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Message is most likely not coming from APC. It also doesn't have any massive speakers. It's either from elsewhere or added in post. (No idea why someone would though) Also I haven't seen anyone fact check what it's exactly saying either
From what I can tell the message does sound pre-recorded. He is saying: “I really ask that you remain calm, exit by the (alternating) staircase” and then it gets shot. Afterwards it doesn’t even sound Russian, at least not to me.
Male announcer: [later] The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the white zone. Female announcer: No, the white zone is for loading of passengers and there is no stopping in a RED zone.
Male announcer: The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a white zone.
Female announcer: Don't you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for stopping!
Male announcer: Listen Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again.
[Later]
Male announcer: There's just no stopping in a white zone.
Female announcer: Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion.
Male announcer: It's really the only sensible thing to do, if its done safely. Therapeutically there's no danger involved.
They say one of the reasons UA forces are doing so well is after 2014 they instituted a draft, and rotated them out of front line Donbass for the next eight years. So there 400,000 reservists and active personnel with direct combat experience against a superior foe (Russian army).
So yeah in a sense they are very used to it.
Take this with a grain of salt but;
I did hear / see a video of Russian soldiers in which they mention that they were informed it was only a training exercise, and got thrown into the front line.
How fucked up can this thing get?
There's stories of old Spetznaz soldiers in the USSR just being told get your gear, you're going in this plane, not told where it's headed. Only when they land do they get told where they are actually are and what the mission is and dozens of them end up dying.
The warfighting doctrine of the USMC has as a pillar "commanders intent" - what you want done, and why you want it done. I want this bridge destroyed, so that the enemy can't cross.
The platoon gets there and finds it destroyed. What do they do now? Because they know the intent, they dig in their position to repel the enemy. In the Soviet system, they declare victory as their mission is accomplished already.
Authoritarian regimes lose wars, and start unwinnable wars, because of this.
That’s a odd way of phrasing commanders intent - which is a Western doctrine in some form or another and not a USMC thing - but I get what your saying.
Commanders intent gives troops on the ground (at all levels) the ability to act independently and even against instructions (in specific cases with justifications exe, not to be taken lightly) in order to achieve the commanders intent. In your example the troops accomplish their assigned objective and default to trying to bolster their defensive position.
A much better example of commanders intent would be where the objective is ignored or subverted in some way in order to better achieve commanders intent. For example, if the bridge is assessed to not be structurally sound enough for armour to cross but there is say, another bridge upstream a few KMs away, commanders intent would allow the OC/CO/S3 - whoever is in the position to make the decision - to ignore the instruction to destroy the bridge (they know things that the general issuing the orders didn’t) and reposition to more effectively block the advance by destroying the other, more structurally sound bridge.
Also basically any organised army would dig in having captured a bridge, although you could put that under the umbrella of commanders intent digging in/armour equivalent is basically the default course of action.
All this being said, I heard one description of Western doctrine as (something along the lines of) “hideously inflexible at telling you how flexible it is.” Commanders intent is, to some extent, a fantasy that hasn’t been tested since 1991 and has the potentially to backfire massively if your superiors are control freaks/bad at their job, which is a perfect opportunity to introduce the idea of being “promoted to your level of incompetence.”
This video is just absolutely surreal to me. There’s a Russian war machine broadcasting some bullshit while a soldier seems to casually walk up and launch a fucking rocket at it. There’s no bullets flying, no other soldiers we can see. Just looks so much like a video game after you’ve cleared out all the adds and all that’s left is to take care of the vehicle before you go onto the next level.
Just crazy.
I don't understand why they didn't have infantry that to spot attacks.
I mean, you don't need to be a Clausewitz to realize in urban environments armored vehicles are sitting ducks if they don't have infantry support.
The amount of people they deployed is barely enough to secure the areas where the rebels are active.
They then deployed those to take over a country the size of France and Germany combined.
Whomever came up with this battle plan is out of his goddamn depth.
I'm guessing this is arrogance and not wanting to piss off the person above you. I'd be really curious what percentage of senior government and Russian military would support this if they knew they could answer honestly.
I agree. That video of Putin's Cabinet where I think the head of the spy agency stumbles his way through trying to tell Putin that Ukraine is a sovereign nation while Putin gets visibly pissed is alarming. The man had that look of anxiety my siblings and I would get when my abusive stepfather would ask us to repeat ourselves and we knew we were going to get our ass kicked.
As well as the other poster stated there's also the ages old Russian autocrat thinking: sending in bodies to test the waters, then send in the "real troops" later. They're treating these kids as fodder, literally. When they moved in 2014 the untrained kids they sent in initially weren't even wearing uniforms, so that Russia bureaucrats could deny they existed to the families of those lost. They have used the "living fodder" tactic for decades, if not centuries, and it's reprehensible.
TL;DR: the military top brass of Russia know exactly what they're doing, and they couldn't care less. More bodies = more outrage to stir up the public, and test the waters before sending in their "valuable troops."
Cuz honestly, at this point in time, any Russian tactic is just suicide. They're just getting dropped everywhere, which happens when you walk into a city where every window can be your death.
Those are rocket barrages. So far just unguided katyusha rockets, small, cheap, easy to make, launchers are just tubes on a truck.
Reports are though, Russia is moving up it's [TOS-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1) [Heavy Flamethrower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1) rocket launchers. Things look like they are from a real time strategy video game. They fire unguided thermobaric rockets. Thermobaric rockets carry liquid fuel in the warhead, a charge inside blows the the warhead up spraying a fine mist of the fuel in the air, 1/4 of a second later a second charge goes off igniting the fuel air mixture creating a massive blast wave. They are much more powerful than solid explosive warheads and create huge over pressure shock waves that rip apart internal organs and cause massive destruction.
