Thoughts on the Russo-Ukranian War?

I3BrigPvSk said:
A "victory" for Ukraine would be if and when the Russian cannot take this beating any longer. The Ukrainian armed forces have the initiative right now and will not be interested in any negotiations. The Russians might want to drag this into a war of attrition again. The Ukrainians cannot be successful in a slugger fest and they will most likely loose the initiative if they are allowing themselves to do it.

There is a quite interesting development in Kherson right now. Are the Russians retreating or are they trying to set a trap to drag the Ukrainians into a costly battle of Kherson
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Beating is an exaggeration,as we don't know the amount of the Russian losses: on 18 October Ukranews said that the Russians had lost 2,548 tanks, while Oryx (using the same sources ) said that it was 1100 tanks .
It is possible that the Russians have decided to retreat to have a smaller front that can be more easily defended ,as they have a smaller manpower than the Ukrainians .
Retreat is not defeat .
Who of both can sustain a war of attrition and how long ?
This will decided not only by what's happening on the front,but also by political, economic and military factors .
 
MontyB said:
Like it or not Ukraine can't win no matter how much we want them too, even if Ukraine pushes them all the way back to the 2014 borders and retakes Crimea all the Russians will do is pull back to Russia, rebuild their strength and come back in the mean time firing missiles into cities.

The only way to guarantee Ukrainian independence and territorial sovereignty is via third party (NATO or US) involvement inside Ukraine.



It is quite obviously a trap, they wouldn't be withdrawing from their centre while reinforcing the flanks if they were simply pulling out.
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I don't think the Ukraine needs to "take back" Crimea and Donbas. If and maybe when the cost of this war is too much for them and decide to go back home. It will not happen as long as Putin is in charge.
 
lljadw said:
Beating is an exaggeration,as we don't know the amount of the Russian losses: on 18 October Ukranews said that the Russians had lost 2,548 tanks, while Oryx (using the same sources ) said that it was 1100 tanks .
It is possible that the Russians have decided to retreat to have a smaller front that can be more easily defended ,as they have a smaller manpower than the Ukrainians .
Retreat is not defeat .
Who of both can sustain a war of attrition and how long ?
This will decided not only by what's happening on the front,but also by political, economic and military factors .
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Russia has taken a beating militarily, politically, and economically. They have lost the initiative on the battlefield. A war of attrition will be more beneficial for the Russian when the Russian military doctrine is attritional. However, it depends on how successful the Ukrainians are to hit the Russian logistical hubs and supply lines. The Ukrainians have been successful with it so far. Especially since the Russians are wasting their Iranian drones on non-military targets
 
I3BrigPvSk said:
Russia has taken a beating militarily, politically, and economically. They have lost the initiative on the battlefield. A war of attrition will be more beneficial for the Russian when the Russian military doctrine is attritional. However, it depends on how successful the Ukrainians are to hit the Russian logistical hubs and supply lines. The Ukrainians have been successful with it so far. Especially since the Russians are wasting their Iranian drones on non-military targets
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I doubt the Ukrainians will accept a ceasefire while Russia controls any of the territory it took since February even under the guise of talks or negotiations as that will give Russia a win, they will never give back the land.
I expect that as long as Ukraine believes it can retake it's territory it should refuse any dealings with Putin, there is no way this can come to an end in a manner positive for Ukraine without Russia making the first move, probably involving a bullet or 30 into Putin and withdrawal back to 23 Feb positions and to be honest they should make those conditions clear to the Russians.
 
MontyB said:
Like it or not Ukraine can't win no matter how much we want them too, even if Ukraine pushes them all the way back to the 2014 borders and retakes Crimea all the Russians will do is pull back to Russia, rebuild their strength and come back in the mean time firing missiles into cities.

The only way to guarantee Ukrainian independence and territorial sovereignty is via third party (NATO or US) involvement inside Ukraine.



It is quite obviously a trap, they wouldn't be withdrawing from their centre while reinforcing the flanks if they were simply pulling out.
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NATO peacekeepers and the Russian military has been reduced to the extend it cannot do anything like this for a very long time.

