Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I mean of course I'm emotionally invested. Russia has invaded a sovereign nation for no good reason other than to flex its muscles and grab some land; and its soldiers are destroying and violating their villages, cities, infrastructure, and most importantly their people. How would any right-minded person not be emotionally invested?

And that's aside from my own personal connections to Ukraine which I have no intention of going into on this forum.

The other reason to accept surrenders is that you want the next set of soldiers to surrender too.

There was this one time on boards during the last presidential election when someone put up a poll asking who people were going to vote for. The winner of the poll was Peter Casey. However, Peter Casey did not win the election. He did come second, but Miggeldy was returned in a landslide. Point being that Internet communities are not always an accurate microcosm. Now I've seen a fair amount of bashing of Daly even before Russia invaded Ukraine, but the fact remains that some fair amount of people in the wider world must have liked what she was offering at the time.

But trying to keep this related to the topic at hand, I do think that if the likes of Daly and Wallace contest the next EUP elections, they will get absolutely hammered over their rigid adherence to criticising the EU at a time when solidarity is the most needed thing. If they're willing to stump up for Russia and challenge the 'western narrative' just because RT once gave them a 15 minute interview or something, their principles can't be all that solid.

Oh sweet jesus. Even your back tracking, apart from being boring, is a cringefest!

It's about relative safety.

If Ukraine take many Russian prisoners and treat them relatively well that is both political leverage against Russia; and it is real emotional leverage against the Russian troops and officers on the ground. It is an incentive both for Russian troops and officers to surrender; but also an incentive for them to minimise mistreatment of prisoners and civilians.

It is also a means to get more Ukrainian prisoners released via prisoner exchanges; which have already happened in certain cases.

Conversely if significant numbers of Russian prisoners are tortured or executed, if wives and girlfriends are sent taunting messages from Ukrainians, if Ukraine doesn't have many Russian prisoners; they lose that leverage. Russian officers and grunts won't be as willing to surrender; they'll be more inclined to fight to the death or flee and exact revenge later. They'll be more inclined to mistreat prisoners and civilians; or even have senior officers order pogroms against particular towns or villages that might be associated with particular military units.

I mean maybe by logic is flawed; but that's how I see it.

Feel free to find even one post which contradicts anything I've stated there.

Don't bother replying to me again though; I'm ignoring you.

I'm pretty sure he still has a backlog of like 200 Russian vehicles he hasn't been able to process yet; too.

Would love to see more expensive modern aircraft confirmed shot down though; they really don't seem to like losing aircraft or pilots whereas they don't seem to care about their conscripts or tanks.

Where some of the Russian loot ended up getting shipped to.

Some of the military aircraft at leninavan where that special op plane was flying from tonight.

Google earth from from. July I think.

Other planes there too on other runways don't know if they're military or civilian.

Haven't a clue on different aircraft.

Although it doesn't look like a big airport.

What a joke that is. Those sanctions are worth the same as pi$$ing on a tree. They aren't doing enough damage.

Let's see...

Starting at the bottom, the first plane looks like a Su-25, a ground-attack aircraft. That type is seeing regular use over Ukraine, on both sides.

Above that is a helicopter, probably a Mil Mi-8 or one of its successors, the Mi-17. They're basically the Huey or Black Hawk of the USSR, a bit larger, but equally widespread and with an equally dizzying array of variants, from transport via sub hunting to electronic warfare, gunship and even crop duster and Search & Rescue.

Above that an on the left side of the taxiway is a Sukhoi Su-27 or one of its successor models. In use by both sides in Ukraine, this is basically the USSR counterpart to the F-15 and is equally capable.

Going back to the right hand side of the taxiway, next up is a Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer. This is an old ground-attack aircraft from the 1970s, roughly analogous with the old American F-111 or early models of the Tornado. The Fencer is on its way out, but still has some combat value.

Back on the left side, we have another helicopter, and an interesting one at that. That looks very much like a Mil Mi-28 Havoc, one of Russia's newest attack helicopters, comparable in role and capability to early model AH-64 Apaches.

Finally, on the right hand side, there is a MiG-29 Fulcrum. Apart from being the subject of fierce debates in this thread, this design, while old, still packs a punch, being robust, agile and surprisingly flexible.

Now, whether Leninavan is a combat air base is another matter entirely. Looking at the satellite imagery, I'm not so sure about that. Most of the Revetments and aircraft shelters seem to be either demolished or in a state of disrepair, at least on Google Maps. There are a number of military airlifts parked in the central part of the base, most Antonov AN-12s, with a few An-26s and even an ancient Ilyushin Il-18 (possibly its Electronic Warfare counterpart Il-20?) in the mix. Three equally ancient Tupolev 134 airliners, probably used for military liaison or in reserve, are also present in the Google Maps images. There are also a few helicopters visible in the northern part of the base, what looks like six additional Mi-28 Havoc and five heavy-lift Mi-26 Halo, currently the largest helicopters in service worldwide.

This weird mix leads me to two possible scenarios for Leninavan:

1) It's a military transport air base. The amount of transport aircraft and helicopters would clearly speak for that, as would the poor conditions of aircraft shelters and revetments, particularly in the southern part of the base.

2) It's a maintenance depot of some sort, or possibly a boneyard. This would explain the numerous different aircraft types, as outlined above. However, the lack of a substantial number of large scale hangars for actual maintenance works goes against that scenario, and the Russian weather isn"t really conducive to outdoors maintenance work on aircraft, even when they're as rugged as Russian designs.

There is however, nothing that indicates that this airfield is some sort of special operations hub or similar. It also likely hasn't seen any real maintenance in a long time. Compared to other Russian air bases such as Engels, the home of the Russian strategic bomber force, that airfield looks like a callback to the bad old days. I'd say it's just close to the combat area in Ukraine, hence its use.