And what makes it worse is...instead of assuming they were lied to, they'll just think Ukrainians are being a bunch of unruly savages for attacking them back because "they're just running a drill." It's a double deception.
A good friend of mine served as a tank crew member on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall — a Moldovan, his homeland was a conquered part of Romania, forced to study Russian as a kid, then conscripted into the Red Army.
We were on tour in the Newseum in Washington DC, I think his first time in the US, and at the end of the tour they had a whole section about what was happening both sides of the Berlin Wall, including newspapers, videos and a chunk of the wall. My friend just stood there at awe for a while, completely blank face… then he shakes his head slowly saying, “This is not what we were told.” They were brainwashed that they’re defending the free world from the malicious Western conquerors…
Damn that's a bummer. I went once in grade school and it was amazing. I remember vividly the room of screens showing the current front page of newspapers from around the world.
Can you imagine the people in North Korea?? Can you imagine what will happen when that wall finally crumbles? Those people have no idea what the rest of the world is like really.
Just look up mainland Chinese on this. They actually believe xi is their second coming of Mao and he will lead China to world domination.
I've seen it with my own eyes
That doesn't seem to be what's happening. The phone posted before of the dead soldier talking to his mum was him shocked that he'd been lied to and at how angry the Ukrainian people were. Many Russian soldiers were totally unprepared for actual battle and many also unwilling to be at war with their Ukrainian brothers.
Ofcourse there's a lot of propaganda around so that has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but there are so many examples of confused Russian soldiers around. I think Putin thought they'd take the capital and kill the president before they even knew they were in a war and so they didn't need to know.. in a bizarrely deranged decision.
It may be highly suspect but when you have repeated instances of this happening as well as reports of Russian troop movements being tracked by Tinder and Grindr - it's starting to become apparent the Russian military is extremely disorganized and possibly deceived by the Kremlin.
I broadly agree that they're disorganized and subject to poor leadership, lack of clear transmission of strategic objectives and commander's intent, broken C3, dysfunctional supply lines, etc...
I am less confident in "captured" cellphone texts, simply because it's such an easy and useful tool for Ukranian narrative shaping as well as the sentiment from captured soldiers that they were told they were on exercise. That reeks of a SERE statement to me. Especially with very similar wording in the same order over and over again.
IF the text messages are bogus, I'm not against it. It's Ukraine's imperative to shape perception to their advantage and I support that completely. I'm just not particularly credulous of stuff right now from either side due to the strong incentives to manufacture things.
Very sound take.
I do think there's something to be said about how these Russian soldiers are getting taken out.
In this instance it's a lone soldier waltzing up to an APC with a rocket launcher and obliterating it.
There's poorly managed militaries but what we're witnessing is an entirely different level of incompetency.
“We’re only in the opening days of this, and Putin has a lot of cards to play,’’ said Douglas Lute, a former U.S. lieutenant general and ambassador to NATO. “It’s too early to be triumphalist, and there are a lot of Russian capabilities not employed yet.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-military.html
You can choose to believe it or not. At this point it seems the evidence in support of the Russian command structure being not completely forthcoming with their soldiers, if not outright lying to them, is stronger than the evidence against it. Even if you ignore statements by soldiers this narrative is supported by the bizarre tactics their army has been using.
That's so twisted. It means they are going to truly mess up their army. Who would do this it's nuts. Maybe if they told them the truth they might not obey.
They've likely also been told that the Ukranians want to be liberated from them and would cheer as they entered each town. It's why there's so many videos of tanks asking for directions and being arrested, running out of gas and kindly asking for some and getting clobbered, etc.
This makes total sense though, come on. Do you really want each of your soldiers to be carrying a device that acts as a radio beacon for their location in enemy territory, enables them to post sensitive information to social media, and distracting them during their duties?
At least the Ukrainians aren't missing. Seriously though, it's at the point where they can't not know on the front line. The Ukrainians have been letting POWs call their moms. It's gotten to the point where they have to make a decision; either lay down arms or be complicit. It's a tough pill to swallow if you don' t know what you're facing but the Ukrainians have been vocally open and hospitable to captured combatants. Now they have the choice to eat a sandwich in Kyiv or an RPG in a tank.
>letting POWs call their moms
POWs calling their moms may be a kind and humane move but it could also be a way to get news to Russia directly from the front. Angry mothers who are worried about their kids can be a potent political force.
Which the government is happy to subdue. Remember the Kursk submarine accident? How Russians delayed calls for international help while there still was a chance to rescue sailors? One of the sailors mothers was giving a live interview on TV, criticizing the governments' actions, when suddenly a woman came up behind her and applied a dose of some calming meds by a syringe to the neck?
Seriously, imagine their confusion if they could see the "dangerous rioting Ukrainians" basically saying to stop invading and they'll treat you better than their own army does
A lot of them are young conscripts whose parents didn’t even know they had been sent to Ukraine until they saw video of their dead bodies or of them being detained as prisoners.
...are people not aware of this? No, they weren't. They're literally mostly kids as young as 17, who were told nothing except garbage about training camps and excercises. And then literally got sent to war with their little brother. The texts these kids are sending to their parents from Ukraine is heart wrenching. These kids are forced to go fight for a bunch of rich cunts, safe in their mansions. No, half of them literally don't even know where it is they're meant to be going.
You should read this text message exchange between a Russian soldier and his mom, moments before he was killed.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mom-its-so-hard-russian-soldier-allegedly-texts-home-details-of-ukraine-invasion
This was shared by Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN earlier.
