Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Rajma

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Not too bad, when those additional 6 NASAMS and 3 IRIS-T systems will be delivered in the upcoming months that percentage might enter into 90+% territory.
 

The United

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Surprised the Russians still have enough missiles to keep these attacks up, especially given that most get shot down. Seems like an act of late stage desperation to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure before the worst of winter sets in. Either that or they've simply been reduced to pointless terrorism.
It's not exactly surprising though because the western intelligence estimations are not always accurate. Plus spouting shites on internet by various people can make it worse.

It's why I said, 1 to 6 ratio or whatever men power loss should not be used to predict the combat capability of the Russians.
 
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Raoul

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It's not exactly surprising though because the western intelligence estimations are not always accurate. Plus spouting shites on internet by various people can make it worse.

It's why I said, 1 to 6 ratio or whatever men power loss should not be used to predict the combat capability of the Russians. There is still a long way to go for the war to be finished sadly.
The two topics aren't really related to one another. Its entirely possible the Russians are expending their remaining volleys of misses while also having accurately lost the around the same amount of soldiers as has been reported. I suppose you could also make the case they are desperately heaving whatever they can at Ukraine in the absence of competent replenishments of troops. The strategy appears to be to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure to make them miserable over winter.
 

The United

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The two topics aren't really related to one another. Its entirely possible the Russians are expending their remaining volleys of misses while also having accurately lost the around the same amount of soldiers as has been reported. I suppose you could also make the case they are desperately heaving whatever they can at Ukraine in the absence of competent replenishments of troops. The strategy appears to be to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure to make them miserable over winter.
The point was though we are definitely in our own bubble with the information.

People kept saying their efforts would be collapsed along with their economy months ago.

We are definitely underestimating their efforts to stay in the war.
 

Raoul

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The point was though we are definitely in our own bubble with the information.

People kept saying their efforts would be collapsed along with their economy months ago.

We are definitely underestimating their efforts to stay in the war.
I don't think we are to be honest. No one is expecting Putin to back down, in fact if his behavior in recent years was an indicator, he was expected to double down because appearing weak to his domestic constituents was never going to happen.
 

Raoul

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I wonder if there's no way to attempt to shoot them down using launchers within Romania?
There is, although the Moldovans may have a problem with it since it would make them look like their airspace was up for grabs for NATO and Russia to use against one another.
 

The United

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I don't think we are to be honest. No one is expecting Putin to back down, in fact if his behavior in recent years was an indicator, he was expected to double down because appearing weak to his domestic constituents was never going to happen.
For sure and more suffering for the people of Ukraine, unfortunately.
 

the hea

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I wonder if there's no way to attempt to shoot them down using launchers within Romania?
Due to the earths curvature and topography the tracking radars needs to be very close to the tragets to be able to see low flying objects like cruise missiles. Russian cruise missiles like the KH-101 and Kalibr fly at an altitude of about 50m, I would guess the radar would need to be within 10km to be able to track them.
 

MTF

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There is, although the Moldovans may have a problem with it since it would make them look like their airspace was up for grabs for NATO and Russia to use against one another.
Yep, that I can see.
Romania is not getting involved.
I dunno... they're already a significant supply route for NATO weapons getting delivered to Ukraine. They're a full NATO member too, so they wouldn't quite be doing it on their own.
Due to the earths curvature and topography the tracking radars needs to be very close to the tragets to be able to see low flying objects like cruise missiles. Russian cruise missiles like the KH-101 and Kalibr fly at an altitude of about 50m, I would guess the radar would need to be within 10km to be able to track them.
Right, I forgot about the low-flying aspect of the cruise missiles. I guess airborne systems can detect them, but then providing a lock for a SAM missile to track is a whole other issue.
 

GazTheLegend

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The point was though we are definitely in our own bubble with the information.

People kept saying their efforts would be collapsed along with their economy months ago.

We are definitely underestimating their efforts to stay in the war.
I don't think anyone is underestimating their efforts to stay in the war. I just think it's an ongoing sunk cost fallacy at this point on the part of the Russian leadership because it's clearly complete madness to continue.

If anything it smacks of absolute desperation to mobilise 300,000 people and start DESTROYING the infrastructure of parts of a country they say belong to them. What is Russia actually going to get out of this war once it's done, really? Absolute pariah status, a wrecked country full of 40million potential insurgents that would ENJOY -killing- Russians for dozens if not hundreds of years afterwards? A smashed economy, that can no longer do business with any country that isn't an authoritarian shithole?

