[Tar Heel]

Ditto, Jeffo. That was pretty much what I was thinking, although more along the lines of a few dozen Abrams in the north along Bellaruzzzia and in the east as defense/offense. Like you say, to shorten supply lines, don't use them for aggressive offensive maneuvers. Putin wants to destroy the country. Use the Leopards for offensive thunder runs and outdated Abrams as border defense. I think this was the whole idea with the Abrams for NATO use. Keep the Russians out of NATO nations.

SHOTGUN RELOADERS, WATCH THIS!

Off duty AFU soldiers make shotgun shells, start at 7 mins

 

[JeffO]

It’s interesting to read between the lines a bit with the whole NATO tanks debate. I know there are escalation concerns, image concerns (German tanks fighting Russians... again) and so on. But also, one gets the sense that the West created machines that, awesome capabilities aside, are very finicky and high-strung. And for that reason maybe not well suited for, y’know, intense ongoing peer-level COMBAT.

However I gotta think Russia’s remaining tanks have been rode hard and put away wet since about this time last year; they can’t be in very good shape either. Same with their artillery. The barrels wear out.....

 

[Tar Heel]

Yes, and the Leopards and Abrams should outperform most of what the Russians have left by a long shot, but they are still tanks susceptible to all manners of ATM's and the like. If the Germans would just allow the Nordic countries and Poland to send theirs that would be a big boost. Also there's a longer range precision missile variant , not ATACKMS, but a hybrid using an existing platform with a cheaper and smaller warhead than ATACKMS, that we should but apparently are not yet sending. I think for the same $ as one Abrams we could give them like 50 of those precision longer range missiles. Oh well, AFU is going to be faced with an onslaught and I hope the Stryker's and Bradly's do the trick. I guess it's whoever gets off the first shot.

 

[luk diver]

Defective genes eliminated from the Gene Pool. Sad as heck as he leaves 4 children without a father but from the sounds of it he probably wasn't paying child support anyways?

Navy SEAL Deserter Killed During Intense Ukraine Battle (msn.com)

Navy Seal Who Went AWOL Killed While Fighting Russians In Bakhmut | ZeroHedge

 

[Tar Heel]

Well, not to nit pick, but Russia and specifically the Wagner Group is a criminal terrorist organization. They recruit hard core felons to invade their neighbor country. Better to look at the big picture, imho. Imagine the US releasing it's hardened criminals to invade Canada. Scoring points off of Navy Seals who see a worthy cause? We can do better than that.

https://news.yahoo.com/podolyak-nearly-80-russian-prisoners-224818988.html

 

[Tar Heel]

After the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, Russia quickly took over Crimea in 2014. Putin could not believe that ordinary people, left to their own devices, would choose freedom and democracy over a strong man dictatorship. Russia also used all propaganda means available to it to set the narrative that Russian speaking people in the East of Ukr and in Crimea were being "persecuted by *****." It was a lie, but part of Putin's long game to destroy Ukraine if he couldn't have it. Pretext for an eventual invasion of Ukrainian sovereign lands, which just happened to be the most oil, gas and metals resource rich lands in all of Europe. A nation, that if admitted to the EU and NATO, would be the largest and potentially in time one of the most powerful EU nations, but only if the people would adopt a pro-democracy stance and reject Russian fascism. Well that's what they show us every day on the battlefield. They have earned our support with the blood of their bravest and finest young men. Fighting off hardened criminals every day, month after month, with our surplus supplies that were designed for this very battle that they are fighting for us, but which we would never use.

 

[Tar Heel]

Sunday night fundraisers for AFU veterans.

 

[luk diver]

I'm watching a 'drama' produced by Wagner in 2022 and IF you want to see what the urban fighting is like in Ukraine this is it. The teams are 'white & green' and you honestly don't know which is Russian and Ukrainian as they are speaking Russian with English sub-titles. Very realistic with live explosions, etc.. Not a Hollywood or propaganda film as basically everyone but two guys die in the end . IF you want to get your head out of the propaganda (Ukrainian, Russian, whatever) and see what this war is like over there I'd recommend it. Basically Hell on Earth.

