Ukrainian War Thread III: The Horrors

[Post War America]

Don’t be a pessimist, things have changed since 1945. You’re more likely to get vaporized, suffer horrific third degree burns, or die via traumatic injuries from debris/getting swept up in the ensuing blast wave. While ground burst fission bombs like Fat Man cause much more direct radiation and nuclear fallout, they aren’t as useful for leveling cities.

I don't know why people would still want to commit mass suicide despite knowing the effects of nuclear war, honestly.

Because people are deluded into thinking that escalating a conflict won't somehow make it likely that it will be escalated even further later on.

[Novus America]

Post War,
Stop quote splitting, or at least do it right, you screwed the whole thing up.

Okay, you concede that. Just do not do it again. It rather rude to make such accusations, even hyperbolically.

“staving off a NATO invasion” is not going to happen, because NATO cannot launch such an invasion without using nuclear weapons. So Russia would actually INCREASE the risk of such invasion.

Basically you entire argument relies on you believing you are so much smarter than Russia.
If you are correct, it still makes zero sense for Russia to do.
If tactical nuke use by Russia is likely to escalate to global thermonuclear war, then it still makes no sense for Russia to use it.
Only one of these can be true:
A) Using tactical nukes is not likely to escalate to such.
B) It is likely to escalate to such and Russia is suicidally insane to use nukes first and would benefit more from negotiations.

Anyways your last part again only prolongs the war indefinitely. Better than allowing Ukraine to lose, but you have no way to end it in the required Ukrainian victory.

But again I am willing to try what you propose (sadly our leadership is not) but if it fails then what?

[Fartsniffage]

You were planning on fighting with zero training or preparedness whatsoever? Do you want to die?

I remember when NSG badasses boldly stood up for trans rights by running over knife-wielding churchgoers in their hotrod wheelchairs, now they're just willing to beat Russia's ass in the slight chance they're...conscripted and forced to go through boot camp.

Well that's a fucking call back.

[Galloism]

I remember when NSG badasses boldly stood up for trans rights by running over knife-wielding churchgoers in their hotrod wheelchairs, now they're just willing to beat Russia's ass in the slight chance they're...conscripted and forced to go through boot camp.

Well that's a fucking call back.

That was a fantastic thread. I keep a link to it in my sig.

[Kowani]

Senate unanimously passes legislation to ban imports of Russian oil, gas and other energy products to the US

Passes House (420-3)

R!No
Massie
Greene
Gaetz

An addendum, there are two related bills here and I messed up

So the House passed bill to ban russian oil and gas passed 413-9

the 420-3 passing bill suspended permanent normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus

both bills passed the senate unanimously earlier, now heading to Biden

[Independent Cossack Ukraine]

Well that's a fucking call back.

That was a fantastic thread. I keep a link to it in my sig.

What the heck thread was that? Did I miss something?

[Bear Stearns]

Imagine if the US had a president who collued with Russia...

Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he made excuses for Russian war crimes in Eastern Europe and called Russia a "friend"
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he directed the press to ignore Russian war crimes or blame them on other countries
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he compromised the sovereignty of several Eastern European countries with backhanded and illegal deals that Congress was not party to
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much his administration was filled with actual Russian agents and sympathizers
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he passed along advanced military technology to Russians
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he doomed millions of people to genocide, rape, and barbarity to further someone bullshit cause

Of course, I am talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt

[Continental Free States]

Imagine if the US had a president who collued with Russia...

Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he made excuses for Russian war crimes in Eastern Europe and called Russia a "friend"
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he directed the press to ignore Russian war crimes or blame them on other countries
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he compromised the sovereignty of several Eastern European countries with backhanded and illegal deals that Congress was not party to
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much his administration was filled with actual Russian agents and sympathizers
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he passed along advanced military technology to Russians
Imagine if this president colluded with Russia so much he doomed millions of people to genocide, rape, and barbarity to further someone bullshit cause

Of course, I am talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The man made the choice, willing and of sane mind, to award Russia territories it had previously colluded with Germany to conquer, occupy and colonize, and then some, to get Russia to join a war that it was literally in no position to make any other choice about, all for little more than his little dream of Four Policemen.

[Fartsniffage]

That was a fantastic thread. I keep a link to it in my sig.

What the heck thread was that? Did I miss something?

By 13 years if this is your first nation.

[Bear Stearns]

You were planning on fighting with zero training or preparedness whatsoever? Do you want to die?

I remember when NSG badasses boldly stood up for trans rights by running over knife-wielding churchgoers in their hotrod wheelchairs, now they're just willing to beat Russia's ass in the slight chance they're...conscripted and forced to go through boot camp.

arent the reddit volunteer brigades in ukraine taking absurdly high casaulties

[The North Polish Union]

I remember when NSG badasses boldly stood up for trans rights by running over knife-wielding churchgoers in their hotrod wheelchairs, now they're just willing to beat Russia's ass in the slight chance they're...conscripted and forced to go through boot camp.

arent the reddit volunteer brigades in ukraine taking absurdly high casaulties

Did anybody expect anything else from redditors in a combat zone that's not a video game?

