11 ms·
Clearly they're winning the war /s
by traveler01 4y ago
Clearly they're winning the war
/s
- codedokode 4y ago[flagged]
- EliRivers 4y agoRussia has many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks I've got a high quality 486 processor here but it still gets slaughtered by a cheap, ropey CPU I bought last year. A high-quality Soviet tank is a high-quality outdated tank that's very vulnerable to modern weaponry.
- codedokode 4y agoThis comparison is not fair because tank's performance doesn't double every year.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoTanks' performance has improved a lot since the 1960s, though.
- foverzar 4y agoThe platform is still largely the same though. Fancy Abrams tanks are of 1970s designs with modern modifications. T-72s and such are also kept updated with modern gizmos like reactive defense, etc.
- t0m44c 4y agoUkraine is not a small country. And Russia is also relying on imported weapons from Iran despite its "infinite" resources. And finally it does not matter how many men Russia has, what matters is how many soldiers they have. Just because they hand rifle to someone doesn't make him a soldier.
- MoSattler 4y agoYou are completely leaving out social factors. Are Russian citizens willing to support the invasion no matter the cost? Are they willing to dedicate their lives to it? Or is there a point where they would decide it's just not worth it? Without the support of the populace, the government wouldn't be able to pursue this for long.
- codedokode 4y agoThey fully support the invasion but have thousand excuses why someone else should dedicate his life.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoWars are easy to support when you don't have to fight them
- ragnarel 4y agoIn Ukraine there are citizens being forced to go to the front lines also. The war will finish by Ukraine depletion, it is a matter of maths, sadly.
- MoSattler 4y agoI am not making any claims about that whatsoever. I am simply saying that judging a conflict solely based on the mentioned numbers while completely ignoring social aspects is an oversimplification.
- raverbashing 4y ago> has many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks You men the ones that go extra-boom whenever something hits them? (just to be clear I mean having the auto-loader under the turret make things extra-spicy when hit even by a grenade or something)
- RA_Fisher 4y agoThat wishful thinking stood out to me, too. “High-quality Soviet …”
- codedokode 4y agoAny modern tank can explode when hit by an anti-tank missile. There are little Western tanks in Ukraine (Ukraine also has Soviet tanks) so you don't see such videos often.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> modern tank can explode when hit by an anti-tank missile The T-72's jack-in-the-box design flaw is being productively exploited on the battlefield. That's not a "can explode" problem.
- medo-bear 4y agosure. we should all put on uniforms and go to war for ukraine because if ukraine loses it will be the end of the world as we know it ... not
- anakaine 4y agoBy equal measure, who'd have thought the assassination of an Archduke and Duchess of two reasonably low priority places by a Bosnian student would have even been front page news. What precipitates from these issues isn't always clear at the outset.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoIt will not be the end of the war, but the West, and especially Europe, will have an aggressive bully at its borders who already proved it can murder and torture people ruthlessly. So the economy will focus on arms race once again until someone in Russia finally understands it doesn't make any sense.
- medo-bear 4y agothat agressive bully was much further west 30+ years ago and western europe managed fine then
- viraptor 4y agoNot very aggressive in practice at that time. And the eastern Europe did not manage very well, which western Europe paid for for quite a long time.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoMost of that aggression was targeted at Eastern Europe, such as putting down uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Which is, go figure, why Poland, the Baltics, the Czechs, etc. are so eager to support Ukraine...
- 4y ago
- gbil 4y agoDo we still depend on raw manpower to 1. increase productions of specialized hardware which anyhow depends on specialized technology, and 2. win wars by sending 'infinite' amount of soldiers to the front ? At the same time, the assumption is that there will be no backlash inside the country if 'infinite' amount of soldiers die ?
- codedokode 4y ago[flagged]
- m2fkxy 4y agoProtests were not necessarily loud but Afghanistan had a heavy impact on Soviet society. Read Zinc Boys, and on the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers. > according to Western propaganda in Wikipedia Yeah, OK, I see.
- elif 4y agoWhat of the fact that multi-million dollar tanks are being taken out by $500 drones?
- codedokode 4y agoIf you talk about kamikadze drones then a simple fishing net can protect against them. Also, are Western tanks immune to $500 drones?