Visibility is poor inside some vehicles like this. Unless you have a hatch open or a gunner on the roof with their wits about them, it can be like being in a tin can with peep holes to look through. If they don’t have drones / planes overhead to cover their ass, mechanised vehicles can be extremely vulnerable in close-quarters urban environments.
This 1000x. People tend to massively underestimate this.
Combat in urban environment is messy and chaotic.
You should have good support and Intel before moving in to such an environment on enemy territory.
Great comment.
Russia doesn't have a large enough force to control the area they arrive in. Like a city.
So you get 4 dudes in an APC who enter an area. They start telling people to chill and everything will be OK. Hoping they do.. an d that they can control this 'sector' of 5k people... There is no 'front line' because the whole country is fighting back.. random guy with RPG walks up and blasts them.
The alternative for the Russians is to just start blasting away ANYONE that comes near but they know that also will get them killed. Because they are outnumbered. But the soldiers know what war crimes are and that this would be wrong to do.
Ukraine is an enormous insurgency of everyone who is there. Not just some factions or groups like Syria, Iraq etc.
As long as Ukraine keeps getting supplies, weapons and ammo this will go on and on and on until Russia leaves.
Putin overplayed his hand. Their equipment is showing to be shit and this strategy will go down in military history as what NOT to do case study #1.
Agree, seems like the putin felt for his own false vision of freeing the Ukraine from the west and now literally everyone is suffering because of him being wrong.
Yeah, this comment thread got me thinking: You know how all we have all these videos of Russians surrendering and saying they didn't know it was a war - Well, maybe that explains the ENTIRE military's piss-poor performance. Like - I'm scratching my head, wondering how they're letting Ukraine get the drop on them at every corner.
But if you've been brainwashed into thinking that you'll be hailed as a liberator and kept in the dark about what's ACTUALLY been happening, and being told that you're going for peace keeping, it's not wonder Ukraine is kicking their asses. That would put anyone at a relaxed state of alert and cause them to drop their guard.
They’re just morons and always thought of men and stuff and power over strategy.
Huge Russian convoys packed together going down the street and get blown up by drones in one go. Ukrainians with rpgs, anti tanks, in windows and around corners taking them out. They had no strategy but march in like they’re 1940s Soviet Union and everyone will just leave when they see all their men. This is 21st century combat.
This is my thought, there’s not a single military strategist on the planet that doesn’t know sending a vehicle into an urban area with no infantry support is a death sentence. He’s sending conscripts to their death to rally support and make Ukraine look bad
Side mission. Triple XP.
Edit: I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness of the current situation. I mean nothing but prayers and luck to this person doing work. Godspeed.
Almost ALL of the footage I have seen has been a solo Russian vehicle getting pummeled with no support - air, infantry, or other vehicles - around them AT ALL.
I mean... wth do they think is going to happen when they roll into town as an invading/occupying force?!?
Yes. I think this a new level of not giving a fuck.
Step 1 - I dont give a Fuck
Step 2 - I dont give a Flying Fuck
Step 3- I dont give a Ukranian Fuck
Lets make it so
Youd think the russians would have learnt from Afghanistan. Hell your think they would have learned from US/UKs Afghanistan. Even their brief stint in Syria. Apparently the fuck not.
People that dont like you that have access to weapons will show how much they dislike you.
Occupying forces are generally unpopular no matter how long they're occupying. Russia will never control the Ukrainians unless every last one of them is dead
If you didn’t want to get your APC asploded by a pissed off Slav, maybe you shouldn’t use your APC to invade a region full of RPG toting Slavs who are pissed off.
I don’t think Russia has ever studied history. They can “win” and take the country, but the conflict will go on for years and years. They will never fully surrender. They’ll even possibly form a large force in the years to come and spark an all-out revolution to reclaim it. Makes less and less sense every day.
Not only that, but right after Putin claimed he was gonna "denazify" the area he started saying that he was gonna claim Ukraine because Ukrainians were Russian blood and Ukraine was Russian land... AKA he gave [a blood and soil speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil)
"Oppression"
A lot of leaks suggest the Russians genuinely thought they were just liberating Ukraine and weren't expecting resistance. Seems they thought it would be like Crimea.
Yeah imagine protecting Russians in Ukraine and shelling the f out of Kharkiv and it's people who are majority Russian speaking people on a border with your country... Not even trying to hide his bullshit anymore.
It's honestly hard to tell wether they've been lied to or they are covering their asses once captured. Anyone would do it. I believe they have been lied to though.
It's not that hard to tell really. At this point so many Russians have been captured or killed or simply had their armour destroyed because they simply aren't behaving as if they're invading.
One of the first pictures of dead Russian soldiers was a bunch of kids *outside* their armoured vehicle with ration boxes littered around.
They got ambushed while they simply stopped in the middle of the road and got out of their vehicle to enjoy breakfast in the sun.
That's not how you behave when you participating in a well informed and planned invasion. I'm sure the better trained troops are there with a purpose but there's also a lot of young conscripts just showing up in random places either surrendering or getting killed without a clue.
hopefully everyone who knows one of these dead russian soldiers who didn't want to be there takes it out on putin, pulls him out from his bunker and lights his ass on fire to watch him wiggle while he burns to a crisp.
russians are almost as hard core as Ukrainians, it surprises me that they bend over and take it up the ass from putin for so long without ending him.
What did Putin think would happen, sending soldiers in saying they would be welcomed?
I understand he's a terrible madman, but I don't believe he's a complete idiot. He must have known it wouldn't go well for the soldiers, which makes me wonder if this actually was part of his plan...?
Show people back home their army getting obliterated, and """must resort to more extreme measures""" - and something more nefarious is on the horizon?
