6 ms·

On paper, Russia has significant military advantage. But if you look at the humans doing the fighting, I think you might see some very different levels of comm

by blunte 5y ago

On paper, Russia has significant military advantage. But if you look at the humans doing the fighting, I think you might see some very different levels of commitment and motivation. The Ukrainian troops are defending their homes. They are up against a wall, so this is a matter of survival. The Russian troops are fighting for something that likely many of them care nothing about. They are being made to risk their lives (and fight their cousins, so to speak). Not only may they have issues with fighting other similar folks, but they certainly don't _need_ to be risking their lives.

dogma1138 5y ago
Russia can’t do combined arms warfare they don’t have good communication lines even on a platoon level and pretty much no cross branch communications. They also seem to completely lack modern blue force tracking which is why they still have to rely on recognition stripes it wouldn’t surprise me if the Russians destroyed as much of their own armor as they did Ukrainian. And most importantly they seem to be completely inept at performing SAED something that the US and some of its allies especially Israel seem to have nearly perfected at least when it comes to Russian/Soviet AA. But you are also very much right about the morale problem. This is a surreal exchange between a Ukrainian and Russian soldiers it feels like a scene from a Cohen Brothers movie https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-tank-fuel-russia-kyiv-b2024003.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-tank...
- ridiculous_leke 5y ago
  That's one weird exchange. It seems that the Russian soldiers weren't expecting the car to be armed. There are also videos where cars are moving past Russian tanks without any confrontation.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    It’s probably about the same experience as US troops would have if they were ordered to invade Canada. Also they were probably told not to treat the local population as hostile and even if they weren’t it’s usually not the default disposition of people soldiers or not. These guys have no fucking idea where they are or where they are headed or what their mission actually is and they probably can’t even call anyone up the chain of command to get new orders and they don’t seem to even want to do that.
    - w7 5y ago
      There are videos on Twitter of Russian forces seemingly ambushing unarmed civilians who are just driving from point A to B and then using their vehicles as road blocks. Seems like it really depends on what men are behind the guns. Such is war I guess.
      - dogma1138 5y ago
        Many of the videos that you see such as the infamous one where you see a group of armed men pull out the occupants from a car are from 2014 and it isn’t soldiers but militia and it’s unclear which side it even was. It also is very much dependent on the situation these soldiers are stranded and under no threat. If they were mounting a checkpoint which was coming under attack they probably would treat incoming vehicles very differently.
        w7 5y ago
        No I'm talking about very graphic ones involving dead bodies that clearly tried to crawl away and vehicles riddled with bullets. You're correct though, the fog of war is thick, and it's hard to tell for certain. I hate to use reddit as a source, but here is a group of civilians encountering a roadblock, being shot at, and then managing to escape. This video is not as graphic as the others. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1605y/people_getting_shot_by_russians_while_driving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1605y/people_gett... Although I can't say for certain if this recent, but it seems to fit. If someone could for certain debunk this, I'm all ears, but this same location (red truck and cars blocking road) shows up later in other twitter videos with a destroyed Ukrainian convoy and dead civilians.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  If the troops are being kept in the dark about their location and missing, that would go a long way to explaining the abyssmal performance of the military so far. How are you meant to plan logistics in this situation? Everyone I know in russia declares virtually 0% support for this invasion. You can only hope that this is begining of the end for Putin. However one should be carefull drawing conclusions about total ineptitude of the Russian military - in a different confrontation, for instance defending Crimea, these issues might not apply.
  - trhway 5y ago
