BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

SuperJail Warden wrote:

A million people died of Chinese Bat Flu. Putin getting coup'd or overthrown after starting a big failed war isn't stranger than anything else lately.

Ukrainians and Russians are too close in culture for people in Russia to stomach mass killing. The Muslims in Chechnya or Syria don't count as people. Can you imagine how people would feel here if we invaded Canada on Sleepy Joe's whim?

let's hope this sentiment lasts when putin starts telling his military top brass to do their worst.

What do you think of what I said regarding their ability to ultimately pacify Ukraine? Their foreigner minister is now putting together foreign brigades.

some of the sanctions, and lack thereof, have been appallingly funny.

some of the fine details and conventions of diplomacy really do make you go cross-eyed.

the EU and US announced, rather magnanimously, that they were freezing putin's assets in their jurisdictions, but that 'they would not instate a travel ban on the named individuals'. as if putin is intending to take a vacation at disney world in the middle of this thing.

italy was quick to instate sanctions/embargos but specifically asked that their luxury fashion exports not be included. lmao. the market is so big for their overpriced gaudy tat in russia that the italians can't bear to lose the income from the house of prada.





liquor stores in the US and canada are banning the sale of vodka, apparently. that'll do it!

so many funny examples.

uziq wrote:

well russia is finished as a power if this continues in a slow-trickle ignominious defeat anyway, aren’t they? anything short of the nuclear option is not going to carry the cold war-era fear that it once did. we’ve now seen them deploy their forces unilaterally on an innocent nation and have seen them be repelled. the damage to the putin regime, coupled with the rest of the world’s resolve, are going to be fatal.

the failure and quagmire in afghanistan was a huge contributing event to the loss of morale and economic decline of the USSR.

Also if a lightweight militia can defeat the mighty Russian military what hope do they have against NATO?

That leaves nuclear weapons and other WMDs, bursting Putin's fantasy bubble of conventional parity is actually very bad.

You remember when Azerbaijan was droning the Armenians and there was video of each strike online? Ukraine just released their first drone strike video using the same one the Azeris used.

Yesterday I started to see more T72B tanks equipped with ERA and troops that appeared better equipped as well. Later models IFVs too. So the heavy equipment is on the move and getting involved. The russians did send professionals early on to occupy three airfields (VDV with Mi-24/Ka-50 support) but they failed that objective in 2 of 3 airports. Hostomel did end up in their hands though, but the runway had already been destroyed by the ukrainians. Over the last few days the only really strategically significant losses we've seen are a Ka-52 that was forced to land, couple destroyed T72s with apparent ERA and a downed Il-76 likely with VDV on board. But those losses are still negligble if we consider that the russians have literally hundreds of Ka's and some ten thousand T72s.

And that's not all. Analysts worth their salt will agree that the russians have so far refrained from using full spectrum missile capabilities or put their air force/artillery to full effect.

There are barely any/no videos of battallion tactical groups on the move or engaged. Could be that platoons are holding greater distance from eachother because the terrain is hard to maneouver through (north of the dniper is basically a swamp, the rest flat open fields) but intensity of fighting is hard to gauge when most civilian videos generally show platoon-sized columns burned out along a roadside (that mostly appear to be older vehicles), or small scale skirmishes. It's generally hard to find something on the fighting. Both sides appear to be much more aware of information security than a few years prior and I've found almost no videos that were filmed by soldiers. Which is a good thing, really. But safe to say only intelligence services focused on the tactical on the ground situation will have a better view of what's actually going on.

As far as UK/US media goes and the triumphalism you're reading, might want to keep in the back of your minds that both were architects of the budapest memorandum and ended up being the largest suppliers of foreign military aid to the Ukrainians. Of course the newspapers will be filled to the brim with stories of how the valiant ukrainians are putting their newly delivered NLAWs and Javelins to great use against the dumb unprepared Rus.

Having said so, it is true that Ukrainian resistance is much more organised, but I question if the Russians weren't aware. It's right over the border and they probably had more than a few agents in the Ukrainian armed forces, they also read the news, so they were hardly unaware of NATO supplies and aid. Putin did probably miscalculate just how large a % of the population opposed him (parts of his speech lead me to think he's lost it), and it is true some military objectives weren't achieved first try. It's however not true that the Russians tried to execute a shock and awe strategy/tactics and failed. As stated full spectrum capabilities haven't been used at all, the initial intensity doesn't reflect that was attempted.

