Ukraine

I’m amazed that the Russians decided to invade during Ukraine’s mud season – either there was a massive planning blunder or perhaps the invasion was postponed?

Ukraine tax authority waives checks on “significant changes in property status”. If you are in Ukraine and “acquire” a T-72 tank that happens to be resting in a nearby field then relax – you won’t get hit by capital gains tax.

A fascinating, thought-provoking thread.

Can anyone add substance to a pal’s claim that Russia only have 9 (now 7) days of arsenal left ? I heard something along those lines on the radio but thought it was Ukraine who had limited supplies (excluding supplies from the West).

There’s a lot of talk about how they’re running out of everything. Yesterday the US claimed that much of the Russian army in Ukraine was down to about 3/4 days of food. We’ve seen a lot of tanks etc running out of fuel, and that stalled convoy (for instance) needs to keep its engines going for at least some of the time, just to keep people warm if nothing else – so that’ll be running out of fuel too.

There was a Russian document shared yesterday that seemed to show that the whole thing was planned to be done and dusted in a fortnight, so perhaps that’s all they planned for?

And then as noted above, there has been years of crony corruption in the military which has just gutted it from the inside. I saw a good thready about how Russia got a new head of defence in about 2008, who started to crack heads, sort it all out, and cancel all these dodgy contracts to oligarchs who were charging hugely over the odds to supply substandard shit. So all the oligarchs complained, got him thrown out, and he was replaced by another yes-man who reinstated all the old contracts. Which is why they’re now all using cheap consumer grade radios and knock-off tyres on their artillery.

Presumably they will be able to re-stock at some point – but their supply lines have been completely chaotic so far. And at another point, if the economic sanctions really bite, they won’t be able to manufacture in such numbers any more.

Christ, that looks like a 1970’s barn-find! Talk about decrepit.

As much as I’d like to believe it, there is probably the opposite of survivorship bias at work in terms of what we see vs reality. As in the good stuff, that is maintained and most functional, is less likely to fail in the first place and will be the first in line for rescue. Old tat will fail more often, be used as a sacrificial pathfinder and be the first to be left behind if they need to get out of Dodge in a hurry.

I wonder if we’ll see videos of Russian tanks pulling farm machinery out of mud next spring. I hope so.

There’s a lot of talk about how they’re running out of everything. Yesterday the US claimed that much of the Russian army in Ukraine was down to about 3/4 days of food. We’ve seen a lot of tanks etc running out of fuel, and that stalled convoy (for instance) needs to keep its engines going for at least some of the time, just to keep people warm if nothing else – so that’ll be running out of fuel too.

Could you imagine!  if the Ukrainians can hold out for another week then the Russian army runs out of all supplies – over night it will go from worlds second biggest / scariest armed force to the worlds biggest laughing stock!

His theory was that Russian army chiefs had sold off massive weapon stocks to line their own pockets, so Putin thinks they had more than they actually do have.

The likelihood of Defense spending going missing in large quantities is quite high.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2013/oct/09/sochi-2014-olympics-money-corruption

The opposition figures Leonid Martynyuk and Boris Nemtsov claimed in a May report that up to $30bn of the budget had gone missing in “kickbacks and embezzlement” to close associates of Putin, claiming the Games had turned into a “monstrous scam”.

Boris Nemstov has since been killed, shortly after opposing a previous invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Leonid is living in New York.

What tyres for:

Ukranian mud.

Has the page count for this thread magically reset?

It’s pegged to the value of the rouble

@inkster do maxxis do a short for APC’s?

Mariupol sounds to be in a truly desperate state.

The Russians have made a hash of it, but still have massive reserves which they have not been able to bring to bear yet. Either way it feels like it will be a long and bitter battle and their economy is in ruins.

What a total waste of lives, time and money.

Could you imagine! if the Ukrainians can hold out for another week then the Russian army runs out of all supplies – over night it will go from worlds second biggest / scariest armed force to the worlds biggest laughing stock!

I’d be very wary of this, again the Russians have a lot in their arsenal that they are not using in this invasion, i pray they never get pushed to even contemplating it, but with Putin, if he’s getting embarrassed he may well start using heavier weaponry on urban areas.

they got the chance to look into the cockpit and were staggered by how basic it all was.

Yeah, the upside of that is Ex-Soviet pilots wondering why NATO jets were so ‘fragile’. the RF pilots can strap in and start and fly away in about 10 minutes with no outside help; try doing that in a F16. also their jets are capable of operating in much much more primitive conditions that ‘ours’ our. There’s pros and cons to each philosophy, but it’s not as straightforward as might first appear

I ummed & aahhed about my last posting!!

It was really just meant to demonstrate the difference between an RPG/guided weaponry & its usefulness against aircraft, rather than a 2 hr presentation on every kind of projectile!!

