Russia on brink of ... NOPE! Russia INVADES Ukraine!

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Racan

Golden Member
Sep 22, 2012
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kage69

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
29,096
41,074
136
Putin and the cook both know Russia is still fucked, that the coming Ukrainian offensives won't be pretty. Crimea a la Normandy, mmm Mmm

Warm weather is helping the defenders; the mud is pretty bad and spring hasn't even begun yet. They've got a week of rain and warm temps ahead of them too, only getting worse. Should exacerbate the already low levels of morale and technical ability.

This is when it'd be nice to have a bunch of F-16s dart in after a couple AD batteries got smoked, bomb the Wagner artillery to hell then bug out at 50ft. Instantly give those defenders a longer lease on life.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
86,018
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I find it more than a little strange that on the cusp of an apparent encirclement not only does Russia pause, but they beg the defenders to withdraw to Ukrainian territory. Is their ability to fight THAT low? They can't complete and hold an encirclement of one relatively small city?

Penetrating behind entrenched cities to cut them off is a thing you want to do, and they're willing to hand away the main benefit of being able to capture the defenders with minimal fighting when they run out of supplies.
I wonder if this isn't something they have the ability to do due to their losses in vehicles. It seems like the Russian army has been reduced to mostly attacking on foot and it would be tough to encircle people on foot as it would take too long.
 

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
24,983
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Scrounging for Tanks for Ukraine, Europe’s Armies Come Up Short
(Gifted NYT link)https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/...ytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Donald Trump is now coming across as eerily prescient in his demands for NATO countries to beef up defense commitments and not just rely on the US.

Why haven't we heard of any renewed interest in a European Defense Community (EU's version of NATO that France torpedoed back in 1952)???
 
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fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
86,018
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Scrounging for Tanks for Ukraine, Europe’s Armies Come Up Short
(Gifted NYT link)https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/...ytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Donald Trump is now coming across as eerily prescient in his demands for NATO countries to beef up defense commitments and not just rely on the US.

Why haven't we heard of any renewed interest in a European Defense Community (EU's version of NATO that France torpedoed back in 1952)???
That wasn't Trump, that was literally every US president for the last several decades.
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
86,018
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Yup, Trump was just willing (hoping) to burn down NATO over it. He also thought the 2% GDP was like a country club due.
Yes, if I remember right he repeatedly asked his aides about charging countries to protect them. I also agree that his reason for pushing it so hard was a desire to destroy NATO.

I don't think Trump was a Russian agent but if he had been I don't think he would have behaved that much differently.
 

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
8,110
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I find it more than a little strange that on the cusp of an apparent encirclement not only does Russia pause, but they beg the defenders to withdraw to Ukrainian held territory. Is their ability to fight THAT low? They can't complete and hold an encirclement of one relatively small city?

Penetrating behind entrenched cities to cut them off is a thing you want to do, and they're willing to hand away the main benefit of being able to capture the defenders with minimal fighting when they run out of supplies.
Wagner doth protesteth too much! I had recently seen a post on the twit that the UA is preparing reinforcements for Bakhmut area. I don’t know if this is for a fallback position, or to keep pressing the Russian army. The Ukrainian's just don’t want to give the Russians another victory. Ultimately, conditions on the ground will dictate the tactical decisions (as you well know). We'll just have to sit here and wait and see.
 

kage69

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
29,096
41,074
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Double-agent or captured legionnaire (or triple-agent???) Difficult to say--always be suspect of propaganda.

If it's shown he helped get people killed I'm not sure certain Ukrainian Americans or Canadians will care. Some of his old comrades could have taken it all rather personally too.

I'd say this is Russia helping ensure he can't go back, burning some bridges and making PR hay out of it to boot. That and the intel he's provided probably means he gets to skip "debriefing" at Lefortovo.

He's villified himself to a much larger audience now, and that's typically a bad idea no matter what your play is. Enraged partisans under a different command structure could ruin his day I bet.
 

kage69

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
29,096
41,074
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Next US aid package is almost all ammunition.

My suspicion is that the US is probably ordering howitzer shells from Asia and using it to backfill our own stocks, freeing more for Ukraine.


Was looking at one announced the 24th, I didn't notice it before but Ukraine is getting the very cool Jump 20. Modular medium class with VTOL, long endurance, low noise, does anti-jamming. *chef's kiss*

More Switchblade and ALTIUS asskickers in same package as well, which you just can't have too many of really. They're going to compliment all those lovely shells quite nicely I hope. Happy hunting guys and thank you Joe Biden!
 
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Indus

Lifer
May 11, 2002
12,638
8,894
136
Scrounging for Tanks for Ukraine, Europe’s Armies Come Up Short
(Gifted NYT link)https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/...ytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Donald Trump is now coming across as eerily prescient in his demands for NATO countries to beef up defense commitments and not just rely on the US.

Why haven't we heard of any renewed interest in a European Defense Community (EU's version of NATO that France torpedoed back in 1952)???

