Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Vlad the Impaler was on to something when he felt that sanctions would not last.

It's a lifeline and he knows it.

They did inform the general public about their internal workings, you just missed it. This article is an interview with the former head of the Crime and Security Branch (who have responsibility for counter terrorism) talking about how they are tracking Irish citizens who fought for ISIS in Syria and are also tracking the far right group Pegida and their operations here

And when theyre not talking direct to the media they are leaking to them, John Mooney of the Sunday Times has a series of articles on whats going on inside the Russian embassy and his sources are in the Crime and Security Branch of the Gardai, he wouldnt have been able to write the articles without the info they fed him.

While you may very well be right, the Red Army in 45 had four years of bloody and horrendous warfare behind them. They had learned the hard way about the importance of a functioning supply chain, and every commander from Zhukov down was aware of that. This institutional knowledge seems to have been almost completely lost in the modern Russian army. They're overly dependent on having access to the Russian railway network, with the logistics units of their armies only designed to gap the relatively short distance to the nearest rail head. When Ukraine cut the railway connections to Russia & Belarus in the opening moves of the war, that basically torpedoed their entire logistics concept.

All of that is before we get to the issues of intrinsic corruption and poor maintenance of even modern vehicles, such as the Pantsir anti-aircraft system. There were several reports of the tires of these vehicles failing due to insufficient movement and excessive exposure to sunlight on one side, meaning that they had just been parked in the vehicle park of some army base and left there. The out-of-date rations have been discussed earlier in this thread if I recall correctly, so I won't go into that. There are numerous more examples like this.

The current logistics failure of the Russian Army isn't simply an operational issue with the units in the field in Ukraine. This is a major systemic issue, that will likely take years to fix, likely even longer given the current implosion of the Russian economy.

Apparently, the "scum" and "traitors" are any Russian person who doesn't support the regime or who opposes the war (his reasoning being that such people are pro-West and that they would rather live in western decadence and see Russia humiliated).

Chances have lessened. China seems embarrassed by the Kremlin dwarf, Russia's army bogged down in Ukraine couldn't take on the girl's scouts just now.

Now it depends how desperate he gets, which is why we need to always give him a chance to back out with the least amount of embarrassment for him.

More likely how good they are at shaking that 688 or Virginia class boat hiding in their prop wake. It's safe to assume that every Russian missile boat that leaves its base will have a tail the moment it leaves Russian territorial waters. That's how the US Navy operated during the Cold War, that's what the Soviet Navy tried, with significantly less success, off the US SSBN bases, and that's in all likelihood still going on. Granted, from what I've read, Russian doctrine is to send each missile boat out with a "bodyguard" likely in the shape of one of their Akula subs, but as lethal as these are, they're still a generation behind the Virginia or Seawolf class, and likely even slightly inferior to to the last 688is that came of the slipways.

It all depends on china to be honest. It's annoying to be beholden to these despots just because you believe in social liberty and the rights of individuals. The standards that we hold western powers to sometimes hamstrings them.

Russia has been through many wars and hardships going back a millennia. I'm not sure the Nazi comparisons help much. There is no comparison to what the Nazis did. Not yet anyway.

Something-something law ... no, no, don't tell me .... it's on the tip of my tongue ....

My point is, if everyone is a Nazi then no one is. This war is unjust and devastatingly brutal, but so far Putin hasn't talked about wiping out Ukrainians and hasn't resorted to mass industrialised killing.

The Chinese know another Hitler when they see him

He doesn't talk about wiping out Ukrainians. Instead he just kills them. Christ lad. C'mon.

Well thats not what you said-

They literally gave an interview to the media on what they are working on. And the general public should be worried if the intelligence service of the Gardai are unable to keep their mouths shut to journalists, its unprofessional and compromises their own operations. You never see any leaks out of G2 the Military Intelligence unit of the Irish Defence Forces yet their colleagues in the Garda Crime and Security branch are forever at it, including in that article I posted where they are literally giving Islamic militants who live in Ireland a heads up that they are being monitored. An intelligence agency blabbing to the media about their operations is pretty dumb stuff, loose lips sink ships and all that.

Gentlemen, may the wind be at your backs

I agree some of the language and Russian propaganda has echoes of the 30s.

Was the Iran-Iraq war 'Nazism'? a million died. One could say Rwanda was Nazi-like? I mean that was ethnic genocide. Where do the comparisons end? Nazism was a particular evil and ideology and systematically tried to wipe out a race of people.

Russian troops control a city and quite a few towns. We've yet to witness lining people up against walls in their hundreds and gunning them down, That's not to minimise their murderous actions in Ukraine - but it's not Nazism.