Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Where the Americans have been producing and flying new design Stealth aircraft since the 70s each one individual and unique to the next the Russians went with lets cheat a little and took an su27 fighter and modified it's airframe and and pancaked fuselage and blended it's wings into a single shape and decided it was a 5th generation stealth fighter, with the radar cross section 1000 times larger the the F35 , meanwhile the US are flying the 3rd generation stealth bomber and at least 2 other unidentified new stealth aircraft,

1330.

Is this a new daily record?

Seems Finland has closed the border with Russia.

Putin couldn't help himself. The Kremlin were flying in refugees from Africa and Middle East and sending them towards the border on bicycles.

The losses of equipment and men must be very apparent to Russian troops on the ground. Word would get around and infiltrate all ranks which has to be having effect on morale. Maybe they are told that the Ukrainian forces are taking even greater losses? We don't hear a lot about mutiny and soldiers abandoning their units/ surrendering etc but this must be an ongoing factor for the Russians. Maybe this is why they conduct their operations as they do, with less room for individuals adapting on the ground, they can't trust their own. If so, puts a high price on the Russian officer class, take them out and their forces are a rabble.

We've been hearing for quite some time that there aren't many experienced officers left in the Russian armed forces. It would certainly explain the extraordinary casualty rates they've been experiencing of late. Seems their only real input at this stage is to shoot their own troops who try to retreat / refuse to advance.

While watching video footage of recent strikes on Russian forces, I found myself asking "... but why would they do this/react like that? Are they not trained to ... ? " and then I remembered that no, they're not trained because (a) there wasn't any time for training after mobilisation; and (b) the soldiers with real-world experience were killed a long time ago.

I would imagine that word doesn't get around, as the groups with the worst losses are comprehensively wiped out, and it appears that a good number of those who survive are off their heads on drink and drugs, so would anyone pay heed to them - if they can even remember what happened?

The thing is that the qualities that you need in a good combat officer, initiative, flexibility, a good grasp of logistics and basic leadership skills, are generally seen as undesirable in a strictly autocratic system. Even worse, they're seen as dangerous. If a lieutenant in charge of an infantry company moves his unit out of position to exploit a weakness in the flanks of an enemy position, instead of sticking to the plan and executing a frontal assault, how can you be sure that that same officer will stay loyal and in his place? While even western militaries tend to prefer the "parade ground officers" over the "rat catchers" during peace time, just look at the US Strategic Air Command in the 1970s, the Royal Navy prior to WW1, or the Bundeswehr prior to its deployments to Kosovo and Afghanistan for examples, from what I can gather, command courses at least try to instill independent thinking and initiative in officers and NCOs.

That never happened in Russia. The Russian military has never placed a lot of emphasis on NCOs, going back to tsarist times, and especially during the Putin years, looking menacing in the annual victory day parade on Red Square was seen as vastly more important than being able to outflank an enemy on a battlefield. And if we're honest, while the Chechen wars were absolutely brutal, there was not a lot of strategic or tactical finesse that was required in those fights. So Russia's officer & NCO corps was already at a major disadvantage at the start of the conflict, and things have only gotten worse since.

What's worse is that Russia HAD great officers in the past. While Russia's efforts in WW2 are often portrayed in public as pure human wave attacks, Zhukov, Bagramyan, Timoshenko and other Red Army officers did actually show quite a bit of creative thinking in their offensives, and all were acutely aware of the massive logistics pipeline they needed to keep their fronts moving. All of this institutional knowledge seems to have been completely lost.

Is this line of thinking not making the mistake of assuming Putin's interests align with those of Russia itself? I've seen a lot of analysts positing that the only reason Russia hasn't retreated back to their own borders is because Putin would be signing his own death warrant if he gave the order?

And this surely is their Achilles Heel. By contrast Ukrainian units have received training from other western armies, have fewer personnel and officers have to box clever. They may not be making rapid progress but once they keep applying pressure, stressing the Russian defences, reducing their personnel, taking out officers - this is smart tactics and will promote collapse.

I dunno - one thing the Russian state and media manipulating and controlling the narrative on the home front. But at the sharp end, soldiers even Russian mobilised conscripts want to live and would be sharing information between themselves.

The same is true of Ukraine. Both sides have limited amounts of men and weapons

"The simple fact is, the miserable war is about to enter year 3 because neither side is able to deliver a decisive blow to the other and nobody can predict which way it will go in 2024."

Not looking to make any predictions but I am not convinced that neither side is able to deliver a decisive blow. Whatever the truth is about counteroffensive targets for the armed forces of Ukraine it is clear that they are making striking progress in destroying putin's military. In the 24 hours before yesterdays high number of infantry eliminated there was a figure of 58 pieces of putin's artillery eliminated which was higher than average and I suspect was linked with increased offensive actions by putin's forces that without artillery support led to even higher infantry losses. Not sure which tactics Ukraine is using most to destroy the artillery systems of putin's troops in Ukraine but I have seen many comments on how putin's troops depend on heavy use of artillery to prepare the way for offensive actions.

The figure of 58 artillery systems eliminated in one day indicates to me that Ukriane may have developed methods of striking a decisive blow to putin's forces by eliminating their ability to use artillery in Ukraine. Without artillery support putin's troops are likely to be much more limited in what they can achieve and if F16s become active for Ukraine as seems to be close, the support his forces might get from their air force will be even more limited. I think Ukraine is in the process of delivering a decisive blow in the conflict by destroying the capacity putin's troops have to fight effectively. The economic power of the military supporters of Ukraine is also much greater than the countries providing military support to putin and the capacity of the russian federation itself so even if it takes a few years I can't see how he hopes to get anything positive from the war he started in Ukraine.

If only Russia had a few more million citizens like this brave artist and a few less million like the evil granny who turned her in:

even the soldiers of real world experience never fought a meaningful war and it showed when things kicked off last year. whole columns taken out as they bunched up and dopes driving straight into urban areas without due care. anyone remember the infamous column of vehicles which trailed from the belarussian border towards kyiv and became the biggest military traffic jam at the time? the bayraktar drone had a field day back then.

someone i know was recently training ukrainian troops in a european country. the base he was stationed in has alone trained over 65k ukrainian troops. an officer permanently stationed there said losses are high. one batch of troops had a 60% casualty rate within a few weeks of returning to the frontline.

i just hope the constant erosion of the russian war machine eventually causes a catastrophic collapse sooner rather than later because a trump win in the US election next year will be disastrous for ukraine and europe as a whole.