I doubt the Ukrainians are so stupid they drive into Kherson like how the Russian drove into Ukrainian urban areas.
 
lljadw said:
To stop Ukrainian counter attacks will not help the Russians .
Neither will do regrouping and restructuring their supply lines, because time is running against Russia : time is a very strong ally of Ukraine .
A defensive strategy that you propose will only delay the Russian defeat .Their only chance of success is a big offensive resulting in a big Ukrainian defeat that forces Zelensky to give up,giving the Russians the opportunity to return to Russia while Ukraine will be ruled by a pro Russian dictator .
The Russians are now in the position of the Germans after Stalingrad at the East front or of the Germans at the end of 1915,with the difference that the Russian position is worse than that of the Germans .With the 200000 available men, Russia can not ''win ''.
The Russians can not afford a war of attrition ,while , for the moment,the Ukrainians are unable to expel the Russians from their country .
Both have failed, but the Russian failure is more serious than the Ukrainian failure .
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You can defeat an enemy if you defend against an attacker, do you know how?
 
I3BrigPvSk said:
It doesn't work like that. What the US instructors and instructors from other countries do is to train quite few Ukrainians and then they train other Ukrainians. Modern weapon system like the Javelin and NLAW are user friendly, it doesn't take long to train somebody to lock the missile on a target and push the buttons. Both are fire and forget kind of weapons. The main contribution by NATO countries is to restructure the Ukrainian command structure to NATO standard and how to coordinate between the different branches of the armed forces to a common goal.
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Most Ukrainian soldiers do not understand English and English is needed to understand how a Javelin works .
Besides,if only few Javelins have been fired ,this proves that the Ukrainians can not use them .If a lot of Javelins have been fired,it proves that most of them fail to destroy their target:following Oryx, the Russians have lost 1100 tanks,only a very small part by Javelins . Half of Russian tank losses are non combat losses,caused by fuel and maintenance problems .Russian tanks can operate only on small distances,if they are forced to go to far,they cease to be operational .
For a Javelin to destroy a Russian tank
a a trained soldier is needed
b a Javelin is needed
c a Russian tank is needed .
And, what is the chance that all three are happening ?
As in WW2 and other wars, most destructions of tanks happen by chance .
There is a big silence about the number of Javelins that have been fired on Russian tanks and the number of these tanks that were lost .
If the Javelins were wonder weapons, our media would give us the proofs . Every day.Every hour . As they remain silent ,the conclusions are
a They don't know it or
b they know it,but,for obvious reasons, they prefer to hide it .
On 11 September, Ukrinform said that Ukrainian military destroyed 70 Russian tanks using drones ,without giving the time span in which it happened and without telling us how many drones /Javelins were used .
Thus, a completely unusable information .
 
I3BrigPvSk said:
Russia has taken a beating militarily, politically, and economically. They have lost the initiative on the battlefield. A war of attrition will be more beneficial for the Russian when the Russian military doctrine is attritional. However, it depends on how successful the Ukrainians are to hit the Russian logistical hubs and supply lines. The Ukrainians have been successful with it so far. Especially since the Russians are wasting their Iranian drones on non-military targets
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It is not on us to decide what are non-military targets .
In WW2 the allies attacked also '' non-military targets as water and electricity supplies of German cities .
Everything is a military target in wartime .
 
I3BrigPvSk said:
You can defeat an enemy if you defend against an attacker, do you know how?
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It depends on the attacker : if his conclusion is that he can not defeat the defender or that victory will be too costly, than he will give up .
It depends also on the defender : on his strength and on his willingness,ability to continue the war .
 