 

[JeffO]

The hell on earth part I buy, but a Wagner film being an info source free of bias and propaganda is a tough sell.

The Russia-rot runs deep. They really did run a very successful influence (on many levels) operation here in the US. I’ll just stop there but this is ripped straight outta today’s headlines:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/01/23/mcgonigal-deripaska-indictment-fbi/

 

[Sparky of SoCal]

WaPo Admits: Russian Twitter Trolls Didn’t Influence 2016 Election - Intellectual Takeout

Even the mainstream media has now been forced to acknowledge that Russian Twitter trolls had minimal, if any, impact on the 2016 election

intellectualtakeout.org

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Tar Heel]

Ugh? I thought we are steering clear of this?
Zelensky admin it prosecuting a couple more members of his staff and parliament. It's so hard to fight off all the Russian oil money, but they are doing their best. Let's put it this way, it would be hard to buy a life ins. policy for him. I wonder if that helo crash last week was meant for him.

This a really good. To think 1991 was so long ago. The news clips are great, the speaker being average. The corruption really took off once the power brokers wanted to steal money from the State, get rid a Gorbachav, and divvy up the oil, gas an mining money among a few elites. Gorby wanted to have a slower transition to capitalism, but once the gates were opened, the financiers from London, Berlin, NY and Paris moved in like sharks smelling a dead whale adrift with no aim. For people my age it seemed like yesterday. Yeltsin's popularity waned with time, so he put Putin in power in 99..

.

 

[JeffO]

.....

 

[Seafrk]

Another episode of HeeHaw.........

""Retired top FBI counterintelligence agent who led Trump-Russia probe arrested for own ties to Russian oligarch""

 

[JeffO]

Yep. Another example of Russian penetration of our institutions and society writ large. The thing to realize is, it’s win/win for Putin. While I’m sure they prefer certain outcomes over others, in truth, he’s just trying to divide us and sow discord. By my lights, he has been almost unfathomably successful at that since circa 2015.

I’m tellin’ ya, Russia penetrated our society in ways most don’t even see. Including, for example, the “patriots” at the NRA! Google it. I’m a big gun guy but they’ll never see another penny from me. They knowingly funneled Russian money into the election! Unforgivable.

The majority of anti-Ukraine sentiment is directly due to such penetration. Most folks who are anti-Ukraine are not even consciously aware of this. D’oh.

 

[JeffO]

Breaking news... Germany will send Leopard 2’s and allow others to export them.

 

[DirectDrive]

Breaking news... Germany will send Leopard 2’s and allow others to export them.

If true, that's good.
Putin has been successful at frightening Germany with his threats.
It's good that the Germans are stepping up.

Too bad that they dilly-dallyed for so long.
With any luck, crews have already been training on Leopard 2's and are ready to deploy, now that intentions have been broadcast to the world.

 

[JeffO]

In other breaking news, we will be sending Abrams.

Putin’s answer appears to be another mass mobilization. I was reading into the tactics being used by Wagner around Soledar/Bahkmut. The first wave is mostly the guys scraped out of prisons and so on. They are mostly armed with RPG’s. They take massive casualties- up to 80%. In the process of inflicting these casualties, the Ukrainian fighters reveal their positions, and better equipped and trained actual Russian soldiers then try to exploit that. Rinse and repeat.

This does not seem to be a sustainable business model to me. They’re going to run out of “undesirables”. If they start using raw conscripts like that- en masse I mean; in some cases they already are- I can’t see it being sustainable.

But in the short term, it can be effective. A whole bunch of poorly trained guys with RPG’s can do some damage. And the sheer wave-after-wave aspect of it has a certain brutal effectiveness.

 

[Seafrk]

"""They (NRA) knowingly funneled Russian money into the election! Unforgivable."" How many hundreds of thousands or millions are we talking about?

 

[Seafrk]

"we (USA) will be sending Abrams" says who?

 

[DirectDrive]

"we (USA) will be sending Abrams" says who?

Pick your favorite news source and there will probably be a story on it.