Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Oh 650 trained already. They are flying through.

I comply agree wrt to the Bradley's. I'm sure the Ukrainian's will put them to good use!

Abrams won't arrive till possibly next year and the number of leopards arriving anytime soon doesn't seem to be many.

The leopards may suit Ukraine more, but the numbers being pledged (now that Germany granted export approval) doesn't seem all that much.

Good read, and the longer this goes on Im thinking the US will tell Ukraine to leave Crimea with the Russians whilst they remove themselves completely from the rest of Ukraine and leave no more claims to Donbas etc.

This too coupled with strong security guarantees (Ukraine into NATO at some point) and perhaps a "peacekeeping" presence at border regions.

Having said that, if Ukraine absolutely clatter the hell out of Russia militarily to the point of collapse, and if Ukraine have enough offensive weaponry stockpiled they may ignore US pressure to submit Crimea for good to russia and may go after it full force. This is the point where it gets dangerous for everyone and the reason the US see Crimea as a red line.

Nothing special just another observation drone ,most of the new ones are intelligence gathering and one small quadcopter, along with the switch blades

Tough lady.

Self inflated ego that one

Its the same old story Gatling, who will go first????. Look at what happened when upwards of 400 Russian soldiers got killed / injured when their commander packed them into a building which had ammunition stored in the basement, and it got hit by the Ukrainian's. The majority of them were from Samara. and so the dead and injured were shipped back there. After the burials ( and speeches by the Lady mayor) the injured were informed that as soon as they had recovered, they were going back to Ukraine. They strongly protested, but were not told that they would be exempt. Now if ever there was justification for rebellion, it would have been in Samara. But it did not happen. By now, I'd say that they are back in action again.

God such a WWI mindset...

That's the problem nobody is fighting back we seen some violence in one particular area but that died down,

They can't all be that afraid, there has to be a natural leader somewhere in the whole of Russia who can stand up and say No we've had enough of this shite it's time for change,

The whole population can't be that subdued surely??.

Yes Josip, I was in Bulevar Revolucion and Trg Republica that day when Kostunica took power, and Milosevic was removed. I heard Kostunica's speech and where he stopped a crowd that wanted to go out to Dedinje where Milosevic lived, and finish him off. He said that the Rule of Law is restored, and Milosevic and his cronies will face justice in the Courts. ( Kostunica was himself a Lawyer or Advocaat in Serbian) and he wanted a clean legal beginning. The protesters , whom came from all over Serbia, even had a mechanical digger to help them sweep away the barricades. But the People were helped by the fact that Milosevic had lost the support of the military and police. His factory of lies had run out of power. You made the point that the first protests failed, (as they did) but back then, Milosevic had enough public support to hold on to power. By 2000 he did not, and that's why he lost. And this is where the Russian story differs from the Serbian one. Depending on who you listen to, Putin still has anything between 60-80% popular support. He does not care how many protests are attempted, be they held by 10'000 people or multiples of 10'000. If his police fail to stop them from starting, for sure his military will, with machine guns if necessary. The Serbian police and military would not have done this, to turn their weapons on their own people, most likely they would have turned them on Milosevic. And that is where they differ from the Russians, Serbs have always been independent minded, Russians always look for leadership, and Russian society encourages this. " Do as we tell you, not as we do"

That's all they have how are we going to beat Ukraine well we're doing to dig trenches and everyday we will send men over the top sooner or later the Ukrainans will either run out of bullets men ,but will stay the course matter what,

It's like when we had certain individuals telling us that we would only be happy when every Ukrainian had fought to the death, it's not the Ukrainans getting slaughtered in empty fields in rural ukraine

It's very difficult to assess what the long term outlook is for Russia. The population are so brainwashed and "serf like", that one wonders if they could ever handle concepts like freedom and democracy. It's a country unlike any other in Europe. I was watching the 1420 YouTube videos from Belarus this week and the contrast with the people there with Russians was huge - you could easily imagine them transitioning to being a democracy and even being an EU member in future.

A lot of the crowd in the stadium yesterday especially the younger people didn't seem too interested in what he was saying, although some commentators claim most of the population support the war.

Hard to know really but if the figures are true that 200,000 have been killed by the Ukrainians then if it drags on for another 12 months there will be a lot of unhappy Russian parents.