[Benuty]

I remember when NSG badasses boldly stood up for trans rights by running over knife-wielding churchgoers in their hotrod wheelchairs, now they're just willing to beat Russia's ass in the slight chance they're...conscripted and forced to go through boot camp.

arent the reddit volunteer brigades in ukraine taking absurdly high casaulties

Yeah a Russian tank literally wiped out a whole squad except for one guy who took cover in time.

[Washington Resistance Army]

I remember when NSG badasses boldly stood up for trans rights by running over knife-wielding churchgoers in their hotrod wheelchairs, now they're just willing to beat Russia's ass in the slight chance they're...conscripted and forced to go through boot camp.

arent the reddit volunteer brigades in ukraine taking absurdly high casaulties

No lol. Despite the memes pro-Russian circles tried to circulate they only accepted people with verifiable military backgrounds and from all the reporting on them SOF types make up a shocking portion of the unit and they've been proven invaluable to the Ukrainians.

[Kalaron]

arent the reddit volunteer brigades in ukraine taking absurdly high casaulties

No lol. Despite the memes pro-Russian circles tried to circulate they only accepted people with verifiable military backgrounds and from all the reporting on them SOF types make up a shocking portion of the unit and they've been proven invaluable to the Ukrainians.

Ah yes, because SOF training protects you from being bombed or shelled to death. Training and experience, mind, that's been predicated on the idea that your side will have essentially uncontested air-support, which is more or less the opposite of Ukraine.

So yeah they're taking relatively heavy casualties because three tours of Afghanistan is like, a few days of Ukraine, basicallly.

Reading this link from the Pulitzer Center, gee it almost seems like they aren't being used as super-duper high speed low drag soldiers

"From the Yavoriv base, Franck, the French fighter, left me dozens of voice memos in the middle of the night, describing his military formation and why he knew he belonged in Ukraine. He was leaving for Kyiv the next morning. Dunn was asked to leave the Georgian legion; he hoped to switch to one of the extremist militias. Mike told me he was crossing into Romania, while Henry sent me a message saying he was getting out. He then recorded and posted a video to Twitter that went viral, complaining about how the legion was a “trap” and he hadn’t been given enough ammunition; he hid in the back of an ambulance to get back into Poland.

I heard from Mamulashvili that he was sending his men to the front. “We are just soldiers, and we are fighting,” he told me. I stayed in touch with many of the fighters I’d met, at least the ones who still felt like telling me their feelings over WhatsApp and Telegram. Several days later, I woke up to a string of texts from one of the Americans I’d met outside the embassy in Warsaw. He wrote in bullet-pointed lists:

• Desertion of foreign legion is very high. Many Ukrainian soldiers, commanders incompetent.
• Russian infantry horrible. 12 Westerners can beat 40 Russians.
• Chechens torture POWs. No mercy to foreign legion. Don’t get captured alive by Chechens.
• Lots of miscommunication with Ukrainians and lots of friendly fire incidents.
• Sometimes your passports will be confiscated.
• Ukrainians may rob you of your western gear and give you a broken rifle and send you to the front.

The messages kept coming. Sometimes they contradicted what he’d said before; I had no way of verifying his updates. “Ukrainians are using outdated tactics to fight Russians,” he wrote. “Their casualty count is much higher than reported. The foreign legion is being sent on suicide missions like attacking 200 Russians with 14 men.”

I didn’t hear from him again. "
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/amon ... n-fighters

[Washington Resistance Army]

No lol. Despite the memes pro-Russian circles tried to circulate they only accepted people with verifiable military backgrounds and from all the reporting on them SOF types make up a shocking portion of the unit and they've been proven invaluable to the Ukrainians.

Ah yes, because SOF training protects you from being bombed or shelled to death. Training and experience, mind, that's been predicated on the idea that your side will have essentially uncontested air-support, which is more or less the opposite of Ukraine.

So yeah they're taking relatively heavy casualties because three tours of Afghanistan is like, a few days of Ukraine, basicallly.

You might have missed the news Ivan but Russia still doesn't have air superiority, the Ukrainians are pretty freely able to move helicopters and aircraft around. News broke the other day that Russian air defense is so shit tier the Ukrainians have even been resupplying Mariupol.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Very interesting news from Russia, in a massive change in rhetoric Peskov now admits Russia has suffered "significant losses" and that it's now a "huge tragedy".

If even the Kremlin is saying this now I can't even begin to imagine how terrible the situation on the ground is for them.

