Was listening this evening to a Aussie who is guest on Speak the Truth via youtube. He was telling of russian troops in some part of the battles, being pushed forward into Ukrainian machine gun fire, so tense the bodies were piled up like a berm. They used some anti armor weapon to blast through the bodies to pick off more oncoming russians. If the russian troops dont go forward, they get shot down by their own soldiers. I think the putler has lost his mind. I wish Nato troops could just go into russia and take the place over, kill that little bastard and anyone who gets in the way. Fighting the way in like this, would that be justification for putler to go nuclear?

Putin won’t go nuclear in Ukraine unless it’s by complete subterfuge of touching off a tac-nuke and blaming Ukraine and by proxy, NATO. Inside their own border is a different story. If NATO forces entered Russia, he would most definitely order up nuke attacks on Russian soil and nobody could say boo about it.

Guys, when you let the fear mongers convince you of the possibility of nuclear war over Ukraine, keep it to yourself.

For goodness sake, stop and think about what you're saying, then say it elsewhere if you can't manage to snap out of it. I don't want to see that stuff on the pages of this forum.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
.....All the time and money spent fracking Marcellus and your State making the biggest contribution, just to politic it away to defeat russia. [BIt was billed as gas for Americans, clean and affordable.[/B] What a shit show. I have friends in Pennsylvania who have well heads on their properties. They are paid good for this. Only to have the product shipped off to Europe.

This is what angers me as well, the fact that we finally become energy independent then rush to export it in massive quantities to China. And Europe. I live in the midst of production yet there are no pipelines to our communities and homes. Sorry for the thread drift.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Guys, when you let the fear mongers convince you of the possibility of nuclear war over Ukraine, keep it to yourself.

For goodness sake, stop and think about what you're saying, then say it elsewhere if you can't manage to snap out of it. I don't want to see that stuff on the pages of this forum.

Understood Para. I wish Ukraine and a number of countrys could just fight their way right into Moscow. Their forces obviously cannot fight worth a darn. Its less than 600 miles from Ukraine. Dig putler out of a hole in the ground and let his people have him.

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
.....All the time and money spent fracking Marcellus and your State making the biggest contribution, just to politic it away to defeat russia. [BIt was billed as gas for Americans, clean and affordable.[/B] What a shit show. I have friends in Pennsylvania who have well heads on their properties. They are paid good for this. Only to have the product shipped off to Europe.

This is what angers me as well, the fact that we finally become energy independent then rush to export it in massive quantities to China. And Europe. I live in the midst of production yet there are no pipelines to our communities and homes. Sorry for the thread drift.

Get rid of the regulatory and taxation pressure Uncah Ho has imposed on natural gas as well as oil production, and the picture will change dramatically. Natural gas prices were climbing before February of last year. Get rid of Erdogan's insistence on milking or blocking (for political reasons) gas from the south and mixing Russian gas with gas from other sources for delivery into Europe and the picture changes dramatically again. Putin isn't the only game-playing government actor willing to deny the US cheap natural gas.

The Fallschirmjager drops on Crete, while giving a masters class on what NOT to do, they did actually achieve their goals. Unlike the VDV drops into Hostomel/Antov Airport.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Get rid of the regulatory and taxation pressure Uncah Ho has imposed on natural gas as well as oil production, and the picture will change dramatically. Natural gas prices were climbing before February of last year. Get rid of Erdogan's insistence on milking or blocking (for political reasons) gas from the south and mixing Russian gas with gas from other sources for delivery into Europe and the picture changes dramatically again. Putin isn't the only game-playing government actor willing to deny the US cheap natural gas.

Not to mention fertilizer...

ON THE FRONTLINES: “GLOBAL FAMINE IS COMING”
https://thehighwire.com/videos...al-famine-is-coming/

I see this clown Lindsey Graham is now demanding that we and Germany and other NATO members send tanks to Ukraine, immediately, right this instant!!!

My question: who made Miss Lindsey a four-star general?

Why don’t you go hop in an M-1 and lead the charge, Chief?

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I see this clown Lindsey Graham is now demanding that we and Germany and other NATO members send tanks to Ukraine, immediately, right this instant!!!

My question: who made Miss Lindsey a four-star general?

Why don’t you go hop in an M-1 and lead the charge, Chief?

Same shit-head, along with McCain, who went to Afghanistan and gave an over-the-top, declaration to an Afghan SOF unit, that the US would never leave and abandon them.....