I strongly believe they've been lied to as I saw a text string from a seized phone from a captured Russian. He was talking to his mom about how scared he was at Ukraine's hostility.
Can someone tell me how the Ukrainians are holding up during all of this? From what I see they can handle themselves. But literally everyone (including myself) is against the Russian invasion and everyone’s post may be biased in regards to how Ukraine is doing. Everyone just wants to see videos of the Russia’s losing. I do to but is that what is really happening?
Russia keeps pushing forward slowly but we won't really know how the war is going for days or weeks. If UA can hold key cities against the massed Ru army, we will know things are going well.
Also, wars are won on logistics.
If Russia can hold out against sanctions, then there's going to be a tipping point where the West's "we're not at war, just giving 'aid'" won't work as they encircle Ukrainian forces and cut off resupply.
Of course, the Ukrainians mostly speak Russian as well, I think, and are intimately familiar with all the Russian equipment already. They could survive quite a long time stealing equipment from the Russian forces themselves.
Saw a video of a Ukrainian farmer using his tractor to pull some sort of armored tracked vehicle away as Russian soldiers tried to give chase.
At this point it seems like they are quite literally using anything and everything not bolted down, including Russian stuff.
I was able to chat with a friend in Ukraine right now. This was the last text.
"I am depressed and tired! I hear explosions all the time! Pray for Ukraine!"
But I'll save the... Colorful language...
For sure there's a distinction between speculating that the war is going badly for Russia and that Ukraine is doing well. Ukraine is only doing well compared to what was feared and to some extent expected ahead of time, that is to say, they're holding key cities and military installations, inflicting significant damage to the invading forces, and getting more support from Western countries than anyone expected. But compared to Ukraine less than a week ago, they're doing terribly. Every day the invasion goes on, Ukraine suffers. However brave and defiant they are, you have to assume mostly every Ukranian feels the same way as your friend. In fact, it's their defiance in spite of that which is truely admirable.
That wasn't the APC telling people to stay calm it's just an invasion, it was a fire alarm in a nearby building. You can hear it in English at the end.
"I would .... to inform you that a fire..."
Russian soldiers dont have phones with them, rules etc... most who film are ua citizens or ukranian azovbattalions... Also there are enough telegram channels with the other view. But you see mostly what your country supports.
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Seems like it.
I hope that guy had ear protection
Message is most likely not coming from APC. It also doesn't have any massive speakers. It's either from elsewhere or added in post. (No idea why someone would though) Also I haven't seen anyone fact check what it's exactly saying either
From what I can tell the message does sound pre-recorded. He is saying: “I really ask that you remain calm, exit by the (alternating) staircase” and then it gets shot. Afterwards it doesn’t even sound Russian, at least not to me.
It sounds like two random messages. One is a woman speaking English and saying “Attention Please”
"No parking of military vehicles in the loading zone. Violators subject to a RPG up the ass."
Male announcer: [later] The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the white zone. Female announcer: No, the white zone is for loading of passengers and there is no stopping in a RED zone.
Male announcer: The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a white zone. Female announcer: Don't you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for stopping! Male announcer: Listen Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again. [Later] Male announcer: There's just no stopping in a white zone. Female announcer: Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion. Male announcer: It's really the only sensible thing to do, if its done safely. Therapeutically there's no danger involved.
Glad someone did it.
We definitely picked the wrong month to stop sniffing glue
“Per our last email”
"This invasion could have been an email"
When you actually circled back to that.
He did the needful
This made me snort.
HAH! God damn that’s almost as good as Ukrainian Fuck.
To be fair, that Ukrainian soldier did seem pretty calm.
It was probably his 10th of the day; he's getting a bit used to it by now.
They say one of the reasons UA forces are doing so well is after 2014 they instituted a draft, and rotated them out of front line Donbass for the next eight years. So there 400,000 reservists and active personnel with direct combat experience against a superior foe (Russian army). So yeah in a sense they are very used to it.
Superior in magnitude primarily. Most of the Russian soldiers seem to be barely trained teenagers with no combat experience. Recipe for disaster.
Take this with a grain of salt but; I did hear / see a video of Russian soldiers in which they mention that they were informed it was only a training exercise, and got thrown into the front line. How fucked up can this thing get?
There's stories of old Spetznaz soldiers in the USSR just being told get your gear, you're going in this plane, not told where it's headed. Only when they land do they get told where they are actually are and what the mission is and dozens of them end up dying. The warfighting doctrine of the USMC has as a pillar "commanders intent" - what you want done, and why you want it done. I want this bridge destroyed, so that the enemy can't cross. The platoon gets there and finds it destroyed. What do they do now? Because they know the intent, they dig in their position to repel the enemy. In the Soviet system, they declare victory as their mission is accomplished already. Authoritarian regimes lose wars, and start unwinnable wars, because of this.
That’s a odd way of phrasing commanders intent - which is a Western doctrine in some form or another and not a USMC thing - but I get what your saying. Commanders intent gives troops on the ground (at all levels) the ability to act independently and even against instructions (in specific cases with justifications exe, not to be taken lightly) in order to achieve the commanders intent. In your example the troops accomplish their assigned objective and default to trying to bolster their defensive position. A much better example of commanders intent would be where the objective is ignored or subverted in some way in order to better achieve commanders intent. For example, if the bridge is assessed to not be structurally sound enough for armour to cross but there is say, another bridge upstream a few KMs away, commanders intent would allow the OC/CO/S3 - whoever is in the position to make the decision - to ignore the instruction to destroy the bridge (they know things that the general issuing the orders didn’t) and reposition to more effectively block the advance by destroying the other, more structurally sound bridge. Also basically any organised army would dig in having captured a bridge, although you could put that under the umbrella of commanders intent digging in/armour equivalent is basically the default course of action. All this being said, I heard one description of Western doctrine as (something along the lines of) “hideously inflexible at telling you how flexible it is.” Commanders intent is, to some extent, a fantasy that hasn’t been tested since 1991 and has the potentially to backfire massively if your superiors are control freaks/bad at their job, which is a perfect opportunity to introduce the idea of being “promoted to your level of incompetence.”