    >the troops are being kept in the dark about their location considering that that excuse has been practiced at least since 2014, and that the soldiers have smartphones to post selfies, and after watching several of those POW videos with their canned responses, i'm convinced that it is just a trained excuse to get better treatment from Ukrainians when caught. Even any technical aspects aside. I grew up on a USSR Navy base, and we always knew who goes to fight where. And the military convoys always naturally interact with locals on their route, soldiers talk to the locals, exchange fuel for vodka/cigarettes, children come to get onto/into tanks in exchange for some small favors/goodies/etc. And to the commenter below: nobody dismantled road signs on the Russian side on the roads to Ukraine :) Btw, on Ukrainian TV - they are in much better mood today giving their military successes and corresponding Russian failures, i mean they weren't panicked or anything like that yesterday, just seriously somber, it is just today they are really having the blast - they today addressed that overall Russian people habit of playing a powerless victim of circumstances : "Next time you'd think twice about whom to choose President." (Other quotes from Ukrainian TV today - "We Christened Russia, and we're going to give it the last rites.", "To see Kiev and die. Looks like you're insisting on doing it in that your own peculiar way - well, be my guest.") And to another commenter below: >conscripts calling families telling that they are forced to sign contracts (in military operation can participate only contractors) so, they forced you to signed contract because that is the only way you can participate in military operation and are sending you on "exercises" with full battle ready hardware somewhere close to Ukraine when there is escalation in the air/news. Days later you're driving through Ukrainian villages with clear orders to shoot on Ukrainian tanks and soldiers first and like have no idea where you are and why you're there :)
- myth_drannon 5y ago
  I think I saw comments that's a fake with an overlaid audio. In the end he starts driving while continuing talking so dunno about that. If it's real, it really can fuck up your mind that your enemy that you are supposed to fight are so similar to you. One thing is to patrol a street full of "Muslim terrorists" thousand miles away from home and another is having a casual chat with a dude you could have been drinking vodka last weekend.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    There are plenty of videos that show similar interactions. The cultural or indoctrination elements don’t exist here like they might do in the Middle East, there is no hate heck there probably is no real animosity either unless they are forced to engage in combat they have no reason to be hostile. Hostility due to hate has to pre-exist or has to be built over time. Nationalism aside they are as close to being one people at this point as you can get, you’ll find it very hard to find a Ukrainian family without Russian relatives and vise versa due to the legacy of the USSR. Basically if a bunch of marines would be deployed and told to take Toronto would get stuck on the way they’ll probably opt to head to the nearest tim hortons too. And unless they come in guns blazing I don’t think the local population would try to feed them through a wood chipper…
  - baybal2 5y ago
    That psychological aversion to genocidal murder cerainly doesn't spread to Russian general staff. They are continuing bombing the Kiyv dam.
KwisaksHaderach 5y ago
A billion dollar in weapons also helps.
mrjangles 5y ago
- credit_guy 5y ago
  > In fact, the regime is currently stopping men from fleeing and trying to force them to fight for them at gunpoint. That always happens when a country fights for its survival. Universal and compulsory conscription. If this is not the moment to resort to this, then when is?
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  In every war where there is conscript you will have scared men running or hiding. It is natural, and not particular to the approval rating of their (current) governing officials. Your comment honestly sounds more like propaganda than the parent's.
- robbiep 5y ago
  I’m not going to shift into armchair general/geopolitical master mode because I am not qualified but you’ve used a Gallup poll from the previous government to try and make a point about the current government, which at its most generous is a silly and careless mistake and at worst is an act of deliberate stupidity and deception. I don’t quite know what to say about the rest of your comment relating to the desire of ukranians to be in this fight but it would appear most of both unofficial (ie social media, crowd sourced) and official western reports are completely at odds with the case you’re trying to make
  - tim333 5y ago
    Yeah the current government seems quite popular "Zelensky won the second round with 73.22% of the votes" I imagine that's one of the things Putin is worried about.
- smarx007 5y ago
  Are you Russian by any chance? The confidence number you pulled out was (ostensibly) for the previous government at the end of its term. The next (current) President got the support of 73% of Ukrainians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_...
kcplate 5y ago
I have heard that a fair percentage of Russians have some level of Ukrainian family ethnicity roots too. I can’t imagine that all of the Russian troops are only of Russian ethnicity. Couple that shared background with command and supply issues, it’s a recipe for morale issues.
dghughes 5y ago
> They are being made to risk their lives (and fight their cousins, so to speak). From the interviews of people on the street in Russia before the invasion I think it's quite literally fighting actual cousins and aunt,uncles, grandparents. Russian people interviewed remarked that they many Russians have close relatives in Ukraine.
- blunte 5y ago
  Exactly. There is just no good motivation for fighting neighbors or family.