To the average Russian maybe they don't care because presumably their standards of living will barely change there's so much corruption in tptb, but once the UK and Europeans sort out their energy infrastructure - and we will, we have a fusion plant being built and it really could be a game changer, and by this time next year alternative sources will undoubtedly have been built, we won't suffer forever - and then all these power games will have been for nothing.
 

Rajma

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For sure and more suffering for the people of Ukraine, unfortunately.
Ukrainians are overwhelmingly prepared for it though as they know only complete Russian capitulation will ensure their safety and prosperity at this stage long-term.
At least not the typical propeller drone like a Bayraktar. The calculated speed matches a typical cruise missile, but also the travelling speed of those bombers.

However Ukraine does possess some old jet powered Tu-141 reconnaissance drones, which could in theory carry a warhead for a suicide mission and would fly at that speed, so a modified Ukrainian drone is indeed a possibility, and considering that Ukraine gets a lot of intel from NATO as well as from their more modern drones this would be a useful way to bin this old stuff.
Highly speculative at this stage but this what you were referring to earlier today:
 

Simbo

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The point was though we are definitely in our own bubble with the information.

People kept saying their efforts would be collapsed along with their economy months ago.

We are definitely underestimating their efforts to stay in the war.
There are many different bubbles of information clearly, especially within "western media".
 

goalscholes

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I don't think anyone is underestimating their efforts to stay in the war. I just think it's an ongoing sunk cost fallacy at this point on the part of the Russian leadership because it's clearly complete madness to continue.

If anything it smacks of absolute desperation to mobilise 300,000 people and start DESTROYING the infrastructure of parts of a country they say belong to them. What is Russia actually going to get out of this war once it's done, really? Absolute pariah status, a wrecked country full of 40million potential insurgents that would ENJOY -killing- Russians for dozens if not hundreds of years afterwards? A smashed economy, that can no longer do business with any country that isn't an authoritarian shithole?

To the average Russian maybe they don't care because presumably their standards of living will barely change there's so much corruption in tptb, but once the UK and Europeans sort out their energy infrastructure - and we will, we have a fusion plant being built and it really could be a game changer, and by this time next year alternative sources will undoubtedly have been built, we won't suffer forever - and then all these power games will have been for nothing.
Isn't the fusion plant a prototype? Not sure it'll be providing significant power for decades. We might be beaming energy from space before then.

Your overall point still stands though that Russia's course is one of significant decline: an aging population which refuses to modernise, and funded by fossil fuels which are owned by oligarchs who are happy hoarding all the wealth. Unfortunately, crumbling empires that refuse to look honestly at themselves are often the most dangerous, as this war has proved.
 

TwoSheds

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There are many different bubbles of information clearly, especially within "western media".
Yeah like US, UK, France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Holland...almost like they're different countries or something. The government don't want you to think about that though, they want to keep you stupid.
 

TwoSheds

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Isn't the fusion plant a prototype? Not sure it'll be providing significant power for decades. We might be beaming energy from space before then.

Your overall point still stands though that Russia's course is one of significant decline: an aging population which refuses to modernise, and funded by fossil fuels which are owned by oligarchs who are happy hoarding all the wealth. Unfortunately, crumbling empires that refuse to look honestly at themselves are often the most dangerous, as this war has proved.
Yep, it's not to say we shouldn't be looking at fusion energy but the odds of that being what gets us to net zero are absolutely miniscule.
 

The United

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There are many different bubbles of information clearly, especially within "western media".
Our own bubble means we only hear from one side of the conflict mostly. I mean it is not exactly hard to understand what I mean there.

And, I am talking about the combat and war news specifically.
 

Rajma

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Couldn’t have written any better myself. Good thread. We need to pressure our politicians as much as possible.
 

Krakenzero

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Our own bubble means we only hear from one side of the conflict mostly. I mean it is not exactly hard to understand what I mean there.

And, I am talking about the combat and war news specifically.
I'd say most of what is discussed in here concerning the war is at least contrasted with ukranian and russian sources from the front before published. Of course there are exceptions.

Concerning ammo and striking capabilities, I don't remember any war ending because of one side running out of them. Bullets and missiles always find a way as long as someone is willing to pay for them. If anyone thought so, it was a naive take.

As far as I know wars end for 3 main reasons:
A) One side accomplishes all of its goals, B) One side has a crushing superiority so the other sues for peace in order to not get crushed, and C) war fatigue from one or both sides result in peace talks. IMO Russia haven't got A, has failed in achieving B and is now bombing mainly to get C going.
 

