Ukrainian Civil War Thread: All Quiet on the Sturgeon Front

[Laser Shark]

Ukrainian MiG-29 Pilot's Front-Line Account Of The Air War Against Russia

 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/45019/fighting-russia-in-the-sky-mig-29-pilots-in-depth-account-of-the-air-war-over-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR3R1NlJI85W4Up7bhcWwoPUQY2ghE1e8R-ILJasjRm_55LiJ77Gda-dQyY

 

A long read, but very much worth it IMO. It seems very frank and sober, almost to a shocking degree, so if you were expecting some propagandistic account of glorious air victories, you’ll probably either be disappointed or pleasantly surprised.

[RobertV]

Yeah, anything that claims ghost of Kiev is real.  Loses me completely.  

[Laser Shark]

There’s only four sentences about that, and the rest of the article is actually quite good, but suit yourself...

[watch_your_fire]

Not sure what I'm looking at here but I think some comedian tried to make a homemade strela-10.

Ukrainians on the left guessing by the gear.

 

And here we have a Mi-28 knocked out a couple days ago supposedly by the British Starstreak missile.

I believe this is the first recorded use of Starstreak in combat?

 

[Cobras]

@LoooSeR Whats the russian reaction on the torture and killing of russian POWs by the ukrainian armed forces? are people gonna do something about it? will they still trust the government even if it doesnt do anything about it?

[Miroslav]

What could they do about it? Are you suggesting it would be wise to publish information on retaliatory killings of Ukrainian POW:s?

I also must note that although I am sure that there is mistreatment of POW:s on both sides, the video where a guy is summarily shooting POWs in the leg and asking who is the officer in charge seemed really sketchy.

[Miroslav]

On 4/3/2022 at 5:22 AM, RobertV said:

Yeah, anything that claims ghost of Kiev is real.  Loses me completely.  

 

The article just says "Yeah he's a real guy but there are a lot of exaggerations". Hardly bombastic propaganda.

[LoooSeR]

3 hours ago, Cobras said:

@LoooSeR Whats the russian reaction on the torture and killing of russian POWs by the ukrainian armed forces? are people gonna do something about it? will they still trust the government even if it doesnt do anything about it?

Anger, obviously. 

 

3 hours ago, Cobras said:

will they still trust the government even if it doesnt do anything about it?

They want army to win this war. Quite a number of people online experessed in some way that they don't trust politicians to make this happen, mainly because of negotiations.

[LoooSeR]

1 hour ago, Miroslav said:

What could they do about it? Are you suggesting it would be wise to publish information on retaliatory killings of Ukrainian POW:s?

I also must note that although I am sure that there is mistreatment of POW:s on both sides, the video where a guy is summarily shooting POWs in the leg and asking who is the officer in charge seemed really sketchy.

UAF and Co executing POWs isn't exactly ground breaking new thing. They had several events of people cutting fingers from rebels back in 2014-15 and uploading photos and videos of that.

https://t.me/voenacher/13858
For example, recent ones.
 

Quote

Marinka, Donetsk region, DPR fighters moved forward and knocked out the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they left behind not only their corpses, but also executed prisoners

 

[Cobras]

4 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

Anger, obviously. 

 

They want army to win this war. Quite a number of people online experessed in some way that they don't trust politicians to make this happen, mainly because of negotiations.

No protests in favor of their own troops? either for the RuAF to go all-in or to pull out?

[Cobras]

7 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

UAF and Co executing POWs isn't exactly ground breaking new thing. They had several events of people cutting fingers from rebels back in 2014-15 and uploading photos and videos of that.

In theory they were killing their own citizens, since they are ukrainian separatists, but now they are killing soldiers of the RuAF, pretty sure the russian population can see the difference.

[LoooSeR]

2 minutes ago, Cobras said:

No protests in favor of their own troops? either for the RuAF to go all-in or to pull out?

I don't understand what protests in favor of troops will do, i guess this is the case with most of people. Volunteers started to appear in MoD recruitment centers, people are donating for gear/equipment via popular military-related personalities and so on.
 

 

Quote

Gudermes, Chechnya, RUS (Russian University of Spetsnaz) training volunteers for Ukrainian operation.

 

[LoooSeR]

1 minute ago, Cobras said:

In theory they were killing their own citizens, since they are ukrainian separatists, but now they are killing soldiers of the RuAF, pretty sure the russian population can see the difference.

Not really. Seps were and are viewed as "ours".

[Cobras]

6 minutes ago, LoooSeR said:

I don't understand what protests in favor of troops will do, i guess this is the case with most of people.

No politician likes civil unrest, and going for protesters that are in favor of their own troops does not look good for them. And I think that could have an impact on their decision making or atleast give them a headache or something. It doesnt inspire much confidence for volunteers when you don't have enough deployed troops for such a large frontline and could get killed or worse if captured.

