide Minneapolis riot against people with assault rifles instead of ghettos blasters? Stay there and slowly die from a lack of supply? It becomes the definition of FUBAR.

Any major geopolitical conflict would be put on hold for at least twenty years or maybe more in such a scenario as everybody reels from the consequences of no more easily accessible electricity, near zero international trade, and civil unrest. Thankfully the mythical nuclear holocaust we all see in movies and games will most likely never come to pass since it's better for everyone involved not to put these ideas into practice. What would the elite political bureaucrats even gain by doing so? There is still the possibility of an extremely limited low-yield nuke exchange between fanatical countries like India or Pakistan. There may even be a terrorist organization that conducts a dirty bomb attack but in those situations, the international community would entirely disown them to prevent the carnage from spreading. As previously stated in this thread by others, Ukraine or Russia using nuclear weaponry is just gonna put them in unmanageable positions when there are still other, less rewarded solutions on the table. It would be nice if the war ended but not in that way, never in that way.

 

[Ghostse]

I highly doubt that the arms and manufacturing industries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were back to full effective operational capacity within the week after it was nuked as you stated. It probably would have taken another few months to get the logistics back to the level before the bombings and I think that was the whole point.

You really, really over estimate Japanese war time logistics.
tl;dr things weren't super great before the war started, war time diversions didn't help, and then the effective siege of Japan now the giant was fully awake at the end didn't help none. There was limited rail and road, most logics was using ships or carried bundles to collection points (and sometimes to the final destination), neither of these were disrupted by the city center getting BTFO.
They weren't cranking out millions of shells. IIRC Nagasaki was primarily an optics assembly plant.
And the Japanese really didn't give a fuck. Lots of workers reporting in for work the next day.

The fire bombings of Tokyo, which killed many more people and did much more damage, barely touched war production because it was already so degraded.

Again, until about the month before German's surrender they were still making 250 fighters a month.

People really, really underestimate what a war economy can get done.


And once again, people with poor reading comprehension fail to note where I point out that "The ability to continue fighting" and the "will to use that ability" are two different things.
Just because the Krauts were outside Paris in WWII, France still had a numerically superior army and that's before you count the Brits. They COULD have just evacuated government and continued fighting, but they lacked the will to do so and surrendered.

 

[WhiteNight]

Perhaps appropriately, Puck has a new video on whether Russia would ever use nukes to win in Ukraine:

He argues that no it won't happen for two major reasons:

• It would be difficult domestically for Putin to explain. Current messaging is that Russia stronk and they are winning the war. How would he explain taking an action that even brainwashed vatniks realize would be a massive gamble, risking national destruction? He thinks Putin may even get toppled. Hence, every conventional resource, such as total mobilization, which has not been done, would be tried first.
• All nuclear powers would line up against Russia, so that Russia would lose in Ukraine anyway. Existing nuclear powers have a strong interest in non-proliferation, and if one of them uses nukes to win a war and none of the others intervene, every non-nuclear power will realize they need to develop nukes for their own safety because great power balance clearly won't protect them. So, for example, China and India will get off the fence and oppose Russia.

My reaction is that I'm not certain these are the strongest arguments. One factor barely touched on is how nukes would even be used to win in Ukraine. Tactical nukes would not be an instant win condition, and in fact would be difficult to use to make progress. Hitting trenches and military clusters would not gain that much with nukes vs. conventional bombs, and it would create problems for Russia's own troops (and perhaps population). Strategic bombing of cities, well, that could devastate Ukraine, but they'd keep fighting, and the rest of the world would react even more strongly.

Big picture, he says Russia has been ramping up nuclear rhetoric recently not because of any intent to use nukes, but to scare western countries, because their support is ramping up again and Russia's position, which had been improving, may start trending for the worse again.

Puck does add at the end that there is a small chance nukes would be used not to win in Ukraine but to protect Putin personally and his regime. After all, if Putin is himself in danger, he may not care what happens to the rest of Russia. But he also rates this as highly unlikely (but more likely than using nukes to win in Ukraine).