by blunte 5y ago

dogma1138 5y ago

Russia can’t do combined arms warfare they don’t have good communication lines even on a platoon level and pretty much no cross branch communications. They also seem to completely lack modern blue force tracking which is why they still have to rely on recognition stripes it wouldn’t surprise me if the Russians destroyed as much of their own armor as they did Ukrainian. And most importantly they seem to be completely inept at performing SAED something that the US and some of its allies especially Israel seem to have nearly perfected at least when it comes to Russian/Soviet AA. But you are also very much right about the morale problem. This is a surreal exchange between a Ukrainian and Russian soldiers it feels like a scene from a Cohen Brothers movie https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-tank-fuel-russia-kyiv-b2024003.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-tank...

ridiculous_leke 5y ago
That's one weird exchange. It seems that the Russian soldiers weren't expecting the car to be armed. There are also videos where cars are moving past Russian tanks without any confrontation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dogma1138 5y ago
  It’s probably about the same experience as US troops would have if they were ordered to invade Canada. Also they were probably told not to treat the local population as hostile and even if they weren’t it’s usually not the default disposition of people soldiers or not. These guys have no fucking idea where they are or where they are headed or what their mission actually is and they probably can’t even call anyone up the chain of command to get new orders and they don’t seem to even want to do that.
  - w7 5y ago
    There are videos on Twitter of Russian forces seemingly ambushing unarmed civilians who are just driving from point A to B and then using their vehicles as road blocks. Seems like it really depends on what men are behind the guns. Such is war I guess.
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      Many of the videos that you see such as the infamous one where you see a group of armed men pull out the occupants from a car are from 2014 and it isn’t soldiers but militia and it’s unclear which side it even was. It also is very much dependent on the situation these soldiers are stranded and under no threat. If they were mounting a checkpoint which was coming under attack they probably would treat incoming vehicles very differently.
      - w7 5y ago
        No I'm talking about very graphic ones involving dead bodies that clearly tried to crawl away and vehicles riddled with bullets. You're correct though, the fog of war is thick, and it's hard to tell for certain. I hate to use reddit as a source, but here is a group of civilians encountering a roadblock, being shot at, and then managing to escape. This video is not as graphic as the others. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1605y/people_getting_shot_by_russians_while_driving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t1605y/people_gett... Although I can't say for certain if this recent, but it seems to fit. If someone could for certain debunk this, I'm all ears, but this same location (red truck and cars blocking road) shows up later in other twitter videos with a destroyed Ukrainian convoy and dead civilians.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
If the troops are being kept in the dark about their location and missing, that would go a long way to explaining the abyssmal performance of the military so far. How are you meant to plan logistics in this situation? Everyone I know in russia declares virtually 0% support for this invasion. You can only hope that this is begining of the end for Putin. However one should be carefull drawing conclusions about total ineptitude of the Russian military - in a different confrontation, for instance defending Crimea, these issues might not apply.
- trhway 5y ago
  >the troops are being kept in the dark about their location considering that that excuse has been practiced at least since 2014, and that the soldiers have smartphones to post selfies, and after watching several of those POW videos with their canned responses, i'm convinced that it is just a trained excuse to get better treatment from Ukrainians when caught. Even any technical aspects aside. I grew up on a USSR Navy base, and we always knew who goes to fight where. And the military convoys always naturally interact with locals on their route, soldiers talk to the locals, exchange fuel for vodka/cigarettes, children come to get onto/into tanks in exchange for some small favors/goodies/etc. And to the commenter below: nobody dismantled road signs on the Russian side on the roads to Ukraine :) Btw, on Ukrainian TV - they are in much better mood today giving their military successes and corresponding Russian failures, i mean they weren't panicked or anything like that yesterday, just seriously somber, it is just today they are really having the blast - they today addressed that overall Russian people habit of playing a powerless victim of circumstances : "Next time you'd think twice about whom to choose President." (Other quotes from Ukrainian TV today - "We Christened Russia, and we're going to give it the last rites.", "To see Kiev and die. Looks like you're insisting on doing it in that your own peculiar way - well, be my guest.") And to another commenter below: >conscripts calling families telling that they are forced to sign contracts (in military operation can participate only contractors) so, they forced you to signed contract because that is the only way you can participate in military operation and are sending you on "exercises" with full battle ready hardware somewhere close to Ukraine when there is escalation in the air/news. Days later you're driving through Ukrainian villages with clear orders to shoot on Ukrainian tanks and soldiers first and like have no idea where you are and why you're there :)
myth_drannon 5y ago
I think I saw comments that's a fake with an overlaid audio. In the end he starts driving while continuing talking so dunno about that. If it's real, it really can fuck up your mind that your enemy that you are supposed to fight are so similar to you. One thing is to patrol a street full of "Muslim terrorists" thousand miles away from home and another is having a casual chat with a dude you could have been drinking vodka last weekend.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  There are plenty of videos that show similar interactions. The cultural or indoctrination elements don’t exist here like they might do in the Middle East, there is no hate heck there probably is no real animosity either unless they are forced to engage in combat they have no reason to be hostile. Hostility due to hate has to pre-exist or has to be built over time. Nationalism aside they are as close to being one people at this point as you can get, you’ll find it very hard to find a Ukrainian family without Russian relatives and vise versa due to the legacy of the USSR. Basically if a bunch of marines would be deployed and told to take Toronto would get stuck on the way they’ll probably opt to head to the nearest tim hortons too. And unless they come in guns blazing I don’t think the local population would try to feed them through a wood chipper…
- baybal2 5y ago
  That psychological aversion to genocidal murder cerainly doesn't spread to Russian general staff. They are continuing bombing the Kiyv dam.

