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What exactly is “stupid bullshit”? My surprise?
Scroll up to the beginning of this thread, back in February. Nowhere will you read anyone predicting the Ukrainians would be able to beat the Russians in mechanized warfare. At best, most people thought the Ukraine would be captured but made too-hot-to-hold by guerrilla warfare. A poster here put it succinctly: the Ukrainians were viewed by much of us as a bunch of teenagers armed with Molotov cocktails. A view I more or less shared.
U.S. military experts mostly believed this too, back then. At least the ones I read in MSM. Leading theory: the Ukraine would be overrun, with pockets of resistance conducting guerrilla warfare armed by NATO. As for the Russian-leaning news sources…well, Putin said his “special military operation" would be over in three days, and all his disbarred-British-lawyer-commentators agreed.
Only the Ukrainians said differently, and they were right. Did you predict in February that the Ukrainians would swiftly mount an organized and skillful campaign of mechanized warfare? If you did I missed it. Please point it out to me. But if you didn’t, then you didn’t believe it possible either.
So what’s your beef with my surprise?
Or maybe you’re taking exception to my comment that the Ukrainians were outnumbered and outgunned?
Here’s the Cliff Notes version of the Order of Battle, as of 2/25/22:
The Ukrainian military were outgunned and outmanned when the war started. So I fail to see how any of my statement was bullshit.
Finally: You said I would get paid per post. Where’s my money? I want my money!
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I think your “Spending” number is off, or at least misleading. Perhaps Ukraine itself has only spent $5B to Russia’s $45B (no idea where those numbers are derived) but that obviously doesn’t include the $16B committed by the US, $1.5B from UK, half a billion from Canada, and however many billions from the EU and others.
If you think Russia deployed 900,000 troops to Ukraine you’re either ignorant or gullible or both.
You keep making mutually exclusive statements. At the same time. You claim that the Russians are unable to mobilize the 300,000 troops that they are trying to mobilize because they’re all running away, then a few posts later you claim they had 900,000 deployed at the start of the conflict.
If you’re going to pursue a propaganda line, stick with it for at least a few weeks. Making mutually exclusive statements in the same day, sometimes in the same post, is just laziness.
Maybe that’s why you aren’t getting your check?
Just to be clear, I am talking about the Order of Battle and military spending as of the date Putin invaded the Ukraine.
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The reservists Putin is calling up are former draftees in US parlance. People required to join the military after age 18 for a year or so. Most in Russia receive minimal training. Many get out of this mandatory service. That Putin in now ordering these guys to Ukraine, some of them up to 60 years old would indicate to any objective observer things are not going his way. Its an act of desperation. The money spent is superfluous.
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Rem : if have found it shocking , some very well educated and smart members of this noble Community relying only on WAPO,NYT and other propaganda tubes are listening to :
" disbarred-British-lawyer-commentators " !!! and liars, clowns from FOX news!!! .
Have never thought , my " targeted woke recovery management " program will yield such fantastic results. Stage
1 is herewith completed . Velkommen to stage “2”
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For anyone that hasn’t been following the conflict and might actually believe such nonsense, the US stated that Russia had between 160,000 and 190,000 troops deployed around Ukraine at the start of the invasion, which meant they were outnumbered by about 3 to 1 by Ukraine.
You people are getting so comfortable rewriting history that you’re waiting less and less time to do it. I bet it gets down to days in the near future if not hours.
No conclusion yet, but the Swedes MAY know more than they let on:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/nord-stream-site-inspection-sabotage-sweden-authorities-2991866
In any case and not surprisingly;
“Both Washington and Moscow have denied responsibility for the leaks”
Could it be ???, or ???
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It’s not a question of who did it because it’s not that hard to do, more of a question of who knew about it and kept quiet. Not really possible to do without the Swedish and US Navy being aware, probably the Danes as well. Doesn’t mean the governments knew.
Whoever actually did it probably provides plausible deniability to all those governments and militaries, although everyone know they knew. Most likely a private contractor.
Yes but who did, or who paid for it?
Could it be someone securing their LNG market?
No, Qatar would NEVER do a thing like that,
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Qatar couldn’t do it and get away with it. That’s one of the most monitored undersea areas in the world and has been for decades, even before the pipeline.
If it was done by air there’s a radar track and if it was done by sea there’s a sonar track. It’s not the 80s anymore.
Like I said it’s not about who did it it’s about who let it be done, essentially greenlit it. The US, Swedes, and probably Danes.
It’s a massive escalation and a pretty stupid one and we’re all going to regret it, but we had 4 years without bones being thrown to the MIC and they’re hungry. Not a huge surprise.
oops will repost…
I didn’t say that, did I? The numbers in the chart above show the approximate size of armed forced each sides had at the outset of the war. The numbers of troops each country could draw-on in February for a military campaign
Putin chose to invade with about 190,000 troops, to use your number. That’s not the entire Russian army. He had another 700K of active troops he could have chosen to use. Some were new recruits being trained. Some were in garrison duty. Some just support units, never meant for the frontline. About 20% in the front lines and about 80% behind the lines in whatever capacity; that’s normal in warfare.
The same situation would have pertained to the Ukrainian armed forces at the outset of war. A split between combat and support & training units. Even if the split on the Ukrainian side was 50/50, rather than 20/80, you only get to frontline Ukrainian forces of about 90,000 (rough guess). Outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 by just the spearpoint of a much larger Russian army.
But let’s say the troop numbers were closer to 1-to -1. How do you explain away the disparity in armor? The number of tanks in mechanized war means more than the number of men, as the French would admit in 1939 when the Germans blitzkrieged past their defenses.
The Russians invaded the Ukraine with a 5-to-1 advantage in tanks. Maybe not all in-country, but available for use. They still have an advantage in MBTs. The Ukrainians are screaming for MBTs, and APCs. But even without them, even outnumbered in this key component of mechanized warfare, the Ukrainians are prevailing. Ditto the disparity in aircraft.
In great measure the Ukrainians are prevailing today because of arms received from NATO countries and others, but the Ukrainians began the war outmanned and outgunned, which was my original comment.
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So both then, got it.
A word-salad served on a heaping bed of what-ifs, with a garnish of innuendo.
Right. Back to mutually exclusive statements.
On the one hand Russia is a falling down pile of rust maintained by illiterate drunken conscripts who are nothing more than subhuman orcs (Because it’s currently ok to be racist, but just against Russians), and on the other hand Russia was able to invisibly thread closely monitored NATO controlled waters and destroy their own infrastructure whose taps they control because they’re just evil geniuses like that.
The scary part about people like you is if TPTB decided they wanted to dehumanize Ukrainians and make you hate them and laugh when they were burned alive, it would probably only take a couple of weeks.
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For Christ’s sake, calm down.
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Speaking of contradictory statements:
So which one is it? Is it not that hard to do, or is it so well monitored that only the US/EU could have done it?
As for the surprising or unexpected part, I’d say it’s that a nation lead by a career comedian/TV producer is seemingly beating a nation lead by a former KGB officer who’s never made a move that wasn’t carefully and devastatingly calculated. That he calculated this one incorrectly is surprising.
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