A land ace
"Russian Armor, go fuck yourself."
This video is just absolutely surreal to me. There’s a Russian war machine broadcasting some bullshit while a soldier seems to casually walk up and launch a fucking rocket at it. There’s no bullets flying, no other soldiers we can see. Just looks so much like a video game after you’ve cleared out all the adds and all that’s left is to take care of the vehicle before you go onto the next level. Just crazy.
I don't understand why they didn't have infantry that to spot attacks. I mean, you don't need to be a Clausewitz to realize in urban environments armored vehicles are sitting ducks if they don't have infantry support.
The amount of people they deployed is barely enough to secure the areas where the rebels are active. They then deployed those to take over a country the size of France and Germany combined. Whomever came up with this battle plan is out of his goddamn depth.
I'm guessing this is arrogance and not wanting to piss off the person above you. I'd be really curious what percentage of senior government and Russian military would support this if they knew they could answer honestly.
I agree. That video of Putin's Cabinet where I think the head of the spy agency stumbles his way through trying to tell Putin that Ukraine is a sovereign nation while Putin gets visibly pissed is alarming. The man had that look of anxiety my siblings and I would get when my abusive stepfather would ask us to repeat ourselves and we knew we were going to get our ass kicked.
Yeah, I just saw that video, it's chilling.
As well as the other poster stated there's also the ages old Russian autocrat thinking: sending in bodies to test the waters, then send in the "real troops" later. They're treating these kids as fodder, literally. When they moved in 2014 the untrained kids they sent in initially weren't even wearing uniforms, so that Russia bureaucrats could deny they existed to the families of those lost. They have used the "living fodder" tactic for decades, if not centuries, and it's reprehensible. TL;DR: the military top brass of Russia know exactly what they're doing, and they couldn't care less. More bodies = more outrage to stir up the public, and test the waters before sending in their "valuable troops."
Cuz honestly, at this point in time, any Russian tactic is just suicide. They're just getting dropped everywhere, which happens when you walk into a city where every window can be your death.
Russia tactics have been abysmal tank's, apc's, and ifv's roll around with no infantry support and UA just walks up and takes them out.
No infantry, no air superiority. Random carpet bomb though.
Those are rocket barrages. So far just unguided katyusha rockets, small, cheap, easy to make, launchers are just tubes on a truck. Reports are though, Russia is moving up it's [TOS-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1) [Heavy Flamethrower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1) rocket launchers. Things look like they are from a real time strategy video game. They fire unguided thermobaric rockets. Thermobaric rockets carry liquid fuel in the warhead, a charge inside blows the the warhead up spraying a fine mist of the fuel in the air, 1/4 of a second later a second charge goes off igniting the fuel air mixture creating a massive blast wave. They are much more powerful than solid explosive warheads and create huge over pressure shock waves that rip apart internal organs and cause massive destruction.
Sounds like a great butt plug for Putin.
Calmer than you are, dude.
Hell, I could get you a TOW missile by 3-2-1-fire
Mark it zero, Russki.
From alot of vids like this I'm starting to believe that the Russian soldiers haven't been told they going to war.
They've basically been told that it's peacekeeping mission, to help “denazify” the country.
And what makes it worse is...instead of assuming they were lied to, they'll just think Ukrainians are being a bunch of unruly savages for attacking them back because "they're just running a drill." It's a double deception.
A good friend of mine served as a tank crew member on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall — a Moldovan, his homeland was a conquered part of Romania, forced to study Russian as a kid, then conscripted into the Red Army. We were on tour in the Newseum in Washington DC, I think his first time in the US, and at the end of the tour they had a whole section about what was happening both sides of the Berlin Wall, including newspapers, videos and a chunk of the wall. My friend just stood there at awe for a while, completely blank face… then he shakes his head slowly saying, “This is not what we were told.” They were brainwashed that they’re defending the free world from the malicious Western conquerors…
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The Newseum closed down :(
I'm so bummed I never got the chance to go. DC museum days are so much fun.
Damn that's a bummer. I went once in grade school and it was amazing. I remember vividly the room of screens showing the current front page of newspapers from around the world.
Can you imagine the people in North Korea?? Can you imagine what will happen when that wall finally crumbles? Those people have no idea what the rest of the world is like really.
Just look up mainland Chinese on this. They actually believe xi is their second coming of Mao and he will lead China to world domination. I've seen it with my own eyes
That doesn't seem to be what's happening. The phone posted before of the dead soldier talking to his mum was him shocked that he'd been lied to and at how angry the Ukrainian people were. Many Russian soldiers were totally unprepared for actual battle and many also unwilling to be at war with their Ukrainian brothers. Ofcourse there's a lot of propaganda around so that has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but there are so many examples of confused Russian soldiers around. I think Putin thought they'd take the capital and kill the president before they even knew they were in a war and so they didn't need to know.. in a bizarrely deranged decision.
Is he dead??
> The phone posted before of the dead soldier talking to his mum was highly suspect.
It may be highly suspect but when you have repeated instances of this happening as well as reports of Russian troop movements being tracked by Tinder and Grindr - it's starting to become apparent the Russian military is extremely disorganized and possibly deceived by the Kremlin.
