Virdea

There is also an Asp brand known as red gun.

Red parts are used in testing to keep firearms testers from blowing themselves up on an incomplete gun.  The red parts often represent parts that are not yet tested, or are removed for testing, or are examples of non-shipping product.

Red parts in American parlance represent either blank or non-firing parts on a gun, depending on what standard you follow.  A bright red part is included to indicate a part that does not function as a firing model.

I am going to leave behind the uncited replies, but i will for edification discuss vetting political speech.  This is the same standards that a writer will use when presenting a data packet to a person who has to develop action plans.

"Our country is ruled by the regime which stands against both the interests of Russia as a whole, and practically every its citizen. Except only for the top people in the security services and the corrupted bureaucracy, that use the state machine in their private interests. This regime makes the steady go to destroy all the institutes of the democratic society: elections, free media, independent court."

Garry Kasparov said this of Putin and the current Oligarchy .  This is an example of political hyperbole that has no way to be developed into an action item.  It is a statement without support.  There is certainly evidence that elections in Russia are compromised, that free media has been extinguished, and that an independent court no longer functions, this statement is not even a starting point for showing any of this.  

Politicians publish well researched, vet-table, strong papers every day - the gentle from Pskov has done just that, and since his contentions are supported by exterior research we can believe much of what he writes.  Titov and his recent papers on the jailing of businessmen is an example of a paper with teeth that can be judged and vetted.

Vice is not accurate

 

they send a few neckbeards to a bar in Belarus and think they are walter fucking Cronkite 

 

Infact, by the logic that Russian news isnt accurate, neither should any Ukrainian or American news be

 

as for politicacians, they will say anything, whether they be on one side of the border or the other wars are usualy pretty milked for public support. So a Russain politician saying "Putin is throwing our boys away in Ukraine" is not a logical and accurate statement on the Russian military, rather than a ploy to get votes

 

and as far as Nato generals, i dont think even the biggest borderline Fascist warmonger has stated there are 36 thousand Russian soldiers in Ukraine 

First, remember it is far more difficult for me to argue from my side because I have to cite and use facts, and you can just say you do not believe them and do not have to back up your theories with replies.  For example, my facts on what journalism sources to use.

1. You saying Vice is inaccurate does not make them inaccurate.  They put people onto the ground, they get close to the action, and they act uncomfortable questions, and they lack major affiliation.  I did not use them merely because they have data not supported by secondary sources available by me.  If more data comes to me, data is also included.  The presence or lack of beards on reporters is not a common measure of reporting accuracy in the United States.  I give you that Russian may indeed measure press on that criteria, I do not know, but the scientific study of the press as accepted by the rest of the world does not find beards to be a measure of anything with regard to reporting. 

2. Russian news is inaccurate because the news agencies are controlled by the government, or by fear of what the Russian government will do to them  There is no major, untainted, Russian news outlet.  Remember, if you own a Russian TV station and the Putin admin does not like you - he jails you, kills you, kills your family, jails your reporters, or kills your reporters.  Russia is 148 on the list of 180 countries in terms of Press Freedom (2014 rating).  Zimbabwe has succeeded in beating Russia this year and last in press freedom.  Columbia news Journal rates Russian news sources an "untrustworthy."  I could not publish a paper and present it in an academic forum with accepted scholars of journalism if I based my paper on a Russian news source, unless I essentially re-reported the story.  Generally you want a mean press freedom (not position, although position is easy to compare for laymen) of 30 or better to trust the media source by RWB standards.  While it is possible for a country with poor press freedom to have a media standout, Russia has none.

3. The Ukraine, at 127, is also not a reliable source.  The reason for quoting Reuters and DW is that they are.  They require multi-sources, have defined editorial policy, require statements of facts to be vetted, and have a policy that publicly admits editorial mistakes.  Each organization has a charter that allows minimal or no political interference with content.  Other news services like this are BBC and oGlobo .  Some media gets tags for slanting and requires some resourcing - al Jazeera has an issue of selective reporting and pre-testing that makes them go back and forth on reliability.