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

Volgograd (Lukoil-Volgogradneftepererabotka) oil refinery gets droned; plant's capacity is 14.8 million tons. 475 km from the frontline. It was also attacked back in the beginning of February 2024.

 

[Abowaffen]

One hour powerpoint of Turtle tanks and copecages.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

NSFW obvs: Meatshield fatnik catches a drone-dropped bomb.

I'm kind of impressed, they actually found a use for their fat shut-in NEETs; it would explain the recent videos of Russians pulling deathfats from their apartments.

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

@WhiteNight

All nuclear powers would line up against Russia, so that Russia would lose in Ukraine anyway. Existing nuclear powers have a strong interest in non-proliferation,

Unfortunately after what the United States did to Libya and didn't do with Ukraine back when Obama was POTUS already been enough for those non-nuclear powers to know the nuclear powers won't keep their legally binding words. Coupled with the none of the nuclear powers' three letter intelligence agencies noticing either India and Pakistan were working on their nuclear weapon programs. Until they like everyone else noticed when both India and Pakistan detonated their test nukes.

 

[Ego]

NSFW obvs: Meatshield fatnik catches a drone-dropped bomb.

I'm kind of impressed, they actually found a use for their fat shut-in NEETs; it would explain the recent videos of Russians pulling deathfats from their apartments.

It really strikes close to home when we see a fellow Kiwibro die.

 

[Red Frida]

It's difficult to see what the advantage of nuking Ukraine would be when much of its weapons aren't manufactured there. I think even India and China would condemn nuking Ukraine in a war that Russia started.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Ukrainian mine-laying drone:

 

[Fuck It We'll Do It Live]

Putin removes Sergei Shoigu as Russia’s defence minister

This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.

 

[Mikoyan]

Ukrainian mine-laying drone:
View attachment 5983796

Scale model RC Gama Goat!

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

It's difficult to see what the advantage of nuking Ukraine would be when much of its weapons aren't manufactured there. I think even India and China would condemn nuking Ukraine in a war that Russia started.

Ukraine have been manufacturing once they had resetup in the western part of the country. Lots of drones as almost anyone with a 3D printer, select parts and HE can build them. Not as much munitions as those need proper facilities with quality control. To be sure they don't blow up where they're not supposed to and blow up where they're supposed to. And mainly refurbishments and repairs of AFVs, some aircraft and other vehicles. As those repair shops weren't all clustered in eastern Ukraine, but have been scattered about.

 

[mindlessobserver]

It's difficult to see what the advantage of nuking Ukraine would be when much of its weapons aren't manufactured there. I think even India and China would condemn nuking Ukraine in a war that Russia started.

Use of WMD's in Ukraine is also the only red line NATO has definitely put down on the conflict. Its been belabored to death before, but while the Budapest Memorandum is about as dead and buried as it can possibly get, the one grasping twitch of life left in it is the western Guarantee to protect Ukraine from nuclear attack.

 

[RodgerDodger]

I'm going to speculate that removing Shoigu is not what winning looks like. I know the Vatniks will disagree. But it is a bit of a bombshell. I saw Konstantin saying that this looks to be the KGB crowd moving to take control of the Military. Their historical rivals.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Its also odd that Shoigu is getting shit canned right as they launch "Kharkiv 2, this time for sure". Its going to be interesting to see what Russia expects to do this time and how it will somehow go better then it did last time when they had full tactical surprise and the Ukrainians weren't watching their border like a hawk.

The approach they are taking to get into Kharkiv is also...odd. Strilecha and Vovchansk are the ass end of nowhere, with no major roads and a fuck huge wilderness between them and anything meaningful. Probably why they've actually managed to push into Ukraine in this direction. I imagine there was not much in their way beyond some very bored territorial guards. Which is bound to change in the coming days. Vovchansk in particular will probably turn into another Mobik Meatgrinder, as its another town with a bisecting river surrounded by fucking marshlands that armored units cannot maneuver in. Meaning approach will have to be some more mass artillery and meat waves.