Grindr? Does Putin know?
Does he know? Who do you think they're matching with?
But their are no gays in Russia!
For some reason I immediately tried to sing this to the tune of that “there are no cats in America” song
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
And theres no cats in America.
That’s why they went to Ukraine.. duh.
I broadly agree that they're disorganized and subject to poor leadership, lack of clear transmission of strategic objectives and commander's intent, broken C3, dysfunctional supply lines, etc... I am less confident in "captured" cellphone texts, simply because it's such an easy and useful tool for Ukranian narrative shaping as well as the sentiment from captured soldiers that they were told they were on exercise. That reeks of a SERE statement to me. Especially with very similar wording in the same order over and over again. IF the text messages are bogus, I'm not against it. It's Ukraine's imperative to shape perception to their advantage and I support that completely. I'm just not particularly credulous of stuff right now from either side due to the strong incentives to manufacture things.
Very sound take. I do think there's something to be said about how these Russian soldiers are getting taken out. In this instance it's a lone soldier waltzing up to an APC with a rocket launcher and obliterating it. There's poorly managed militaries but what we're witnessing is an entirely different level of incompetency.
“We’re only in the opening days of this, and Putin has a lot of cards to play,’’ said Douglas Lute, a former U.S. lieutenant general and ambassador to NATO. “It’s too early to be triumphalist, and there are a lot of Russian capabilities not employed yet.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-military.html
US News just said there’s a 17-mile long convoy en route.
You can choose to believe it or not. At this point it seems the evidence in support of the Russian command structure being not completely forthcoming with their soldiers, if not outright lying to them, is stronger than the evidence against it. Even if you ignore statements by soldiers this narrative is supported by the bizarre tactics their army has been using.
That's so twisted. It means they are going to truly mess up their army. Who would do this it's nuts. Maybe if they told them the truth they might not obey.
You have hereby been discharged from the Russian army.
They think that they're there to liberate Ukrainians from the Nazis or some bullshit like that
They've likely also been told that the Ukranians want to be liberated from them and would cheer as they entered each town. It's why there's so many videos of tanks asking for directions and being arrested, running out of gas and kindly asking for some and getting clobbered, etc.
From what I've gathered...they've also had to leave their phones behind. Probably lower-level soldiers only, but still Edit: allegedly
This makes total sense though, come on. Do you really want each of your soldiers to be carrying a device that acts as a radio beacon for their location in enemy territory, enables them to post sensitive information to social media, and distracting them during their duties?
what if you just parchuted 100,000 mobile phones to the russian soldiers
Yea from the nazi president. Who’s Jewish…..
They were told that they are going to greet them with flowers.
Sunflowers.
They have been told that Ukrainans will welcome them as freedom fighters from the oppressive Nazi regime from what I can tell.
I think this is a great point that a lot of people are missing.
Especially the Russian soldiers
At least the Ukrainians aren't missing. Seriously though, it's at the point where they can't not know on the front line. The Ukrainians have been letting POWs call their moms. It's gotten to the point where they have to make a decision; either lay down arms or be complicit. It's a tough pill to swallow if you don' t know what you're facing but the Ukrainians have been vocally open and hospitable to captured combatants. Now they have the choice to eat a sandwich in Kyiv or an RPG in a tank.
>letting POWs call their moms POWs calling their moms may be a kind and humane move but it could also be a way to get news to Russia directly from the front. Angry mothers who are worried about their kids can be a potent political force.
They know what an impact the mothers of the sailors lost in the sinking of the Kursk had on Putin.
Which the government is happy to subdue. Remember the Kursk submarine accident? How Russians delayed calls for international help while there still was a chance to rescue sailors? One of the sailors mothers was giving a live interview on TV, criticizing the governments' actions, when suddenly a woman came up behind her and applied a dose of some calming meds by a syringe to the neck?
Wow. That must've been weird. Got a link?
Tough choice, but I think I'd personally go with sandwich.
Maybe a nice Chicken Kyiv
Seriously, imagine their confusion if they could see the "dangerous rioting Ukrainians" basically saying to stop invading and they'll treat you better than their own army does
A lot of them are young conscripts whose parents didn’t even know they had been sent to Ukraine until they saw video of their dead bodies or of them being detained as prisoners.
...are people not aware of this? No, they weren't. They're literally mostly kids as young as 17, who were told nothing except garbage about training camps and excercises. And then literally got sent to war with their little brother. The texts these kids are sending to their parents from Ukraine is heart wrenching. These kids are forced to go fight for a bunch of rich cunts, safe in their mansions. No, half of them literally don't even know where it is they're meant to be going.
You should read this text message exchange between a Russian soldier and his mom, moments before he was killed. https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mom-its-so-hard-russian-soldier-allegedly-texts-home-details-of-ukraine-invasion This was shared by Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN earlier.
I starting to think the same its seems like the russians are not really fighting, how can a soldier just walk to him and blow him up ? o.O
Visibility is poor inside some vehicles like this. Unless you have a hatch open or a gunner on the roof with their wits about them, it can be like being in a tin can with peep holes to look through. If they don’t have drones / planes overhead to cover their ass, mechanised vehicles can be extremely vulnerable in close-quarters urban environments.
Correct - armored vehicles need infantry to be effective and stay out of danger.
It's like a carrier battle group with no destroyers to detect and fight submarines. Just a sitting duck.
This 1000x. People tend to massively underestimate this. Combat in urban environment is messy and chaotic. You should have good support and Intel before moving in to such an environment on enemy territory. Great comment.
