https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1fjhrnh/mushroom_explosion_at_russian_ammunition/
Sensors detected 2.8 magnitude earthquake lol https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes/quake-info/9611698/mag2quake-Sep-18-2024-BALTIC-STATES-BELARUS-NW-RUSSIA-REGION.html#google_vignette
Xitter thread about the attacked base:
Tonight Ukrainian OWA-UAV's successfully struck and have severely damaged the Toropets Northeast Ammunition Depot which has seen significant expansion since the declassified June 1965 report by the National Photographic Interpretation Center now known as the National Geospatial… pic.twitter.com/sASOM0dA69
— Intelschizo (@Schizointel) September 18, 2024
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I haven't been paying attention. But how has Russia ended up failing this hard? I assumed they would steamroll Ukraine but Ukraine seems to have forced them into a war of attrition that's likely to be quite costly to Russia even if they can outlast Ukraine.
I'm also curious what this means for war going forward. Russia was supposed to have one of the most powerful armies in the world but they are struggling with a poor Eastern European country, and the US cannot seem to be able to deal with insurgents and gorilla fighters. I'm guessing we end up with the same holding back stuff everyone has been doing until two superpowers engage in total war and at that point we are back to using WMDs and purging problematic people groups.
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The goal is to denazify ukraine. Ukrainian men are nazis. So you have them all go to war and get denazified one at a time. There's about 1 million fewer ukies so far, so russia seems to be winning
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The answer is not simple, and there are many misconceptions about this war in the popular discourse.
The main misconception is that Ukraine has a weak army. Yes, they have an African-level GDP, but they still inherited a lot of shit from the USSR. More air defense, more tanks, more artillery, and even more ammunition than all the major Western European militaries combined. In 2014 all this was mostly on paper, they were too corrupt and disorganized to use it, so they struggled even against the "little green men". Since then, however, Poroshenko has reformed the military, and it has paid off big time. There was also a reawakening of patriotism, e.g. almost overnight writers switched from Russian to Ukrainian etc., which helped morale.
BTW, Western European militaries are in really bad state. The US is struggling to supply Ukraine due to politics, Europe is struggling because they don't have shit. I recently saw a comment on /r/neoliberal "what if European militaries are powerful only on paper?". I was like neighbor what the heck are you talking about, they're weak even on paper! Just look at the inventory of any major Western European military. You will see shit like "13 MLRS launchers in service" (France) or zero long-range anti-air batteries (UK). The only thing that is remotely impressive are the air forces, but the issue is there's no fricking ammo. Famously, France and UK ran out of ammo during the first few days of the 2011 Libya campaign. And nothing has been done to fix that since then. Compare the total number of produced French HAMMERs (around 2k) to American JADAMs (around 550k). And BTW, think-tanks say that even those US numbers are too low and should be increased to counter China.
Anyway, so what went wrong for Russia? Significant air support was impossible due to Ukrainian powerful air defenses. Russia's forces used in February were too small, and their plan wasn't great. They went for a decapitation strike, they wanted to take Kyiv ASAP in a hope that shocked Ukrainians will surrender. They didn't actually defeat the Ukrainian units on the way to Kyiv, they merely bypassed them. Which means they had enemy on their rear, constantly mounting ambushes. This was completely unsustainable, so in April they had to leave the Kyiv oblast entirely. Vatniks call it "a brilliant feint". Also Russians logistics were shit. A good example of that are videos of Russian soldiers refueling on Ukrainian civilian gas stations. Also the infamous 64km-long Kyiv convoy of doom.
That said, Ukrainians also had their fair share of frick-ups. The collapse in the south was so bad, that the only possible explanation is treason. The terrain favored the defenders, and yet the Russians even crossed the fricking Dnipro river in Kherson, almost unopposed. Ukrainians didn't even bother to blow up the bridges.
After Russian initial assault failed and they evacuated from Kyiv, the situation was really bad for them. Ukrainians had the numerical advantage and they continued to push. It resulted in a complete collapse of Russian frontlines in Kharkiv (and to a lesser extent Kherson). This prompted Putin to stop pretending that everything is going fine and make some unpopular decisions, that is, the mobilization and also he asked Iran for weapons. This helped to stabilize the frontlines and the war entered the "stable" phase. No major city has changed hands since then. The Russians are slowly advancing by throwing (and losing) an unimaginable amount of armor at the Ukrainians. As of today, according to Oryx, they have lost 3376 tanks and 4548 IFVs.
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Okay so the tldr version is basically Russia was overconfident and thought Ukraine would fold immediately like Afghanistan did to the Taliban. Ukraine actually has a lot of weapons systems both from the USSR and NATO and with revitalized patriotism pushed back Russia who had to scramble to get itself together. Now that Russia has started to take it seriously it has turned into a meat grinder of attrition, which Russia is winning but at a high cost. Am I correct?
