[Werthead]

Germany has agreed to send Leopards and give permission for other countries to send theirs. The US will also send Abrams, though possibly on a longer timescale. That's pretty huge stuff.

[Primateus]

I've been looking at pictures of the T-14, the so-called "Western Tank Killer" of Russia. This might be my bias talking, in fact I am pretty sure it is. But to me, the T-14 looks like a sort of Potemkin tank.

[Werthead]

 Primateus, on 24 January 2023 - 09:23 PM, said:

I've been looking at pictures of the T-14, the so-called "Western Tank Killer" of Russia. This might be my bias talking, in fact I am pretty sure it is. But to me, the T-14 looks like a sort of Potemkin tank.

It's basically a very modern tank with some cool ideas like active defence (which isn't that new, a lot of modern IFVs from most western countries have it, and better) and a built in AA defence (effectively a Stinger on the roof). That's all pretty good, but it still seems vulnerable to roof-killer AT fire and its main gun is surprisingly weak given the rest of its capabilities. The theory is that upgrading the Leopard, Challenger or Abrams to match its capabilities would be relatively trivial.

There's also the slight problem in that it's so expensive Russia can't actually afford to deploy it in any number, it relies heavily on western electronics which mysteriously are in short supply in Russia, and it's rather publicly and famously broken down on its way to the parade ground several times.

[Mentalist]

 Werthead, on 24 January 2023 - 07:56 PM, said:

Germany has agreed to send Leopards and give permission for other countries to send theirs. The US will also send Abrams, though possibly on a longer timescale. That's pretty huge stuff.

Sholz to make public announcement tomorrow. Watch for a mysterious money truck that might find itself breaking down in front of his house with the key left in the ignition lock.

To date, Poland and Finland pledged to supply Leos, Germany is expected to give some, Spain said they can get their stored ones up to speed in a month, Norway is looking into giving a few, and Netherlands is going to explore buying the ones they were supposed to be leasing from Germany and donate those to Ukraine. SHould scrape together a few companies with these.

There'll be a decent chunk of pressure on Trudeau now to provide some, given there's literally no land threats for Canada to worry about in the immediate future. Hopefully we hand over like a battalion. This leaves 5 mysterious "other countries" that supposedly were ready to join the Leopard-giving at Rammstein, but needed Germany's go-ahead.

Ideally, Poles can start the training ASAP, so that first units could be ready for late spring.

[Werthead]

 Mentalist, on 25 January 2023 - 03:10 AM, said:

Sholz to make public announcement tomorrow. Watch for a mysterious money truck that might find itself breaking down in front of his house with the key left in the ignition lock.

To date, Poland and Finland pledged to supply Leos, Germany is expected to give some, Spain said they can get their stored ones up to speed in a month, Norway is looking into giving a few, and Netherlands is going to explore buying the ones they were supposed to be leasing from Germany and donate those to Ukraine. SHould scrape together a few companies with these.

There'll be a decent chunk of pressure on Trudeau now to provide some, given there's literally no land threats for Canada to worry about in the immediate future. Hopefully we hand over like a battalion. This leaves 5 mysterious "other countries" that supposedly were ready to join the Leopard-giving at Rammstein, but needed Germany's go-ahead.

Ideally, Poles can start the training ASAP, so that first units could be ready for late spring.

The theory I'm seeing is that European countries can put together 10 Leopard companies plus one apiece of the UK Challengers and US Abrams for 12 modern tank companies, 168 tanks. That's not enough for Ukraine to win the war overnight, but it's enough for a major counter-offensive. And of course more Abrams would then follow, and possibly European countries could scrape together another 3-4 companies for a later reinforcement push.

I do know Canada is worried about Russian activity off its northern coast during the summer months, but Russia probably isn't going to be unloading thousands of T-72s up there.

[Cause]

What is Russias game plan. They are being ground down slowly but surely with no victory condition is site. I suspect that europe and the USA is probably happy to keep that attrition going for as long as possible too, rather than act to grant ukraine a quick victory too. Russias conventional military is already weakened, and will cost billions to rebuild.

Does Russia actually see any path to benefit from this or are they just frozen into inaction by a refusal to lose face as a country and by Putin.

[Werthead]

 Cause, on 25 January 2023 - 10:11 PM, said:

What is Russias game plan. They are being ground down slowly but surely with no victory condition is site. I suspect that europe and the USA is probably happy to keep that attrition going for as long as possible too, rather than act to grant ukraine a quick victory too. Russias conventional military is already weakened, and will cost billions to rebuild.

Does Russia actually see any path to benefit from this or are they just frozen into inaction by a refusal to lose face as a country and by Putin.