Corruption thriller: Zelensky’s deputy minister arrested

Just 14 days after the President of the Ukrainian National Bank (who is said to have embezzled 5,42 million euros) applied for asylum in Austria, Deputy Minister Wassyl Losynsky was arrested.

https://freewestmedia.com/2023...y-minister-arrested/

Those who are familiar with the EU Court of Auditors’ report on Ukraine from autumn 2021 will not be particularly surprised by the current events in Kiev: Deputy Minister Wassyl Losynsky has been arrested for accepting a six-figure bribe.

“The National Anti-Corruption Bureau searched the home of Deputy Minister for Municipal, Territory and Infrastructure Development Vasyl Losynsky and arrested him,” Ukrayinska Pravda reported.

The ministry has already responded to the report and fired the top official. Losynsky is accused of having received a bribe of 400 000 euros when buying electricity generators. The investigations have been ongoing since September, the government employee apparently wanted to enrich himself by the fact that his compatriots were facing an electricity crisis.

Warrant issued for the Ukrainian bank boss
The latest chapter in the corruption thriller was exposed just 14 days after Austrian daily the eXXpress reported on the President of the Ukrainian National Bank who had fled to Austria. Kyrylo Shevchenko (50) is currently hiding in Vienna because the government in Kiev has accused him of having embezzled 5,42 million euros. In the Ukraine, an arrest warrant has been issued for the bank manager.

As reported, Shevchenko has now applied for asylum in Austria.

The Ukrainian bank boss, who managed the national bank of the warring country until October 4, has excellent international connections: Shevchenko was invited by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on April 21 of the previous year to Washington, right after the start of the Russian operation.

He is not the only Ukrainian fleeing justice: President Zelensky suspended the Constitutional Court’s chairperson Oleksandr Tupytsky in 2020 in an effort to overturn the court’s October decision on corruption.

In December 2020, the Ukrainian parliament reauthorised the government’s decision, ignoring the court. Tupytsky, the former President of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court and declared opponent of the Ukrainian leader, currently also lives undisturbed in Vienna.

Allegations against the Ukrainian Minister of Defense
According to official information, the Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov is suspected of overpriced food purchases for the army, the daily newspaper Die Welt reported. Resnikov has been summoned to appear before parliament, Vice-Chair of the Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Reconnaissance Marjana Besugla told national broadcaster Suspilne Media on Saturday.

In addition, the Court of Auditors announced a special audit in the Ministry of Defense.

Earlier, media reports in Kiev caused a stir that the Defense Ministry was buying food to feed its soldiers at prices up to three times higher than retail prices in stores. The contract for 13 billion hryvnia – 300 million euros – is not about feeding the soldiers at the front, but enriching kleptocrats in the rear.

Ukraine was granted EU candidate status in June, four months after the war began. The requirements for accession include the rule of law and progress in the fight against corruption, where Ukraine, despite numerous efforts in recent years, still ranks among the lowest in the world.

Press spokesman also fired
Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych was forced to resign after stating that the recent strike on an apartment building in Dnepropetrovsk was caused by a Ukrainian SAM missile, not a targeted Russian attack. He quickly became another casualty of Kiev’s information war.

On the evening of January 14, Arestovich said the partial destruction of a residential building in the city was the result of a projectile shot down by Ukrainian air defenses which fell on it. Following this, he was sharply criticized by government supporters and put on the infamous Ukrainian Myrotvorets kill list.

On January 16, Ukrainian legislator Alexey Goncharenko reported that a petition was launched to fire him.

Notably, Arestovych has slammed the political war the Ukrainian leader has waged on Ukraine’s Russian speaking population and Orthodox Church: “Zelensky has declared war on Christianity. This is when [the Ukrainian secret service, the SBU] entered…the Ukrainian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate…”

And more corruption reported here:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...sports-cars-mansions

Let Ukraine have whatever weapons it wants or needs to take on Russia. Without sugarcoating it and trying to take sides, these are the advantages:

1. The price we're paying to let someone else confront Russia via a proxy war is a cheap way for us to upstage Russia. It's money well spent to let Russia's weaknesses shine through and it takes them down on the world stage. How much did we spend annually before the Ukraine war trying to take down Russia?

2. Other people are willing to die to fight this war. We're sending advisors and all that but other people have said they will die in the fight. We get upset with body bag counts and now we don't have to.

3. This is R&D for our defense contractors. It's a test bed for our platforms and there's value in that. It's morbid to say as much but we can find out what works and what doesn't without tweaking at no cost of US lives.

4. It sends a message to China that the Western World can unify against a world bully and foe. If Russia had taken effective control of Ukraine in 96 hours without consequences, China would be emboldened to do the same with Taiwan.


