Ukraine - Russia Conflict
- Thread starter randomradio
- Start date
Because you are excessively helping to fund an aggressor in Europe. You aren't just making enemies out of your old enemies, you're alienating the whole of Eastern Europe and former Soviet states who see Putin as Hitler and the Soviets as Nazis. You forget that oppression is far more recent for them than anything you suffered historically.
Ukraine is not a covert ally of Pakistan at all. Russia has sold weapons to Pakistan.
Pakistan–Russia relations - Wikipedia
Russia pledges to provide more weapons to Pakistan, despite unease in India
www.deccanherald.com
It's not going to win, and if it even looked like it was winning NATO would intervene. Allowing Putin to steal even more of the planet's resources just makes the problem even bigger next time round, that's why NATO will never allow it to happen.
Being Russia's friend and being Putin's friend are two different things. India needs to realise that.
As for the Soviets, the Nazis and Communists were both socialists and fascists. The Nazi party was the National Socialist Party. They were both hard-line dictatorships with zero tolerance for dissent or civil liberties, i.e. fascists. The only difference was their targets of persecution. Nazis targeted non-Aryans, Communists targeted Christians (people of religion) and land owners. Nazis used concentration camps and gas chambers, Communists used gulags and famine. Both expert propagandists.
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This is becoming reminiscent of Imperial Japan, as Russia slowly sifts through the archives of failed dictatorships to imitate.
he is full of BS, he thinks if he can keep lying all the time he can claim some sort of moral high ground. Every one knows their hypocrisy very well.
ukraine is just like pakistan they have no values or principles and will stoop to any extent. These animals havent even spared their own children and have radicalized them with all sorts of nonsense.
Tumulte à Bakhmut
Tumult in Bakhmut
Since the recapture of Kherson on 11 November, ending two months of offensives and two spectacular Ukrainian victories, operations seem to have come to a halt, which does not mean that they are any less violent. People are dying just as much in these small, fragmented battles as in the big attacks, but for every soldier killed on either side, there is infinitely less ground gained.
This is probably only an operational pause, with the resumption of large-scale operations when conditions - weather, logistics, reconstitution of forces, setting up of support, etc. - allow it, as after the July-August pause. In the meantime, and in contrast to the absence of major movements, the fighting around the town of Bakhmut has acquired the status of a battle and this is perhaps the main surprise of the moment.
The Surovikin line
The stinging defeat of the Russian forces at the beginning of September in the province of Kharkiv acted as an eye-opener. Faced with the now clear superiority of the Ukrainian army, it was no longer possible for Russia to continue waging war in this way or risk military collapse. If a historical parallel is to be drawn, the Russian change at the end of September resembled in many respects that of the Germans at the end of 1916 after the two giant battles of Verdun and the Somme: a change of military leadership, the creation of a great fortified line, withdrawal behind this line, industrial mobilisation and the rebuilding of forces until the offensive could be resumed. At the same time, the Germans increased the pressure on enemy companies by bombing capitals, blockading the UK economically through submarine warfare and supporting Russian revolutionaries. In 2022, the Kremlin added a Russian touch with an anarchic mobilisation of reservists and the immediate dispatch to the front of tens of thousands of troops without training or appropriate equipment, but framed by Stalinist-inspired legislation punishing, for example, in advance those who would take prisoners.
From October onwards, they dug in everywhere on the Russian side, including in front of Crimea and Mariupol, they sealed off the Luhansk front by forming a border line between Svatov and Kreminna, they withdrew behind the Dnieper in the province of Kherson and they counter-attacked only along the province of Donetsk. Weekly salvos of missiles and strike drones are also being fired at the country's energy infrastructure, especially electricity, in order to hamper the Ukrainian war effort and undermine the morale of the population.
The new Russian strategy has led, as expected, to some internal unrest and, in particular, to a massive flight of rebels, but no revolt. It can therefore, at least in the Kremlin's view, be sustained by counting on a more rapid exhaustion of Ukrainian and even Western societies than on the Russian side, in order to obtain at least a status quo, which could be presented as a victory by Vladimir Putin despite the immense losses and damage, and at best the possibility of resuming the offensive at the beginning of 2023 with a renewed army.
