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Russia's military is being decimated, just not at the line of contact currently. You're watching a protracted battle play out all across the world right now bet

Russia's military is being decimated, just not at the line of contact currently. You're watching a protracted battle play out all across the world right now between Russian interests and Western interests. Some of these include: 1. Russian/Wagner (now admitted to be the same) neocolonialism in African states, most recently Niger. Within days Niger stopped trading Uranium to France. Conveniently, France is the least dependent on Russia for energy and will force the French to buy outside of Niger and then refocus on Russia. 2. The latest naval drone hit on a Russian oil tanker in the Black Sea took place well beyond the expected range of Ukrainian capability, which likely means someone else (Turkey?) helped at least get it into launch range. This coupled with the Ukrainian position that all russian ships, and all ships trading with russia are now targets in the Black Sea is also big for the area. Currently Russians may not be dying in droves defending their positions. However, the knock on effects for russian military capacity, industrial capacity, and naval capacity are incredible. The longer they flounder and the more they commit to Ukraine, the more their traditional enemies are able to take advantage of their weakness. If russian gas and oil cannot flow out of the black sea safely, their PMC backed interests in Africa and South American become less effective, and the corresponding governments will look elsewhere for influence/protection/trade.

ethbr0 3y ago
It'll be fascinating to learn whatever grey/black ops details come out after the war hopefully ends. The naval drone question is especially fascinating. IMHO, they have to be transported closer to impact site by some other vessel. Ukraine doesn't have submarines, and Russia has 6(?) Kilo's in the Black Sea, so traditional submarines would be insane in that environment anyway. And whatever transport method would need to be stealthy with respect to Russia's sensing methods: acoustic, radar, to a lesser degree visual. Given Ukraine's technical capabilities and traditional shipbuilding expertise, I'd hazard there's a somewhat-stealthy drone carrier boat (probably also unmanned). They could also be hiding/launching the drones directly from commercial shipping, but that's an awfully big risk for the flag country/ship owner with respect to Russia boarding and searching, or even back tracing launch points.
- _kbh_ 3y ago
  > The naval drone question is especially fascinating. > IMHO, they have to be transported closer to impact site by some other vessel. The specifications I have seen is that they have somewhere between a 400km - 800km (I know it's a big spectrum) range. If they were about mid that, they wouldn't need launching from outside the Ukrainian mainland to hit pretty much anything of military interest.

ethbr0 3y ago

It'll be fascinating to learn whatever grey/black ops details come out after the war hopefully ends. The naval drone question is especially fascinating. IMHO, they have to be transported closer to impact site by some other vessel. Ukraine doesn't have submarines, and Russia has 6(?) Kilo's in the Black Sea, so traditional submarines would be insane in that environment anyway. And whatever transport method would need to be stealthy with respect to Russia's sensing methods: acoustic, radar, to a lesser degree visual. Given Ukraine's technical capabilities and traditional shipbuilding expertise, I'd hazard there's a somewhat-stealthy drone carrier boat (probably also unmanned). They could also be hiding/launching the drones directly from commercial shipping, but that's an awfully big risk for the flag country/ship owner with respect to Russia boarding and searching, or even back tracing launch points.

_kbh_ 3y ago
> The naval drone question is especially fascinating. > IMHO, they have to be transported closer to impact site by some other vessel. The specifications I have seen is that they have somewhere between a 400km - 800km (I know it's a big spectrum) range. If they were about mid that, they wouldn't need launching from outside the Ukrainian mainland to hit pretty much anything of military interest.