World War III

[Kristy]

“Russian volunteers have proven that the Russian government is completely defenseless against organized resistance by Russians,” the official told Yahoo News. “Ukraine welcomes the desire of Russians to change the political system in their own country.”

Simply because the RuZZian government has not lead a crackdown on these play soldier weekend warrior shitheads. When they do, Pooptin will make examples out of them because that what RuZZia does to its dissenting citizens. It's pretty much RuZZia's entire history

[Nickdfresh]

Anti-Putin Russian Guerillas Strike Russian Border Town, Panic Belgorod

Pro-Ukrainian Russian partisans advance into Russia’s Belgorod region in surprise raid
A lightning raid that stuns Moscow.
404
Michael Weiss and James Rushton
Mon, May 22, 2023 at 1:20 PM EDT

KYIV — Russia may have taken the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut Sunday, but forces aligned with Ukraine apparently took a tiny part of Russia on Monday — or so video and photograph footage suggested as of just after noon local time. Ukrainian armored vehicles, including at least one tank, were seen attacking a border post, in the town of Kozinka, in the Belgorod region of southern Russia.

Drone footage, taken from the Ukrainian side of the border, showed a lone tank advancing toward the Russian border checkpoint in Kozinka, the main building of which had several large holes blasted in its exterior walls. A group of three light armored vehicles was also spotted in the same location, with Ukrainian marks — white crosses — clearly painted on their hulls. Footage circulating on social media and purportedly shot inside the checkpoint building showed Russian passports scattered on the floor, a portrait of Vladimir Putin hanging on the wall and a dead border guard.

What seemed to be a relatively simple Ukrainian cross-border raid — not the first of its kind in 15 months of war — soon revealed itself to be a far more ambitious and dug-in incursion into Russian territory. From Kozinka, the counter-invaders advanced toward the larger Russian town of Grayvoron. As of Monday morning, the Ukrainian-aligned forces had advanced 3.5 miles over the border into Russia.

As they progressed, the pro-Ukraine Russians handed out leaflets telling Russian soldiers how to surrender and promising their good treatment if the soldiers did. “The best deсision for you and your family is to surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine!” the leaflets read. “The prisoners are fed according to the norm of our soldiers, and if you have desire you will be arranged for paid work.”

Ukraine denies involvement

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine's military intelligence directorate, claimed that the operation in the Belgorod region was carried out exclusively by Russian citizens, with the aim to “create a certain security zone to protect the Ukrainian civilian population.” Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also claimed that Kyiv had no direct involvement in the events in Belgorod, which they were watching “with interest.”

“As you know, tanks are sold at any Russian military store and underground guerrilla groups are composed of Russian citizens,” Podoliak said.

Ukraine’s denial mirrored and mocked the Kremlin’s own past denials of its incursions into Ukraine, including the 2014 seizure and illegal annexation of Crimea.

Another senior Ukrainian military intelligence official, in what can be described as a smirking disavowal of any hand in the matter, told Yahoo News: “These are not regular units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, definitely not our style of warfare. There are many analogies in history where the people themselves decide when to take up arms and defend their rights and freedoms. Finland in 1939, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968. Similarly Ukraine in 2014, in the territory of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions. As a rule, a referendum with 82% to 84% support from the local population follows. In any case, ‘We are not there.’”

“Russian volunteers have proven that the Russian government is completely defenseless against organized resistance by Russians,” the official told Yahoo News. “Ukraine welcomes the desire of Russians to change the political system in their own country.”

Russia reacts

The Russian military scrambled to get reinforcements to the border as the advance of the pro-Ukrainian forces continued. Mi-8 transport helicopters were seen over Kozinka and Rakitnoye, dropping flares and flying low in an attempt to avoid portable surface-to-air missiles. Local Russian civilians fled, forming long lines of traffic as they made their exit from the area.

The Kremlin’s public reaction was first an attempt to downplay the attack. Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, described the action as the work of a “Ukrainian sabotage group” but said Russia had “sufficient forces” in Belgorod to deal with them.

