The Invasion of Ukraine, Russia Threatens Finland/Sweden

[Utquiagvik]

What do you think it means?

kyiv's about to be leveled.

oh god.

[Diopolis]

i hope this doesn't mean what i think it means.

What do you think it means?

Grozny.

[Luminesa]

Christ have mercy. I hope they got stopped by forces outside of Kyiv and are in scuffles or something. Please God.

[Adamede]

Guess its going to be another night of me watching Kyiv live feeds instead of doing homework for me.

[Dtn]

If they were deploying "the thermobaric weapon" they'd be advancing, not withdrawing lol

They're not comparable to nuclear weapons in any way. The huge explosion posted here a while ago was a military depot in Central Ukraine going up the first minutes of the invasion.

[Arlenton]

I wonder when/if this war will enter a Ukrainian insurgency phase. These weapons, especially AT and AA weapons, being supplied into Ukraine should prove useful.

It ain't me, IT AIN'T ME!
I ain't no oligarch's son, son.

[Adamede]

I wonder when/if this war will enter a Ukrainian insurgency phase. These weapons, especially AT and AA weapons, being supplied into Ukraine should prove useful.

It ain't me, IT AIN'T ME!
I ain't no oligarch's son, son.

When/if the Russians start capturing significant amounts of Ukrainian territory.

[Utquiagvik]

What do you think it means?

Grozny.

Im pretty sure Zelenskyy is still in Kyiv. he gets to get himself and everyone he can find to another city. EVERYONE needs to get out of Kyiv or the death toll will go WAY up.

[Hispida]

christ, how morbid is this? here we are, in our bedroom or living room or wherever we are, watching the first european war in 30 years play out in real time. it sounds like something out of a dystopia.

[Adamede]

If they were deploying "the thermobaric weapon" they'd be advancing, not withdrawing lol

They're not comparable to nuclear weapons in any way. The huge explosion posted here a while ago was a military depot in Central Ukraine going up the first minutes of the invasion.

It seemed that most Russian forces had halted, not withdrawn.

[Luminesa]

christ, how morbid is this? here we are, in our bedorom or living room or wherever we are, watching the first european war in 30 years play out in real time. it sounds like something out of a dystopia.

I’m in my bed, I’m supposed to be getting ready for an event, and I keep clicking the refresh button for updates. I think I’m going insane.

[Adamede]

christ, how morbid is this? here we are, in our bedorom or living room or wherever we are, watching the first european war in 30 years play out in real time. it sounds like something out of a dystopia.

That's kind of how it's been working since live TV reporting really became a thing in the 60's. Now it's just all the time instead of during dinner.

[Cosmic79]

More reports of Russian armor getting destroyed.

https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/14 ... 1729564680

[A z a n i a]

On why Russia's performance is a shitshow;

The expense of having a top of the line tank is basically nothing compared to the cost of actually using it.

Like... Okay, I know this is dumb. But have you ever played Hoi4?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTvRc8fQNBs

And built an enormous tank army? Five full battlegroups of 24/24/24/24/24 tanks and you go "I'll be goddamn unstoppable!"

And then they just... immediately run out of fuel because you mobilize them all at once, and then they're just big dumb coffins?

Yeah... the reason we're seeing a bunch of stalled Russian convoys and so on is their army is on paper enormous and modern. The problem is they don't have the economy to actually use any of it.

It's one reason why Putin is furious the war isn't over yet. It's making that extremely apparent to the whole world. If he had broken Ukraine in 48 hours we wouldn't be seeing all this embarrassing shit about their logistics nightmare and realizing;

"Russia has 12000 tanks. Oh. No. Russia has 100 Tanks and 19900 fancy iron coffins because they're too poor to actually afford any more than that in actual usage".

On top of this the Russian military appears to have gone for top of the line tanks and aircraft and all that shit and been extremely dismissive of modernizing their fuel trucks and actual logistics network. They're using decades old shit and western experts have told the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians;

"Oh yeah. You can take that thing down with small arms fire. We used to build them like that too lol. If you don't have a Javelin, take a handgun and go hunting for a fuel truck. You'll be killing twenty tanks that way.".

So it has become a total shitshow. As to why Russia hasn't bothered modernizing its logistics system despite the flaws in such a system being well understood, documented, and countermeasures devised, two theories leap to mind.

Because they're massively insecure fucknuggets and so the entire point of modernizing their tanks and so on is because those are "The Cool Things" and they look down on logistics as an annoyance. Or two.

They're actively trying to psyche out the west by having a "Modern military" but genuinely can't afford a modern logistics network to upkeep it as well (that is actually the overwhelmingly more substantial expense). So someone told Putin "We can have 400 modern tanks and a logistics system" and Putin stares ahead and says "And if we didn't expect the tanks to actually be used in a prolonged conflict?"

"Well. We can scrap the logistics system and afford 12000..."

"Do that then.".

Because the alternative was for Russia to have a military about the size of Italies... maybe twice as big if they're committed to doing so. Except the Italian military is actually functional, and Russia's is not.

Look at some comparisons.

Italy spends 30 billion dollars a year and has an army of 90,000.

Russia spends 60 billion dollars a year, and has an army of 1,000,000.