For the time being and at the cost of considerable human losses, this strategy seems to be bearing fruit despite the loss of Kherson. Also hampered by the rain and mud of autumn, the Ukrainian offensive in front of Svatove and Kreminna has stalled, while Russian attacks in Donetsk province are attracting attention. Tactically, these attacks seem strange since they are carried out in areas solidly held by the enemy, from fort to fort. This is perhaps because the complete conquest of the Donetsk province remains the last, in the sense of only, possible terrain objective for the Russians to achieve. It is probably also paradoxically in this long fortified strip that the Russian forces are most able to use their only main asset: artillery. This fortified area, built since 2015, is the largest in the world after the one separating the two Koreas. It obviously benefits the defender and reminds us of the usefulness of field fortifications, but it also forces us to stay in place. But sticking to the ground, holding it absolutely, means offering immobile targets to the Russian firepower. The Russian artillery is weakened by the harassment of its logistics by Ukrainian strikes and simply by the scarcity of shells, but even if it fires three times less than in June, it still sends an average of 20,000 shells per day, compared to perhaps 7,000 Ukrainian ones.
The Russian attacks in Donetsk are thus very similar to those of the April-May-June quarter, but smaller. Where they used to employ battalions, they now only use assault detachments of the maximum size of companies - this is the return of the 'vanguard companies' well known to Cold War soldiers - preceded by heavy artillery strikes to seize at best a few hundred metres in one day, or even a few dozen in urban areas. The assault detachments are sometimes preceded by reconnaissance of 'expendables', those whose losses count for little to the Russians, such as certain Donbass militiamen or prisoners recruited by Wagner. Unlike the 'expendables' of the movies, they are not elite soldiers and are poorly equipped, but in the case of Wagner's prisoners they are morally supported by the lead of the barrage platoons. Employed sometimes en masse they were able to surprise and subdue the Ukrainians on some positions, but they were mainly used to indicate to the artillery where the defenders were. If the artillery did its job well on these detected positions, the assault detachment could then occupy the ground. If not, the artillery will have worn down the Ukrainian forces. In these battles, Ukrainians fall far more often from shrapnel or the blast of shells and rockets than from AK-12 bullets. A Franco-Ukrainian doctor recently declared that he had seen hundreds of wounded in three weeks in his triage centre in the region, but not a single bullet wound.
Little Verdun
Among a small number of battles along the Donbass, the battle of Bakhmut has become emblematic of this new Russian offensive campaign. After the capture of Severodonetsk on 25 June and Lysychansk on 3 July by the Russians, the battle of Bakhmut appeared to be the essential stage for approaching Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from the south-east. The town of 70,000 inhabitants had been hit sporadically since the end of May and it was thought that it would be subdued in July, but things had changed. While their advance seemed inexorable at the time, the Russian forces were in fact exhausted by the effort of the past three months and stricken with a kind of offensive apathy.
This was the moment when the Wagner group, the army of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigogzhin, seized the opportunity to show itself. The group had battalions on various fronts, including Kherson, but the Bakhmut area was its main zone of action. It did not take much more than that to decide to take the city, in disconnection with the general trend of the Russian army and perhaps precisely because it was disconnected from this army, which was highly criticised at the time. Bakhmut was the largest city that could be taken by the Russian coalition forces. And we should probably not look for any other reason for these obstinate attacks that have been growing since 1 August. As a result, the battle is becoming known and therefore also a strategic object. It is a kind of Potemkin battle that one cannot afford to lose, otherwise one will also lose face.
Tactically, the big cities are difficult to take. All those that have been taken in Ukraine by one side have been taken by surprise, like Melitopol at the beginning of the war, or after an encirclement or a threat of encirclement, like Mariupol, Lysychansk or even Kherson. Even so, this was not certain. Chernihiv or Soumy resisted being surrounded for weeks before the Russian forces withdrew. No major city could be seized when it was connected to its camp and the defender could always resupply and relieve his forces. Not that it is impossible, it is just much more difficult.