KwisaksHaderach 5y ago

A billion dollar in weapons also helps.

mrjangles 5y ago

credit_guy 5y ago
> In fact, the regime is currently stopping men from fleeing and trying to force them to fight for them at gunpoint. That always happens when a country fights for its survival. Universal and compulsory conscription. If this is not the moment to resort to this, then when is?
SubiculumCode 5y ago
In every war where there is conscript you will have scared men running or hiding. It is natural, and not particular to the approval rating of their (current) governing officials. Your comment honestly sounds more like propaganda than the parent's.
robbiep 5y ago
I’m not going to shift into armchair general/geopolitical master mode because I am not qualified but you’ve used a Gallup poll from the previous government to try and make a point about the current government, which at its most generous is a silly and careless mistake and at worst is an act of deliberate stupidity and deception. I don’t quite know what to say about the rest of your comment relating to the desire of ukranians to be in this fight but it would appear most of both unofficial (ie social media, crowd sourced) and official western reports are completely at odds with the case you’re trying to make
- tim333 5y ago
  Yeah the current government seems quite popular "Zelensky won the second round with 73.22% of the votes" I imagine that's one of the things Putin is worried about.
smarx007 5y ago
Are you Russian by any chance? The confidence number you pulled out was (ostensibly) for the previous government at the end of its term. The next (current) President got the support of 73% of Ukrainians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_election https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_...

kcplate 5y ago

I have heard that a fair percentage of Russians have some level of Ukrainian family ethnicity roots too. I can’t imagine that all of the Russian troops are only of Russian ethnicity. Couple that shared background with command and supply issues, it’s a recipe for morale issues.

dghughes 5y ago

> They are being made to risk their lives (and fight their cousins, so to speak). From the interviews of people on the street in Russia before the invasion I think it's quite literally fighting actual cousins and aunt,uncles, grandparents. Russian people interviewed remarked that they many Russians have close relatives in Ukraine.

blunte 5y ago
Exactly. There is just no good motivation for fighting neighbors or family.