4. The United States at 48 is well within the area where media is mostly free, and the issues there are mostly issues of surveillance rather than interference, which is illegal per se and per quod and jealously protected.  Since the US lacks censorship per quod and per se we instead use a case/by/case on it, and that requires we NOT use FOX news, who fails in terms of media accuracy and pretests.  AP, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, St. Petersburg Times, NBC news all fit into a modern window of what is acceptable news coverage, and you will even see these organizations punish their own reporters publicly for failing to meet standards.  

So I have cited reasons not to trust Russian media.

Politicians will say anything is not an accepted research paradigm for vetting political speech.  Gotta do better than that.  That is a cited and vetted document that agrees with other presentation I have made, and also follows Potomac (2014) who is alternately sourced (but sadly, very expensive to read.)

There are no Fascists on active duty in any NATO countries military structure.  By operational definition, if you wish to use that, then you get very close to living in a Fascist country yourself.

I did not make any claims about oriental faces in the Ukraine.  An eastern face could be a supporting fact in a pile of other facts, but alone is not something that can be used.  As I have said several times.  Using this is a straw man.

NATO General

German News Agency of high repute

International News Agency of high repute

Financial Times - moderate repute but lots of feet on the ground.

Russian politician making extensively cited argument. 

Russian citizens both sources through competent news agencies 

I hit the research gold standard with that one.

Note, I could have included

VICE - good news agency and very accurate, just a bit wild

FOX - Not a good source.  They tend to make stuff up from the porch rather than sending people into the field.

Russian TV/Newspapers.  All government controlled or cowed.  Spout party line or get thrown in jail.

Direct Ukrainian information not vetted by a major news outlet for accuracy.

And I have the for-pay access materials.  

     The whole thread is just dumb. Without any serious information, statistical and factual data, it is impossible to do accurate conclusions as Virdea tried to do. 

Actually I provided serious information.  Not seeing a lot coming back though. 

Russia could solve this argument for us.  They have refused entry into most areas to the Organization for Security and Co-operation, they could simply open the doors and let the group in.  The fact that they won't allow free access to the country side by this group is pretty much a smoking gun of my own assertion.  

Alright, I haven't gotten a chance to read them.

I think that it would be easier, since I already posted sources to support my contention, that people with other opinions show issues with morale such as desertion, problems in Pskov, and the like are caused by some other issue.  And you simply cannot say the Russian army is crap because it is conscript.  The Brazilian Army is conscript and does not have these problems.  You have a national effort to put thousand upon thousands of soldiers into a foreign country and claiming that problems in the very units supporting the invasion of the Ukraine are not in fact suffering from it.

 

My point is, assuming that your sources (very questionable sources at that) are correct, the jump to 36,000 men and Vietnam style morale issues is not supported by the evidence you presented. 

The source is not questionable.  Remember I have read all of the citations you have made to refute that source and found no reason not to agree with it.

The Siberian soldier is not being counted by me because it lacks secondary and tertiary support from alternate sources, and my other data sources not part of the discussion do not have anything about this in them.  I need more information to make this work.

Ahah, then we get to the crux of the disagreement.

Virdea? It doesn't really seem like you could prove morale issues are the result of the situation in the Ukraine, but I'm ready to be surprised. Got anything on this?

Yes, already posted citations cover this very well.

The photos of the Grad I obviously cannot confirm at from the Ukraine, but those do appear to be Grads.

AND - usually when photos appear of dubious value they can be tracked down.  No one refutes the media watching sites that present these pictures.  They just claim they are inaccurate.  

I need to provide a citation for the number "36,000" not appearing in the links you provided? Did you just take the only estimate I saw and multiply by 3? That doesn't match up with "3-4:1 support troops", then you'd need to multiply by four or five.

 

Also alcoholism and hooliganism has always been a problem in the Russian army. It's not, in fact, a professional military, it is a conscript military. There are professionals, but there are also a ton of people that don't want to be there and whose goal is to slack off for 1-3 years of their conscription term and then get back to their meaningful lives. Pointing out the Pskov VDV division (which by the way got its Order of Suvorov for actions in Crimea, which your article conveniently ignores) has discipline problems doesn't mean anything, especially when some of your links claim that all sorts of other units from Europe to Siberia are in the Ukraine too. How come no one brought their discipline problems to light?