This is why the Russians, with Wagner at the forefront with Donbass militiamen and regular artillery, are attacking the town from three sides simultaneously, hoping to cut off all the "lives" of Bakhmut: from the north via Soledar, from the south via Zaitseve and then Optyne, and directly from the east from Poproskve and the T0504 road. This is a far cry from "high-speed offensives". The advance is millimetric, sometimes of the order of 100 metres per week, but seems inexorable at least in the south and east. So far, the Russians are reportedly finally approaching the town of Bakhmut proper, particularly in the east where they have seized the industrial area along Patrice Lumumba Street and appear to have penetrated the large residential area east of the Bakumukovka River. They have also reportedly taken Optyne to the south, but are still stalling in the north.
Most surprisingly, the Ukrainians have accepted the battle in what appears to them to be mainly a fire trap. They deployed an army of six brigades reinforced by autonomous battalions along a dozen kilometres of front, more than one man per metre of front. The Ukrainians organised brigade rotations, which testifies to their willingness to fight over the long term, an element of comparison beyond the images, the methods of combat and the symbolic value of the fighting, with the battle of Verdun in 1916. It is possible that Bakhmut acted as a magnet for the Ukrainians to the detriment of the attack they seemed to be organising in the direction of Kreminna or perhaps in the province of Zaporijia. This would be the first Russian success, the second being to 'bleed the Ukrainian army dry' to keep with the Verdun analogy, and the third would simply be to plant the Russian (or Wagner) flag in the centre of Bakhmut.
However, as for the Germans in 1916, this battle can also be a trap for the Russians. In the first place, it is not at all certain that the battle of Bakhmut is the main drag on Ukrainian operations. If, as some indications suggest, the Ukrainians are waiting for the ground to solidify before attempting to break through into Zaporizhia province, the Bakhmut attack will not have curbed Ukrainian ambitions and will take a back seat. But even as it became the main battle, the Russians also suffered terrible losses in the fighting around Bakhmut and will probably suffer even more inside the city, where close combat takes precedence over artillery shelling. If it is possible for the Russians to cut the M03 road feeding the city from the north, a key bridge would already be destroyed, it will be almost impossible for them to cut the one feeding it from the west. In other words, there will always be renewed, well-equipped, motivated, often competent Ukrainian soldiers in the city unless every building is taken. Taking Bakhmut, house by house, is a major challenge for the Russian army, which, let's not forget, does not have the best human capital in numbers and qualities. Worse, if they even managed to take the town, it would be difficult to hold it since it is under fire from the Chassiv Iar heights 4 km to the west.
In the end, if we exaggerate a little, Bakhmut could also be the tomb of the Russian army and this is perhaps why the Ukrainians accept this battle, a new surprise in this war that is not lacking in them.
Tumult in Bakhmut
Since the recapture of Kherson on 11 November, ending two months of offensives and two spectacular Ukrainian victories, operations seem to have come to a halt, which does not mean that they are any less violent. People are dying just as much in these small, fragmented battles as in the big attacks, but for every soldier killed on either side, there is infinitely less ground gained.
This is probably only an operational pause, with the resumption of large-scale operations when conditions - weather, logistics, reconstitution of forces, setting up of support, etc. - allow it, as after the July-August pause. In the meantime, and in contrast to the absence of major movements, the fighting around the town of Bakhmut has acquired the status of a battle and this is perhaps the main surprise of the moment.
The Surovikin line
The stinging defeat of the Russian forces at the beginning of September in the province of Kharkiv acted as an eye-opener. Faced with the now clear superiority of the Ukrainian army, it was no longer possible for Russia to continue waging war in this way or risk military collapse. If a historical parallel is to be drawn, the Russian change at the end of September resembled in many respects that of the Germans at the end of 1916 after the two giant battles of Verdun and the Somme: a change of military leadership, the creation of a great fortified line, withdrawal behind this line, industrial mobilisation and the rebuilding of forces until the offensive could be resumed. At the same time, the Germans increased the pressure on enemy companies by bombing capitals, blockading the UK economically through submarine warfare and supporting Russian revolutionaries. In 2022, the Kremlin added a Russian touch with an anarchic mobilisation of reservists and the immediate dispatch to the front of tens of thousands of troops without training or appropriate equipment, but framed by Stalinist-inspired legislation punishing, for example, in advance those who would take prisoners.