- m2fkxy 4y agoObviously, it is such a simple solution no one but HN members has found about it.
- codedokode 4y agoI have seen a video from Ukraine where they bragged that a net above a tank has caught two Russian kamikadze drones (they got stuck in it and didn't explode).
- smcl 4y agoI mean yeah they tend to actually have reactive armor and don't tend to be quite as vulnerable to the "turret tossing" as those operated by the Russians. But this isn't about western vs soviet tanks. The point was the "many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks" appear to be quite vulnerable to very inexpensive and widely available equipment that Ukraine have become adept at using.
- m2fkxy 4y agoIt also doesn't help that those tanks are employed in a completely inane way by the Russian side.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- smcl 4y ago> many thousands of high-quality Soviet tanks I'm curious why they have chosen not to deploy them, then.
- codedokode 4y agoBecause tanks are expensive and sending prisoners with AK-47 to storm enemy trenches is much cheaper.
- smcl 4y agoSo you're saying they've got this enormous fleet of tanks that they've yet to deploy but which could turn the tide of the war ... and they're just sitting on them? I don't buy it.
- tokai 4y agoIts a classic russian strategy for coping. They will state that they are choosing to loose and that they could win if they wanted. It's unclear what exactly this helps, other than making them seem incompetent and willing to let people die when it could have been avoided.
- foverzar 4y ago> It's unclear what exactly this helps, other than making them seem incompetent and willing to let people die when it could have been avoided. How exactly is the massive deployment of mobile artillery supposed to result in less deaths? In any case, the end of the war would obviously not be the end of the world. Isn't the whole point of the aid for Ukraine that it is supposed to contain Russia and deplete its military and economic capabilities?
- smcl 4y agoThe point of the aid is to assist Ukraine in its defence. Whether Putin chooses to continue to exhaust Russian military stockpiles and crater the Russian economy in pursuit of a war that looks increasingly unwinnable is his choice.
- notorandit 4y agoDetermination. Ukraine has no air force, Russia has. Russia has almost 10 time more soldiers. Unless western countries start sending soldiers to fight Russians, there should be no way for Ukrainians to even withstand. Nonetheless, Russia is definitely not winning after 1 year. Maybe Russia will end up controlling the majority of the land. Just rubbles and ashes. This is not winning IMHO.
- tokai 4y ago>Ukraine has no air force Not true. They are still flying.
- codedokode 4y ago> Russia has almost 10 time more soldiers. I believe this is wrong. Russia doesn't have 10 times more soldiers now, and regular army isn't deployed in Ukraine; only volunteers (including prisoners), mobilized soldiers and contract army is.
- m2fkxy 4y ago> regular army isn't deployed in Ukraine May you elaborate on what your understanding of "regular army" is?
- codedokode 4y agoAn army of people conscripted for 1 year for training; they are not sent to the war. Every man must serve for 1 year. There are also soldiers hired by contract and well paid for their service. They are sent to the war and they cannot refuse or break the contract. Sometimes they are called "professional army". Army of conscripts is around 1-1.5 million soldiers; professional army was about 300 000 soldiers before invasion. It was not enough to win so there was a mobilization of about 400 000 (official numbers) and recruiting volunteers from prisoners.
- mcv 4y agoIn some ways, Ukraine has already won; Putin intended to capture Kyiv in three days and completely failed to do that. He turned to some minor territory gain, but that's also going very poorly. Russia's winter campaign is almost a complete failure, with tens of thousands of lives lost for very minor gains. Ukraine is smaller than Russia, but by no means a small country. Ukraine has 40 million people and is far more motivated to fight than Russia is. Russians really have nothing to win here; it's just about Putin's pride. Meanwhile Ukrainians are fighting for their lives, their country, and the future of their children. These are powerful motivators, and go a long way towards explaining Ukraine's unwavering morale in the face of overwhelming odds. Ukraine also fights much smarter. Russia uses very primitive tactics: use massive artillery to flatten entire cities, move infantry in, and if they get killed, flatten the place with artillery again. And then they ran low on artillery ammunition, not to mention that many of their barrels have been so overused they can't shoot straight anymore, so now they've resorted to human wave attacks. Ukrainian defenders of Bakhmut have described wave after wave of Russian attackers crawling over the dead bodies of their dead comrades only to get gunned down too. There's no sophistication at all, and coordination is often poor. Meanwhile Ukraine with its more limited resources executes very smart attacks. Most of the time they target Russian supply lines to make it harder for Russia to fight. But sometimes they've undermined Russian positions so much that they can suddenly grab an enormous swath of territory, like they did east of Kharkiv and west of Kherson. I frankly don't see how Ukraine can lose this. In some ways they have already won. Although of course it really depends on how you define victory and loss here; both sides have lost a lot, and any end result where Putin is in a position where he can try again later, means that the war for Ukraine is not really over.