Refutation of your statement.  My own sources show 36,000 soldiers in support of operations (pulling triggers or handing the trigger pullers ammo).  Sources for the conflict say there are between 6,000 and 12,000 trigger pullers.  3 to 1 is 12,000x3.  4 to 1 is 9,000x4.  There is a lot of heavy equipment in the field with Russian crews - we know all about the missile batteries, but the Grad batteries are also widely known.  if 12,000 trigger pullers - not a outrageous number considering the number are coming back dead, then 3-1 is actually a small tail.  So my math is accurate.

My own take based on other intel is about 6000 soldiers who have suffered some pretty hefty casualties, plus another 6-8000 manning check points and keeping the population in line, plus a pretty large mixed bag of artillery which does move across the border and back depending on how the fighting goes, and obviously can shoot on Ukrainian positions from either side of the border. Obviously the truck lift needed to keep all this going is running constantly - gone are the days when 400 trucks delivered "humanitarian aide" and dropped off war supplies to beleaguered garrisons.

Pskov is not the only problem area where soldiers are getting out of hand, just the easiest to document quickly for you and since it is a C1 unit it should be at the top of readiness.  Discipline problems are happening in many units and being documented.  Some of these problems are in known hotspots other than the Ukraine - Dagestan and Chechnya for example, but some are not.  And I am ignoring the Ukrainian claims of Siberian troops because there is no second and third source for that plus all the other documents I have do not say anything about the Far East, except one reference to that being the destination for the casualties.

But your biggest problem here is existential.  Putin claims zero troops.  12,000 troops is not zero even if I am wrong and those trigger pullers are being supported by motor bike gangs (not even a joke, the Russian army contracted with motor bike gangs to terrorize civilians in Crimea during that invasion - they are essentially auxiliary troops).  200 dead tallied by name in two months is not an insignificant sum.  The second existential problem you have is that asserting that the Russian Army was crap and cannot get worse by comparison ignores the fact it might.  Soldiers rioting and refusing orders in unit sized groups, taking bases and shooting their officers, is not an impossible situation.  

To summarize: there is nothing in Virdea's links that corroborates Vietnam style morale drain or 36,000 soldiers. 

Please provide refutation with citation.  

6-12,000 trigger pullers do not, even in the Russian army, scavenge from the land.  3-4 to 1 support troops is normal, unless support organizations spring from nothing in the Ukraine.  Air defense and Grad batteries along operated by Russian forces would require a deep effort to move supplies into the region.  

Desertion seems the start of Vietnam style morale loss for Russian units.  Russian parents of soldiers, politicians, prisoners of war, all point to a refutation of this.  Alcoholism and hooliganism by soldiers in Pskov.  Russian is not a comic opera military filled with drunken keystone cops and thieves, it is a professional military.  A single desertion a year is big news in NATO during the WOT.  200 bodies is a lot to secretly stick into the ground even for a force of 36.000.  

Good post, Vir, but remember the forum's motto: Link, or die.

Please excuse me for not linking to the for-pay sites, but there is enough in popular media.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/01/breedlove-russian-buildup-ukraine-could-signal-rebel-offensive.html - Breedlove testimony before congress.  Breedlove, in a setting where he could be jailed (for contempt of congress) clearly stated Russian Forces are fighting in Ukraine.  This guy is dramatic, but he is not spouting lies to his own bosses.  Anyone who knows how congressional relations with the military work know that getting McCain ticked at you if death to your career and your desires.

http://www.dw.de/disowned-and-forgotten-russian-soldiers-in-ukraine/a-17888902  Discussion of what will happen to captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine and interviews with Pskov area politicians.  Pskov is where the 76th is based.

Originally a less reliable source, they have recently gotten very good at showing their evidence.  http://conflictreport.info/2015/01/23/hard-evidence-the-regular-russian-army-invades-ukraine/

Foreign Policy, hardly a Rebel Rag, confirms 76th : http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/01/is-vladimir-putin-covering-up-the-deaths-of-russian-soldiers-in-ukraine/

Reuters - a very strong source.  If Russian soldiers are not present, why would they quit because of being present?  http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/10/us-ukraine-crisis-soldiers-specialreport-idUSKBN0NV06Q20150510

Take the political invective out of this and read it as a research paper.  

http://www.putin-itogi.ru/putin-voina/

Yes.  36,000 is precisely it.  Remember, if you want to count Frontline and compare with all in then you are making an apples and oranges comparison.  36,000 soldiers put 4-6 thousand infantry in the front.  Plus, the rebels are shaky.  Support for separatism is low to very low.  Loyalty to the leadership in these regions is limited.  To keep this thing running takes a considerable effort on the part of Russia.

