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Why Russia Has So Far, Failed To Win The Battle For Donbas
1945 ^ | 05/06/2022 | Lt. Col. Daniel Davis

Posted on 05/06/2022 9:14:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

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To: Owen
Yes.   winking face
21 posted on 05/07/2022 12:16:51 AM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: roving
When Russia invaded Ukraine, I seriously figured it would be over in a couple of weeks. Russia military has turned into a meme.

NATO and US officers are directing the war, inside Ukraine.

They think they are being clever.

22 posted on 05/07/2022 12:18:29 AM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: kiryandil

With respect I kind of agree with your statements but your conclusion is dodgy.

Nobody’s counted how many educated Russians have gotten their families out of Dodge. If Putin resorts to conscription to build the 600,000+ ground force needed to capture and hold Ukraine (never mind open up other fronts) it won’t be that intelligentsia getting the draft.

It’ll be the dirt poor towns away from the big cities getting offers of 500 bucks apiece to let their boys join the great adventure in Novorussiya... Those communities haven’t seen a bean of investment from Russia in decades but they have access to Russian state television and radio so are bombarded with approved propaganda morning noon and night with no access to alternative sources.

For years the West has thought North Korea’s propaganda mill is bad (some people there actually believe Mercedes cars are made in North Korea to a Kim genius’ specifications). It’s got nothing on Russia’s fake news.

The western MSM is biased as hell and peddles fake news a lot but we have access to alternative sources and most of us are smart enough to know when our own preferred news sources aren’t telling the full story. There is no concept of that in impoverished towns across Russia.

This isn’t speculation because we know already that convoys of “volunteers” are being sent west from places that not even Moscovites have heard of. These people live like the Amish not by choice but because they literally have no idea how theyve been left decades behind the big cities.

Russia’s elites and cosmopolitan intelligentsia have treated rural Russia and rural Ukraine and rural anywhere else in the old Soviet orbit as full of “untermenschen” fit only for farming and conscription for decades.

They don’t need westerntards to do it. They do it happily on their own.

Yes, that means they’ve played a fantastic rope-a-dope to the extent that many Georgians, Chechens, Russians and others, have set aside the utter destruction Russia visited on their countries in favour of a 500 buck bribe to join the army, alongside pushing out a propaganda message for two decades to the effect of “we didn’t do that to you; you did it to yourselves and the West is responsible”.

I’ve got two Uke refugees living with me right now. Well, I say Uke. They’re from Donbas, are ethnic Russians, speak Russian, were pro devolution for DPR.

I wouldn’t say they’re converted to Zelenskyy’s side but they both say as long as they have holes between their butt cheeks they ain’t returning to Donbas unless Putin’s army gets whipped all the way out of Ukraine.

That’s what I am hearing from educated Russians, not just from Ukraine but from Russia.

The pro war yahoos are the people Russia itself treats as “untermenschen”, and the TV pundits paid a fortune to lie to them.


23 posted on 05/07/2022 12:21:57 AM PDT by MalPearce
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To: MalPearce

I presume they’re not under the sanctions treating them as Russian non-people, then...


24 posted on 05/07/2022 12:25:40 AM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: Owen
US astronauts get to the ISS via Russian Soyuz vehicles and have for the past TEN YEARS. There has been no other way since the Shuttle was closed down. Russia’s tech is superior, not inferior. Just accept it. It is reality.

Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Top: Soyuz, a ~50 year old capsule design. But I'll hand it to Russia, seriously, in its simple design, it's reliable. (Especially compared to our overly complex Space Shuttle stack)

Bottom: SpaceX Crewed Dragon, a <5 year old design. Also, thankfully, simple in it's basic approach.

Our Space Shuttle was infinitely more advanced than Soyuz, for basic space taxi uses needlessly so. Massively expensive, managed by imbeciles, morbidly unsafe. But yes, more advanced.

25 posted on 05/07/2022 12:41:38 AM PDT by Yossarian
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To: kiryandil
They think they are being clever.

Do you think they think they're being as clever as Russian officers directing the war, inside Ukraine?

All this crap ends once Russia stops its illegal, brain-dead invasion.

26 posted on 05/07/2022 12:43:47 AM PDT by Yossarian
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To: Owen

Great post...very good outline of reality.

When one side is losing “double digits” per day and the other side is being crushed mercilessly to the tune of “hundreds or thousands” each day — Rybar reported Ukraine losses of 757 (killed, wounded, captured — yesterday) it is hard to see that (over 52,000 to date) as the author’s stated “successful defense.”

Rybar is considered to be credible and states that “The projected losses of the AF of Ukraine, National Guard and State Border Service are given in accordance with insider information from the Ukrainian General Staff.”

Anyone carefully following this war on the internet sees those kind of numbers backed up both by the horrific amount of dead Ukrainian soldiers pictured vs. the paucity of similar pictures of Russian soldiers and by the individual accounts given by the soldiers themselves from both sides which mesh completely with the one sided reality of this war to date.

And as to the much heralded NATO equipment that is going to lead to Ukrainian victory, the reality is that NATO has been sending mainly old (in many cases even expired i.e. Javelins) hodge-podge of equipment that would not be very useful in this war and worse yet, frequently does not get to the troops because Russia has closed most supply lines and attacks weapons depots nightly,

According both to the video I posted (read the links from yesterday) from one soldier on the Russian side and to the fact that Ukraine has started an investigation to find out why the Russians know how and where shipments are scheduled and has been successful in interdicting them lends additional evidence to the ineffectiveness of NATO’s efforts.

