Russian Special Military Operation in the Ukraine - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

[Procopius]

Russian military recruitment ad poking fun of they/them Western armies. With subtitles.
View attachment 6364632

(it's a riff on a Russian song on what boys and girls are made of, similar to the one in English).

How many decades of Bruce Springsteen and McDonalds will it take for ordinary Russians to start to feel inferior to Americans? All those years of Cold War propaganda have gone up in smoke in the last two years.

With Russia having a population roughly five times that of Ukraine, a simple calculation shows Ukraine must achieve a 5:1 kill ratio to make their war effort sustainable. If the opposite were true, if five Ukrainians are dying for each Russian, then over time the war is untenable.

Mediazona updated their count on 30th August by 4,640 to 66,471. The worst day for recorded Russian deaths remains the 2022 New Year's eve party that was bombed where 242 were killed. Meanwhile the daily Russian numbers of Ukrainian casualtiest hit over 2,000 when the Kursk attack began, has rarely dropped below that since, and regularly reaches 2,500. The total for July and August is just shy of 150,000. That's equivalent to taking out the entire armies of two from Britain, Germany and France. What army could take those casualty numbers and still be fighting?

Invading Kursk is clearly an act of desperation so it doesn't need to make sense as a good plan - that's what desperation means. But there needs to be some logic and it's been hard to discern one in such a bone-headed move as this.

They were losing in the Donbass anyway. Isn't the definition of insanity to keep trying what hasn't worked before? What other options did they have to try something different. Invade Poland?

 

[Overly Serious]

They were losing in the Donbass anyway. Isn't the definition of insanity to keep trying what hasn't worked before? What other options did they have to try something different. Invade Poland?

You're not contradicting me. They were losing on the Eastern front, that's part of what made Kiev desperate. Along with a probably upcoming Trump administration that didn't want to burn more money on foreign wars, collapsing state finance and increasing causalities and collapsing morale. I don't know why you got from my post that I was suggesting anything else - they were desperate and are trying desperate measures. It is still worthwhile to know why they think any given desperate measure might work. The idea of it being an attempt to fail enough that the West must come in and save his administration is an interesting one. Plausible, frankly.

 

[demicolon]

Okay so it's been almost a month since the Kursk Kerfuffle. Last time I checked, they were battling over Sudha, now they captured Sudha and advancing despite casualties. Not a good look, especially since you can't use the excuse that mines are everywhere for the snails pace of Russian advances. Sad!

 

[Happy Camper]

Sadly I have a job to go to these days and can't follow the conflict as closely as I'd like to but listening to how the media over here portrays things this is pretty much what it feels like. Yes, even after basically everyone that matters has conceded that taking a few hundred square kilometers of empty farmlands in rural Russia isn't the biggest deal since Napoleon entered Moscow.

On a general aside, I hope the lot of you are doing well. I miss being able to post on the forums more regularly (not just here but elsewhere as well not to mention my M@TI backlog) but you know how these things go. This is honestly the friendliest place I've had to discuss the conflict.

Okay so it's been almost a month since the Kursk Kerfuffle. Last time I checked, they were battling over Sudha, now they captured Sudha and advancing despite casualties. Not a good look, especially since you can't use the excuse that mines are everywhere for the snails pace of Russian advances. Sad!

Dunno, seems like the Ukrainian offensive has barely moved at all after they ran out of mechanized units whereas Russia has been advancing quite rapidly since Ukraine moved its reserve over to Kursk. The channels I do follow (admittedly sporadically) seem to agree on this and it makes sense to me at least. Ukraine's best brigades were sent there and a lot of the resources for the offensive have to be taken from elsewhere which lines up even with western reporting about shortages throughout the year. You should also not only consider the amount of ground being traded but also the quality of it so to speak. The territory Russia has been forced out of (with the exception of one modest town) are empty fields and hamlets in very rural localities whereas Ukraine's been losing much larger locations with more strategic value than Bumsville #5297.

At least to my eyes - and I'm an amateur so feel free to correct me - it seems like Ukraine gambled on making an offensive into an undefended area of Russia in the hopes of improving their situation elsewhere. And again at least to my eyes, being stuck in open fields in rural Russia for the better part of a month midst constant air strikes it seems like that gamble came up snake eyes. On one hand I can actually see the logic on it since simply waiting in trenches to be shelled isn't a path to victory, but I really wish for the sake of the Ukrainian people that their leaders would stop gambling with the lives of their men and seek peace, even if it'll be on terms less favorable than the ones that were on the table in 2022. They don't deserve to be massacred like this for what seems to be a lost cause in my opinion.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

The idea of it being an attempt to fail enough that the West must come in and save his administration is an interesting one. Plausible, frankly.

