SAR and FLIR ought to help here to a degree. Originally, Banderits tried to wage a Partisan warfare after WWII using those forests. But for the most part they ended up sitting there doing buttfuck all for 10 years. Not to say this wlll happen same way if it reaches that point. But i would not be surprised if it will.
I think the insurgents in Ukraine had losses of like 1:10 versus the Soviets back then. Scott Ritter mentioned that. And that is if you do not count civilian losses in Ukraine. Yeah an insurgency should work really well. Not.
In Ukraine the Russian Army is pressing now even the prototype vehicle in combat for this unique T80UM2 star of the defence shows it didn't go well
Holy crap. Well it makes sense to test everything I guess. Even this museum piece. I am surprised they have not tried more tanks with APS. At least in the urban conflicts in places like Mariupol. Perhaps they are trying to avoid infantry losses to APS when their own troops operate close with the tanks?
The Polish bad history with Russia / USSR runs much further back than that though.
Yeah I understand there is deep historic resentment between Poland and Russia.
Murder of Polish officer staff and political leaders not general civilian population. If you think it does not happen in similar operations. Well. Just remember what happened to Saddam and his sons. Heck Stalin purged people in the Soviet Union itself. Like Tukhachevsky. So this is not exactly exceptional treatment suffered by the Poles.
Yes the evil Soviet troops should have ridden to the rescue of the brave Polish insurgents and overrun their own supply line. I have looked at that incident more than once and there is no way the Soviets could have got there in time even if they wanted to. Perhaps the Poles should instead complain to the people who asked them to do this pointless uprising against the Nazi occupier in the first place. Which were not the Soviets. But the British and Polish government in exile. The Anglos do this kind of stunt all the time. The US also convinced the Iraqi population to rise against Saddam in 1991 and a lot of people got killed by the Iraqi National Guard as a result.
To be honest I do not know why the Poles have such a beef with the Russians, or at least with the Soviets, given their history post WW2. I can understand the problems before that though.
Why would Russia use a Kinzhal? It could be they are having issues with having enough Iskandrs.
For two reasons. 1) To send a message to NATO. 2) Because it was actually the most suitable weapon for the task.
Like I said before Iskander does not have enough range to hit a target close to the Romanian border from Russian soil. It has only 500km range. Kinzhal has 2500km range. The target was also supposedly a Soviet era bunker which used to be the storage facility for the nukes in Ukrainian soil. So it is probably hardened and to ensure destruction you would probably need a high kinetic impact warhead. Which Kinzhal is.
Those base attacks must be particularly demoralizing for the Ukrainians. After some high profile coverage of that Yavoriv strike near the Polish border, and then the Nicolaev strike yesterday where basically any entire company's worth of troops were killed, there has been no coverage of the base strike today in the Western or Ukraine media, except a brief report on Al Jazeera which cites Russian sources. Russia claims they wiped out another 100 Ukr and mercenary forces. I guess Ukr has decided to neither confirm or deny it.
Well of course. If you believe these idiots in the Ukrainian government Russia had exhausted its whole cruise missile stock the day before. So how can they be hitting sites again the day after that uh? And in multiple sites? Idiots.
Last bit as I still question Putin's endgame.
I have no doubts Russia can easily achieve whichever war goals it has here. I am more concerned they will drop the ball on the peace negotiations than the war itself. Stalin had the same issue when he had the Continuation War after the Winter War.
The US was able to walk away from Afghanistan ... Still, the ongoing costs of the US occupation were low enough, and American pride great enough, that it is actually quite surprising that the US left.
I think a lot of people underestimate the cost of the interventions on Afghanistan and Iraq both. Just look at the separate budget for the interventions the US spends yearly. And that does not include a lot of things like government aid or even things which supposedly fall under the regular military budget but are actually expenditures for the war. For example do you think the US would have needed to get all those MRAP or Striker vehicles in the first place? They are basically useless in a peer conflict.
The costs to Russia of a prolonged occupation of Ukraine are likely to be much, much higher, but their strategic investment in Ukraine is also much, much greater.
Russia's supply lines would be way shorter. They can basically resupply by rail in Ukraine.
I do not understand why people don't get that.
Do you even have an inkling of how much supplies from the US to Afghanistan would cost in comparison?
Germany: "We are concerned over the use of a hypersonic missile by Russia in the war against Ukraine,"
They better be. Their precious F-35 with B-61 JDAM nuclear bombs would be still taking off their airbase and going towards Russia and a Kinzhal would be hitting them while they were en route to the targets there.
F-35 with B-61 is a stupid waste of money. Even the French have the ASMP-A for air delivery of tactical nukes.
I think the Russians are way more concerned with the Poles buying the AGM-158 JASSM. In fact they have been complaining about it for quite some time. Notice how Kinzhal only entered service after the Finns and Poles got the JASSM. That is Finland's "neutrality".
Yeah that should be enough. Not. I mean just read what that Qatari official said like last week. Notice how this news has like no actual concrete figures in it. In the long term I could see Europe covering like half its natural gas purchases from Russia with LNG imports. Not just from Qatar but other places like US or Australia. But by that time Russia will have built pipelines to send a similar amount of gas to the transit they lost in Europe towards China. And guess who would have the competitive advantage in energy price then. Europe will also find out they will be competing with Japan and South Korea for LNG purchases. Both are importers of Russian LNG and as they seek to divest from that will be competing for exact same suppliers. Xi's signature of a deal with Russia to build a pipeline for 10bcm from Vladivostok to Northern China means Russia will be able to send the gas from Sakhalin which would have otherwise gone to Japan and South Korea into China instead too. The West are being idiots here. And Russia does not need to cut the gas even. They just need not to negotiate new contracts once the old ones expire in two years. Most of Europe did not negotiate new contracts with Russia due to US pressure.
