Posted on 03/07/2023 2:09:08 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut since it began last summer, Western officials say.
The epic nature of the battle is out of all proportion to Bakhmut's strategic significance, they add.
But after more than six months of grinding, horrific fighting, the future of Bakhmut still hangs in the balance.
Since the fighting began, some 90% of its pre-invasion population has fled.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
More unhinged insults zero facts.
“As for how - no, they sailed there, in a ship.”
Yep, put on their SCUBA Gear (fins and all), went down there, dug through the dirt, and planted their 500 POUND BOMBS with 3 MONTH FUSES, and then came up for some Mixed Drinks.
I understand the need to post this garbage (after all, we all need a day job), but it is simply HYSTERICAL for Conservatives to see here.
Bombs were certainly lowered by crane. As is usual in this sort of thing. No diver carries that stuff. But they do maneuver it, connect it, weld it, etc.
And in commercial diving one certainly has to put on all that on a ship. People do that every day. This sort of thing is SOP for construction and maintenance of underwater infrastructure all over the world. There are lots of videos on commercial diving on YouTube.
You are being quite a thick-head on this, BTW.
I am, thankfully, very, very retired.
“Bombs were certainly lowered by crane. As is usual in this sort of thing. No diver carries that stuff. But they do maneuver it, connect it, weld it, etc.”
We get it, IT IS A LIVING. We’d rather spend our time with people who aren’t assigned to this site.
Can’t argue, so you squirt ink and scuttle off.
Typical.
“Can’t argue, so you squirt ink and scuttle off.”
Just dealing with the implication that a bunch of SCUBA DIVERS, on a Yacht, managed to plant 1500 pounds of explosives and put them on a 90-day timer.
But, again, WE DO GET IT, as we all have to make a living.
Who said they were scuba divers? Or some guys back from the Bahamas with with PADI certs?
Or just scuba divers? These depths are normal for commercial divers.
And what’s the big deal with 1500 lb of anything given a ship with a crane? Or timers?
Apparently it’s ok to TROLL HERE all you want and blame Ukraine for the pipeline being blown up, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll check out and give you a free pass. I have enough money to make it through retirement (when I decide to do that), so at least your trolling (A bunch of SCUBA DIVERS, LOL!!!) will get some push back.
+1
Or just drag magnetic bombs along the bottom in the “No Anchorage or Dredging” area until it connects. Then set the timer and it’s Miller time.
🇷🇺 advanced further in the south of the city.
🇷🇺 continue to secure areas of the eastern bank abandoned by 🇺🇦.
Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’
Russia’s relentless assault on Bakhmut is sacrificing waves and waves of unprepared men being sent to their deaths. But multiple defenders of this embattled city in Donetsk Oblast feel that they are in a similar boat, according to interviews with more than a dozen soldiers currently fighting in or around Bakhmut.
During their brief visits to the nearby town of Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian infantrymen told the Kyiv Independent of unprepared, poorly-trained battalions being thrown into the front line meat grinder to survive as best they could with little support from armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, drones and tactical information.
“We don’t get any support,” says a soldier named Serhiy, who has been fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut, sitting down with his friend, also named Serhiy, for a conversation in a small cafe in the Kostiantynivka market. Both men are in their 40s but one of them is a bit older than the other.
The soldiers lack about everything that would support their defense:
They say that Russian artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers are often allowed to strike Ukrainian positions for hours or days without being shut down by Ukrainian heavy weapons. Some complained of poor coordination and situational awareness, allowing this to happen or making it even worse.
Mortarmen spoke of extreme ammunition scarcity and having to use weapons dating back to World War II. Drones that are supposed to provide critical reconnaissance information are also scarce and are being l
All this leads to terrifying casualties of both dead and wounded. "The battalion came in in the middle of December… between all the different platoons, there were 500 of us," says Borys, a combat medic from Odesa Oblast fighting around Bakhmut. "A month ago, there were literally 150 of us."
“When you go out to the position, it’s not even a 50/50 chance that you’ll come out of there (alive),” says the older Serhiy. “It’s more like 30/70.”
The soldiers describe the Russian operation as small reconnaissance followed by artillery fire. This is repeated again and again until it has reached the desired result. The very reasonable application of this tactic is why I disregard claims of 'waves or Russian cannon fodder storming forward' or of 'high Russian losses'. They are obviously nonsense:
The older Serhiy says that the enemy likes to send a team of three or four expendable foot soldiers to attack and make the Ukrainians expose themselves by shooting at them. At that point, the more elite forces zero in on the defenders’ position.