From October onwards, they dug in everywhere on the Russian side, including in front of Crimea and Mariupol, they sealed off the Luhansk front by forming a border line between Svatov and Kreminna, they withdrew behind the Dnieper in the province of Kherson and they counter-attacked only along the province of Donetsk. Weekly salvos of missiles and strike drones are also being fired at the country's energy infrastructure, especially electricity, in order to hamper the Ukrainian war effort and undermine the morale of the population.
The new Russian strategy has led, as expected, to some internal unrest and, in particular, to a massive flight of rebels, but no revolt. It can therefore, at least in the Kremlin's view, be sustained by counting on a more rapid exhaustion of Ukrainian and even Western societies than on the Russian side, in order to obtain at least a status quo, which could be presented as a victory by Vladimir Putin despite the immense losses and damage, and at best the possibility of resuming the offensive at the beginning of 2023 with a renewed army.
For the time being and at the cost of considerable human losses, this strategy seems to be bearing fruit despite the loss of Kherson. Also hampered by the rain and mud of autumn, the Ukrainian offensive in front of Svatove and Kreminna has stalled, while Russian attacks in Donetsk province are attracting attention. Tactically, these attacks seem strange since they are carried out in areas solidly held by the enemy, from fort to fort. This is perhaps because the complete conquest of the Donetsk province remains the last, in the sense of only, possible terrain objective for the Russians to achieve. It is probably also paradoxically in this long fortified strip that the Russian forces are most able to use their only main asset: artillery. This fortified area, built since 2015, is the largest in the world after the one separating the two Koreas. It obviously benefits the defender and reminds us of the usefulness of field fortifications, but it also forces us to stay in place. But sticking to the ground, holding it absolutely, means offering immobile targets to the Russian firepower. The Russian artillery is weakened by the harassment of its logistics by Ukrainian strikes and simply by the scarcity of shells, but even if it fires three times less than in June, it still sends an average of 20,000 shells per day, compared to perhaps 7,000 Ukrainian ones.
The Russian attacks in Donetsk are thus very similar to those of the April-May-June quarter, but smaller. Where they used to employ battalions, they now only use assault detachments of the maximum size of companies - this is the return of the 'vanguard companies' well known to Cold War soldiers - preceded by heavy artillery strikes to seize at best a few hundred metres in one day, or even a few dozen in urban areas. The assault detachments are sometimes preceded by reconnaissance of 'expendables', those whose losses count for little to the Russians, such as certain Donbass militiamen or prisoners recruited by Wagner. Unlike the 'expendables' of the movies, they are not elite soldiers and are poorly equipped, but in the case of Wagner's prisoners they are morally supported by the lead of the barrage platoons. Employed sometimes en masse they were able to surprise and subdue the Ukrainians on some positions, but they were mainly used to indicate to the artillery where the defenders were. If the artillery did its job well on these detected positions, the assault detachment could then occupy the ground. If not, the artillery will have worn down the Ukrainian forces. In these battles, Ukrainians fall far more often from shrapnel or the blast of shells and rockets than from AK-12 bullets. A Franco-Ukrainian doctor recently declared that he had seen hundreds of wounded in three weeks in his triage centre in the region, but not a single bullet wound.
Little Verdun
Among a small number of battles along the Donbass, the battle of Bakhmut has become emblematic of this new Russian offensive campaign. After the capture of Severodonetsk on 25 June and Lysychansk on 3 July by the Russians, the battle of Bakhmut appeared to be the essential stage for approaching Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from the south-east. The town of 70,000 inhabitants had been hit sporadically since the end of May and it was thought that it would be subdued in July, but things had changed. While their advance seemed inexorable at the time, the Russian forces were in fact exhausted by the effort of the past three months and stricken with a kind of offensive apathy.
This was the moment when the Wagner group, the army of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigogzhin, seized the opportunity to show itself. The group had battalions on various fronts, including Kherson, but the Bakhmut area was its main zone of action. It did not take much more than that to decide to take the city, in disconnection with the general trend of the Russian army and perhaps precisely because it was disconnected from this army, which was highly criticised at the time. Bakhmut was the largest city that could be taken by the Russian coalition forces. And we should probably not look for any other reason for these obstinate attacks that have been growing since 1 August. As a result, the battle is becoming known and therefore also a strategic object. It is a kind of Potemkin battle that one cannot afford to lose, otherwise one will also lose face.