[Miroslav]

Looking at the current maps on the facts on the ground, Russia looks like it is in a position of strength for negotiations. Does Ukraine have any credible capability for purely offensive action to retake the Donbass region, Mariupol or Kherson?

[Miroslav]

Just now, Miroslav said:

Looking at the current maps on the facts on the ground, Russia looks like it is in a position of strength for negotiations. Does Ukraine have any credible capability for purely offensive action to retake the Donbass region, Mariupol or Kherson?

 

I just read a news report that the Czech Republic will be donating a bunch of T-72:s to Ukraine. Couldn't find any information on what level of upgrades and modernization they have received.

[Laser Shark]

Yep. It looks like they'll get some T-72M1s and BMP-1s (including ex-Swedish Pbv 501s, but they're not seen on the train below), as well as Bushmasters from Australia.

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/czech-republic-sends-tanks-ukraine-czech-tv-reports-2022-04-05/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-okays-sale-former-gdr-infantry-fighting-vehicles-ukraine-2022-04-01/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-01/what-is-the-bushmaster/100958322

[Miroslav]

How do you guys think it will go from here? Assuming neither side is capable of a serious offensive, who has time on their side? Eventually I guess Zelensky will be pressured to make peace to reduce civilian casualties, but the Russian occupation force must be suffering heavy attrition.

[Alzoc]

7 hours ago, Miroslav said:

How do you guys think it will go from here? Assuming neither side is capable of a serious offensive, who has time on their side? Eventually I guess Zelensky will be pressured to make peace to reduce civilian casualties, but the Russian occupation force must be suffering heavy attrition.

 

Depends on what both sides are willing to accept.

 

Russia is still sticking to the "special operation" narrative, meaning the political cost of mobilization or sending conscript into Ukraine would be high. It would mean admitting to the Russian population that the scale of the invasion was much bigger than initially reported and that they took not insignificant losses. Russian ground forces have about 280 000 soldiers about which a bit over 100 000 are tied up in Ukraine. Keep in mind that Russia still have to keep it's other borders secure (especially the border with China) and that the country is huge. So without access to conscripts or forces from other theatre they can't easily replenish their losses. All of this is compounded by the poor state of Russian logistics in Ukraine. Ukrainian know this and are targetting their supplies. They recently blown up an oil depot in Belgorod (Russia), which supply the forces in Kharkiv, using attack helicopter. Even if the Ukrainian deny it was them, the Russian have no reasons at all to blow up their own badly needed supplies, even for a false flag operation. On top of it force the local Russian population to see that the war came back right at their doorstep contradicting the narrative of the Kremlin.

 

As for Ukraine they are fighting on their own soil, so as you said the longer the fight goes on the higher civilian casualties will be. It all depends on what losses the Ukrainian population are willing to accept, but for now their moral is likely high (Russian troops stepped back from Kiev and they are fighting a defensive war to keep their independence). On the other hand Ukrainian forces so far denied engagement on open terrain to the Russian forces. They know that in open combat they will likely be defeated by Russian forces which have the edge in the air and in the overall quality of their material. So far they preserved some of their manoeuvrer capability by forcing the Russian in urban combat and being on the defensive, but now that they are going on the offensive their losses will be much higher and they could lose most of their remaining assets and be forced back into a passive defensive position. It's a big gamble.

 

The fight in the Donbass will most likely determine the future borders of the separatist republics and how much terrain will Ukraine lose during negotiations.

 

A slightly different matter is the worrying radicalization of both sides. We know that exactions against POW occurred on both sides and that both of them already partially disregard international law regarding POW (Publishing images of captured soldiers is normally forbidden for example). The massacre in Bucha will rile up the Ukrainians even more, possibly leading to even more exactions against Russian POW creating a negative feedback loop. This was aggravated when Russia, instead of denying their responsibility in Bucha and saying that they would investigate anyway (which would have been the smart choice) went and immediately claimed at the UN that all of it was a fabrication from Ukraine using ridiculous arguments (like corpses being living actors, Ukrainian forces planting the bodies in the town, or Ukrainians killing their own for a false flag) which was very quickly debunked using satellite imagery proving the chronology of Russian claims was impossible. We may never know what really happened in Bucha (at least before a few years to decades after the end of the war), but it remain that Russia will have to deal with the image of a war criminal for at least the rest of the war, which won't help them either on the international stage or on dealing with the population in occupied territory.