Once they begin exchanging fire, the Ukrainians are struck with heavier weapons like Russian mortars and rockets from Grad multiple launch rocket systems or BMP infantry fighting vehicles and BTR armored personnel carriers with machine guns.
“They get the positions where we are, establish the coordinates, then they hit us from seven to nine kilometers out with mortars,” as well as from closer by with grenade launchers, says the older Serhiy. “They wait for the house to fall so we have to jump out. The building catches fire and then they try to finish us off.”
“Their birds come out and they chase us with fire,” adds the younger Serhiy, referring to Russian UAVs, like quadcopters and Orlan-10 fixed wing drones that spot distant heavy weapons. “They hit accurately.”
As Russians destroy more and more buildings, Ukrainians keep losing more places where they can reliably take cover. Borys the medic says people have been lost when their entrenched positions collapsed from heavy Russian fire, suffocating them.
“I’ll put it like this, we should get our people out because if we don’t take off, then in the next few weeks, it’s going to be bad,” says Oleksandr. A mortarman named Illia agrees that Bakhmut is “practically encircled.”
For lack of ammunition there is no Ukrainian counter artillery fire. Infantry fighting vehicles are held back from the front. The little trained Territorial Brigades are sent in at night to be killed the next morning:
Multiple soldiers say Bakhmut troops are barely given enough time to learn to shoot a rifle – sometimes their training is just 2 weeks, before they’re dropped into the hottest parts of the most intense current battle of the war. They would have preferred for troops to get a minimum of two or three months of training before being deployed to such a hot spot. “Two weeks’ live training and they’re sent here. You can’t do that,” says the older Serhiy. “Or it’s a person who once served in the army, how long ago was that? Obviously they forgot everything.”
“We were promised that we wouldn’t be sent to the zero line right away, that at first we’d be sent to the second or third line,” he continues. “And then we came here in the middle of the night and they immediately sent us to Bakhmut.”
...
According to both soldiers named Serhiy, most brigades are insufficiently trained and lack the experience for an environment as brutal as Bakhmut. People are taken at night to a place they’d never seen before and the battle starts in the morning.
“This is why positions are abandoned, people are there for the first time,” says the younger Serhiy. “I went to a position three times and was given six people who hadn’t fought at all before. We had a few dead and wounded that had to be evacuated… Our people are not being protected.”
Oleksandr confirms that while some battalions fighting in Bakhmut are well-trained and ready, most of them aren’t and many were thrown in at night without much preparation. “Yes, that’s true, my battalion was not prepared,” he says. After five months without a single break from the fighting, only half of Oleksandr’s battalion is left, he says.
“They shouldn’t have rushed to throw everyone in there,” says the younger Serhiy. “Better to abandon those positions, who cares? It’s better to properly train people.”
Lies.
Just another place where Liberaltarian Putin Cucks come to die.
Except verdun didn’t fall And both sides fairly even
Bakhmut is toast and Ukraine depleted there
Once it’s gone it’ll be it really didn’t matter anyhow
wardaddy - note that buwaya said clearly that Verdun was far more important for morale and was considered a border garrison for nearly a century at that point.
Verdun was a fortress city on the River Meuse, and a strategically-vital link in the French sector of the Allied line on the Western Front. To the French people, Verdun was also a symbolic fortress and a national treasure. The loss of such a citadel would be an enormous blow to French morale.
Bakhmut is and was not - it is symbolic in a lower sense, but not as big a loss as it was when Kherson fell to Russia last year.
“Bakhmut is toast” — well, not yet. It’s been 7 months and it still hasn’t fallen. It probably will (or won’t - still to be seen), but 7 months for the supposedly 2nd strongest military in the world is a massive infra dig for Russia.
“Ukraine is depleted there” - not quite. Remember that defenders have lower losses in most cases and especially so when the Ukrainians have been preparing this place for 8 years as a killing point to kill Russians. Numbers bandied around are anywhere from 3 Russians killed for every 1 Ukrainian to 7:1 and even 10:1
“Once it’s gone it’ll be it really didn’t matter anyhow”
The “once” is unknown at this time,
:didn’t matter anywhow” — no more than Mariupol which make a chokehold for the Russians in the east keeping them busy, and also killing off many Russian soldiers.
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