lljadw said:
Most Ukrainian soldiers do not understand English and English is needed to understand how a Javelin works .
Besides,if only few Javelins have been fired ,this proves that the Ukrainians can not use them .If a lot of Javelins have been fired,it proves that most of them fail to destroy their target:following Oryx, the Russians have lost 1100 tanks,only a very small part by Javelins . Half of Russian tank losses are non combat losses,caused by fuel and maintenance problems .Russian tanks can operate only on small distances,if they are forced to go to far,they cease to be operational .
For a Javelin to destroy a Russian tank
a a trained soldier is needed
b a Javelin is needed
c a Russian tank is needed .
And, what is the chance that all three are happening ?
As in WW2 and other wars, most destructions of tanks happen by chance .
There is a big silence about the number of Javelins that have been fired on Russian tanks and the number of these tanks that were lost .
If the Javelins were wonder weapons, our media would give us the proofs . Every day.Every hour . As they remain silent ,the conclusions are
a They don't know it or
b they know it,but,for obvious reasons, they prefer to hide it .
On 11 September, Ukrinform said that Ukrainian military destroyed 70 Russian tanks using drones ,without giving the time span in which it happened and without telling us how many drones /Javelins were used .
Thus, a completely unusable information .
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Most Ukrainian soldiers speak better English than you do. The foreign instructors don't train all Ukrainians, the Ukrainians who have been trained to use Javelins or NLAWs train other Ukrainians. That is the standard procedure when foreign instructors train other soldiers. If a country buy a new weapon system, only a few are initially trained to use it. These newly trained soldiers train the other to use the new system.

The Javelin and the NLAWs aren't complicated to operate for soldiers trained to use other AT weapons.
 
lljadw said:
It depends on the attacker : if his conclusion is that he can not defeat the defender or that victory will be too costly, than he will give up .
It depends also on the defender : on his strength and on his willingness,ability to continue the war .
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That was a test and you failed it. Try again and show you have military training or being at a defense college/university
 
I3BrigPvSk said:
The main contribution by NATO countries is to restructure the Ukrainian command structure to NATO standard and how to coordinate between the different branches of the armed forces to a common goal.
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Why should it be needed to restructure the Ukrainian command structure to NATO standard ?Why not the opposite ?
The Ukrainians are fighting against the Russians ,NATO never fought against the Russians . The Ukrainians have no lessons to receive from NATO .
During the Cold War,the Bundeswehr was the only that could stop a Soviet attack.But, although it was also the only that had fought against the Soviets, it was forced to accept the NATO ( = US ) doctrine,doctrine of a country that had never fought the Soviets .
We can be very happy that the Soviets did not attack : I doubt very much that an Americanized German army would have been able to stop the Soviets .
It is the same in Ukraine : to Americanize the Ukrainian army is not giving this army more chances to stop the Russians .
 
If the Javelins/drones were that good , many more Russian tanks would have been lost and the Russians would not still occupy 15 % of Ukraine .
A weapon is only as good as the man who uses it .
Tests by Lockheed are worthless,as we know in advance the result .
Thousands of Javelins and drones have been fired ( better wasted ) but the results are deplorable .
How many Javelins /drones are needed to destroy ONE Russian tank ?
 
lljadw said:
If the Javelins/drones were that good , many more Russian tanks would have been lost and the Russians would not still occupy 15 % of Ukraine .
A weapon is only as good as the man who uses it .
Tests by Lockheed are worthless,as we know in advance the result .
Thousands of Javelins and drones have been fired ( better wasted ) but the results are deplorable .
How many Javelins /drones are needed to destroy ONE Russian tank ?
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Surely that argument runs contrary to the argument you have used though.

If as you say we can't claim the Javelin is a success because we don't know how many tanks have been destroyed by them equally, we can't call it a failure for exactly the same reason?

What we can say is that ATGMs and Drones are taking out Russian armour (Ukraine isn't complaining about them) and Ukraine seems to have enough of them to blunt Russian armoured attacks therefore they are doing their job.
If they weren't then I am going to bet anything you like infantry would be dumping them on the roadside unused rather than carrying around an extra 25kg of useless weight.
 
lljadw said:
Why should it be needed to restructure the Ukrainian command structure to NATO standard ?Why not the opposite ?
The Ukrainians are fighting against the Russians ,NATO never fought against the Russians . The Ukrainians have no lessons to receive from NATO .
During the Cold War,the Bundeswehr was the only that could stop a Soviet attack.But, although it was also the only that had fought against the Soviets, it was forced to accept the NATO ( = US ) doctrine,doctrine of a country that had never fought the Soviets .
We can be very happy that the Soviets did not attack : I doubt very much that an Americanized German army would have been able to stop the Soviets .
It is the same in Ukraine : to Americanize the Ukrainian army is not giving this army more chances to stop the Russians .
Click to expand...

You can see the result of how the West's command structure works. The Russians use their old command structure. NATO and other west countries have been in Ukraine to train them since 2014.
 
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