There's possibly several reasons for why we see lots of older equipment and why the Russians appear to be having a hard time. Wrt older equipment: perhaps an intentional move to soak up those NLAWs and Javelins on BMPs and T-models that are way beyond their expiry date, piloted by equally expendable soldiers. I'd say that's likely. Another option is that we've overestimated Russian forces for the longest time, and that their BTGs are mostly mixed and matched old/new shit. I'd say that's unlikely, public sattelite imagery does indicate some serious firepower is still over the border and as stated earlier we saw more modern stuff today. Perhaps they're also worried about replacement of quality equipment/ammunition because supply must be a little disorganised after all the sanctions and already expended ammunition etc in recent wars, so they're sparingly using what they have. Perhaps they also want to withhold their best tech from deployment because they don't want NATO analysing all the newer tech.

As for having a hard time, perhaps they've complicated their own advances too much by choosing 4 different fronts for fighting. South, west, northwest, north. While it can be effective in disorienting the Ukrainians, that complicates supply lines, thins your forces, and also leaves you open to attacks behind the front. Just yesterday I saw destroyed supply columns close to the Belarus border, so the Ukrainians are definitely being as annoying as they can be. You can reach back to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the plan of attack was much simpler and actual shock and awe in action. It's an interesting comparison.

Another likely possibility is that the Russians wanted to take over with minimal damage caused, I believe I might've written that before. Your puppet government isn't going to function if you've destroyed all critical infrastructure and every major city. So the expectation would be that they're gradually increasing intensity of the fighting, trying to slowly force the Ukrainians into surrender. The Russians also appear to be moving around most cities, with the most equipped & organised forces close to Kiev.

Now here comes a thought I'm a little worried about. Sending back the Russian economy to 1989 with all possible sanctions while strongly increasing military aid to ukraine, when Putin has engaged himself in a war in which defeat is not an option, is dangerous.

Last edited by Larssen (2022-02-27 02:58:16)

Larssen wrote:

Now here comes a thought I'm a little worried about. Sending back the Russian economy to 1989 with all possible sanctions while supplying strongly increased military aid to ukraine, while Putin has engaged himself in a war in which defeat is not an option, is dangerous.

This is the bigger problem, Putin has clearly miscalculated somewhere, but what happens next?
On day one he was essentially talking about nuking anyone who intervened. Now he has no conceivable way out.

If the west had been more sensitive to Putin's complaints this might not have happened, I think it would have happened whatever was done.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Why wouldn't you just tie the rag on the outside of a closed bottle rather than risk spilling burning gasoline down your collar?

Anyway to armchair general, makeshift incendiaries like that are still effective against tanks particularly in urban situations. Open hatches, air intakes. Would still rather have the long ranged weapon though.

How are they going to enforce a new regime without occupying it? The people there are fighting harder than the Iraqis fought us.

Putin also had Afghanistan as an example, 20 years of training and fully equipped with a full spectrum of weapons and they caved immediately to lightly armed Taliban

Honestly thats what I expected the Ukrainians to do faced with tank columns and aircraft.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

How are they going to enforce a new regime without occupying it? The people there are fighting harder than the Iraqis fought us.

I don't have an answer. 'Demilitarising Ukraine' at least implies Russia will push for a total surrender or defeat of the ukrainian armed forces. Then you'd need to purge government/army command and replace it with pro russian elements.

As things stand the 'best' outcome for Putin, in my view, would be to accomplish that goal, retreat, and let the country devolve into civil war which he can again fund by proxy.

We shouldn't discount the possibility that the russians may consider using tactical nuclear warheads on the battlefield at some point. Thankfully Putin has worked himself in a problematic position by stating that quelling Ukraine's nuclear ambitions is one of the stated goals, so using those weapons himself now seems nigh impossible. But I still reckon they could at some point deploy these if the Ukrainians don't relent. One or two and the war is definitely over.

Still, it's early days and the Russians have an overwhelming conventional advantage. It could take another week, maybe a month, but ultimately the Ukrainians can't win.

Last edited by Larssen (2022-02-27 02:53:59)

Nothing is impossible with a nut like Putin.
At this point its not impossible that he wants to raze the entire northern hemisphere to compensate for getting pushed in a puddle when he was a skinny 14 year old who couldn't grow a moustache then and probably can't now.

"Demilitarising Ukraine" doesn't even make any kind of sense as an objective when the world has orbital missiles, and he's already ranting about the Baltics, Finland and Sweden.

Fuck knows what is really going on in his head, it does seem to be rebuilding of the USSR and cowing everyone else for some megalomaniac reason.