Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Crap, ninja edit incoming,

But your probably right about Xi

China won't care, they don't recognise the ICC and are highly critical of it. Former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited China (and other countries) while having an outstanding ICC warrant for his arrest.

No, no one is immune to making mistakes ( look at the one Putin made) but even so, I'd trust the Ukraine commanders on the ground before anyone else. Just luck at the remarkable job they have done so far. Military academy's will be teaching Ukrainian strategy far into the future, as a guide on " How it's done".

And a bigger one at that

Same thing can be said for those advocating for no withdrawal from bakhmut. Plenty of video of actual UA soldiers complaining about the situation in Bakhmut and wondering why command hasnt given the order to pull back to better lines. But sure the armchair generals here know better than those on the frontlines eh?

The defensive lines to the west in Chasiv Yar are infinitely better than what they have right now in Bakhmut. Wagner control the heights all around Bakhmut to South, East and North, as well as having surrounded the city on 3 sides. When the people defending bakhmut itself are asking why they havent been pulled back to better positions, its fair to question the motivations of the higher ups.

Question away Timmy. Let us know the answer please in your own good time.

@timmyntc Same thing can be said for those advocating for no withdrawal from bakhmut. Plenty of video of actual UA soldiers complaining about the situation in Bakhmut and wondering why command hasnt given the order to pull back to better lines.

From the same people say the same thing for 7 months and guess what, bakhmut holds ,

How many more tens of thousands of Russians will be sent to the slaughter for town or city they can never hold, literally night after night hundreds of Russians walk across open Fields only to be slaughter by ukrainian artillery and drones ,it's not the Ukrainans walking around without armor or air cover,

They are sitting in trenches and hard cover,

And they haven't even started a counter attack yet,and yet the arm chair privates on here are already predicting it's failed based of two reports in the media from the same person,

We see videos daily from Ukrainans on the front lines in bakhmut and Vuhledar and guess what they aren't crying about lack of training or ammunition of crying about exhaustion.

Why ????

They won't.

They can't. The only way he gets his just desserts is a bullet in the head from one of his own. And everyone knows it.

..

Russia is outshelling Ukraine by more than 10-to-1, Ukrainians have been very clear on this and the need for more artillery pieces and munitions.

Sitting in trenches is no guarantee of safety from artillery barrages 10x greater than anything they can inflict on the Russians in response. And the Russians occupying higher ground around bakhmut makes counter battery warfare more difficult.

Plenty of testimony about Bakhmut being a meatgrinder for Ukrainians too, notions of 7 to 1 kill ratios are just copium.

There are armchair generals on both sides: some calling for withdrawal from Bakhmut, some calling for the Ukrainians to stand fast, and it's all based in claims from here and there and snippets of opinion. The truth is nobody knows for sure. The age-old "fog of war" means that the Russians on the ground don't know what the Ukrainians on the ground know, the Ukrainians on the ground don't know what the Russians on the ground know. Likewise, we outside the battlezone don't know what either of them know, nor can we know what NATO intelligence-gathering assets can see, and what they're feeding to the Ukrainians.

There's a reason Napoleon would just tell his corps scommanders what he wanted and leave it up to them how they did it. The Germans in WW2 used "auftragstaktik" (Mission Command) for the same reason: the commander on the spot is the guy best placed to know the terrain, the conditions and the state of his own forces and his opposition, and make his own decisions about what to do. Napoleon broke his own rules when he tried to dictate matters in Spain from Paris (and later Russia!). The information he received was often out of date by the time he got it, and the orders he sent were often out of date by the time they arrived. During the American Civil war, event with the benefit of telegraphic communications, the high-ups in Washington had little success when they tried to manoeuvre the Union's armies in the field by remote control.

The same is no less true today, with patchy, incomplete and often misleading information buzzing around the Internet. TV and print news reporters while having plenty of resources behind them still have a limited view, and there is probably much that they won't be told anyway by either side. Even the genuine military experts we see interviewed pepper their assessments with caveats about limited information. Anyone without up-to-date, comprehensive, detailed intelligence of the battlefield situation who is confidently stating that either side should do this or that is bullshitting.

I agree with the premise - however its been reported on a few times that Zelensky himself gave the order not to retreat from Bakhmut but to reinforce the city.

If the Ukrainian officers are anything like the Soviet Union system they grew up in, there may be many reluctant to give a true depiction of the situation in Bakhmut lest it fall on their head.