As for no one having photographs of Russian units, this is 100% right.  This was true of Crimea also.  There just happened to be thousand upon thousands of young, military age men, whose photographs matched those serving in the Russian military, who happened to get great deals on new, off the shelf Russian equipment and vehicles with Russian tags on them, who all decided to vacation at the same time in military order.  

Look at the evidence.

Dozens of Facebook boss of photographs with GPS markings clearly showing soldiers standing on heavy equipment who were inside of the Ukraine.

Multiple news photographs of Russian tagged vehicles moving through clearly Ukrainian territory.

Breedlove, in his own bombastic way, leaking NATO documents on Russian deployments.

Thousands of photographs of young professional soldiers, many matched forensically to soldiers in Russian service.

Grad-K batteries in unit formation identified at Donetsk both by Rebel photography and NATO surveillance.

SA22 batteries moving into battery formation geolocated to the Ukraine

Russian radio chatter quoted by NATO and Swiss sources.

Russian engineers building a bridge near Luhansk who forgot to sterilize their uniforms.

Russian soldiers identified by name at checkpoints.  Several admitted their nationality and were new to the area.

A surge of burials of soldiers "killed" or "killed while deserting" and the establishment of a cremation facility for Russian soldiers accidentally killed "near the Ukraine".

I understand someone in Russia can't run around yelling at the tree-tops anything but the party line - a close friend of mine from my earlier life recently left Russia for Sweden and even there is won't to post on social media, and I do not blame growling at me or ill temper over this post, but my concerns are for the health of the Russian military, which I see as essential for maintaining peace.  I am not calling Russia names for what it is doing in the Ukraine - I literally do not understand why once they took the Crimea they need that slice of land, but I am worried that the Russian Army is being asked to do more than it can do in the region.

There is a theory that the US is actually overstocked for firearms.  If hoarders released even a part of the stocks of weapons they are holding waiting for legislation to drive prices us, then the market would crash all but the rare and historical weapons.  Much of these stocks are ARs, AKs, and 9mm handguns, which it is hard to see becoming rare enough to double their value.  

This is not to say firearms are not a good investment.  A well selected portfolio will beat inflation and can be rapidly converted.  However Colt and a lot of other manufactures are showing that without military contracts, there is not enough civilian demand to keep them going.

Where are you getting this "draining of a lot of Russian manpower"? You're not seriously accepting Ukrainian claims of 50 500,000 Russian regulars in the East, are you? Also the Russian army has been the picture of disorganization for 24 years. Ooooh rise of hooliganism in Pskov, that's a national crisis right there!

 

 

Conventional counting is around 36,000 RGF soldiers in the Ukraine.  Reliable sources show these soldiers are being drawn from the 76th, from the Omsk training center, the 19th Brigade, and from the 13th Tank Regiment.    I doubt Russia could deploy 500,000 soldiers for a parade at the Kremlin, so where-ever that number comes from is a myth.  The last NATO release had RGF and VDV at a little under 400,000 soldiers, with only about half of those soldiers C2 or better.

36,000 soldiers is not a big number of the Ukrainian conflict, but it is a significant effort on the part of the Federation.  Considering that there is a brigade occupying Chechnya, a brigade occupying Georgian territory, a mixed bag of units nailing down the Crimea, and a growing need for military police in Dagestan with a slow drain of casualties in what is turning into a slow motion war, Russia's near-order commitment is more like 94,000 soldiers and irregulars.  Although Russia has hired two cossack groups and a motor bike gang, nearly 1/3 of Russia's total forces are in harms way.