[Kalaron]

Ah yes, because SOF training protects you from being bombed or shelled to death. Training and experience, mind, that's been predicated on the idea that your side will have essentially uncontested air-support, which is more or less the opposite of Ukraine.

So yeah they're taking relatively heavy casualties because three tours of Afghanistan is like, a few days of Ukraine, basicallly.

You might have missed the news Ivan but Russia still doesn't have air superiority, the Ukrainians are pretty freely able to move helicopters and aircraft around. News broke the other day that Russian air defense is so shit tier the Ukrainians have even been resupplying Mariupol.

>Calling someone Ivan because the facts don't agree with you
Ah yes, a stunning defense.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/amon ... n-fighters
Gee, maybe the soldiers she interviewed were Russian?

[Luminesa]

Ah yes, because SOF training protects you from being bombed or shelled to death. Training and experience, mind, that's been predicated on the idea that your side will have essentially uncontested air-support, which is more or less the opposite of Ukraine.

So yeah they're taking relatively heavy casualties because three tours of Afghanistan is like, a few days of Ukraine, basicallly.

You might have missed the news Ivan but Russia still doesn't have air superiority, the Ukrainians are pretty freely able to move helicopters and aircraft around. News broke the other day that Russian air defense is so shit tier the Ukrainians have even been resupplying Mariupol.

Wait, people can get food and water into Mariupol now?! What?! Where?! How?!

[Farnhamia]

You might have missed the news Ivan but Russia still doesn't have air superiority, the Ukrainians are pretty freely able to move helicopters and aircraft around. News broke the other day that Russian air defense is so shit tier the Ukrainians have even been resupplying Mariupol.

>Calling someone Ivan because the facts don't agree with you
Ah yes, a stunning defense.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/amon ... n-fighters
Gee, maybe the soldiers she interviewed were Russian?

*looms ominously* Let's keep it civil, both of you.

[Washington Resistance Army]

You might have missed the news Ivan but Russia still doesn't have air superiority, the Ukrainians are pretty freely able to move helicopters and aircraft around. News broke the other day that Russian air defense is so shit tier the Ukrainians have even been resupplying Mariupol.

>Calling someone Ivan because the facts don't agree with you
Ah yes, a stunning defense.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/amon ... n-fighters
Gee, maybe the soldiers she interviewed were Russian?

This article is not the slam dunk you think it is. It relies on information that the author openly admits cannot be verified and in many cases is contradictory.

You might have missed the news Ivan but Russia still doesn't have air superiority, the Ukrainians are pretty freely able to move helicopters and aircraft around. News broke the other day that Russian air defense is so shit tier the Ukrainians have even been resupplying Mariupol.

Wait, people can get food and water into Mariupol now?! What?! Where?! How?!

Ukainian helicopters flying extremely low through various approachs have apparently been dropping off supplies in the city for a few weeks now. The Russians seemingly had no idea until they got lucky and saw one on its return trip and shot it down.

[Kalaron]

>Calling someone Ivan because the facts don't agree with you
Ah yes, a stunning defense.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/amon ... n-fighters
Gee, maybe the soldiers she interviewed were Russian?

*looms ominously* Let's keep it civil, both of you.

Roger roger, Bruv.

My point is just this: the situation in Ukraine is bad. This extends to the "SOF" people who go there. You're liable to be fleeced for all you're worth, heck there's even soldiers who noted that they didn't feel comfortable with their fellow soldiers over there because of the very real threat that one might shoot you in the back for your kit.
This isn't Afghanistan. It's not any war where these dudes have experiences fighting. Could they demolish a bunch of Russian conscripts who just want to go home? Yeah. Will their training help a lot when a 500lbs bomb detonates in the middle of their squad? Nah.

>Calling someone Ivan because the facts don't agree with you
Ah yes, a stunning defense.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/amon ... n-fighters
Gee, maybe the soldiers she interviewed were Russian?

This article is not the slam dunk you think it is. It relies on information that the author openly admits cannot be verified and in many cases is contradictory.

Are you implying that the soldiers she interviewed lied about the conditions there being awful, or something?
Yes, she cannot verify that the conditions Ukraine is under are that desperate. But at the same time there's a reason a ton of people have come back complaining about Ukraine's treatment of the Reddit legion, heck there's a reason that contract they sign with people is so ambiguous too.

"Instead, the co-ordinators explained that volunteers were expected to fight on the frontline. “You were told that you would go where you are most needed,” Priday said. They would get three to five days’ training. Staff informed them that the first two days would be devoted to rudimentary map-reading and medical skills; on the third day weapons would be handed out and volunteers would practise firing them on a range; then all of them – regardless of their prior experience – would be dispatched to the front. A Belarusian anarchist who had been through the training confirmed the abbreviated nature of it. He said he was told that new recruits were destined for Kyiv."

https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/03/ ... RJEALw_wcB

Long shitty link, but: the tl;dr is that Ukraine isn't exactly that concerned with the welfare of the people being sent over because it's literally a different kind of war.

