Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

(Mar 26, 2022 12:40 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]This really belonged on a thread CC started recently but I missed the chance to post.. so please bear that in mind.

England hasn't been invaded for almost a thousand years - America not for a while. Compare with Ukraine which is and has been on the front line throughout its history (<- convenient even if not entirely true). In any English football crowd of 25,000 (I'm guessing) you could probably find 900 Azov types if you offered them a uniform and a gun. That the number of Nazi types in Ukraine is so small is what one should really be looking at as an indication of national character.

There's a logical fallacy (channelling Syne) known to me as the 'No true Scotsman' fallacy (brought  to my attention by rpenner some years ago) which applies to Zelensky being a Jew that doesn't conform to  (prejudiced) expectations of Jewishness and dismissing him as 'Not a true Jew'.

( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman )

The No true Scotsman is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:
not publicly retreating from the initial, falsified assertion
offering a modified assertion that definitionally excludes a targeted unwanted counterexample
using rhetoric to hide the modification

"This really belonged on a thread CC started recently but I missed the chance to post.. so please bear that in mind."

To wit: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-11958.html

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(Mar 26, 2022 12:27 AM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Today (Friday March 25) the Russian General Staff has announced what appears to be a change of strategy in the Ukraine war.

Sergei Rudskoi, the Head of the General Staff Main Operational Directorate said in a briefing,

"The main objectives of the first stage of the operation have generally been accomplished. The combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been considerably reduced, which, I emphasize once again, makes it possible to focus on the main efforts to achieve the main goal, liberation of Donbas."

He said that 93% of the Luhansk oblast have been "liberated" and 54% of the Donetsk oblast. That's apparently where Russia will now direct its efforts.

"We did not plan to storm them [major Ukranian cities] initially in order to avoid destruction and minimize losses among personnel and civilians," Rudskoi said at the briefing. "Although we're not ruling out such a possibility, our forces and equipment will focus on the most important thing, the complete liberation of Donbas...

"There were two options. The first one was to limit the actions only to the territory of the DPR and the LPR within the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which is stated in the republics' constitutions. But then we would have been faced with constant replenishment by the Ukrainian authorities of the group involved in the so-called joint forces operation," Rudskoi told the briefing on Friday.

"Therefore, the second option was chosen, which envisages actions on the entire territory of Ukraine, with events for its demilitarization and denazification," he said.

"The demilitarization of Ukraine is being achieved both with precision strikes on military infrastructure, military bases, aerodromes, command posts, arsenals and military depots, and with troops crushing the opposing enemy groups," he said.

"Unfortunately, during the special military operation there have been losses among our combat comrades: 1,351 servicemen are dead and 3,825 injured," Sergei Rudskoi said on Friday.

From the Russian Interfax news agency

https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/77393/

Sounds like the creative staff of that frustrating TV series from the 1st decade of the 21st century: "Lost".

I.e., making it up as they go along.

(Mar 26, 2022 12:55 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like the creative staff of that frustrating TV series from the 1st decade of the 21st century: "Lost".

I.e., making it up as they go along.

They obviously had to adjust to the fact that they didn't win the fast and almost bloodless victory they expected. We are a month in and they haven't yet taken any of Ukraine's largest cities and they haven't ended the Ukrainian army's surprisingly effective resistance. It's their own Russian assault that's ground to a halt.

They needed to spin their failure to achieve most of their major goals into a declaration of victory, if only for domestic Russian consumption. And they need to narrow their future goals to something less costly and more achievable than occupying all of Ukraine, which seems increasingly out of reach.

That demands an ability to spin straw into gold. Rudskoi did the best that he could at that impossible task.

I don't for a moment believe the casualty numbers he provided. The ones leaked a few days ago are probably closer to the truth.