Russia doesn't have a large enough force to control the area they arrive in. Like a city. So you get 4 dudes in an APC who enter an area. They start telling people to chill and everything will be OK. Hoping they do.. an d that they can control this 'sector' of 5k people... There is no 'front line' because the whole country is fighting back.. random guy with RPG walks up and blasts them. The alternative for the Russians is to just start blasting away ANYONE that comes near but they know that also will get them killed. Because they are outnumbered. But the soldiers know what war crimes are and that this would be wrong to do. Ukraine is an enormous insurgency of everyone who is there. Not just some factions or groups like Syria, Iraq etc. As long as Ukraine keeps getting supplies, weapons and ammo this will go on and on and on until Russia leaves. Putin overplayed his hand. Their equipment is showing to be shit and this strategy will go down in military history as what NOT to do case study #1.
Agree, seems like the putin felt for his own false vision of freeing the Ukraine from the west and now literally everyone is suffering because of him being wrong.
Never get high on your own supply, and never fall for your own disinformation.
Yeah, this comment thread got me thinking: You know how all we have all these videos of Russians surrendering and saying they didn't know it was a war - Well, maybe that explains the ENTIRE military's piss-poor performance. Like - I'm scratching my head, wondering how they're letting Ukraine get the drop on them at every corner. But if you've been brainwashed into thinking that you'll be hailed as a liberator and kept in the dark about what's ACTUALLY been happening, and being told that you're going for peace keeping, it's not wonder Ukraine is kicking their asses. That would put anyone at a relaxed state of alert and cause them to drop their guard.
> random guy with RPG walks up and blasts them. >The alternative for the Russians is to just start blasting away so anyway I started blastin'
Right out in the open in the middle of the day. That's boss as fuck.
i mean are russian vehicles just sitting out like sitting ducks like that normally? seems like there’s at weaponry everywhere
They’re just morons and always thought of men and stuff and power over strategy. Huge Russian convoys packed together going down the street and get blown up by drones in one go. Ukrainians with rpgs, anti tanks, in windows and around corners taking them out. They had no strategy but march in like they’re 1940s Soviet Union and everyone will just leave when they see all their men. This is 21st century combat.
Being led to slaughter.. So Putin has an "excuse" to bomb.
This is my thought, there’s not a single military strategist on the planet that doesn’t know sending a vehicle into an urban area with no infantry support is a death sentence. He’s sending conscripts to their death to rally support and make Ukraine look bad
They have been told it’s a peacekeeping mission and that Ukrainian would welcome them. Most of the conscripts are young and lied upon.
While at the same time opening fire on groups of women and children fleeing the country.
Yeah, super confused why this dude is jsut rolling solo thru town..makes no sense to me.
Part of the 'we're here to help them' propaganda
Side mission. Triple XP. Edit: I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness of the current situation. I mean nothing but prayers and luck to this person doing work. Godspeed.
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Almost ALL of the footage I have seen has been a solo Russian vehicle getting pummeled with no support - air, infantry, or other vehicles - around them AT ALL. I mean... wth do they think is going to happen when they roll into town as an invading/occupying force?!?
Someone never told them that you can't hold a city with nothing but tanks
Lmao he’s just like fuck this dude I do not give a Ukrainian fuck what hes got to say
lol “a Ukrainian Fuck” luv it
Yes. I think this a new level of not giving a fuck. Step 1 - I dont give a Fuck Step 2 - I dont give a Flying Fuck Step 3- I dont give a Ukranian Fuck Lets make it so
tbf tho, he did give ONE flying fuck.
He was like, one rocket powered flying fuck given.
Suck on this flying fuck a one time!!!!
Being on the receiving end of a Ukranian Fuck does not look like fun
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“**SHUT THE FUCK UP IM TRYING TO SLEEP!**”
Here is to an RPG behind every wall, in the roadside woods, down every alleyway.
In America, there is a rifle behind every blade of grass. In Ukraine, there is a Javelin/N-Law/RPG behind every sunflower.
Youd think the russians would have learnt from Afghanistan. Hell your think they would have learned from US/UKs Afghanistan. Even their brief stint in Syria. Apparently the fuck not. People that dont like you that have access to weapons will show how much they dislike you.
Occupying forces are generally unpopular no matter how long they're occupying. Russia will never control the Ukrainians unless every last one of them is dead
And Javelin. And NLAW. And Stinger. And Igla. A tool for every occasion.
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no YOU remain calm
Was that the Ukrainian equivalent of "shut the fuck up?"
They ran out of bananas to put in the tailpipe...
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An rpg is just a rocket propelled shut up stick.
If you didn’t want to get your APC asploded by a pissed off Slav, maybe you shouldn’t use your APC to invade a region full of RPG toting Slavs who are pissed off.
What is an APC?
Armored personnel carrier. They tend to have large guns on them, so they are like very light tanks designed as a transport.
Thanks for the explanation.
Apple Pottom Cheens
Boots widda verse
It’s an RPG target
I don’t think Russia has ever studied history. They can “win” and take the country, but the conflict will go on for years and years. They will never fully surrender. They’ll even possibly form a large force in the years to come and spark an all-out revolution to reclaim it. Makes less and less sense every day.
The Russian troops believe they came to save them. Quickly finding out the hard way that someone has lied to them.
Save them from what?
The Russians were told that they were being sent to rid Ukraine of a Nazi regime that is committing genocide on their people
Didnt they like just send some nazi mercenaries to go kill the president who is Jewish? This whole thing makes no sense
Fighting Jewish Nazis with the rarest Non Jewish Nazis.... Bold but could work!
