The War in the Ukraine

With the loss of Crimea and Luhansk oblast Ukraine now has population 48.66 - 2.4 - 2.5 = 43.76 million people, and Russia now has 146 + 2.4 = 148.4 million people, giving Russia a man power advantage of 148.4 / 43.76 = 3.39 times (data from Ukraine and Russia 2001 census. Note, Ukraine never did another census after 2001). The war should now go easier for Russia from here on out.

Ex-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko continues to purchase military equipment for Ukraine. This time, Italian MLS SHIELD armored vehicles were purchased with volunteer funds, according to Poroshenko, the equipment was purchased for the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army. Unexpectedly for everyone, the Ukrainian site "Peacemaker", which publishes information about the enemies of Ukraine, accused Petro Poroshenko of corruption. Information was posted on the website that allegedly Poroshenko, under the guise of raising funds and purchasing MLS SHIELD armored vehicles, took 40 million hryvnia abroad and allowed the funds to be misused. MLS SHIELD is a 4×4 armored SUV manufactured by TEKNE. The manufacturer guarantees the safety of 10 crew members in the event of a car being blown up by mines and improvised explosive devices, as well as in case of an ambush attack. It is possible to install a warhead in the armored vehicle, in which a machine gun of up to 12.7 mm caliber or an automatic grenade launcher can be installed. According to Petro Poroshenko, he buys armored vehicles in the maximum configuration.


Russian artillery destroyed the Czechoslovak 152-mm self-propelled guns vz.77 "Dana-M2" in the Seversk region with an accurate blow. ACS "Dana-M2" is a modernized version of the self-propelled gun vz.77 "Dana" developed in 1977. Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine purchased supported self-propelled guns in the Czech Republic, which caused a scandal. In the Czech Republic itself, the Dana self-propelled guns were decommissioned in 2018 and replaced by CAESAR 155-mm self-propelled guns. The Czech Republic refused to modernize the Dana self-propelled guns due to the impossibility of integrating this installation into a single NATO digital data transmission and target designation system.

LawLeadsToPeace said:

Does anybody have an idea of how that happened? I thought the “shoot the fuel tank/c4” thing was a myth.

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Solid rocket propellant is different from C-4. C-4 is extremely stable even by shock from a small arm bullet. Rocket propellant isn't.

Fuel on the other hand has no oxidizer in it except air on the surface. Unless the bullet enters the fuel through the surface, there is no air for fuel to burn.

So I think fuel tank and C4 are relatively safe from a rifle shot, but not always. In case of C4, what if it is shot by an anti material rifle? Could the higher (than small arm) velocity of the bullet translate to a pressure above the threshold of ignition?

Yommie said:

With the loss of Crimea and Luhansk oblast Ukraine now has population 48.66 - 2.4 - 2.5 = 43.76 million people, and Russia now has 146 + 2.4 = 148.4 million people, giving Russia a man power advantage of 148.4 / 43.76 = 3.39 times (data from Ukraine and Russia 2001 census. Note, Ukraine never did another census after 2001). The war should now go easier for Russia from here on out.

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Russia never had a manpower problem, it had a political willpower question.
Why limit to only 200K soldiers in Donbass? It's a political issue (i.e. "SMO"), not a population issue.

Phead128 said:

Russia never had a manpower problem, it had a political willpower question.
Why limit to only 200K soldiers in Donbass? It's a political issue (i.e. "SMO"), not a population issue.

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There isn't any problem. You are overstating the significance of Ukraine conflict. It is true that Ukraine is very important to Russia, but without NATO involvement on the ground, it is far less a challenge than from Germany in WWII. So there is no need for mobilizing the whole Russian population to bear down on Ukraine. Ukraine (as I repeatedly say) is to Russia as much as Vietnam is to China. China rotated its active troops on Vietnam without increasing constriction, nobody outside of the border region even felt anything of the war. The two conflicts are not full out wars in the eyes of the bigger players no matter how devastating they are to the smaller players.

taxiya said:

Solid rocket propellant is different from C-4. C-4 is extremely stable even by shock from a small arm bullet. Rocket propellant isn't.

Fuel on the other hand has no oxidizer in it except air on the surface. Unless the bullet enters the fuel through the surface, there is no air for fuel to burn.

So I think fuel tank and C4 are relatively safe from a rifle shot, but not always. In case of C4, what if it is shot by an anti material rifle? Could the higher (than small arm) velocity of the bullet translate to a pressure above the threshold of ignition?

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C4’s are detonated with other explosives like det cords and blast caps. Since firing an anti material rifle next to people is safe, I highly doubt that the pressure from a round of an anti material rifle or a heavy machine gun is enough to detonate C4 or other similar explosives.

LawLeadsToPeace said:

C4’s are detonated with other explosives like set cords and blast caps. Since firing an anti material rifle next to people is safe, I highly doubt that the pressure from a round of an anti material rifle or a heavy machine gun is enough to detonate C4.

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I am thinking of the velocity of the bullet on impact, within a short range (400 meters instead of nearly 2000 meters), could the velocity be supersonic? The muzzle velocity is often more than mach 2. I don't know what the shock wave from a blast cap is though. The air front speed to the surrounding area of the muzzle is far lower than the muzzle velocity or the impact velocity of the bullet.

Phead128 said:

Russia never had a manpower problem, it had a political willpower question.
Why limit to only 200K soldiers in Donbass? It's a political issue (i.e. "SMO"), not a population issue.

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The Russians cannot keep a large army in peacetime due to the size of its economy. Once the war started, they are doing a sort of covert mobilization. There are a lot of volunteers and they were talking of needing an additional 200K troops by signing up the volunteers. The idea is that these new troops will take over non-combat duties like securing areas already taken, freeing the current troops for the tip of the spear. Additional troops do not change the way they fight the war much for the following reasons,

1. There is no urgency since they understand that NATO will not send troops. They can take their time.

2. A long war will allow the Russians to destroy infrastructure and in general break the morale of the Ukrainian population. Only when the Ukrainians understand that NATO is impotent to help would they have a change of mind.

3. There is another limitation to the Russian arm forces. In peacetime, they don't have the money to have a large logistics arm to supply the troops they already have. Throwing 3x the number of troops into combat would hugely magnify this problem.

4. Fighting a slow war in their turf would increasing the problems of logistics for the Ukrainian army, which already has a big issue with them. This would allow the Russians to destroy the Ukrainian arm forces much easier in this war of annihilation.

Phead128 said:

Russia never had a manpower problem, it had a political willpower question.
Why limit to only 200K soldiers in Donbass? It's a political issue (i.e. "SMO"), not a population issue.

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Modern warfare isn't about the number of soldiers, but numbers of tanks, artillery, aircraft and so on. Russia has an overwhelming advantage in numbers on that front.

200,000 is an massive number of soldiers for one country to be deploying into another country, that's bigger than the standard army of most countries in the world including every European country except the Ukraine.

Without mass mobilisations it's probably close to the maximum Russia can deploy with current rotation rates. They can start calling up reservists, which would impact their economy or rotate soldiers less, which would affect morale.

Unlike Russia the Ukrainians can't rotate their forces. For the most part soldiers deployed to the front lines are staying their until they're injured. They've already called up and deployed all reservists, and are now down to handing out papers at gas stations and swimming pools and talking about drafting women.

some more cruise missile footage