TLDR – RPGs no use against jets!! Unless you get a very lucky shot, but you might as well try & throw bricks into its engines!!

What tyres for:

Ukranian mud.

Newer ones, clearly.

They must not have Kwik Fit in Russia. “These tyres are no good mate you’ll need new ones”

I wonder how the Ukranian allies are going to get supplies/weapons into the country?

This was covered by the BBC this morning….
get them to various [secret] locations along the border with NATO and hand over to Ukranian military.

But the convoys could then easily be picked off by air.

Very doubtful there would be a convoy …. just normal lorries heading in various directions.

Edit: Which is possibly why civilians are reporting that food deliveries are being targeted by the RF – they may be, but the RF have no idea if an artic is full of munitions or Pot Noodles.

The Ukranian propaganda campaign is interesting. It is based almost entirely on humour, (not surprising given the presidents previous employ).

It doesn’t require that we believe it, (we’re living in the era of ‘fake news’ after all), instead it cleaves to the fact that humans often find a greater truth in humour.

And it keeps the spirits up as well.

PJM1974
Free Member
I’m amazed that the Russians decided to invade during Ukraine’s mud season – either there was a massive planning blunder or perhaps the invasion was postponed?

@PJM1974 – The theory goes that they did it whilst holding the Chair of the UN Security Council, which ended on March 1st. They intended a quick decapitation strike at Ukraine whilst holding the chair of the council which decides on sanctions, peacekeepers, etc.

What tyres for:

Ukranian mud.

The old 26 x 2.1 Trailrakers in the garage will finally pay for themselves!

@sharkbait – the Russians do not have control of the Air. They have air superiority only where they’re backed up by SA400 launchers on the ground, so close to the main avenues of attack. This explains why they’re using only standoff cruise missiles (which Jane’s thinks they’ve used over 48% of the total national stockpile) for deeper strikes. The Ukranian airforce still exists, but is operating in the west of Ukraine, which is very lucky for the that massive Russian convoy. An Apache swarm from the Polish border would be a sight to see.

It is just an entirely weird situation, the invasion force is what it is, with rumours of badly equipped and trained soldiers, equipment that is failing and so on, it just looks like it really counted on the Ukrainians not wanting to fight Russian soldiers, and stand down, the last few days are the opposite, now they are getting bogged down and it’s still the invasion element, it’s just properly mental, the days of quantity having a quality all of its own isn’t really a viable thing for an invasion, where you need both!

Putin’s school of thought is that it’s not an invasion force, it’s a liberating force. The plan / assumption / hope was that the Russian soldiers would be greeted as conquering heroes by the citizens who were (according to Russia) living under a fascist dictator and desperately wanted to be part of Mother Russia.

So if you’re going in to liberate and be greeted as heroes and welcomed in, you don’t really need much ammo / food etc nor do you need advanced weapons.

Turns out that the Ukrainians are not living under a fascist dictator and they quite like being Ukrainian.

A missile (clue is in the name) is designed to MISS, not HIT.

Or unless it’s a Rapier. Which is designed to sit there and not work.

I seem to recall something about inspection of black sea navy vessels finding that all the turrets were basically painted to the extent that they had *never* been able to turn, let alone fire.

Might have been a thread about that carrier that got turned into a nightclub?

I ummed & aahhed about my last posting!!

It was really just meant to demonstrate the difference between an RPG/guided weaponry & its usefulness against aircraft, rather than a 2 hr presentation on every kind of projectile!!

TLDR – RPGs no use against jets!! Unless you get a very lucky shot, but you might as well try & throw bricks into its engines!!

I knew what you meant and agree.  I’m just being an arse, never knowingly missing an opportunity for hair splitting pedantry.  Things which go bang were my job for three decades, it’s a hard habit to break. Sorry!

The mud thing is weird. Presumably half of Belarus and SW Russia is flat and also muddy at this time of year.

he theory goes that they did it whilst holding the Chair of the UN Security Council, which ended on March 1st. They intended a quick decapitation strike at Ukraine whilst holding the chair of the council which decides on sanctions, peacekeepers, etc.

Putin’s main leverage on the EU is supply of gas. If he waited until the mud dried out it would already be Spring in the countries in central Europe that rely on Russian gas, meaning energy sanctions would be very easy to impose.

He doesn’t seem to have considered why none of the old Eastern Bloc seem to want to live under his jackboot any more?

Yeah, the upside of that is Ex-Soviet pilots wondering why NATO jets were so ‘fragile’. the RF pilots can strap in and start and fly away in about 10 minutes with no outside help; try doing that in a F16. also their jets are capable of operating in much much more primitive conditions that ‘ours’ our. There’s pros and cons to each philosophy, but it’s not as straightforward as might first appear

It’s like the apocryphal tale of the Americans ploughing millions into developing Fisher SpacePens vs the Russians using pencils.