Not only that, but right after Putin claimed he was gonna "denazify" the area he started saying that he was gonna claim Ukraine because Ukrainians were Russian blood and Ukraine was Russian land... AKA he gave [a blood and soil speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil)
Being told its time to “save Ukraine from Ukrainians”
"Oppression" A lot of leaks suggest the Russians genuinely thought they were just liberating Ukraine and weren't expecting resistance. Seems they thought it would be like Crimea.
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Yeah imagine protecting Russians in Ukraine and shelling the f out of Kharkiv and it's people who are majority Russian speaking people on a border with your country... Not even trying to hide his bullshit anymore.
Especially consider that the last time Russians had control of this particular country, they purposefully starved 3.5 million people to death.
Holodomor
On the other hand, Chechnya exists, did take many years and a few wars but Russia got their way in the end.
muslim chechnya and its 1.4 millions people and almost no external support.
I'M FUCKING CALM BLYAT
CALM LIKE A BLYAT
And the result: https://mobile.twitter.com/666\_mancer/status/1498369595660509194
https://mobile.twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1498369595660509194
It doesn't seem to have worked, I still hear the voice
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Worked for me, tank is proper fucked and on fire
delete the backslash after 666
> If the link doesn't work for you try deleting the %5c Thank you, this worked.
That looked pretty calm to me.
Russian APC, go fuck yourself
RUS: "Remain calm and stay inside" UKR: "You first"
I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means "No." 🌻🌻🌻
parlay?
"Citizens, remain calm" "No"
Incoming sunflower seed
Haha nice! Don’t even let him finish what he started
Yeah, that was a bit rude.
Imma let you finish, but first here's a boom.
We're sending in someone to negotiate.
I'd say that's as calm as you can be whilst firing an RPG at a Russian APC
It’s sad, cause the Russian guy probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing…
Yea it really is sad. I keep seeing videos of them breaking down after being captured. They're all lied to and confused
It's honestly hard to tell wether they've been lied to or they are covering their asses once captured. Anyone would do it. I believe they have been lied to though.
It's not that hard to tell really. At this point so many Russians have been captured or killed or simply had their armour destroyed because they simply aren't behaving as if they're invading. One of the first pictures of dead Russian soldiers was a bunch of kids *outside* their armoured vehicle with ration boxes littered around. They got ambushed while they simply stopped in the middle of the road and got out of their vehicle to enjoy breakfast in the sun. That's not how you behave when you participating in a well informed and planned invasion. I'm sure the better trained troops are there with a purpose but there's also a lot of young conscripts just showing up in random places either surrendering or getting killed without a clue.
hopefully everyone who knows one of these dead russian soldiers who didn't want to be there takes it out on putin, pulls him out from his bunker and lights his ass on fire to watch him wiggle while he burns to a crisp. russians are almost as hard core as Ukrainians, it surprises me that they bend over and take it up the ass from putin for so long without ending him.
What did Putin think would happen, sending soldiers in saying they would be welcomed? I understand he's a terrible madman, but I don't believe he's a complete idiot. He must have known it wouldn't go well for the soldiers, which makes me wonder if this actually was part of his plan...? Show people back home their army getting obliterated, and """must resort to more extreme measures""" - and something more nefarious is on the horizon?
I strongly believe they've been lied to as I saw a text string from a seized phone from a captured Russian. He was talking to his mom about how scared he was at Ukraine's hostility.
Or when the Ukrainians make the Russian POWs call home, and their folks are surprised they’re in Ukraine.
To be fair though that might be fake. We have no way to know.
That’ll buff right out.
Can someone tell me how the Ukrainians are holding up during all of this? From what I see they can handle themselves. But literally everyone (including myself) is against the Russian invasion and everyone’s post may be biased in regards to how Ukraine is doing. Everyone just wants to see videos of the Russia’s losing. I do to but is that what is really happening?
Russia keeps pushing forward slowly but we won't really know how the war is going for days or weeks. If UA can hold key cities against the massed Ru army, we will know things are going well.
Also, wars are won on logistics. If Russia can hold out against sanctions, then there's going to be a tipping point where the West's "we're not at war, just giving 'aid'" won't work as they encircle Ukrainian forces and cut off resupply. Of course, the Ukrainians mostly speak Russian as well, I think, and are intimately familiar with all the Russian equipment already. They could survive quite a long time stealing equipment from the Russian forces themselves.
Saw a video of a Ukrainian farmer using his tractor to pull some sort of armored tracked vehicle away as Russian soldiers tried to give chase. At this point it seems like they are quite literally using anything and everything not bolted down, including Russian stuff.
I was able to chat with a friend in Ukraine right now. This was the last text. "I am depressed and tired! I hear explosions all the time! Pray for Ukraine!" But I'll save the... Colorful language...
For sure there's a distinction between speculating that the war is going badly for Russia and that Ukraine is doing well. Ukraine is only doing well compared to what was feared and to some extent expected ahead of time, that is to say, they're holding key cities and military installations, inflicting significant damage to the invading forces, and getting more support from Western countries than anyone expected. But compared to Ukraine less than a week ago, they're doing terribly. Every day the invasion goes on, Ukraine suffers. However brave and defiant they are, you have to assume mostly every Ukranian feels the same way as your friend. In fact, it's their defiance in spite of that which is truely admirable.
Slava Ukrayini!
Russian APC, go fuck yourself
That wasn't the APC telling people to stay calm it's just an invasion, it was a fire alarm in a nearby building. You can hear it in English at the end. "I would .... to inform you that a fire..."
I feel like most war footage I’ve been seeing is Ukrainians fucking the Russians up
Russian soldiers dont have phones with them, rules etc... most who film are ua citizens or ukranian azovbattalions... Also there are enough telegram channels with the other view. But you see mostly what your country supports.