Day 31 Summary - the end of the first month of the war

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...1-summary/

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...t-march-26

Despite Rudskoi's words yesterday, Russian reinforcements continue to flow to the forces outside Kyiv. But these forces seem to be digging into defensive positions and haven't launched any significant attacks in the last 24 hours. The Ukrainians have taken advantage to launch some small attacks on Hostomel, a Russian-held suburb northwest of Kyiv. Russians still mostly hold the town. There's also fighting in Irpin, mostly held by Ukraine. An interesting development is Russian artillery and missile shelling of some small towns to the west of their west-Kyiv salient. Unclear why, but it's possible that Ukraine is preparing an offensive in that area.

There haven't been any big changes around Kharkiv today. There's no sign of Russian forces leaving this area and heading to the Donbas.

Things are interesting in the south. The Ukrainians continue to push the Russians away from Mykolaiv and are retaking the small villages to the east that the Russians took a few days ago. And the Russians have reportedly been rushing reinforcements to the nearby city of Kherson, which they occupy. There's no reports of Ukrainian army attacks there, so some think that the city is the scene of partisan resistance activities by the local population. If armed civilians can keep up harassment attacks in occupied cities, it will only tie down more Russian troops that are needed elsewhere.

And Mariupol... The small area still held by the Ukrainians is in danger of being cut into two pockets. The Russians have reached the center of the small city. The city is expected to fall in the next few days.

BBC reports:

Quote:President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine is prepared to discuss adopting a neutral status as part of a peace deal.

Channelling Kordee I feel the need to point out that I suggested this as a way forward in an earlier post xxx that few (if any) actually read and none will remember.

Day 32 summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...2-summary/

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...t-march-27

Fighting continues in Hostomel and Irpin (Kyiv suburban towns) where Ukrainians are counterattacking, but there's been little significant movement.

To the east of Kyiv near the Russian border, the Ukrainians have recaptured several rural towns around Sumy, most notably Trostianets (pop around 20,000).

There haven't been any dramatic changes around Kharkiv.

The Russians are attacking the last Ukrainian held towns in Luhansk oblast. But in adjoining Donetsk oblast, the Russians have made little progress.

The situation in Mariupol is the same as yesterday.

And there haven't been any big changes in the Mykolaiv and Kherson areas since yesterday.

Mariupol



Captured Russian T-80 tank in Trostianets



And a sad one for aviation buffs everywhere, the remains of the An-225 Mriya, once the world's largest airplane. at Russian occupied Antonov airport at Hostomel.

While the success of the US Javelin and British NLAW anti-tank missiles in destroying Russian tanks has gotten lots of attention, most of Ukraine's anti-tank missiles and most of its kills, have been using locally made Ukrainian Stugna-P models. They were put into mass production after Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea and Ukraine has an estimated 7,000 of them.

These are bigger than the Javelins, weighing about 200 pounds (missile + launcher) and thus aren't man-portable but rather crew-served weapons. They have about the same range as the Javelin (several miles) but unlike the Javelin, they aren't self-guiding "fire-and forget" missiles. They must be steered to the target by an operator, who keeps the target tank centered in crosshairs on what looks like a laptop screen. In-flight commands are transmitted to the missile by a laser located on the launcher. A feature that I'm sure the operators like is that the control laptop is connected to the launcher by a 150 foot cable, so if the Russians fire back at where they observe the rocket launching from, the crew can be a distance away.

These Ukrainian weapons don't have all the features of the American rockets, but they are a lot cheaper. The Ukrainians have lots of them and in Ukrainian hands they are performing very well. 

https://twitter.com/war_noir/status/1503096030795120651

When watching the explosion on the screen (in the video in the tweet) it's best to remember that this isn't a video game. Several men died just then.

Video of Mriya in happier days.

Great video with tours inside, many video clips of her in action. (Interestingly, she has internal payload volume and load capacity as large or larger than Starship will (hopefully) have. Mriya couldn't fly to the Moon and Mars, but she flew all over the Earth with her extra-sized loads.

She was a big girl, but aviation fans around the world knew and loved this legendary airplane, the world's largest transport aircraft.

We won't forget you, Mriya!