It's not the nicest things to say but those are the realities that I see.

quote:

Originally posted by Flashlightboy:
Let Ukraine have whatever weapons it wants or needs to take on Russia. Without sugarcoating it and trying to take sides, these are the advantages:

1. The price we're paying to let someone else confront Russia via a proxy war is a cheap way for us to upstage Russia. It's money well spent to let Russia's weaknesses shine through and it takes them down on the world stage. How much did we spend annually before the Ukraine war trying to take down Russia?
It's not the nicest things to say but those are the realities that I see.

That would be fine and dandy, IF we were replacing OUR inventory, we ARE NOT. This proxy war is running us out of some of our harder to replace tech/weapons.

Western tanks headed to Ukraine

“Russia today warned that Germany's decision to send dozens of modern tanks to Ukraine is 'extremely dangerous' and will 'take the conflict to a new level'.

Bringing an end to a bitter row, Chancellor Olaf Scholz finally confirmed today Berlin will send its own German-made Leopard 2 tanks to the front lines and allow Nato allies to deliver some of theirs.

Russia branded the move a 'blatant provocation' and warned the new Nato supplies will 'burn like all the rest', while one raging Putin propagandist called for the German parliament to be destroyed in a nuclear strike.

And Russia's ambassador today said: 'This extremely dangerous decision takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation, and contradicts statements by German politicians about the unwillingness of the German Federation to get involved in it.'

Around 30 M1 Abrams tanks will be sent from the US, while Berlin will initially supply 14 Leopard 2 tanks. Russia's own storage facilities have around 10,200 tanks, while an estimated 3,300 have been deployed in Ukraine, with 1,640 destroyed.  …”

DailyMail article:
https://mol.im/a/11674127

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
Russia's own storage facilities have around 10,200 tanks, while an estimated 3,300 have been deployed in Ukraine, with 1,640 destroyed.  …”

The caveat to that impressive number is that nearly all of these tanks in Russia's storage facilities are 50-70 year old designs stockpiled during the middle of the Cold War, which are outclassed by modern tanks and modern anti-tank capabilities. Nearly all of Russian's modern tanks are already in use by active units, and a number of them have already been destroyed.

That ~10k tank stockpile reportedly includes 2,800 T-55s, 2,500 T-62s, 2,000 T-64s, and the remainder being mostly T-72s with a few hundred T-80s and T-90s.

But as the saying goes: "Quantity has a quality all its own". Though the same can be said about Ukraine's widespread access to anti-tank weaponry...

The other important factor is that, as has been seen with basically all of Russian's stockpiled military equipment, regular maintenance is apparently not a priority for them (and maintenance budgets would be a prime target for siphoning money into corrupt pockets too), so those many thousands of tanks are almost assuredly all in various states of disrepair, and will have to be pieced together into a significantly smaller number of actually usable outdated tanks.

Plus, the Russian military has notoriously poor equipment accountability and inventory. So there's no telling how many of those broken-down outdated tanks actually exist vs. just existing on paper to justify inflated budgets or demonstrate inflated capabilities.

^^^^^^^
In fact, I believe that it was Joseph Stalin that said, "Quantity has a quality all its own".

It's commonly attributed to Stalin on the interwebs, but that's just widespread misattribution. That particular phrase only dates to the 1970s, long after his death.

In addition, Stalin spoke Russian, and the Russian words for "quantity" and "quality" are not similar, thus the phrase doesn't have its play on words like it does in English.

But this doesn't mean Stalin didn't consider a similar idea to be valid, or make a statement along the same broad lines sometime during his life.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
Western tanks headed to Ukraine
Around 30 M1 Abrams tanks will be sent from the US, while Berlin will initially supply 14 Leopard 2 tanks. Russia's own storage facilities have around 10,200 tanks, while an estimated 3,300 have been deployed in Ukraine, with 1,640 destroyed.  …”

This quote is intended to minimize the possible impact that western MBTs can have on Ukraine's efforts in the war; contrasting 34 against 10,000.
Rest assured, if Russia had the personnel and materiel to bring more power to bear, they would have by now. They haven't spent a full year just dipping their toes in.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
The caveat to that impressive number is that nearly all of these tanks in Russia's storage facilities are 50-70 year old designs stockpiled during the middle of the Cold War, which are outclassed by modern tanks and modern anti-tank capabilities. Nearly all of Russian's modern tanks are already in use by active units, and a number of them have already been destroyed.