The Firestarter

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Am I missing something here or is Ukraine now in the business of stealth technology , or they have found some backdoor for the C-x00 SA radars. Because if what they say is true, the Bairaktars couldn't make it through the networked defences in the later stage of the war, but here a UAV managed to hit a fecking strategic base hundreds of km intro Russia. Either way, unbelievably embarrassing for Putin.
 

stefan92

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Am I missing something here or is Ukraine now in the business of stealth technology , or they have found some backdoor for the C-x00 SA radars. Because if what they say is true, the Bairaktars couldn't make it through the networked defences in the later stage of the war, but here a UAV managed to hit a fecking strategic base hundreds of km intro Russia. Either way, unbelievably embarrassing for Putin.
Russia claims that they actually shot down the drones and that it was just some debris that damaged the parked planes. Considering the apparently small damage this seems plausible to me.

In this case it was most likely a bit of Russian incompetence, they simply didn't expect such strikes and reacted a bit to slow to fully prevent damage.
 

The United

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I'd say most of what is discussed in here concerning the war is at least contrasted with ukranian and russian sources from the front before published. Of course there are exceptions.

Concerning ammo and striking capabilities, I don't remember any war ending because of one side running out of them. Bullets and missiles always find a way as long as someone is willing to pay for them. If anyone thought so, it was a naive take.

As far as I know wars end for 3 main reasons:
A) One side accomplishes all of its goals, B) One side has a crushing superiority so the other sues for peace in order to not get crushed, and C) war fatigue from one or both sides result in peace talks. IMO Russia haven't got A, has failed in achieving B and is now bombing mainly to get C going.
We rarely presented news from Russian sources, let alone any credible sources.

@harm had to debunk many of them that were posted here. Then there are those who believe that the Russians will tell the world that they are having 1000 of them getting killed or injured every day, and things get complicated.

And according to the sources we read, you would get a picture of a million UKR soldiers fighting against 500k Russians, with 600 of them or so losing every day over there for 10 months. You would wonder how the Russians could even stay there at all, let alone do whatever they are doing now.

I agree with your points. It is just that people don't seem to like it when you question the common sense of some of the overblown figures.

Don't get me wrong, I would get excited if those figures were true because it means the war can be over soon. It is just that after awhile, it looks like this thread is filling up with feel-good stuff only.
 

Krakenzero

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We rarely presented news from Russian sources, let alone any credible sources.

@harm had to debunk many of them that were posted here. Then there are those who believe that the Russians will tell the world that they are having 1000 of them getting killed or injured every day, and things get complicated.

And according to the sources we read, you would get a picture of a million UKR soldiers fighting against 500k Russians, with 600 of them or so losing every day over there for 10 months. You would wonder how the Russians could even stay there at all, let alone do whatever they are doing now.

I agree with your points. It is just that people don't seem to like it when you question the common sense of some of the overblown figures.

Don't get me wrong, I would get excited if those figures were true because it means the war can be over soon. It is just that after awhile, it looks like this thread is filling up with feel-good stuff only.
Bar the guy who admitted tens of pages ago that is blatantly doing propaganda for Ukraine, I'd say that the rest of the sources posted here come from either official international media or Twitter accounts that verify their own information through cross check with russian sources and/or visual confirmation. In a modern war this is as good as it gets regarding information, and that's why I come here to get it.

On death counts: there are reasonably credible sources that the russian death count in places like Bahkmut is pretty high. In any case, I think actions are stronger than words and the fact that Russia ordered a partial mobilization of their civilians about 6 months after going to war with about 200,000 soldiers speaks for itself.

I don't think there are a million ukranian soldiers, as the official number before the war I think was about 200,000. However, I do think there's at least 1 million ukranians actively working in defending their territory. Lots of them are probably engineers, doctors, truck drivers or provide logistics/resources in some other way. When you are fully mobilized defending your country from the beginning these kind of things matter. That's an advantage that Russia doesn't have and it probably reflects in the battlefield and in the death count.

If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that the UA would have 35.000 to 40.000 KIA (about 120-150 a day) and the RA 80.000 to 100.000 (about 300-350 a day). That is considering both the invader/invadee ratio, the way both armies fight (RA with a more direct approach while the UA is understandably more cautious and attrition based) and armies only (no civilians, which would of course vastly increase Ukraine's death count). However, these numbers don't tell the whole story as there are a lot of other factors in play, like Russian military reserves being considerably bigger (meaning they can keep losing forces at a higher rate for a longer time), UA having the home advantage in being able to recruit, heal the wounded, regroup and mobilize forces faster than the RA, etc.

