Oorlog in Oekraïne #254 Sneeuw!

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:31 schreef Nattekat het volgende:

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Er bestaat ook een variant op sneeuw: natte sneeuw. Deze soort komt wat vaker voor doordat het ook boven het vriespunt kan vallen. In hogere regio's in Nederland komt deze soort zelfs nog voor. Deze soort sneeuw staat erom bekend dat het meteen smelt zodra het op de grond valt.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:31 schreef Nattekat het volgende:

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Er bestaat ook een variant op sneeuw: natte sneeuw. Deze soort komt wat vaker voor doordat het ook boven het vriespunt kan vallen. In hogere regio's in Nederland komt deze soort zelfs nog voor. Deze soort sneeuw staat erom bekend dat het meteen smelt zodra het op de grond valt.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:29 schreef TheFreshPrince het volgende:
Die onderste tank heb ik gehad.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:36 schreef AchJa het volgende:

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Hier nog 1.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:39 schreef Nattekat het volgende:

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De FOK! propagandamachine flikt het weer

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:36 schreef AchJa het volgende:

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Hier nog 1.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:40 schreef Cherni het volgende:

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De oudere Volvo's mag je gerust tanks noemen.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 01:08 schreef Repentless het volgende:

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Tja, en ondanks dat Putin niets om het Russische volk geeft, is sinds zijn aantreden het percentage Russen onder de armoedegrens gedaald van zo'n 30% naar 13%. Een daling van zo'n 60% dus. Dat percentage ligt onder dat van Nederland of de VS. Dat zeggen de Russen niet zelf, maar de Wereldbank.

Natuurlijk heeft een klein clubje Russen zichzelf tegelijkertijd exorbitant verrijkt. Maar dat was onder Jeltsin niet anders. Sterker nog: de ongelijkheid werd alleen maar groter en het percentage mensen onder de armoedegrens steeg zelfs boven dat van de USSR uit.

Dus ja, we kunnen hier wel roepen dat hij niks om het Russische volk geeft, zichzelf ten koste van hen verrijkt en alleen maar bezig is met zijn eigen macht, maar er zijn genoeg Russen die daar anders over denken op basis van de verbetering van hun levensstandaard.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:41 schreef polderturk het volgende:

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Dan moeten we die naar Oekraïne sturen.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:41 schreef polderturk het volgende:

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Dan moeten we die naar Oekraïne sturen.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:27 schreef AchJa het volgende:

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Dit dus...

[ afbeelding ]

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 01:08 schreef Repentless het volgende:

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Tja, en ondanks dat Putin niets om het Russische volk geeft, is sinds zijn aantreden het percentage Russen onder de armoedegrens gedaald van zo'n 30% naar 13%. Een daling van zo'n 60% dus. Dat percentage ligt onder dat van Nederland of de VS. Dat zeggen de Russen niet zelf, maar de Wereldbank.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:57 schreef Nattekat het volgende:

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Best logisch, die kunnen bezette steden in bedwang houden.

Moeten ze er wel kunnen komen natuurlijk.

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Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way. The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.

The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically. Russian forces concentrated considerable combat power around Mariupol drawn from the 8th Combined Arms Army to the east and from the group of Russian forces in Crimea to the west. Had the Russians taken Mariupol quickly or with relatively few losses they would likely have been able to move enough combat power west toward Zaporizhiya and Dnipro to threaten those cities. The protracted siege of Mariupol is seriously weakening Russian forces on that axis, however. The confirmed death of the commander of the Russian 150th Motorized Rifle Division likely indicates the scale of the damage Ukrainian defenders are inflicting on those formations. The block-by-block fighting in Mariupol itself is costing the Russian military time, initiative, and combat power. If and when Mariupol ultimately falls the Russian forces now besieging it may not be strong enough to change the course of the campaign dramatically by attacking to the west.

Russian forces in the south appear to be focusing on a drive toward Kryvyi Rih, presumably to isolate and then take Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west but are unlikely to secure any of those cities in the coming weeks if at all. Kryvyi Rih is a city of more than 600,000 and heavily fortified according to the head of its military administration. Zaporizhiya and Dnipro are also large. The Russian military has been struggling to take Mariupol, smaller than any of them, since the start of the war with more combat power than it is currently pushing toward Kryvyi Rih. The Russian advance on that axis is thus likely to bog down as all other Russian advances on major cities have done.