Yep that is worrying.

But I hope Europeans start pulling their weight and soon!

The US can only do so much.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
30,118
45,505
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Who is John McIntyre? Someone who won't be coming home lest he have an accident.

sounds like Johnny Jihad has some 'issues' if this is to be believed, it's a hell of a story

Okay so, buckle up I have some wild stories about this guy. So, this guy, Johnny, showed up to Ukraine and joined the Legionnaires. From what I’ve heard, he was “eccentric” from the time he showed up, but it was attributed to the fact that Johnny boy wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box. Upon arriving, he declared his intention to become a chaplain for the legion, going as far as to write “Priest” on his plate carrier( except he spelled it wrong) On more than one occasion he loaded a belt on a machine gun backwards, claimed to be able to read Ukrainian and Russian (He knew what sounds the letters made but not what the words meant.)

Once they got to combat operations, Johnny was a decent soldier. Things began to change however after a certain hard battle, when he was rotated away from the front lines, and he decided to get extremely intoxicated and started pissing on the legions vehicles. He was told stop and didn’t, and eventually ended up pissing in the trunk of one of the vehicles that was filled with gear, food, supplies, a machine gun after he was told that the convoy wouldn’t pull over in a stretch of dangerous highway for him to relieve himself. Essentially, he was told that he was a fucking disgrace and that he was fucked when they arrived back to the front, because they found that he had a mini keg of beer in his rucksack, and had been drinking all day. They arrive back to the front, and Johnny is told that he is being put under arrest. He doesn’t like this, not one bit. He attempts to start fighting the other soldiers, even taking swings at them , until he was promptly rendered unconscious via a swing of a rifle butt. He wakes up in a house under guard, and then decides to jump out of a window, in the middle of the night without shoes or a shirt on, and run away. After it is discovered that he has gone away, it comes out that Johnny may be in possession of a grenade. He runs to a nearby village, which has been abandoned, and steals a woman’s clothes from one of the empty houses.

At this point, his unit is out looking for him quite urgently after it surfaces that he confided in one of them, that dear Johnny was once in Isis. He’s now on RT claiming to be Antifa and a communist, was unironically in Isis, and had previously been under Russian artillery and air strikes in Syria. He smuggled himself back into the United States through the southern border, and was hiding from the law. While in the US and hiding from the law, Jihad Johnny decides to get himself involved in Meth and confederate biker gangs, owing a substantial amount of money to this gang. He forced himself on the leaders daughter and got her pregnant in hopes that the leader of this biker gang wouldn’t do anything to him (he was wrong)

You genuinely could make a movie out of this it’s so insane. So the Biker gang is out looking for him, to get their money and i assume his head, and having no way to pay it, Jihad Johnny decides to launch a Jihad against the confederate biker gang. (This is all from what he told other members of the unit after he was caught) He got his hands on an AK, and He rigged up a s*ic*de v*st and intended to detonate it to take out members of this gang. For context, Johnny was a Christian, then became a Muslim, then became Jewish, then a muslim again and then an atheist, and then a christian again (Like i said, not the brightest knife in the crayon box) And repeated this cycle several times before “selling his soul to satan for 150 years of life” before becoming a christian again. (He was completely sober recounting this by the way)

So the urgency to find this methhead, isis member lunatic who’s running around with a grenade obviously increased greatly. He was then found after running through the town yelling “Help me Baby Jesus Help me” over and over again during an artillery barrage, when he was promptly clubbed over the head with a rifle by the same guy who had done it previously. He was then placed under strict confinement, and while awaiting punishment was sent to do labor in a bunker. He was kicked out of the legion after running away again, getting drunk and pissing all over a bunker, and defacing it with spray paint. There was a joke about him, “That if the Russians ever got ahold of Johnny he’d be wearing a Russian uniform within 5 minutes because of how impressionable he was” , this ended up being true. After this, he ended up converting to Norse Paganism and joining a different militia, who were totally unaware of these previous actions, after he had a discussion with a Pagan and he decided to become one.

What I suppose happened is that he got in trouble again in this other militia, fled to istanbul like he said, and then on to Russia, because otherwise he probably would have been strung up. And soon the Russians are going to find out he has an IQ of 68 and that he’s Bullshitted all of this, and he’s going to be in for a further rough time as there is really no going back on what he’s said. His former unit members don’t believe he was “a spy who had the mission to defect the entire time” , just that he’s an absolute imbecile who’s dug a hole so far deep he won’t be able to climb out.

He ended up in Ukraine in the first place to get away from the biker gangs and also because his teeth were so fucked from meth use, he wanted to get them fixed (he did) And that’s the tale of Jihad Johnny so far, related to me from members who served in his unit. An absolute Odyssey, insane shit, insane guy

WAIT WAIT I MISSED A PART, The reason he didn’t go through with his jihad against the biker gangs was because Jesus appeared to him in a vision and melted the vest off him and he woke up naked
 
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