Europe and the US wants this over ASAP. They see the situation as unpredictable and highly dangerous to Ukraine, to European security and also to Russia itself. Russia is a very brittle country, it looks strong and tough on the outside but inside it is a somewhat fragile alliance of oligarchs, warlords, generals and criminals with Putin somewhere between the strongman in charge and an arbitrator between these factions. The danger of Russia collapsing into civil war or just collapsing is fairly real, which is not ideal when you have 6,000+ nuclear weapons under lock and key. You can already see battle lines being drawn between different factions who have more ambitious designs in Moscow then they do in Kyiv.

Russia has overall logjammed itself. Before September Putin could have probably settled for just Donbas, given up the rest of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts in a peace deal, tried to wrangle recognition of Crimea and called it a day, and sold that as a (very, very expensive) win. His decision to try to annex a quarter of the country, including vast amounts of terrain he doesn't control and has even lost in recent months has created a trap from which he can't really escape. If he settles for Donbas now, he's effectively admitting defeat because the Russian Constitution does not allow for territorial concessions, and he'd have to get the Duma to agree to change the constitution for a position of weakness.

What Russia is trying to do now is run out the clock and hope western support for Ukraine collapses, or they somehow grind out a military win in Donbas and maybe can try to wrangle a deal at the negotiations table. But their view of what is realistically achievable does not seem compatible with Ukraine's, or with reality.

The other possibility is that Russia might well be hoping that North Korea goes nuts and invades the South, or tries to nuke South Korea, Japan or Hawaii, or China invades Taiwan and creates a massive distraction they can use to their own advantage. I don't think they're going to be obliged, though.

[Cause]

I don’t know. The west hasn’t moved with great speed to secure Ukraine or given them what they need for a counter punch. I know it’s not possible to just gift Ukraine weapons overnight and have them use them but it seems to me that they are purposefully giving out just enough to keep the fight going. The west is grinding down russias conventional military for cents on the dollar and calling it a bargain.

The sanctions could be tougher, the military aid could be faster or at least smoother. This whole tank donation has required cajoling and pressure from multiple angles.

I get that their is an argument that if you push Russia into a corner they could do something crazy such as dropping a nuke but that supports my argument the west is happy to string out the status quo until Russia exhausts itself even though Ukraine will pay for it the liner this drags out.

I suppose most wars are pointless but this one is certainly especially so.

[Nicodimas]

Russia doing so poorly the west needs to send... even more advanced weapondary. 150k ukraines killed sadly for west, 1k a day now. 1/7 the Russian fatalities thus far.

90 seconds to midnight.

United States cannot withdraw support as Russia now will start taking landmass. Crazy. German green party basically said Germany is at war with Russia..live

Propagda is really amped up in the west.
They don't 100% understand Russia interceptor tech is way better than imagined. They are banking on that.
Nato won't back down.

I'm hoping Russia just calls it. No more escalation

However Europe should be preping for ww3 , but instead to choose to send tanks east. Brillant. ..

"Bavrilov said that he has been instructed by his government to announce "We know that the Leopard-2 tank, as well as the Bradley and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, are armed with uranium-core armor-piercing projectiles, the use of which leads to [radioactive] contamination of the area, as happened in Yugoslavia and Iraq.

If such shells are delivered to Kyiv, we will consider this as the use of dirty nuclear bombs against Russia, with all the ensuing consequences."

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 26 January 2023 - 05:16 AM

[Macros]

Wait Glorious Russia has only lost (does math) about 25k troops?

Mobilisation of reserves was just for shits and gigs

[Nicodimas]

Thought:The last time German tanks entered Ukraine, Russia lost 27 million.

Good listen
https://youtu.be/3yGozTWRqLk

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 26 January 2023 - 06:07 AM

[Nicodimas]

 Macros, on 26 January 2023 - 05:57 AM, said:

Wait Glorious Russia has only lost (does math) about 25k troops?

Mobilisation of reserves was just for shits and gigs

The scale of this might be more than you realize. I think. These numbers might be way higher.

The tank losses alone might be.. 3k Russia 7k for ukraine.

https://www.brooking...ons-for-russia/

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This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 26 January 2023 - 06:23 AM

[Primateus]

Wait, I'm missing something here, Nico, are you seriously suggesting that Ukraine has maybe lost 7000 tanks? Because that sounds...just a little crazy.

[Maark Abbott]

 Primateus, on 26 January 2023 - 09:44 AM, said:

Wait, I'm missing something here, Nico, are you seriously suggesting that Ukraine has maybe lost 7000 tanks? Because that sounds...just a little crazy.

tank rush is a legit strategy what do you mean.

[Primateus]

I mean, well, when you put it like that...

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Macros, on 26 January 2023 - 05:57 AM, said:

Wait Glorious Russia has only lost (does math) about 25k troops?