The Russian military continues to commit small groups of reinforcements to localized fighting rather than concentrating them to launch new large-scale operations. Russia continues to commit units drawn from its naval infantry from all fleets, likely because those units are relatively more combat-ready than rank-and-file Russian regiments and brigades. The naval infantry belonging to the Black Sea Fleet is likely the largest single pool of ready reserve forces the Russian military has not yet committed. Much of that naval infantry has likely been embarked on amphibious landing ships off the Odesa coast since early in the war, presumably ready to land near Odesa as soon as Russian forces from Crimea secured a reliable ground line of communication (GLOC) from Crimea to Odesa. The likelihood that Russian forces from Crimea will establish such a GLOC in the near future is becoming remote, however, and the Russian military has apparently begun using elements of the Black Sea Fleet naval infantry to reinforce efforts to take Mariupol.

The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time. Maxar imagery of Russian forces digging trenches and revetments in Kyiv Oblast over the past several days supports this assessment.[1] Comments by Duma members about forcing Ukraine to surrender by exhaustion in May could reflect a revised Russian approach to ending this conflict on terms favorable to Moscow.

Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties. The World War I battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele were all fought in conditions of stalemate and did not break the stalemate. If the war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition Russian forces will continue to bomb and bombard Ukrainian cities, devastating them and killing civilians, even as Ukrainian forces impose losses on Russian attackers and conduct counter-attacks of their own. The Russians could hope to break Ukrainians’ will to continue fighting under such circumstances by demonstrating Kyiv’s inability to expel Russian forces or stop their attacks even if the Russians are demonstrably unable to take Ukraine’s cities. Ukraine’s defeat of the initial Russian campaign may therefore set conditions for a devastating protraction of the conflict and a dangerous new period testing the resolve of Ukraine and the West. Continued and expanded Western support to Ukraine will be vital to seeing Ukraine through that new period.

Key Takeaways:

We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine’s capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail;
Russian troops will continue trying to advance to within effective artillery range of the center of Kyiv, but prospects for their success are unclear;
The war will likely descend into a phase of bloody stalemate that could last for weeks or months;
Russia will expand efforts to bombard Ukrainian civilians in order to break Ukrainians’ will to continue fighting (at which the Russians will likely fail);
The most dangerous current Russian advance is from Kherson north toward Kryvyi Rih in an effort to isolate Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west. Russian forces are unlikely to be able to surround or take Kryvyi Rih in the coming days, and may not be able to do so at all without massing much larger forces for the effort than they now have available on that axis;
The Russians appear to have abandoned plans to attack Odesa at least in the near term.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 11:14 schreef bleiblei het volgende:

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In Rusland krijgen ze relatief weinig tegenstand. Ik vraag mij af of die riotpolice opgewassen is tegen een volk dat er vol tegenin gaat en gevoed wordt met westerse wapens .

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 11:14 schreef bleiblei het volgende:

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In Rusland krijgen ze relatief weinig tegenstand. Ik vraag mij af of die riotpolice opgewassen is tegen een volk dat er vol tegenin gaat en gevoed wordt met westerse wapens .

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After 11 years of war, the destruction of towns, cities and much of the Syrian military, Bashar al-Assad’s army has launched a recruitment drive. But the recruits are not fresh from bootcamps and will not fight on the home front. They are the vanguard of what could be the biggest state-backed mercenary force in the world. Within days, Syrian troops could be deployed to reinforce the stalled Russian frontlines in Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin is about to extract a lethal price for Moscow’s rescue of the Syrian leader.

The first Syrian troops to join Putin’s ranks – an advance force of 150 – arrived in Russia on Thursday, European intelligence officials claim. Ukrainian military intelligence, echoing a claim by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, believes 40,000 Syrians have signed up to fight – a figure that would represent a sizeable chunk of the battle-ready capacity of the country’s entire military.

In the economic wasteland of post-war Syria, the best – and maybe only – state-backed job on offer is one that those who sign on for might not come home from. The vast majority of newly enlisted Syrian mercenaries are trading in salaries of $15 a month for monthly deals worth between $600 and $3,000. Rank and experience in the gruelling decade of insurrection attracts the higher dollars, but even the basic salary is luring recruits who have few ways out of overwhelming poverty.