Maybe the thought process is it will draw off defenders from Chasiv Yar, which seems to be what Russia actually wants atm.

 

[cybertoaster]

Society would not be pushed back to the Stone Age with little left to fight over

In some places it will, the problem is not the radiation but the sheer destruction, we're talking massive infrastructure damage and complete industry collapse. Most nukes target power, fuel and chemical installations, without that you can't do anything, you can't power anything, you can't fuel anything for logistics, you can't grow shit because you can't make fertilizers, you're back to the days of manure and guano when the surviving population is still higher than back then. So its not like your farm will be irradiated and full of giant mutant scorpions but that you wont have anything to work with, you'll be back to plowing the fields with a donkey like in the old days, assuming the city refugees don't kill it for food and ravage your farm that is. That's what most people don't understand about nuclear war, that most of the deaths outside urban centers will be from famine and disease. Governments might survive but it will be skeleton governments that can barely pretend to be in charge, most nuked countries will became de-facto failed states.

And because this will annihilate the northern hemisphere humanity as a whole will go backwards a lot, most tech and expertise will turn to ashes, and this is the optimistic scenario where for example australia wont get nuked despite being part of the five eyes, same with new zealand. If the future of mankind rests on south america and subsaharan africa then god help us all, the bronze age collapse is going to be a joke compared to this.

Don't expect reconstruction to be quick, germany and japan were still in tatters with most major cities reduced to big shanty towns well after WWII, it was only after the marshall plan and the korean war that those countries finally managed to rise from the ashes. So basically outside help, help you wont see in this scenario because its the richest parts of the world that got nuked, the rest scrambling to not collapse too specially africa where most countries are almost entirely dependent on western food aid that would be entirely gone. Maybe you can get south americans to trade food for whatever tech is still intact, as they import most of that.

but, there would be enough destruction to destroy the federal power of governments to wage any war abroad, at least until the domestic situation can be stabilized.

Military bases are priority one for ICBMs right after silos, it will be a miracle if there are any troops left to police the country.

I'm sure a decent chunk of the world's militaries would survive

On global average the ones below the equator should be mostly intact, but those above the equator will be mostly destroyed, except maybe sub crews that weren't in port.

Any major geopolitical conflict would be put on hold for at least twenty years

Nah, small wars will start almost immediately among the unaffected countries, specially in africa were I expect major genocides to start as there's no-one left to stop them and like I said there will be little food left. If you mean in the northern hemisphere then forget about any real wars happening for at least a century.

near zero international trade

Not among surviving countries, for example brazil will essentially be the world's major industrial power after this, assuming the fallout isn't that bad. Trade will continue to of course only a fraction of what it is today.

How would he explain taking an action that even brainwashed vatniks realize would be a massive gamble, risking national destruction?

People who say this really don't understand ruskie psychology, under this mentality all russians should've given up after the initial success of barbarrossa.

He thinks Putin may even get toppled

He will get toppled (and TOPPED) for sure if he loses this war.

Existing nuclear powers have a strong interest in non-proliferation, and if one of them uses nukes to win a war and none of the others intervene, every non-nuclear power will realize they need to develop nukes for their own safety

LMAO there was no bigger signal to other countries that you need nukes to stay safe than ukraine getting invaded after losing their soviet nukes despite being promised by russia that this exact situation would never happen and guarantees from nato that there would be boots on the ground from day one if this happened.

If anything this proves the west germans were right.

China and India will get off the fence and oppose Russia.

Again this bald fuck has zero knowledge of geopolitics, this would be actually good for china because it gives them carte blanche to nuke taiwan, specially if russia doesn't get nuked at all since it means the western nuclear powers wont sacrifice themselves to avenge their non-nuclear allies. Again the same situation west germany feared. And really, would you get nuked to avenge kiev? to avenge taipei? I wouldn't, it fucking retarded.

Ukrainian mine-laying drone:
View attachment 5983796

This war has been the biggest collection of half-assed chintzy inventions in a while...