Hooliganism caused by Army soldiers normally assigned to an elite division is a problem because it is a sign of that division being made progressively weaker by its deployment stance.  The US after Vietnam saw that happen with the 173rd - it had to be broken down and absorbed because leadership had failed so badly over the tears.  Sure, it was a troop reduction, but plans prior to its return to the country were to maintain the unit or give it reserve status.

My worries are with Russian military prep.  The Ukraine is not being solved, but is draining a lot of Russian manpower.  I am not so sure that the Ukrainians are as bad as everyone says (although they are certainly ill-armed) but the Russian manpower being diverted from C1 units is having an effect that even publicly available intelligence is seeing signs of unit disorganization.  They used to say you could tell the readiness level of a Russian unit by the level of hooliganism in the area of its main basing, and Pskov has seen a rise of hooliganism by soldiers in the last year.  

I do not believe for a second Poland or German will ever attack Russia - that is an impossible thought, but they can make Putin nervous and he can do something stupid.   I like a strong Russian conventional force because it makes the oligarchy secure.  I worry when I hear from friends in the Russian army that their units are becoming difficult to govern.

And yes, the Ukraine, both sides, are not models of efficiency. 

With the tightly controlled press in Russia information about the status of the military has always been difficult.  This has traditionally had the effect of making Russian line units vulnerable to brittleness, as was seen in their use in Chechnya.  

The new Russian deployments to the Ukraine though has been hard on the units supplying men.  The men transferred are not acknowledged, they leave suddenly, and more often than not, they come home to be buried without acknowledgement of their service to their country.  Some units like the 76th Guards are suffering Vietnam level attrition rates.  And the soldiers who die are often being denied death benefits and, are increasingly being cremated before they are returned.  Severely injured veterans are being sent to the far east where they are not receiving adequate treatment for their wounds.  Parents of soldiers have in recent months been beaten or harassed for asking after their loved ones and in some cases are receiving official letter stating their children have deserted.  

Currently the Ukrainian Army is gaining combat capacity.  Last year, Russia staved off total collapse of the rebel groups in the East only by a major ground effort and some of the weaknesses of Russian unit cohesion was seen, including looting and poor target discrimination.  The press likes to paint Russia like an all conquering boogie man beast, but as cases of alcoholism and petty crime grows around bases that host units whose soldiers are fighting in the Ukraine could we be seeing the start of a hollow army for the Russians?  This hollow army coming at a time when NATO is discussing a 25% growth in its force structure and a realignment toward defense to the East, and when some military forces such as Poland and Romania are making massive strides in readiness.  

The main reason this makes me nervous is a strong Russian army keeps the oligarchy's fingers away from nuclear options.  Without the checks and balances of western democracy or the rigid control structure of China, Russian deterrent forces are at their lowest lever of readiness in years.  Putin is not a military man or a diplomat, and he has the economic sense of a teenager.  Can he move to repair the slow rips in the Russian military before you have a tragic result (and here, I mean a base rioting in a way it makes western news media).

My wife solved the issue of named guns.  They are all George.  

If you do not lend your car to anyone here, and avoid introducing them to any female relatives below the age of 65, this forum is a great place to hangout.  Welcome.

Think about Neil Gardner.  He engages the Columbine shooters at 60 meters when they had long arms - shooting out his ammo supply but staying in the line of fire for several minutes.  Today he is called a coward (for not charging Kliebold to gain a better tactical position) a baby killer (because in his first interviews he said he was shooting to kill Kliebold and people objected that a high school student would be subject to kill shots) an untrained shooter (for failing to shoot the weapon from Kliebold's hands) and so forth.

In my book the guy engaged two heavily armed shooters at 60 meters and bought a minute or two for kids to get out of the school is a hero.  But he is a cop so no version of what he did was considered good.

Is that an A2 BAR?

"Technically proficient North Korean Commandoes demonstrate to the Dear Leader their mastery of the technical arts.  Despite their perfection of skills, they welcome Dear Leader's suggestions to better deter American aggressors from our lands."

What is he armed with?  If it is a knife then someone should award him a .40 lifetime achievement award.  If it is not a knife then all it would take is two officers to serve him up a meal of grass a la handcuff, with extra servings of pavement if he falls unlucky.

My students do studies of the rare gun industry - hoarding right now accounts for half the uptick in prices last decade.