Where do you think they got the savings from? How can they afford to field more than ten times the men and and almost a hundred times more tanks and with full infantry mechanization on only twice the budget?

From that army being basically non-functional. It's just there to look good on paper and be scary. If you expect it to do anything for longer than 48 hours, it evaporates, as we've seen.

Which is why Italy only has 200 tanks and not 12000. It's why they don't have full mechanization. And so on. Because they want a functional military, not a piece of propaganda on how large and modern their military is. Nobody thinks logistics systems are sexy for that kind of propaganda.

Okay, you've made some valid points, but I do have a problem with your analysis. The Russian military command isn't made up of idiots playing dress-up, and I cannot stress this point enough. They definitely understand the importance of logistics, and since we know that this invasion was planned, they definitely knew how they were going to supply the forces committed to the invasion. We're only four (five?) days into the invasion, and, as several others have pointed out on this thread, the coalition encountered similar logistics issues during the Iraq War.

Now I'm not saying that Ukraine is doomed. In fact, I think as more pressure is applied to Russia, there is a chance that they'll walk away from the negotiation table (when negotiations do eventually happen) in relatively good shape.

[Hispida]

christ, how morbid is this? here we are, in our bedorom or living room or wherever we are, watching the first european war in 30 years play out in real time. it sounds like something out of a dystopia.

That's kind of how it's been working since live TV reporting really became a thing in the 60's. Now it's just all the time instead of during dinner.

i want to say it makes me sick, but i can't. that's the worst part, honestly. i'm invested like a TV show.

[Gallia-]

If they were deploying "the thermobaric weapon" they'd be advancing, not withdrawing lol

They're not comparable to nuclear weapons in any way. The huge explosion posted here a while ago was a military depot in Central Ukraine going up the first minutes of the invasion.

It seemed that most Russian forces had halted, not withdrawn.

Yes they're waiting for artillery to arrive before they attack.

That is what a siege generally is.

[The Blaatschapen]

christ, how morbid is this? here we are, in our bedroom or living room or wherever we are, watching the first european war in 30 years play out in real time. it sounds like something out of a dystopia.

The true dystopia is in ukraine right now, not our living rooms far away.

[Adamede]

That's kind of how it's been working since live TV reporting really became a thing in the 60's. Now it's just all the time instead of during dinner.

i want to say it makes me sick, but i can't. that's the worst part, honestly. i'm invested like a TV show.

Same. It's been consuming my every thought. Doesn't help that one of my college professors is from Ukraine and still has family there who are preparing to fight.

[Adamede]

christ, how morbid is this? here we are, in our bedroom or living room or wherever we are, watching the first european war in 30 years play out in real time. it sounds like something out of a dystopia.

The true dystopia is in ukraine right now, not our living rooms far away.

True.

[Ethel mermania]

Senior Advisor to the EU parliament says the keys will be in Ukrainian skies "within the hour"

Excellent news.

So how does the nato airbases these planes are flying out of not become a legitimate target of the war?

[The Lone Alliance]

i hope this doesn't mean what i think it means.

They’re deploying the thermobaric weapon?

Do you even know what thermobaric means or is that just a buzzword to you that means "Really big explosion" and you don't even know what the weapon is.

Really wish people would stop tossing "thermobaric" around in ignorance.

Excellent news.

So how does the nato airbases these planes are flying out of not become a legitimate target of the war?

Same reason planes flying out of Russia into North Vietnam weren't targets in the Vietnam war.

[Diopolis]

I wonder when/if this war will enter a Ukrainian insurgency phase. These weapons, especially AT and AA weapons, being supplied into Ukraine should prove useful.

It ain't me, IT AIN'T ME!
I ain't no oligarch's son, son.

When/if the Russians start capturing significant amounts of Ukrainian territory.

The Russians do have significant amounts of Ukrainian territory, just not anything close to a majority.
As I've been saying for the duration of crisis, the most logical places for an insurgency in Ukraine are a Taliban-style Maoist insurgency(and the Taliban ran a textbook Maoist insurgency very successfully) in the far west, using Poland/Slovakia as safe havens, and IRA-like inside-out insurgencies in major port cities.
Notably these are totally different kinds of campaigns, and they require particular conditions to wage. It remains to be seen whether Mariupol and Odessa will be amenable to urban insurgencies after capture, but Galicia will almost certainly be amenable to Maoist guerrilla warfare unless either coopted or ethnically cleansed. The USSR would have done the latter without thinking twice; the modern Russian response to similar insurgencies has been cooption(notably in Chechnya).

[Senkaku]

EU to provide fighter jets fo Ukraine

Senior Advisor to the EU parliament says the keys will be in Ukrainian skies "within the hour"

God willing they'll get there before any Russian heavy bombers...

Advisor to the Head of the Office of the Ukrainian President says Russia has completely halted an advance towards Kyiv in some directions, and some of its units are withdrawing


This seems worrying

maybe they're preparing to open negotiations in earnest! :')

[Kowani]

In a shocking twist, the Belarusian “referendum” ending the country’s non-nuclear status has passed

[Arlenton]

Excellent news.

So how does the nato airbases these planes are flying out of not become a legitimate target of the war?

Are they flying them out of NATO airbases? Or just sending them to Ukraine, who will then pilot them? I figured the former though I may be wrong.