“A sabotage and reconnaissance group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine entered the territory of the Grayvoron district,” Vyacheslav Gladkov, the Russian governor of the region, said in a statement. “The armed forces of the Russian Federation, together with the border service, the Russian Guard and the FSB,” he added, referring to the successor agency of the Soviet KGB, “are taking the necessary measures to eliminate the enemy.” Russian military bloggers also claimed that the deputy head of the Grayvoron city administration was wounded “during the shelling of the administration building,” a claim Yahoo News cannot independently verify.

Though the prospects for the invaders to hang on to any territorial gains is dim, the incursion has already embarrassed the Kremlin a day after its declaration of victory in Bakhmut, a blasted-out city in Donetsk, which Russian forces — particularly the Wagner mercenary corps — have been trying to sack for nine months. The Belgorod raid will no doubt force the Russian military to redeploy elements from a badly strained army to reinforce the border region.

[Kristy]

What's this?

[Kristy]

I call shenanigans.

[Nickdfresh]

The final Battle of Cyclops (near Bakmut):

[Nickdfresh]

Russian arms industry is fucked...

[Nickdfresh]

Russian soldier surrenders to drone:

[Kristy]

It's not even a war anymore as it is legalized human hunting of what's left of the RuZZian military. Bodies are piling up everywhere and no one in RuZZia gives a shit. It's going to be a Summer of Slaughter.

[Seshmeister]

Also it's not US size budgets they have been spending, less than a tenth of the US more like UK spending levels.

[Seshmeister]

I think they sunk all their money into kickbacks. Generals who officially are on $150k salary a year have big yachts.

[twonabomber]

So Russia sank all their money and resources into nukes and let the rest of the military go without. Not surprised.

[Seshmeister]

I honestly think one of Russia's biggest problems is history. US or UK have our problems and some of them are based on myths but Russia is way worse for fake history.

Putin is trying to invoke the WW2 stuff just now about Ukraine and how the West should remember that Russia saved us all from the Nazis.

The problem with this is that he probably doesn't even know what happened in WW2 never mind the average Russian. The resources the US and UK provided to them is just staggering, 400,000 jeeps & trucks
14,000 airplanes, 8,000 tractors, 13,000 tanks Over 50% of their vehicles, Every 'victory' they had against the Germans was basically them losing 5 or 10 times as many as the Germans but just not allowing anyone to give a fuck.

No one is teaching in Russian schools or universities about the massive help Russia had from the West in WW2.

For example even at their great fucking victory at Kursk they outnumbered the Germans 2 to 1 but sill lost more than 3 times as many tanks and 5 times as many men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk

[Nickdfresh]

I posted the above at the end of March here. It's the T-54/55 series, a pretty good old tank noted for reliability and ease of use/maintenance is still in use in Third World battlegrounds like the Sudan. The Ukrainians are also fielding Romanian donated T-55's but the difference is that those are modernized with a NATO L7/M68 105mm gun that was standard before the M-1 Abrams got the 120mm Rheinmetall gun along with most other tanks like the German Leopard II series. More importantly the Ukraine's T-55's have had modern optics and fire control systems installed along with extra turret armor.

It seems the Russian are just deploying these T-54/55's largely as-is, with tech dated to the late 1950's or mid-60's at best. The plus side is that it's easier to stuff them with conscript crews as they are pretty crude and easy to learn on. And they might be useful as a rear echelon indirect fire platform and counter-guerilla occupation tank supporting infantry and police.

But the downside is that their 1958 dated IR night rangefinders and sights can be easily targeted by any newer tank like the T-64 on. And their armor is nearly useless against any modern antitank missile system..

[Kristy]

What...what in the fuck is this?

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/08/europe/russia-t-55-tanks-ukraine-intl-cmd/index.html

Russians using tanks designed in 1948.


The tanks are T-55s, a model first commissioned by the Soviet Union’s Red Army in 1948, shortly after the end of World War II.
They’re so old, you can find them in museums. But in following decades, when deployed against Western-built tanks – in some Arab-Israeli conflicts, and then in the Gulf War – they were no match.
“In the first Gulf War, in 1991 for example, the American and British tanks were knocking out Iraqi T-55s from 23 kilometers.

[Nickdfresh]

CNN reports Russian sources claiming intense Ukrainian artillery fire around the city of Zaporizhzhia as they attempt to evacuate the occupied...