It doesn’t require that we believe it, (we’re living in the era of ‘fake news’ after all), instead it cleaves to the fact that humans often find a greater truth in humour.

It makes us in the West like them. Because we consume loads of social media, this is aimed at us. And it’s working, they have massive popular support which then turns into massive political support. It seems that Zelensky is a master at getting people to like him, being able to go from actor to President in a single campaign.

“Quantity has its own type of quality” only if all that quantity actually still works.

Russia might have 12,000 tanks but if 9,000 of them are T55 and T62s with the turrets rusted solid then it hardly matters.

You also need people willing to drive the tanks too.

My military knowledge extends to occasionally lurking on the Airfix thread but I do wonder if this conflict is the swan song for the tank.

It is something being debated. Look at how the UK are talking about reducing the number of tanks and the US marines have already done so completely.
However the question was whether that was a mistake of fighting the last war and whether the next conflict (think of any possibilities?) might actually have semi modern tank armies going head to head.

@sharkbait – the Russians do not have control of the Air

Ummm…. yeah, I’m sure you’re right – but I never mentioned anything about it!
I just said that I doubt there would be a convoy of lethal aid.

Blokeuptheroad – It wouldn’t be STW without some grade A pedantry!!

I’m no expert in tank killing munitions and most of my threats were Sam7 os Small arms fire.

We did discover a working ZSU 23-4 Radar guided AA canon just outside Baghdad though, which made us Pucker Up a bit!

It’s like the apocryphal tale of the Americans ploughing millions into developing Fisher SpacePens vs the Russians using pencils.

This was actually busted. They can’t actually use pencils as the shavings from minute amounts of graphite getting into the electronics could have presented a real danger of short circuit

It’s all very well laughing at the poorly prepared Russian ground forces but Putin won’t back down and won’t just give up. Personally given a horrific set of options like the Ukrainians I’d rather have a column of half arsed young conscripts thinking they are on a massive liberation excercise driving down my road in rusty tanks than be staring at the business end of a cruise missile or worse. There seems to be very little thought from the mainstream media about where Putin can go next, bearing in mind the psychology of a thwarted dictator who doesn’t now even have the hearts and minds of all his own citizens…there are absolutely no checks and balances on him or Lavrov and I get the feeling he has been planning this for a decade.

What tyres for:

Ukranian mud.

You’ll be looking at the Maxxis Occupiers or the Panaracer Invaders….

https://t.co/4WkYgVsexz pic.twitter.com/jL0HTyXv1Q

— Philip Bump (@pbump) March 3, 2022

I can’t see the Russians going home to be honest.

Even if it’s true that the Russians might rum out of munitions in 10 days time, that still gives them 10 days to capture the entire Black Sea coastline. If they then run out of equipment, then so be it. They’ll just sit there.

Perhaps that column sitting there above Kyiv is a distraction. Putin knows he has limied resources / time and wants to capture as much territory as he can. If he gets the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, he might trade the territory he’s siezed where that column is, west of the river Dnipro for the as yet un occupied territory EAST of the river.

The battle for Odessa might be the most ferocious of all, it might be the last chance for Ukraine to have access to the Black Sea.

Bit of a glimpse inside a captured bit of kit, looking pretty tired.

I think what we are seeing in terms of poor military equipment, obvious poor maintenance and suggestions of “creaming off the top” from the maintenance budgets is highly endemic of the Russian corrupt culture these days, something Putin himself has arguably nurtured more than anyone else.

To that end I think it is almost obvious that he will be the arbiter of his own demise… The Imperialist USSR was backed up by Communist ideals, soldiers who believed in the “greater good”. Modern Russia is mostly a state full of people who want a western lifestyle and all the trimmings, and have seen how whilst speaking out against the state can get you thrown in jail and beaten up, corrupt capitalism is almost encouraged!

I see some of that mindset still exists. If you’ve ever seen the TV series ‘Deutschland 83’ it captures the spirit of the times and the mutual mistrust/misjudged motives perfectly.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the Deutschland 83/86/89 series, get binge watching now… Brilliant TV, and from what I understand (I was only born in 1980, but young to remember the 80’s accurately) very accurate too.

Very insightful to hear about your own experiences in Cold War Germany though…

there are absolutely no checks and balances on him or Lavrov and I get the feeling he has been planning this for a decade.

Having just watched Lavrov’s latest unhinged rant about Hollywood movies and Torch waving Nazi parades it reminds me of Tariq Aziz’ nonsensical broadcasts during the first gulf war.

This was actually busted. They can’t actually use pencils as the shavings from minute amounts of graphite getting into the electronics could have presented a real danger of short circuit

Hence “apocryphal”