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The biggest Russian fuckup in this war was to put their elite soldiers in one plane for Hostomel Airport without knowing that Ukraine had SAMs in position and e
by ocschwar 2y ago
The biggest Russian fuckup in this war was to put their elite soldiers in one plane for Hostomel Airport without knowing that Ukraine had SAMs in position and enough intelligence to know this was coming.
After that the Russian "elite" units were elite in name only.
This was in hour 8 of the war and it's worth bearing in mind that this war could have gone very, very differently.
- Retric 2y agoReal life isn’t a movie, one aircraft worth of people isn’t going to do that much.
- ocschwar 2y agoIt annihilated the VDV.
- adwn 2y agoNo, but them taking and holding the airport close to Ukraine's seat of government would have done a lot.
- Retric 2y agoNow you’re assuming quite a bit more than just a handful of troupes surviving. Such as them being able to get to an airport when there’s air defenses in the way. Being able to reinforce those troupes quickly again through air defenses etc. Within a narrative such as loss of elite troops would definitely have some serious impact. In the context of a war the loss of the aircraft could easily be more significant.
- outer_web 2y agoThe videos of the Russian troops at Hostomel are on Youtube. As a commenter above mentioned, they were there to allow troop transports to land and eventually be connected to the tank column coming south from Belarus.
- Retric 2y agoSure that was a plan, but it turns such movements of tanks proved very detrimental to Russia. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking if only X, but war is complicated. It’s possible Russia would have been worse off because they tried to use those VDV soldiers in a plan that disastrously failed. It’s slightly more likely that they would have been a small net benefit, but chances are things would look more or less identical today with or without them.
- cosmicgadget 2y agoMy guy, the dismissive tone of "it's not an action movie" while backpedaling to "tut tut, sure that might have been their specific plan but have you considered unintended consequences" is too much for me.
- Retric 2y agoI’m sorry if reality is too much for you. Saying doing X wouldn’t have mattered is a perfectly reasonable rebuttal here. Ukraine not using a missile for attacking that aircraft means they could have used it to attack a different aircraft. Similarly Russia got to use all forces in that plan not destroyed with the aircraft in some other plan. That’s not backpedaling that’s just the inherent complexities involved.
- outer_web 2y agoHave a good day.
- 2y ago
- dmytrish 2y agoI don't know where you got this myth from. Extermination of elite VDV units was not just one plane shot down. There were many russian helicopters successfully landing at Hostomel, the area saw heavy fighting for several days until it was under Ukrainian control. > The Russian Il-76s carrying reinforcements could not land; they were possibly forced to return to Russia.[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport Rumors of an Il-76 downed close to Vasylkiv did not prove to be true: > Claims have been made that Ukrainian aircraft shot down two Russian Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft transporting assault troops.[33][124][34] However, The Guardian reports "no convincing public evidence has surfaced about the two downed planes, or about a drop of paratroopers in Vasylkiv".[125] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_front_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Vasylkiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_front_of_the_Russian_...