That ~10k tank stockpile reportedly includes 2,800 T-55s, 2,500 T-62s, 2,000 T-64s, and the remainder being mostly T-72s with a few hundred T-80s and T-90s.

But as the saying goes: "Quantity has a quality all its own". Though the same can be said about Ukraine's widespread access to anti-tank weaponry...

The other important factor is that, as has been seen with basically all of Russian's stockpiled military equipment, regular maintenance is apparently not a priority for them (and maintenance budgets would be a prime target for siphoning money into corrupt pockets too), so those many thousands of tanks are almost assuredly all in various states of disrepair, and will have to be pieced together into a significantly smaller number of actually usable outdated tanks.

Plus, the Russian military has notoriously poor equipment accountability and inventory. So there's no telling how many of those broken-down outdated tanks actually exist vs. just existing on paper to justify inflated budgets or demonstrate inflated capabilities.

The impression I get is actually that the older types may be in better condition because they used up much of the better storage facilities, while later models with more delicate technology were stored in worse circumstances, frequently after the breakdown of the USSR. We have seen old T-62s in Ukraine because apparently they were easy to make operational again, but few T-80s.

The same account that noted the numbers thought in Russian storage also stated that overhead imagery of outdoor lots suggest about 2,300 tanks look unrestorable, 1,300 dubious, 2,100 restorable at factory level, and less than 900 easily put back in service. Plus another estimated about 1,300 in indoor storage and unclear condition, not necessarily "good"; remember the huge jam of broken-down trucks on the road to Kiev early in the war, many simply because their tires had gone bad due to years of not being turned.

Russia will probably not run out of tanks in Ukraine; but neither will they sweep over the country with 10,000 tanks - because they can't make that many operable, and absent politically dangerous full mobilization won't have the warm bodies to crew them either. That's not to say delivery of Western types will win the war for Ukraine. Tank for tank, they're superior to anything the Russians, and for now the Ukrainians, have, but they may struggle with an infrastructure built to support the lighter ex-Soviet types, and require whole new logistics chains; for each of the multiple types in a rather modest total likely to arrive within the next months.

As it looks now, one battalion is to be established of 30-50 Abrams (typical NATO org would be three or four companies of 14 each, plus two for battalion command; ex-Soviet is smaller at typically 3 x 10 + 1). Supposedly they won't come from US Army stocks as stripping out sensitive bits of specific equipment would be a drawn-out process; unclear whether they might come from allies operating variants of the same type. Either way it has been warned that they might take months or, pessimistically, years (which wouldn't be much use) to arrive.

Another two battalions are to be formed from about 40 Leopards each collected across Europe; one of the older A4 variant donated by Poland, Norway, and probably some others, and another of the much more capable A6 version from Germany and the Netherlands (who will buy the 18 they have currently leased from Germany for service in a joint tank battalion for the purpose) among others. These are planned to be in Ukrainian service somewhere between late March and early May. There are proposals for enough additional Leopards to establish another two battalions, but most of them are older A4 in storage which will again need to be refurbished, and not be available before the end of this/start of next year.

The French are still mulling whether to contribute some of their Leclercs, but like everyone else in Europe have a small remaining fleet without the benefit of multi-national commonality. The Brits have already pledged a squadron of 14 Challenger 2, which will however be a little like white elephants as they don't even have ammunition commonality with the other Western types due to their rifled vs. smoothbore 120 mm guns. German armsmaker Rheinmetall seems to think they can buy back and refurbish some additional Challengers from the Middle East, but they've had some rather pushy PR ever since Ukraine broke.

A better idea might be to restore the older Leopard 1 of which nearly 400 are still in European industry stocks. While this is also a 60s design with much less armor and a 105 mm gun, the last A5 variant was thoroughly upgraded and remains in active service with Greece, Turkey, Brazil and Chile. It was still supposed to go up against Soviet types fielded in the 80s, and critically is in their weight range, which should make navigating Ukrainian bridges etc. easier. Plus you won't have to carve it out of already meagre European active tank fleets.

If maintenance practices are any indicator of deep depot-level practices, then I wouldn't count on too many more Russian tanks coming to the front. Thier simplicity is to their advantage, as their restoration isn't complicated however, since they've been sitting in the open for several decades



Ukraine ideally would like to get an armored division outfitted with whatever combination of tanks, IFV and artillery they can get their hands on. A more realistic option given what's been donated, is to create a heavy brigade to punch through defensive lines and everyone else pours through in the menagerie of battle-taxis. We already know Russia isn't very flexible or agile, as the battlefield evolves but, they also don't have much in-depth defense so, breaking the initial line is the crux to their defense.