Bottom line, even at only 500 per day of losses (and lately every day has been considerably higher) in just one month Ukraine loses 15,000 more troops. That is not sustainable. Pictures of captured troops show middle aged and older men. (200,000 conscripts fled when the war broke out.)

If this were a boxing match the referee would have already “called the fight.”


27 posted on 05/07/2022 12:47:00 AM PDT by Cathi
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To: Owen

On your #9, Russian tech isn’t necessarily better or more advanced....it’s just cheaper. If China had offered the same level...cheaper, they would have been the ‘go-to’ guy.


28 posted on 05/07/2022 1:32:06 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: Jamestown1630

They’re all behind murdering, raping and torturing defenseless civilians. That is how they initially thought it will go.

Now they’re getting killed by Ukrainian soldiers and suddenly they don’t like it at all.


29 posted on 05/07/2022 2:34:12 AM PDT by Krosan
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To: alexander_busek
Thanks for that edit. The 'affect' / 'effect' misuse is one of my grammatical peeves.
Right behind then/than.
30 posted on 05/07/2022 4:48:17 AM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (A morning without coffee is like...just kidding. I have no idea.)
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To: Owen
Russia’s tech is superior, not inferior. Just accept it. It is reality.

Tell it to the Moskva.

31 posted on 05/07/2022 5:19:52 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: Owen

The West, at least for the moment, has “infinite” supply of dollars, food and technology to provide the Ukes anything they need short of boots on the ground. It remains to be seen who has more blood to be spilled.

And Elon Musk’s space x just returned a crew from the iss. Presumably the same rockets can put another crew back on.


32 posted on 05/07/2022 5:38:09 AM PDT by RedMonqey (Fu%k the Ballot box. Now the Cartridge Box)
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To: Cathi

Yes but one side us fighting an existential war for survival on home turf with whatever tools it can lay its hands on while the other is fighting a totally unnecessary war, with poorly equipped conscripts a thousand miles from home following orders from a central command structure that didn’t have a clue what it was getting itself into and are not allowed to use their own initiative.

Call me in six months when Ukraine has 600,000 dead combatants and Russia is so depleted of veterans it’s sending teenagers with 2 weeks of combat training into the field.


33 posted on 05/07/2022 5:49:53 AM PDT by MalPearce
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To: SeekAndFind

“1945” is not a credible military site, often getting even the basics mixed up, while omitting important material.


34 posted on 05/07/2022 6:55:55 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: Yossarian
Do you think they think they're being as clever as Russian officers directing the war, inside Ukraine?

Are you admitting that NATO and the US are directly at war with the Russians and the Donetz & Luhansk militias?

Because those Russian officers are directly at war with the UAF.

Be a shame if the HQ in L'vov got a "present" down the chimneystack.

How WOULD the "peaceful" NATO countries explain all those high-ranking corpses? A bus accident on the way to a conference?   winking face face with tears of joy face with tears of joy

35 posted on 05/07/2022 7:13:39 AM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: SeekAndFind

An attacking force will suffer much more casualties than a well dug in defending force that is well armed. As long as Ukraine can hold the position it becomes a meat grinder for the Russians.


36 posted on 05/07/2022 8:27:42 AM PDT by cpdiii (CANE CUTTER-DECKHAND-ROUGHNECK-OILFIELD CONSULTANT-GEOLOGIST-PILOT-PHARMACIST )
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To: Yossarian

Examining further the issue of “inferior” vs “superior” tech.

Not a great analogy, but what is the price on a shelf of a can of beans that does not exist? Capitalism fails (already failed 2008 and since then we just print money) when confronted with scarcity. Capitalism presumes higher price ensures supply. If something isn’t built, it will be built if you offer enough money. Well, this fails in scarcity. If the planet runs out of oil, you can offer all the dollars per barrel you want to offer.

But the real point is Shuttle vs Soyuz. How can a non existent technology be superior to one that functions? The measurement is not semiconductor junction count, or optional features count. It is putting people in orbit count, and of course for 10 years the Shuttle’s count has been 0 and Soyuz quite a few.

Similarly, spacious interiors only matter if selling tourism. This is a freight operation, not tourism. Those spacious designs probably hope to sell tourism. Russia never had that intent. They are moving human freight to orbit. Nobody else could.

Now then. Atlas V. 85 launches to date. It is the workhorse launch vehicle of the US. The first stage engine is RD180, a Russian rocket engine.

Orbital Sciences cargo to ISS rocket is Antares. It uses RD181 in its first stage, a Russian rocket engine.

They have extremely high mission success numbers. And let’s re-iterate here . . . technological superiority is defined as success. Not degree of shiny. Russian technology is superior.


37 posted on 05/07/2022 9:04:42 AM PDT by Owen
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To: Owen

“Russia’s tech is superior, not inferior. Just accept it. It is reality.”

Heavy stuff. I will follow your posts.


38 posted on 05/07/2022 9:18:01 AM PDT by Grzegorz 246
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To: Krosan

I don’t believe that all the Russian people think that way, or even all of their military.


39 posted on 05/07/2022 12:47:35 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Jamestown1630

Shouldn’t have said all, but still a large majority. Russians have an intense superiority complex toward Ukrainians and it often turns into hatred.

They see Ukrainians as stupid redneck cousins, who could be “re-educated” into being members of a superior Russian nation. Ukrainians rejecting it first surprises and then angers them.


40 posted on 05/07/2022 9:26:17 PM PDT by Krosan
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