World War III

[Nitro Express]

You have to be careful with some of that old Russian stuff. The old RPG’s have an impact fuse on the nose. If the tip of the rocket hits something hard it explodes. Some rust usually isn’t going to affect a Kalashnikov. The Soviet ones were built really well. The bore and gas system is chrome plated so it won’t rust. Some pitting isn’t going to hurt anything unless it’s a spring. The spring might fail. One problem area is the bolt carrier return spring. The assembly can fail due to a lot of use or extreme corrosion. It’s a part that takes a real beating.

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Russian troops have turned to Wikipedia to find instructions on handling weapons and used 1960s-era maps in the country's invasion of Ukraine: NYT
John L. Dorman Dec 17, 2022, 12:35 PM

From the start, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was riddled with strategic blunders, with a military force that was unprepared for the conflict and logistical issues that have hobbled the Kremlin.

In a New York Times investigation detailing Russia's failures throughout the conflict, the story of Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade is one of the clearest examples of the poor decision-making that has defined the invasion.

While in combat, the troops in the naval brigade lacked sufficient food, maps, critical medical supplies, or walkie-talkies, and they were forced to use 1970s-era Kalashnikov rifles — with some members having to resort to using Wikipedia to locate instructions for using certain weapons — according to the report.

In interviews with The Times, several members of the brigade told the newspaper that some of the newly-enlisted military fighters had little experience with guns and spoke of having few bullets to use in combat.

The members were initially told by their commanders that they wouldn't see combat, per the report. But once they witnessed their comrades being killed around them as Ukrainian forces were firing upon them, they realized that they weren't told the truth about their role in the conflict.

A Russian solider named Mikhail — who in October witnessed many of his comrades dying near the Ukrainian town of Pavlivka — told The Times that of the 60 members of his platoon, 40 were killed and just eight members eluded serious injuries.

"This isn't war," Mikhail told the newspaper from a hospital near Moscow. "It's the destruction of the Russian people by their own commanders."

Russian President Vladimir Putin displayed a high degree of confidence in the country's military when he launched the invasion of Ukraine in late February.

But nearly ten months later, Russia has been unable to defeat the Ukrainian military and has found itself shunned and isolated from the West.

According to The Times, Putin "spiraled into self-aggrandizement and anti-Western zeal," which drove him to make the decision to invade Ukraine "in near total isolation."

Per The Times report, Russia's invasion plans showed that the military expected troops to march across Ukraine and swiftly take control of the country, with officers being instructed to bring along their dress uniforms and medals for military parades in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

The Russian military, which was seen as a formidable force before the conflict, in actuality had been "severely compromised" by longstanding corruption, per the report.

Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine relied on old maps — some from the 1960s — to navigate their way across the country, and many used their cellphones to call numbers in Russia, which allowed Ukrainian forces to locate and attack them. The Times report also detailed how some Russian pilots flew their planes as though they weren't in peril.

In January, the retired Russian Gen. Leonid Ivashov, having seen reports about the impending conflict, wrote an open letter stating that a full-scale war with Ukraine would jeopardize "the very existence of Russia as a state."

"Never in its history has Russia made such stupid decisions," Ivashov told The Times during a recent phone interview. "Alas, today stupidity has triumphed — stupidity, greed, a kind of vengefulness and even a kind of malice."

Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, pointed to intervention by the West in assessing Russia's numerous setbacks throughout the conflict.

"This is a big burden for us," he said, referencing the strong NATO support for Ukraine. "It was just very hard to believe in such cynicism and in such bloodthirstiness on the part of the collective West."

Since the conflict began, the Biden administration has continued to send advanced weaponry to Ukraine, including high-speed, anti-radiation missiles.

As of November, the United States has committed $66 billion in aid to Ukraine.

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Russian draftees in open rebellion because of no food, water, rusty AKM rifles from the 70's, etc. They begin changing "cocksucker" at the senior officer threateni9ng them with "riot police"...

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When you don't pay your army...

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Ukrainian forces are moving in on Kherson as the Russian openly talk of retreat, liberating the city would be another remarkable milestone. It will also allow Ukraine to again cut off fresh water supplies to Crimea. Maybe the Russians can use their oil and gas to build desalination plants no?

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Blow Up Russian Trains, Liberate The Coast: Ukraine Has A Plan To Win The War
David Axe, Forbes Staff - Yesterday 4:43 PM

© Provided by Forbes
According to AFP, the Kremlin ordered repairs to the $4-billion, 11-mile span to wrap up in July 2023. Until then, Russian forces in southern Ukraine will depend on just one overland supply route—a rail line through eastern Ukraine that’s well within range of Ukrainian artillery.