On the Russian side we also have seen a few public personality using a vocabulary which is frankly worrying and would have been better left in the gutter of History. Like the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church claiming that the very existence of the Russian people is on the line and borderline making it a Holy war against a "decadent" Occident or in another register the diatribe of Timofeï Sergueïtsev :

 

Spoiler

The passives Nazi supporting the elites (where he equate Ukrainian nationalism to nazism) are impossible to re-educate, there is a need for a [...] total cleansing. All organizations that have tied themselves to the practice of Nazism must be eliminated and banned. However, in addition to the top brass, a significant part of the popular masses who are passive Nazis, collaborators of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported the Nazi government and were lenient towards it. A just punishment for this part of the population is only possible by bearing the inevitable burdens of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as discreetly as possible against civilians. The subsequent denazification of this mass of the population consists of re-education, which is achieved by ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and severe censorship: not only in the political sphere, but necessarily also in the sphere of culture and education. It was through culture and education that the deep mass Nazification of the population was prepared and implemented, consolidated by the promise of the dividends of the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda, violence and internal terror, and the eight-year war with the rebellious Ukrainian Nazi people of Donbass. Denazification can only be carried out by the victor, which presupposes his unconditional control of the denazification process and the power to ensure this control. As such, the denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state - Russia - cannot proceed with a liberal approach to denazification. The ideology of the denazifier cannot be contested by the culprit in the course of denazification. (…) The duration of denazification can in no case be less than one generation, the one that will be born, grow and mature under the conditions of denazification. The Nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years - since at least 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism acquired legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the "independence" movement towards Nazism.

 

I can only hope that those are isolated cases and that they do not reflect the public opinion, but that kind of discourse can only lead to a no-matter the cost and a no-compromises attitude which will lead to an escalation of the atrocity on both sides.

[Miroslav]

The Ukrainian Nazi discussion is almost off-topic, but I am very confused by that narrative.

 

Yes, Ukraine has a nationalist patriotic movement spanning large parts of society. This much is clear. But this is normal for any society. The only thing that is provocating about this is that as Ukraine self defines itself as a separate independent entity, it says that Ukraine is not Russia. Well that's not nazism.

 

In addition, there undoubtedly seem to exist small nazi parties. But this is true for a lot of countries. Hungary is not a nazi country. Sweden is not a nazi country. Spain is not a nazi country.

 

The most damning evidence is that there are soldiers fighting in ukrainian uniforms that celebrate nazi iconography and even some pure german operation barbarossa nazi shit. But these guys are politically irrelevant idiots! They are fighting for a slavic nation with a jewish president. They are hooligans in uniform! Very useful back in 2014 when ukraines regular forces had no fighting morale and no morals. They primarily want to fight. Whatever political context is not so important. I read an interview of a western (neo nazi) azov guy who traveled to join the Donbass separatists, but he ended up defecting to the azov battalion instead because he didnt like his commander in the separatists forces... Political idiot, citizen of nowhere, he just wanted to fight.

 

I would never want that shithead watch over a POW. But Ukraine and the Kiev government is still not a nazi regime.

 

I live in a European "western" democracy. Because of family, I have a lot of love for Russia. But this special operation bullshit is a major mistake by Russian leaders. I wish peace and prosperity for the Russian people.

 

[watch_your_fire]

2 hours ago, Miroslav said:

The Ukrainian Nazi discussion is almost off-topic, but I am very confused by that narrative.

Wars, in the modern age, require a lot of political hoops and justifications. Denazification, WMDs, "harboring terrorists" etc. Ultimately politicians just say these things to avoid saying "we want power in this region and are going to take it by force". IMO Putin would have been better off going with a "protecting ethnic Russians" narrative than the denazification thing.

6 hours ago, Alzoc said:

Russia is still sticking to the "special operation" narrative, meaning the political cost of mobilization or sending conscript into Ukraine would be high. It would mean admitting to the Russian population that the scale of the invasion was much bigger than initially reported and that they took not insignificant losses. Russian ground forces have about 280 000 soldiers about which a bit over 100 000 are tied up in Ukraine.

Excellent point.

I've heard that Ukrainian forces, counting militia men and other irregulars, are coming to outnumber the total Russian forces in Ukraine. Of course, there's a big difference between a gopnik with an AK and a trained soldier, but still.

Russia likely intends to fill this gap with mandatory conscription in Donbass but that's a short term solution at best considering how most manpower there has already been tapped.

@LoooSeRWhat sort of options does Putin have constitutionally in Russia to fill manpower shortages without a declaration of war?

And what happens when the current 1 year service period for conscripts ends? Do they just get to go home?

[LoooSeR]

4 minutes ago, watch_your_fire said:

/.../

@LoooSeRWhat sort of options does Putin have constitutionally in Russia to fill manpower shortages without a declaration of war?

And what happens when the current 1 year service period for conscripts ends? Do they just get to go home?

Not much. Use other forces and branches of law enforcements for second line/rear security. Use more units from other parts of Russia. But that will not get too much people.

Yes, after service you are going home and do whatevere you want.

[Miroslav]

Even if Russia could get the manpower, it couldn't train it to become effective soldiers fast enough to make major offensive action in Ukraine possible. Neither is it possible to replace all the destroyed equipment at record speed without some economic war miracle.

[Sturgeon]

8 hours ago, Miroslav said:

I am very confused by that narrative.

Guessing you don't know what a "black sun" is.

[Sturgeon]

I'm not even going to post photos of Ukrainian guys larping as Nazis, if you're too lazy to find that shit yourself, I don't really care to talk to you anyway.