Tactically, the big cities are difficult to take. All those that have been taken in Ukraine by one side have been taken by surprise, like Melitopol at the beginning of the war, or after an encirclement or a threat of encirclement, like Mariupol, Lysychansk or even Kherson. Even so, this was not certain. Chernihiv or Soumy resisted being surrounded for weeks before the Russian forces withdrew. No major city could be seized when it was connected to its camp and the defender could always resupply and relieve his forces. Not that it is impossible, it is just much more difficult.
This is why the Russians, with Wagner at the forefront with Donbass militiamen and regular artillery, are attacking the town from three sides simultaneously, hoping to cut off all the "lives" of Bakhmut: from the north via Soledar, from the south via Zaitseve and then Optyne, and directly from the east from Poproskve and the T0504 road. This is a far cry from "high-speed offensives". The advance is millimetric, sometimes of the order of 100 metres per week, but seems inexorable at least in the south and east. So far, the Russians are reportedly finally approaching the town of Bakhmut proper, particularly in the east where they have seized the industrial area along Patrice Lumumba Street and appear to have penetrated the large residential area east of the Bakumukovka River. They have also reportedly taken Optyne to the south, but are still stalling in the north.
Most surprisingly, the Ukrainians have accepted the battle in what appears to them to be mainly a fire trap. They deployed an army of six brigades reinforced by autonomous battalions along a dozen kilometres of front, more than one man per metre of front. The Ukrainians organised brigade rotations, which testifies to their willingness to fight over the long term, an element of comparison beyond the images, the methods of combat and the symbolic value of the fighting, with the battle of Verdun in 1916. It is possible that Bakhmut acted as a magnet for the Ukrainians to the detriment of the attack they seemed to be organising in the direction of Kreminna or perhaps in the province of Zaporijia. This would be the first Russian success, the second being to 'bleed the Ukrainian army dry' to keep with the Verdun analogy, and the third would simply be to plant the Russian (or Wagner) flag in the centre of Bakhmut.
However, as for the Germans in 1916, this battle can also be a trap for the Russians. In the first place, it is not at all certain that the battle of Bakhmut is the main drag on Ukrainian operations. If, as some indications suggest, the Ukrainians are waiting for the ground to solidify before attempting to break through into Zaporizhia province, the Bakhmut attack will not have curbed Ukrainian ambitions and will take a back seat. But even as it became the main battle, the Russians also suffered terrible losses in the fighting around Bakhmut and will probably suffer even more inside the city, where close combat takes precedence over artillery shelling. If it is possible for the Russians to cut the M03 road feeding the city from the north, a key bridge would already be destroyed, it will be almost impossible for them to cut the one feeding it from the west. In other words, there will always be renewed, well-equipped, motivated, often competent Ukrainian soldiers in the city unless every building is taken. Taking Bakhmut, house by house, is a major challenge for the Russian army, which, let's not forget, does not have the best human capital in numbers and qualities. Worse, if they even managed to take the town, it would be difficult to hold it since it is under fire from the Chassiv Iar heights 4 km to the west.
In the end, if we exaggerate a little, Bakhmut could also be the tomb of the Russian army and this is perhaps why the Ukrainians accept this battle, a new surprise in this war that is not lacking in them.
In Russia you don't have to look to football fans to find fault, the fascists are in the Kremlin. The fascists are the ones who created mass graves in Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin, Lyman, Izium and Kherson.
Looks like they all missed anyway - Russian tech.
Russia have been dying outside that place since August. The local crows can't even take off anymore.
Yeah, he is talking about famines. But he comfortably forgot how the British induced famine into India to kill several thousand of our people. Russia's victory is necessary to keep this Western evil into check.
Absolutely. I have said it before that Ukraine is just like Pakistan. But unlike us, Russians don't want to bleed to death by a thousand cuts, they want to break the knife and defang the Ukro Nazi. We should have destroyed Pakistan in 1971 itself. Not doing that was a big mistake. And btw, who was protecting Pakistan in 1971? Yes UK and US. Same countries that are pushing Ukraine more and more to fight Russia.
But Russia will succeed no matter how much @BMD and Euro/Yankee co. want otherwise.