Syrians have shown a readiness to sign up at least 14 recruitment centres across the country, in Aleppo, Damascus, Deir Azzour, Homs and Hama, as well as Raqqa, which less than five years ago was at the centre of the war against Islamic State.

“They have been arriving in the dozens to the regime base in Raqqa,” said a Kurdish fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces in north-east Syria. “We can see them turn up. The Russians have also asked [Kurdish groups] to join them, but I don’t know of anyone who has done so yet.”

In western Syria, some of the regime’s most prestigious units claim to have signed up thousands from their ranks. The Fifth Division, which was trained by Moscow, the 4th Division, which is loyal to Assad’s brother, Maher, and the Tiger Forces, which played prominent roles in the war, are all central to the recruitment push, which will seriously stretch their already depleted ranks and potentially turn Assad’s ragtag army into the largest mercenary force in Ukraine.

Comparatively safe in his palace thanks to Russian backing, and in the debt of Putin if he wants to remain there, Assad appears to have given Moscow carte blanche to airlift his army, and his commanders free rein to enlist them. The vulnerable state that leaves his forces at home seems secondary to returning a favour that the Syrian leader has no other way to honour.

Ukrainian officials say the mercenary force will fly from the Khmeimim base on daily military transport flights. Militia groups that had fought alongside them are also joining the recruitment drive, with Palestinians, National Defence Front troops, the Ba’ath party and even some members of Shia militia groups that fought in Syria under Iran’s auspices joining in.

Pro-regime militia groups have been trained and backed by Russian units since late 2015, when Putin formally intervened to save Assad. At that point, the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani had convinced Putin that Assad was only weeks away from losing the Alawite heartland of western Syria to opposition groups who had decimated his armoured units with precision-guided missiles smuggled across the Turkish border by the CIA.

Ever since, Putin has established a tutelage over Assad and, during visits to Syria, has rarely wasted an opportunity to assert his dominance. During inspections of Russian troops at Kheimemin, Putin led entourages, forcing Assad to trail behind him. He has insisted on meetings in Russian bases instead of the presidential palace – a clear slight to a leader who he regularly complained was yet to return Russia’s investment in blood and treasure.

In the city of Homs, business is reportedly brisk at a regime recruitment post. “I had to wait for three hours,” said one soldier, a sergeant, who said he had few qualms about travelling to Ukraine. “The Russians helped us a lot and now we will help them,” he said. Asked what he would be paid, he responded: “Twenty-five times what I’m earning now. You don’t think the terrorists from Idlib won’t go to join the Ukrainians? Of course they will. We will be fighting each other again, but this time in the snow.”

A second pro-regime fighter, who fought for four months in a militia in southern Syria last year, said he had been offered $600 plus death benefits to travel to Ukraine. “That is more than I could ever earn in Syria,” he said. “That is putting a value on my life, I know, but that’s what life is worth these days. If I die there, at least my family can live.”

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 11:28 schreef Richestorags het volgende:
A second pro-regime fighter, who fought for four months in a militia in southern Syria last year, said he had been offered $600 plus death benefits to travel to Ukraine. “That is more than I could ever earn in Syria,” he said. “That is putting a value on my life, I know, but that’s what life is worth these days. If I die there, at least my family can live.”

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Op zondag 20 maart 2022 10:09 schreef Isdatzo het volgende:

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Ja, precies. Daarom doen praktisch alle voormalige Sovjet-staten doen het sinds ze Rusland de rug toegekeerd hebben het in alle opzichten beter dan Rusland .

Rusland wist in de periode dat Poetin het voor het zeggen had het bbp per inwoner te verdubbelen. Daarentegen: Georgië (4,7 maal), Armenië (4,5), Azerbeidzjan, Turkmenistan, Litouwen, Wit-Rusland, Letland, Estland, Kazachstan, Tadzjikistan, Oezbekistan tot aan Moldavië (2,3).

Hier een werkelijk uitstekend draadje over de Russische economie onder Poetin: [ twitter ]

The Rather Pathetic Economy of Russia