Some Tactical Thoughts

[Sertorio]

In view of the Russian overwhelming military superiority in the Ukraine I have for a while wondered why it is taking Russia so long to solve the problem.

Some people like fantasizing about Russian incompetence or Ukrainian incredible capacity to thwart Russian military efforts. Forgetting the fact that it took only a few days for Russia to destroy most of the Ukrainian military assets and reduce Ukrainian military capacity to near zero. Ukraine has no air force, no navy, almost no armour, and little artillery. And practically no air defenses. So, why can't Russia wrap it up?

The Ukraine has some well entrenched forces in the Donbass, and its soldiers are brave enough to keep fighting Russia. And it is capable of keeping killing civilians in the separatist territory with both missiles and artillery. But why can't the Russian army quickly solve the problem? Why can't Russia neutralize the forces shelling the separatist cities? Or overrunning the scattered Ukrainian forces?

Surprisingly as it may seem to some of you, the answer can only be one: Russia wants to minimize Ukrainian civilian casualties. Ukrainians have been part of Russia/Soviet Union for too long to be considered strangers and even less enemies. Killing Chechen people was easy. Killing Ukrainians is not. With the Ukrainian army hiding in towns and cities, mixed with the civilian population, fighting them is very difficult if you want to avoid killing civilians. As soon as you use your more effective weapons, you start killing many civilians. Bomb the sites from where Ukrainian artillery is shelling separatist Donbass cities and you kill hundreds of civilians. Overrun towns occupied by Ukrainian forces and you kill thousands of civilians. Russia can't do it. Because of the relationship with the Ukrainian people, and because you must be able to live with those people once the war is won. So you must force the Ukrainians to surrender with a minimum fighting. You must surround them, you must exhaust their ammunition, you must sap their morale, you must deprive them from food and water, and you must kill the military without injuring civilians. Damn difficult. And that's why it is taking so long. Russia will finally solve the problem, but it will take time.

Now, what NATO countries must realize is that if it comes to a war between Russia and NATO, Russians will have no similar problems killing civilians in those NATO countries. So if NATO is thinking that the Russian military are incompetent, and that they may easily defeat them, forget it. For Russia to overrun Poland it would take a fraction of the time it has taken to subdue the Ukraine. Russians like Ukrainians, but they do not like Poles...

[SteveFoerster]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

[Sertorio]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

The saddest thing is that you don't dare believing it, because it would turn your fantasy world upside down. And your fantasy world is a lot cosier than reality...

[Doc]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

The saddest thing is that you don't dare believing it, because it would turn your fantasy world upside down. And your fantasy world is a lot cosier than reality...

OK I suppose you Believe Joe Biden is the equivalent of FDR to Putin's Stalin. While Stalin was not very competent in pursuing his war against Germany, Putin can't even manage to beat Poland with a 10 to 1 advantage in military might.

What a sad joke.

[Sertorio]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

The saddest thing is that you don't dare believing it, because it would turn your fantasy world upside down. And your fantasy world is a lot cosier than reality...

OK I suppose you Believe Joe Biden is the equivalent of FDR to Putin's Stalin. While Stalin was not very competent in pursuing his war against Germany, Putin can't even manage to beat Poland [Ukraine] with a 10 to 1 advantage in military might.

What a sad joke.

I tried to explain why it seems so, but you weren't paying attention...

[SteveFoerster]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

The saddest thing is that you don't dare believing it, because it would turn your fantasy world upside down. And your fantasy world is a lot cosier than reality...

OK I suppose you Believe Joe Biden is the equivalent of FDR to Putin's Stalin. While Stalin was not very competent in pursuing his war against Germany, Putin can't even manage to beat Poland [Ukraine] with a 10 to 1 advantage in military might.

What a sad joke.

I tried to explain why it seems so, but you weren't paying attention...

Oh, we heard your "benevolent Putin" theory. That's what prompted all the laughter.

[Sertorio]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

The saddest thing is that you don't dare believing it, because it would turn your fantasy world upside down. And your fantasy world is a lot cosier than reality...

OK I suppose you Believe Joe Biden is the equivalent of FDR to Putin's Stalin. While Stalin was not very competent in pursuing his war against Germany, Putin can't even manage to beat Poland [Ukraine] with a 10 to 1 advantage in military might.

What a sad joke.

I tried to explain why it seems so, but you weren't paying attention...

Oh, we heard your "benevolent Putin" theory. That's what prompted all the laughter.

If future facts will end up showing that Russia indeed was trying to minimize Ukrainian civilian casualties, will you be ready to apologize?...I very much doubt it...

[SteveFoerster]

This is a war of choice for conquest. If Russian policymakers were trying to minimise Ukrainian casualities, the number would have been zero.

[Doc]

The saddest thing is that I think you actually believe this.

The saddest thing is that you don't dare believing it, because it would turn your fantasy world upside down. And your fantasy world is a lot cosier than reality...

OK I suppose you Believe Joe Biden is the equivalent of FDR to Putin's Stalin. While Stalin was not very competent in pursuing his war against Germany, Putin can't even manage to beat Poland [Ukraine] with a 10 to 1 advantage in military might.

What a sad joke.

I tried to explain why it seems so, but you weren't paying attention...

Sertorio I am not a fan of this war for a lot of reasons. I base that opinion based on what to the best of my ability I can sort out as facts. I am not perfect but I do a pretty good job of verifying the facts. Parroting comment from a few sources consistently means not looking for the facts but having a prejudged facts are irrelevant agenda as to what the truth is.

Honestly I get my news basically randomly from different sources. Which I do by not looking at corporatist and statist media. I just go to non corporatist social media sites and find among the BS the real news.

Minds.com
Slug.com
Reddit has some news subreddits that are pretty diverse in view
Gab.ai I have used but I am getting tired of telling the founder and owner that anti-semitism (like him reposting a "gab" from his wife that complains about kosher ketchup) as he seems to practice it is BS. SO I do not recommend it and probably stop using it. The only thing Torba did right was to set up his own infrastructure independent of the BIG Corporate internet so he did not get shut down the first time he was directly competing against investment fund own Big tech media like Parlor was shut down by Amazon over its growling user count WRT Twitter. But then again GAB has never had a burst in user count I assume mostly because of the bigotry of its owner.

[Sertorio]

This is a war of choice for conquest. If Russian policymakers were trying to minimise Ukrainian casualities, the number would have been zero.

Some die hard neo-cons continue to manifest their ignorance of military affairs by pointing to Russia’s slow progress in taking Severodonetsk as evidence of Russia’s incompetent, weak army. What they fail to understand is that Russia was trying to avoid killing the civilians still inside Severodonetsk, who were being used as human shields by the Ukrainians. Putin and the Russian commanders are placing a higher value on saving civilians rather than unleashing their full military might in order to show the world what they can really do. This is a remarkably mature military strategy.
https://sonar21.com/even-the-uks-sky-ne ... he-donbas/

But those without any military experience cannot understand this...