Except they succeeded, most likely against their own expectations. Gerasimov's false reports to Putin may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise because they ruined the plan you described and made Zelensky look like a naughty boy who torpedoed the talks everyone from Xi to Biden and the pope were pushing for.

 

[The giant penis of doom]

I can't imagine what would be required to make a submersible aircraft carrier but it would definitely be a terrifying ship

Indeed terrifying. Good torps, good AA, and can build and house a shitton of planes.

I wonder if Russia is secretly building one? They have the motivation and capacity to do so in secret.

The motivation to build? Not really. What would be the point?
The motivation to do it in secret obviously, but how do you imagine the capacity? Any such drydock would be visible from space. Unless they create a giant underground facility with locks to the oceans, but that sounds even more ludicrous.
And such a giant investment would be found out on other intelligence channels, glowies are everywhere.

 

[Overly Serious]

I think the notion of a submersible aircraft carrier is a bit Avengers, sorry everybody. I'm still unconvinced that in an age of hypersonic missiles that normal aircraft carriers are viable anymore. They're a tool of force projection that was useful for the USA to threaten non-peer powers given US military doctrine is 'establish air superiority, air strike everybody'. Let them move their air superiority to places they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

But Russia doesn't care about force projection - they've no intent to invade far flung regions of the world, their focus is largely defensive. And air craft carriers against a modern country like China or Russia - I just don't see them staying afloat for that long. Well, they're very hard to actually sink given their design, but lets say I don't see them being fully functional for very long. One or two mild hits to the runway and they're at least partially fucked.

EDIT: It's slightly sad though because my avatar is a crew member from the submersible jet launcher in the TV show UFO. But Sci Fi is probably where submersible aircraft carriers should remain. I mean the entire point of submarines is secrecy anyway. Hard to imagine you couldn't spot an aircraft carrier sized one which also wouldn't be able to go nearly as deep I imagine.

 

[Feline Supremacist]

Russia's new migrant problem - "No hablo Ruso"

South American illegal immigrant, caught in the direction of Toretsk. Catholic Charities* on suicide watch. Link
*Catholic Charities actively assists and encourages illegals entering though the US southern border

 

[Yak-130 Mitten]

Yes, even after basically everyone that matters has conceded that taking a few hundred square kilometers of empty farmlands in rural Russia isn't the biggest deal since Napoleon entered Moscow

Napoleon in Moscow wasnt even that big of a deal. The city wasnt even the capital of Russia at the time. Napoleon just hoped for a favorable peace treaty from Alexander I, for some fucking reason thinking that taking a non-capital city would prompt an empire with full armies in fields to just surrender. We all know how it ended. Russians just shrugged it off.

Epic History TV has a great series on Napoleon, still ongoing.

 

[Male Idiot]

I can't see them being comfortable with the idea that those same people might come back. Last thing the UK govt wants is a native population comfortable with armed resistance.

Well I figured they realised that those chuddies won't be coming back, save for a bodybag. So there would be no survivors, or if they surrendered, they would be left with the Russians holding the bag.
It would annoy Russia, deplete its ammunition somewhat, but would rid Abdul Rapedeep and his paki pals of all those norfchuds permanently.

 

[Fapcop]

Okay so it's been almost a month since the Kursk Kerfuffle. Last time I checked, they were battling over Sudha, now they captured Sudha and advancing despite casualties. Not a good look, especially since you can't use the excuse that mines are everywhere for the snails pace of Russian advances. Sad!

Why exactly should the Russians sweep in there ASAP and clear it out?

Is there some sort of territory held-bonus every December I’m not aware of?

Sorry, but too many people think they know war because they’ve git hundreds of hours in C&C and HOI.

Now currently the Ukrainians are in control of a handful of villages near the border, and a bunch of forests.

Sure, Russia could do exactly what Kiev had been hoping they’d do: Urgebtly transfer forces from where the war is exactly won or lost: The Donbas.

They could also gather up as many relatively inexperienced conscripts and recruits, throw them at the Ukrainians and get it back, at a high cost of lives and materiel. The Afghanistan method. (Remember how that one ended?)

Or… They could shrug at the fact that the Hohols have control over some evacuated villages, keep throwing FABs and drones at them, fuck up their supply lines and keep taking out Ukrainians as they get transferred to the Kursk direction to try and stop the methodical but slow Russian advances.

Pretty sure the latter is the winning move. There is a good rule when it comes to war that can be summed up as: Don’t interrupt your opponent, when they do something utterly retarded.

And sending your best, elite units to sit in a forest belt 10 km inside Russia and slowly get droned into obliteration is definitely a retard move.

 

[Fapcop]

Napoleon in Moscow wasnt even that big of a deal. The city wasnt even the capital of Russia at the time.