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More or less. But it should be noted that the frontlines are moving at a snail's pace, a few kilometers per month, and that Russia's current manpower situation isn't as good as it could be, because Putin refuses to do a second mobilization round. Supposedly because the first time around it caused ~1 million people to leave the country.
Instead, they rely on signing volunteers for obscene amounts of money. Signing bonuses are increased every few days, which signals declining interest. The bonus for the Moscow region is ~2M RUB (~20k USD). The offer isn't limited to Moscow residents, a guy from Shitholansk, Siberia can sign up wherever he wants.
There's the question of how long Russia's stockpile of armor will last, and how long its economy will be able to hold up. I have no idea what the answer is, but I suspect that Putin is waiting until the US elections to see what happens. If US support continues and there are no signs of Ukrainian collapse, I think he may begin to move toward ending the war (for now).
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That's what pisses me off about people who don't take this seriously. If Ukraine fell easily every non NATO country in the European area would be free game for Russia. If you think that wouldn't effect American wellbeing you are beyond r-slurred.
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So literally just Moldova?
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Well, now after it just got 4 more members.
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this take on airplanes is slurred though. The Western war in Irak 1 Irak 2 and Afghanistan in terms of air was fricking supremacist. The whole point of the Kurst successs is that they applied the NATO tactics of "move hide shoot" instead of the Soviet "lmao just run at the enemy across an open field" as they did in the Eastern front
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The Russians certainly aren't a "good"military by Western standards, but on paper they aren't totally awful. Their biggest capabilities gaps aren't surprising, in that they have shitty logistics (literally don't even use pallets lmao) and that they never really developed an air force capable of doing the advanced SEAD missions and crushing close air support the US has honed over decades. It's unsurprising that the Russians bogged themselves down and have resorted to pushing troops onto a meat grinder stubbornly trying to break a hole in enemy defences with brute force, as that's what they did in WWII and Chechnya. At the end of the day, it's really hard to get people out of holes in the ground if you can't vaporize them with impunity from 30,000 feet, and Russia just doesn't care about casualties, which are literally WWI-tier at this point.
That doesn't mean the west doesn't need to worry. Ukraine has showed that a war like this requires enormous amounts of ammo, which the US realized they can't build enough of and the Euros are completely incapable of doing so, massive air defence networks, which the US probably doesn't have enough, and the proliferation of drones. Basically from the squad level on up, you need drones, jammers, anti-drone weapons which we don't have enough of, and every armored vehicle needs anti-drone measures.
If Russia did decide to attack Europe, the Euros could grind them into dust- for about a week, and then they'd be out of ammo and get crushed. If the US got involved, our arsenal would be depleted rapidly, and could probably stop Russia dead, but China is a different story. The US needs to R E T V R N to big operations and build up those cold war stockpiles of dumb munitions, invest extremely heavily in millions of drones and drone countermeasures, otherwise the next war is going to be a bloodbath
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My autism has reached the point where I read "bogged down" and my mind immediately went to
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Mommy is soooo proud of you, sweaty. Let's put this sperg out up on the fridge with all your other failures.
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Basically winning a war now while also trying not to go for just complete annihilation seems super difficult with current technology.
Kind of like world war one where military strategists were shocked at the stale mate because the trench warfare was not at all expected but the weaponry tech and ability to kill had way outpaced the transportation technology so it just got super bogged down quickly.
Also Russia is actually winning right now and probably in their best position since early on in the war that's why you are seeing the escalation by Ukraine. Ukraine is out of men and slowly collapsing.
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bro people are not expendable to the wider society. Putin called for many more soldiers just now. If this was a game of RIsk, sure.
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we are talking about russians here
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Holy shit what a cope lmao
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Ukraine's biggest issue is lack of ammo at this point. They have far better artillery than the Russians and their most successful strategy has been to win the artillery battles against massed Russian guns, so that the Russians can't saturate Ukrainian positions and Ukraine has a relative firepower advantage to repel assaults and weaken Russian formations massing to attack.
However, the west can't supply enough 155mm, so Ukraine can't play to their biggest strength, hence the invasion of Kursk to get a big negotiating chip
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I mean, it's par for the course, no?
Russia collapsed from the effort of fighting ww1, they only won ww2 because of massive aid from the US, they lost in Afghanistan & Chechnya.
I would be surprised if they didn't fail miserably in Ukraine.
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YOU NO UNDERSTAND! Russia is against the entire globohomo world, and fighting alongside the kohol jews (I'm not a nazi btw)
Even the United Space Federation has joined forces with the homojews to team up against Russia, because Russia is the last bastion of white culture and masculinity.
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