Day 33 Summary

https://militaryland.net/ukraine/invasio...3-summary/

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgro...t-march-28

In fighting west of Kyiv, the mayor of Irpin announced that Russians have been pushed entirely out. (This has been confirmed.) The Ukrainian military says that the Russians are performing troop rotations, withdrawing depleted units north to Belarus and sending fresh units in. The Ukrainians hope to take advantage of these rotations to retake Bucha and Hostomel.

To the east of Kyiv small Russian columns are moving along the rural roads but there don't seem to be any Russian forces strong enough to attack the capital. So bottom line, little change to the east of Kyiv.

Further east, wounded were evacuated from Trostianets to Sumy and they reported encountering no Russians, so that road is clear. There have been unconfirmed reports that the Russians moved a unit out of the Sumy area, presumably with hopes of redeploying it somewhere else (the Donbas?) Still unclear what, if anything, that movement means for the campaign in the northeast.

The situation around Kharkiv is largely unchanged, but east of there the smaller towns of Chuhuiv and Izium are under Russian attack.

It's starting to look like some of the Russian forces in the Kharkiv area are starting to advance southeast to attack Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk oblast from the rear. The attacks on Chuhuiv and Izium might be associated with this since they sit astride highways. The Russians have made little progress in Donetsk oblast so far, perhaps because they are relying on separatist forces in that area. In Luhansk oblast, the last Ukrainian held cities like Sievierodonetsk continue to hold out but are in danger of encirclement.

In Mariupol the Ukrainian-held zone contines to hold out as the Russians are seemingly trying to cut it into two pockets. The Russians are in the city center, where fighting is building to bulding.

East of Mykolaiv the Ukrainians continue to advance and the Russians seem to only hold a few small farming villages at this point. The Russians appear to have tried a small attack out of Kherson towards Mykolaiv but it were beaten back. The Ukrainians are employing artillery there. There seems to have been no further Russian advance towards Kryvyi Rih.

General Ted Wolters, head of the US European Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committe today that he believes that the Russians have already ordered 70-75% of their available front-line military manpower to the Ukraine campaign. Some of it is coming from as far away as Vladivostok on the distant Pacific coast. The Ukrainian military says that Russians are calling up reserves and plan to increase conscription. I believe that the Russians were trying to go to a US-style professional army as opposed to a conscript army. They still had a draft, but it was for reserve units, not front-line units. But with the reserves being called to active duty, the increased draft is intended to replenish the reserves. Of course it will take months to train conscripts to even basic military proficiency.

But... when Senators asked him if he thought that the Ukrainians could win the war, Wolters wouldn't go that far, just saying that the Ukrainians could bleed and stall the Russians. He did say that the Ukrainians showed a "steep learning curve".

Apparently the US had about 60,000 troops in Europe prior to the war and this will be going up to as many as 100,000 or more. That depends on what our European allies do to strengthen their own defenses.

Big news!

Explosions have been reported in Belgorod, Russia. This is a small Russian city (about 350,000 people, capital of its own oblast) located in Russia near the Ukraine border. It's a town that served as a military staging point for the invasion into Ukraine.

Is this a Ukrainian attack into Russia? Is it a false flag operation to give Russia an excuse to escalate? Or was it an accident handling ammunition and explosives?

Or maybe it didn't really happen...

This might be all over the news soon. They are probably scrambling to verify it right now.

https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/stat...8895707144

Edit Still no confirmation - I'm starting to doubt it.

Edit 24 hours later Still no confirmation. I'm thinking it was just internet noise

According to the BBC, Russia is now offer $7,000 for Syrians to join the fight against the Ukraine, apparently they've claimed to have had 16,000 recruits sign up.

The problem is that some of the Syrian fighters will likely have ties to IS amongst other groups, so they might well use it as a way to get paid, to get armed and then to attack not just the Ukraine but Europe. If Russia does this I would assume that it is most certainly an Article 5 for NATO and this War/conflict will escalate.