As a Nerd when it comes to history, I’d like to push back on that a little. Yes, technically Peter the Great had moved the capital to St Petersburg.

Moscow however was a spiritual capital of sorts, and center of the elite merchant class and old aristocracy.

Conquering Moscow would arguably be a bigger blow against Russia and the Czars divine right to rule than St. Petersburg.

(Also, Napoleon was hoping to take out the Russian army in a big battle, and got “lured” deep into Russia. Moscow was a great place to stay the winter and regroup while attrition grinded the Russian army away. A good plan, until the city burned down.)

 

[Meh123]

Vert well, but it does sound cool. Imagine a giant ship that cannot be seen until it's ready to attack and is capable of deploying airplanes and troop boats at any coast with little warning. If it had a name known and feared and stalked the coast of NATO countries, striking with no warning then quickly vanishing.

Let me present you

 

[demicolon]

Napoleon in Moscow wasnt even that big of a deal.

Yeah, such a nothingburger it was burned to the frozen ground to prevent its capture by the French.

Or… They could shrug at the fact that the Hohols have control over some evacuated villages, keep throwing FABs and drones at them, fuck up their supply lines and keep taking out Ukrainians as they get transferred to the Kursk direction to try and stop the methodical but slow Russian advances.

I know that Battle of Kursk II: Electric Bogaloo is little but a PR move to prop Ukraine Army's morale and show off to the West, but 200k civilian refugees, an inoperational NPP (not notepad++) and snails-pace of the reaction doesn't make Russia look good. Their goal was to humiliate Russia and they achieved that. To me it proves that RA is good at artillery attrition but is very bad in terms of reacting to unexpected events. Not a good look but whatever.

Let me present you
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Ooh, is that from Supreme Commander? I liked Total Annihiliation more but only because I couldn't afford a better PC.

 

[Susanna]

Let me present you
View attachment 6367317

How is that better than just throwing cruise missiles out of the torpedo tubes? A drone carrier would be spotted easily, the real version at least has a slim chance to get away.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

Their goal was to humiliate Russia and they achieved that.

Not the first time, really. Sinking "Moskva" was another humiliaton off the top of my head, so was blowing up Kremlin with the drone and I am sure that I will come up with a dozen of other examples if I look. Except I am not sure how humiliation translates into any tangible victory aside from a PR one, and Russia and most Russians are beyond caring about Ukrainian PR at this point.

 

[Betonhaus]

Why exactly should the Russians sweep in there ASAP and clear it out?

Is there some sort of territory held-bonus every December I’m not aware of?

Sorry, but too many people think they know war because they’ve git hundreds of hours in C&C and HOI.

Now currently the Ukrainians are in control of a handful of villages near the border, and a bunch of forests.

Sure, Russia could do exactly what Kiev had been hoping they’d do: Urgebtly transfer forces from where the war is exactly won or lost: The Donbas.

They could also gather up as many relatively inexperienced conscripts and recruits, throw them at the Ukrainians and get it back, at a high cost of lives and materiel. The Afghanistan method. (Remember how that one ended?)

Or… They could shrug at the fact that the Hohols have control over some evacuated villages, keep throwing FABs and drones at them, fuck up their supply lines and keep taking out Ukrainians as they get transferred to the Kursk direction to try and stop the methodical but slow Russian advances.

Pretty sure the latter is the winning move. There is a good rule when it comes to war that can be summed up as: Don’t interrupt your opponent, when they do something utterly retarded.

And sending your best, elite units to sit in a forest belt 10 km inside Russia and slowly get droned into obliteration is definitely a retard move.

If anything it's a genius move for Russia. Ukraine is committed to diverting much needed troops to a front that is cheap for Russia to maintain. They will keep sending troops there because the PR wins is demanded of them. By NATO standards Russia looks weak by not kicking them out, but by objective strategy the invasion is meaningless. The only thing it does is injure Russia's pride in the eyes of America and its allies, and they already have dismissive views of Russia so they're irrelevant.

It's different priorities. America and its allies are so obsessed with saving face that they are willing to lose their necks over it, while Russia is willing to lose face to save their necks.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

Let me present you
View attachment 6367317

nice water

 

[SaidNoOneEver]

To me it proves that RA is good at artillery attrition but is very bad in terms of reacting to unexpected events. Not a good look but whatever.

If Mexico invaded the US with 20k or whatever heavily armed troops and armor they'd get a lot further inside the US than Ukraine got into Russia and likely be there just as long as Ukraine has held out.

 

[namelesstacotruck]

Doesnt it also clear up some legal issues that required it to be declared a "special military operation"?

Putin can now go gloves off with no legal objections (including satisfying Russians nuclear defensive doctrine rules) as long as those forces stay inside no?