All that is to say, the Russian field armies in and around the port of Kherson on Ukraine’s temporarily-occupied Black Sea coast are in trouble. They were struggling with resupply before the Ukrainians blew up the Kerch Bridge, twisting its twin rail lines and dropping one of its two road lanes. Now the struggle will get worse.

The partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge “presents the Russians with a significant problem,” tweeted Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army general.

And that sets conditions for what some analysts say is Ukraine’s plan to end the eight-month-old war. As Russian forces fray in the south, gaps could form in their defensive lines stretching from just north of Kherson 250 miles west to the terrain between occupied Mariupol and free Zaporizhzhia.

If Ukrainian brigades can exploit those gaps and liberate the ruins of Mariupol, they will “sever the Russian armed forces in Ukraine into two pieces that cannot mutually reinforce,” according to Mike Martin, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King's College in London—and almost entirely isolate the Russians in the south.

After that, “you’re going to see a general collapse of the [Russian armed forces], a change of power in Moscow and a deal that involves Crimea being handed over,” Martin added. “Or, the Ukrainians will just take it.”

The Russian army traditionally relies on trains to move the bulk of its supplies. That explains why the army never had the big, robust truck units that, say, the U.S. Army takes for granted. The Russians’ truck shortage got a lot worse this spring when the Ukrainians blew up hundreds of trucks trying to resupply Russian battalions rolling toward Kyiv on a doomed mission to capture the Ukrainian government.

The Kremlin’s problem, now that Ukraine has cut the main rail line into Kherson Oblast, is that the only other rail line connecting Russia to a railhead anywhere near Kherson, terminating in occupied Melitopol, lies just a few miles south of the front line near Volnovakha, north of Mariupol. Ukrainian troops could hit the line, and any trains rolling along it, with 120-millimeter mortars, 155-millimeter howitzers and High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.

Realistically, Russian commanders have few options short of surrender. They can feed small quantities of supplies into Kherson by truck, by boat and by plane—and hope that the garrison in the south can hold out until July, when the Kerch Bridge might fully reopen.

The problem is that Ukrainian commanders know they’ve got nine months to take advantage of Russia’s logistical problem. Nine months to add a third counteroffensive to the counteroffensives they launched in the east and south six weeks ago. That third attack almost certainly will target Mariupol in order to cut in two the Russian army and starve half of it.

With the Russians on the defensive and the Kremlin’s desperate nationwide mobilization mostly feeding hapless old men into a war they’re not equipped to fight, the momentum clearly lies with the Ukrainians. They get to choose when to launch a third counteroffensive. Russian sources already are anticipating the possible attack.

It’s likely only the coming winter can dictate terms. The first few months of Ukraine’s winter are wet and muddy. The last few are cold and icy. The former are hostile to ground combat. The latter, somewhat less so. If Kyiv aims to end the war on its terms before, say, January, it might need to make its move soon.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/blow-up-russian-trains-liberate-the-coast-ukraine-has-a-plan-to-win-the-war/ar-AA12YrX4?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=fd653a7570a643dca9bea4b60c188f55

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[Kristy]

Is Germany being a little bad ass here or what?

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Looks to me like a bomb went off under the road bridge and that set off the train loaded with fuel on the rail bridge. A coincidence that the train was there? I think not. Good planning on this bombing.

Upon further review, that may be the case but FFS how? Like The Guns of Navarone shit!

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Naw, it was the tractor trailer, maybe mounted by operators. Very sophisticated blend of white phosphorous, fuel, and maybe Semtex...

While the Russians claim they partially reopened things to traffic (guessing passenger cars), the rail slicing is a big problem for the Russian military...

[Kristy]

Looks to me like a bomb went off under the road bridge and that set off the train loaded with fuel on the rail bridge. A coincidence that the train was there? I think not. Good planning on this bombing.

[silverfish]

Sorry for the foreign language video, but it's the only thing that's not in the useless, non-embeddable "youtube shorts" format.

CNN has a clip:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/08/europe/crimea-bridge-explosion-intl-hnk/index.html

"The exact cause of the blast at Europe’s longest bridge is yet to be confirmed. Russian
officials said a truck exploded, causing Crimea-bound sections of the bridge’s road portion
to collapse. A subsequent fire engulfed a train of fuel tanks on a separate, adjacent rail
portion of the bridge."

[FORD]

So Long And Thanks For All The Vodka??

I obviously don't read Russian, so I can't verify the exact purpose of this illustration, but it would appear to be the Russians bragging about all of the ways this bridge was supposedly protected, and could never be destroyed.....



They even had trained dolphins defending it, apparently? If the dolphins abandoned their post, should we be looking for a Vogon Construction Fleet in the sky??

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https://twitter.com/OleksiyDanilov/status/1578636142055870464?s=20&t=7QKa59_z7vdMsWdZQoGkcw