- foverzar 4y ago> Putin intended to capture Kyiv in three days and completely failed to do that. What exactly is that assertion even based on? People talk like it is some kind of a definite fact, but there is no reference to any particular source or a universal explanation of how this was deduced.
- mcv 4y agoWe were alive and following the news when it happened. I'm not exactly sure what makes you doubt this. It's pretty well-reported. They fought on the outskirts of Kyiv, lost a bunch of troops and material, and eventually withdrew when they couldn't make any further progress.
- glogla 4y agoYou're framing it as if it's China vs Belgium but Russia has about three times the population of Ukraine. And literally millions of Russian men already fled Russia rather than be conscripted. Looking at current ratio of Russian and Ukrainian losses, having three times the soldiers is not going to be enough.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoNot millions. That number is probably closer to 800k. Still a lot, esp. you consider the primary draftable age groups (e.g. 18-30), and that not all males in that group would be military worthy, i.e. medical or mental disabilities, etc. Also a big deal if you consider that most of them are the wealthier, smarter, more mobile parts of the population, which will exacerbate the brain-drain and impact the economy. A lot of those guys aren't gonna go back anytime soon, or at all.
- foverzar 4y ago> Also a big deal if you consider that most of them are the wealthier, smarter, more mobile parts of the population, which will exacerbate the brain-drain and impact the economy. This a post-Covid era. Everything that is "smart and mobile" is also remote. Which means that physical relocation doesn't exactly imply brain drain, especially given that wealthier destinations such as the US or some parts of Europe are harder to reach then ever.
- Fatnino 4y agoYou use the phrase "high quality" and then immediately follow it up with the modifier "soviet". The highest quality soviet tank is a rust bucket compared to even low end western tanks from 25 years ago.
- walkhour 4y ago[flagged]
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y agoAny discussion as to who is winning is meaningless without defining what victory means. And apparently it not only means something very different for each side, but also changes with time. Suppose Ukraine manages to push Putin's army back to original pre-2014 borders. Is this victory? With a large part of the country in ruins, a terrible GDP decrease, thousands of men with PTSD, not to mention those dead. There is simply no victory here, just enormous pain because of someone's sick ambitions.
- mcv 4y agoLoss/victory is far too simplistic to discuss the possible outcomes and their consequences. Putin seems to have painted himself into a corner where now his continued rule over Russia depends on being able to paint this as either a victory or a loss that's in no way his fault (because NATO started it and he was just defending himself). But also it seems that at the very least, he needs Crimea. For Russians in general, they don't really need anything here. The real loss for them is that Putin is willing to sacrifice their entire country to bail him out of his fiasco. A win for them would be getting rid of Putin and not replacing him with someone even worse. For Zelensky, the bare minimum is of course independence from Russia, and he seems to have won that at least. But millions of Ukrainians have been captured and often deported/abducted by Russia, and that's a loss too. He wants those people free, and he's absolutely right to. And he wants to keep Ukraine whole; accepting any loss of Ukrainian territory is a loss to him. Not to mention that it sets a precedent; Putin has a history of making small land grabs, and without hard security guarantees, it's likely that Putin will try another land grab in the future. And indeed Putin is still trying to grab more land right now. Putin wants that corridor to Moldova, and then Moldova itself. Leaving Putin in a position where he can try this again and again, is also a loss for many countries in the future. So even if on the short term it would be good for Ukraine if the fighting stopped; if it's really just a temporary cease fire during which Putin can regroup in order to try again, that may be worse for Ukraine than trying to completely block Putin right now.
- notorandit 4y agoIt's not war, it's a special operation.