Mobilisation of reserves was just for shits and gigs

'US estimates Russia's approximate losses in Ukraine: "significantly more than" 100,000 people'

US estimates Russia's approximate losses in Ukraine: "significantly more than" 100,000 people

[worry]

 Nicodimas, on 26 January 2023 - 06:06 AM, said:

Thought:The last time German tanks entered Ukraine, Russia lost 27 million.

Good listen
https://youtu.be/3yGozTWRqLk

Always great to get foreign policy advice from a dude with these sections on his Wikipedia:

Please contain your surprise to find that he's made multiple appearances in the last year as a particularly virulent Putin bootlicker on neo-Nazi Tucker Carlson's white power hour.

[Mentalist]

 Nicodimas, on 26 January 2023 - 06:06 AM, said:

Thought:The last time German tanks entered Ukraine, Russia lost 27 million.

Good listen
https://youtu.be/3yGozTWRqLk

Thought: most of them weren't actually Russian. Belarus, for instance, lost over a third of their total population in WW2

In fact, the bulk of the fighting was going on in the same territory where the orcs are trying their luck now.
Majority of deportations and executions which the Nazis did during WW2 also took place in UA and Belarus, rather than Russia proper.

Both Moscow and Berlin like to perpetuate the idea that WW2 was a German affront against Russians - and only Russians , b/c it spares them having to acknowledge their designs to essentially colonize the "lesser peoples" in between. This delusion that no one else has any agency and they are free to arrange the space between them as they see fit is the precise reason why the world was so poorly prepared for this.

[Werthead]

Yes, the Soviet Union lost a vast amount of people and territory during WWII. But Russia lost significantly less. In fact, Russian territory itself was not violated until German troops reached St. Petersburg and then launched their offensive from Minsk (in Belarus) towards Moscow, and then the following year with the attack from Ukraine to Stalingrad (Volgograd) via Rostov and Kursk. Ukraine lost 7 million dead (16% of its population) and Belarus another 2 million (almost 25%), whilst Russia lost 14 million (13%). Horrendous losses, of course, but not solely Russian. And of course it should be noted that the USSR's most successful leaders (by some metric of successful) were actually from Georgia and Ukraine.

In terms of Ukrainian losses, they are hard to estimate but there's been reasonable estimates. The most likely figure right now is between 100,000 and 120,000, like the Russians, but this seems to be split between military and civilian casualties (Russian civilian casualties have been almost negligible, since obviously the fighting is not taking place on Russian soil) with civilian casualties making up the majority. Around 40,000 are estimated to have been killed in the fighting around Mariupol, Melitopol and on that front, and maybe as many in the Donbas and the heavy shelling of Kharkiv. Military casualties admitted by the Ukrainians seem to be under 15,000, but there seems to be a widespread belief that it is a morale-boosting underestimate. A more likely figure is on the order of 20,000 to 30,000, or running at less than 25% of Russian casualties. That is borne out by the tactics used by the two sides, with the Ukrainians using tactics that disfavour direct assault in favour of cutting off supply lines and forcing units to retreat with artillery persuasion rather than destroying them in detail in a costly ground attack. Russian tactics, on the other hand, favour direct assaults with massed human waves against entrenched positions, which are extremely costly. Russian medevac and recuperation systems also seem to be barely existent, let alone functional, and unless soldiers are maimed, they are rotated back into combat almost immediately. This completely skewers traditional kill/wounded ratios for the Russians, whilst Ukraine's are more in touch with 20th/21st century norms.

Ukraine started this war with 900 tanks, has lost several hundred of those, has captured several hundred more from Russia and has acquired hundreds more from importers, with the conclusion last summer than Ukraine had several hundred more tanks than it started the war with (so over 1,000). However, many of these are outmoded and outdated Soviet models, even less well-maintained than the Russian equivalent, and mostly used in defence. They need better, more modern tanks for offensives. Obviously they have not lost 7,000 tanks, that's a ludicrous assertion with no basis in fact or logic.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 26 January 2023 - 03:08 PM

[Mentalist]

UAF took significant casualties during the offensive in Kherson Oblast' as well. 30k dead and 60k wounded wouldn't be unreasonable.
The orcs most likely have a lower killed:wounded ratio- I'd guess 1:1,5. Obviously, since they have greater recruiting pool, they can sustain the losses longer at the current rate.

The reason why we need NATO tanks is because ammo for the T variants is beginning to run low. Obviously, they are still being used (Czechs are refurbishing them as fast as they can, and UkrOboronProm announced that they were able to move their own repair facilities into "one of the neighboring countries" (either Poland or Slovakia, most likely). But the issue is supply of ammo for Soviet-grade tanks.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 26 January 2023 - 03:34 PM