[Latvijas Otra Republika]

Very interesting news from Russia, in a massive change in rhetoric Peskov now admits Russia has suffered "significant losses" and that it's not a "huge tragedy".

If even the Kremlin is saying this now I can't even begin to imagine how terrible the situation on the ground is for them.

It must really suck when this guy can't lie any further.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Are you implying that the soldiers she interviewed lied about the conditions there being awful, or something?
Yes, she cannot verify that the conditions Ukraine is under are that desperate. But at the same time there's a reason a ton of people have come back complaining about Ukraine's treatment of the Reddit legion, heck there's a reason that contract they sign with people is so ambiguous too.

Oh no the conditions are almost certainly awful, there is no warzone on the planet where they're good.

What I'm objecting to is pretty much everything else, because it conflicts with much of the verified reporting, and even much of the articles own reporting. It does 180s between "the Foreign Legion is better than anything Russia can field in combat and we slaughter them" to "the unit doesn't function at all and we're deserting because things are so bad for us". Based on all the other reporting the former part seems to be true but the latter really doesn't. All the glory seeking morons and other untrained types were sent away very quickly and western sources have confirmed the Legion is performing so well it's prioritized by the Ukrainian military for the first shipments of new weapons and systems. These two narratives cannot mix, one of them has to be false.

[American Legionaries]

Well that's a fucking call back.

That was a fantastic thread. I keep a link to it in my sig.

I thank you for your service, sir. The link makes it easy to revisit such a fond memory.

Are you implying that the soldiers she interviewed lied about the conditions there being awful, or something?
Yes, she cannot verify that the conditions Ukraine is under are that desperate. But at the same time there's a reason a ton of people have come back complaining about Ukraine's treatment of the Reddit legion, heck there's a reason that contract they sign with people is so ambiguous too.

Oh no the conditions are almost certainly awful, there is no warzone on the planet where they're good.

What I'm objecting to is pretty much everything else, because it conflicts with much of the verified reporting, and even much of the articles own reporting. It does 180s between "the Foreign Legion is better than anything Russia can field in combat and we slaughter them" to "the unit doesn't function at all and we're deserting because things are so bad for us". Based on all the other reporting the former part seems to be true but the latter really doesn't. All the glory seeking morons and other untrained types were sent away very quickly and western sources have confirmed the Legion is performing so well it's prioritized by the Ukrainian military for the first shipments of new weapons and systems. These two narratives cannot mix, one of them has to be false.

I have a buddy who's over there. And I'm curious to try to co tact him to get his take.

[Kalaron]

Are you implying that the soldiers she interviewed lied about the conditions there being awful, or something?
Yes, she cannot verify that the conditions Ukraine is under are that desperate. But at the same time there's a reason a ton of people have come back complaining about Ukraine's treatment of the Reddit legion, heck there's a reason that contract they sign with people is so ambiguous too.

Oh no the conditions are almost certainly awful, there is no warzone on the planet where they're good.

What I'm objecting to is pretty much everything else, because it conflicts with much of the verified reporting, and even much of the articles own reporting. It does 180s between "the Foreign Legion is better than anything Russia can field in combat and we slaughter them" to "the unit doesn't function at all and we're deserting because things are so bad for us". Based on all the other reporting the former part seems to be true but the latter really doesn't. All the glory seeking morons and other untrained types were sent away very quickly and western sources have confirmed the Legion is performing so well it's prioritized by the Ukrainian military for the first shipments of new weapons and systems. These two narratives cannot mix, one of them has to be false.

Or, both sides are actually awful and drained from a long-running conflict that's killed a ton of their troops.

I repeat, can a bunch of former SOF guys run off a bunch of Russian Conscripts? Yeah. Will that save them from a bomb? Nah.
Russian Ground forces don't want to advance because they're literally the bottom of the barrel, this should give you no reason to think Ukraine isn't also incompetent-ish, especially when it comes to sending units into meat-grinders because they have to stop the Russians from pressing their conscripts forward.

Ukraine has taken a pretty huge amount of casaulties, they really don't care that much about what one more warm body does in the war, so long as they move up.

As well, I'd argue that the narrative you've put forward is one that doesn't mix with what we genuinely *do* know. If they were prioritizing the Foreign Legion, why, praytell, would they require that they bring their own kit? Part of those weapon packages includes body armour and rifles.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co ... 774098.amp
"The new US aid for Ukraine includes a wide range of military equipment, ranging from 25,000 sets each of body armour and helmets to rifles and grenade launchers, thousands of other anti-tank weapons and more than 20m rounds of ammunition."