It's easy to lose perspective, but what the UA has been doing is incredible. In February almost no one thought they would last longer than a month, let alone have a good shot at winning. And they have kept beating the odds every step of the way. Not even a couple of months ago the discussion was if Kherson could be liberated by Christmas, before the really cold winter. And it happened seven (!) weeks earlier. Maybe that's why is so easy to get carried away. And that was not a feel good story, that's just what happened. Hopefully the good news keep coming.
 
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The United

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Bar the guy who admitted tens of pages ago that is blatantly doing propaganda for Ukraine, I'd say that the rest of the sources posted here come from either official international media or Twitter accounts that verify their own information through cross check with russian sources and/or visual confirmation. In a modern war this is as good as it gets regarding information, and that's why I come here to get it.

On death counts: there are reasonably credible sources that the russian death count in places like Bahkmut is pretty high. In any case, I think actions are stronger than words and the fact that Russia ordered a partial mobilization of their civilians about 6 months after going to war with about 200,000 soldiers speaks for itself.

I don't think there are a million ukranian soldiers, as the official number before the war I think was about 200,000. However, I do think there's at least 1 million ukranians actively working in defending their territory. Lots of them are probably engineers, doctors, truck drivers or provide logistics/resources in some other way. When you are fully mobilized defending your country from the beginning these kind of things matter. That's an advantage that Russia doesn't have and it probably reflects in the battlefield and in the death count.

If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that the UA would have 35.000 to 40.000 KIA (about 120-150 a day) and the RA 80.000 to 100.000 (about 300-350 a day). That is considering both the invader/invadee ratio, the way both armies fight (RA with a more direct approach while the UA is understandably more cautious and attrition based) and armies only (no civilians, which would of course vastly increase Ukraine's death count). However, these numbers don't tell the whole story as there are a lot of other factors in play, like Russian military reserves being considerably bigger (meaning they can keep losing forces at a higher rate for a longer time), UA having the home advantage in being able to recruit, heal the wounded, regroup and mobilize forces faster than the RA, etc.

It's easy to lose perspective, but what the UA has been doing is incredible. In February almost no one thought they would last longer than a month, let alone have a good shot at winning. And they have kept beating the odds every step of the way. Not even a couple of months ago the discussion was if Kherson could be liberated by Christmas, before the really cold winter. And it happened seven (!) weeks earlier. Maybe that's why is so easy to get carried away. And that was not a feel good story, that's just what happened. Hopefully the good news keep coming.
Agreed. And, they keep surprising everyone with their creativities and capabilities.
 

Rajma

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Maybe instead they should lobby to provide more advanced weapons that can end this war faster without needing to engage into this artillery war? Or they expect soldiers with rifles to liberate territories by going up against artillery shells? It’s literally a byproduct of their nonsensical constraints they have put on Ukraine.
 

harms

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While Latvia can do anything it wants in its country I can’t stress enough how idiotic this decision is if we consider the eventual defeat of Putin’s regime (not only in Ukraine but in Russia as well) as our collective global goal. Same as with the Russian branch of BBC — they keep creating bureaucratic issues for its journalists (and if they’ll have to relocate to, say, London, they’ll have to drastically cut the staff down).

TV Rain should’ve been more thorough, they do make a lot of technical mistakes (maybe it’s because they’re short on staff) and the things like Crimea’s map, while being an obvious oversight, rightly provoke a reaction from Ukraine & all the powers that support it. But they’ve been covering this war 24/7, exposing Russia’s lies, its war crimes etc., they’re not some hidden agents of Putin’s propaganda.
 

Rajma

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While Latvia can do anything it wants in its country I can’t stress enough how idiotic this decision is if we consider the eventual defeat of Putin’s regime (not only in Ukraine but in Russia as well) as our collective global goal. Same as with the Russian branch of BBC — they keep creating bureaucratic issues for its journalists (and if they’ll have to relocate to, say, London, they’ll have to drastically cut the staff down).

TV Rain should’ve been more thorough, they do make a lot of technical mistakes (maybe it’s because they’re short on staff) and the things like Crimea’s map, while being an obvious oversight, rightly provoke a reaction from Ukraine & all the powers that support it. But they’ve been covering this war 24/7, exposing Russia’s lies, its war crimes etc., they’re not some hidden agents of Putin’s propaganda.
I think you’re wrong, the goal shouldn’t be to defeat Putin regime instead we need to defeat a fundamental element Russizm on which the Putin regime and country has been built and for that you need to be showing hard truths about their society and not caring for the conditions of “their boys” in the trenches under Bakhmut.