AggieLit said:

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oldmanguy said:

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If a third drop on Kiev is true I think we are seeing Putin's choice.

He will not shell the **** out of the cities a la Chechnya and he's trying to see through capturing the government.

He won't she'll the cities I think for two reasons. First he needs them functional after a puppet government installation and second he thinks that may be a line best not to cross for fear of further international escalation well beyond sanctions.

The weather warming up will slow that armor advance and further construct the vehicles to the roadways which will offer up a shooting gallery for defenders.

Above all else he needs to own the air. I think this is where he has failed the worst.

What a Charlie Foxtrot.

I really hope to visit Ukraine I. The future.

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Based on his speeches, I think Kiev is a city he does not want to see destroyed. It is the birthplace of Russia (Kievan Rus'). He is also trying to win hearts and minds. He wants to be viewed by Ukrainians as the protector of Ukraine, while the West is seen as a corrupting influence. He also wants popularity in Russia, and Russians have many family connections to Ukraine. Unlike Grozny, this is "their" city, with a Slavic Orthodox population, not a Muslim population.

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I concur with all of this. We're not seeing the level of destruction that Russia has dealt in either Chechnya or more recently Syria to civilian structures.

Came back to the thread after having been gone awhile, catching up.

2wealfth Man said:

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74OA said:

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ATX_AG_08 said:

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chris1515 said:

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How much faith do you have in what you're reading about the ongoing results/situation? To me it seems that anyone that really know, has strong incentive to exaggerate the numbers to support their side.

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Lots of propaganda prob taking place, but I've seen enough real footage of destroyed Russian equipment to know without a doubt the ukes are taking it to them in a major way.

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Yep. Cut the numbers in half and the Russians still appear to have lost a division's worth of armor.

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This trending into an infantry slog if they want to take, cities, seats of government, infrastructure, etc. Putin may order it, but I wonder if Ivan on the ground will have the stomach for it.

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someone posted pics of massive self-propelled artillery pieces moving to Belogorod with the invasion "Z" markings

my guess is Putin starts shelling Kiev

before he would just send in troops to be sniped from all sides

The Kaliningrad thing is touchy for Russia. That could be something the prompts Putin to go even more irrational than he has already seemed to this point.

LMCane said:

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2wealfth Man said:

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74OA said:

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ATX_AG_08 said:

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chris1515 said:

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How much faith do you have in what you're reading about the ongoing results/situation? To me it seems that anyone that really know, has strong incentive to exaggerate the numbers to support their side.

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Lots of propaganda prob taking place, but I've seen enough real footage of destroyed Russian equipment to know without a doubt the ukes are taking it to them in a major way.

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Yep. Cut the numbers in half and the Russians still appear to have lost a division's worth of armor.

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This trending into an infantry slog if they want to take, cities, seats of government, infrastructure, etc. Putin may order it, but I wonder if Ivan on the ground will have the stomach for it.

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someone posted pics of massive self-propelled artillery pieces moving to Belogorod with the invasion "Z" markings

my guess is Putin starts shelling Kiev

before he would just send in troops to be sniped from all sides

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Current invasion plan isn't working as designed. So I think the gloves come off of the Russian war machine soon and we see a reversion to brutal type.

jabberwalkie09 said:

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Dan Scott said:

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So was Putin really dumb enough to think he could stroll into a country where a lot of its people favor the West and not have pushback. If you're going to attack a country then you attack a country. If that means blowing stuff up then you blow things up. He didn't have winning strategy from the start.

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Hubris can be blinding.

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the Russians pretty much strolled into Crimea and parts of Donbas back during the Obama Administration and no one did anything.

Russia has been bombing civilians in Syria for the last 3 years and no one did anything.

Russia took over Georgia in a few days and no one did anything.

2wealfth Man said:

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The Kaliningrad thing is touchy for Russia. That could be something the prompts Putin to go even more irrational than he has already seemed to this point.

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I am sure the Russians will issue dire threats over it but it wouldn't be too much trouble for them to re-route air traffic over the Baltic into Koenigsburg ("Kaliningrad").

Jayhawk said:

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2wealfth Man said:

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The Kaliningrad thing is touchy for Russia. That could be something the prompts Putin to go even more irrational than he has already seemed to this point.

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I am sure the Russians will issue dire threats over it but it wouldn't be too much trouble for them to re-route air traffic over the Baltic into Koenigsburg ("Kaliningrad").

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I wonder how many of the native Koenigsberg Germans would be happy to see the Russians get their @ss kicked in the next few weeks..

agent-maroon said:

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ttu_85 said:

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Ernest Tucker said:

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richardag said:

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PWestAg18 said:

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richardag said:

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Kenneth_2003 said:

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I'm no adept student of the matter, but I never figured Putin too be an inept tactician.

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He was KGB not military and who knows how he surrounded himself with his current military leaders.

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I also think Putin legitimately believes the former USSR states want to "get the gang back together" in the same way he does, and he didn't expect the entire populace of Ukraine to unite and fight back like this. My guess is nobody else in the room had the balls to tell him he was wrong either.

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I think this is a very good point.

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If .............. Keiv

Now he is going to face a humiliating defeat/quagmire and this would ruin him and Russia. Putin will double down and see that ukrain is not filled with sympathy for Russia. His perspective will shift to invasion and I fear we will see more of what happened in Syria/grosny. Putin is about to be backed into a corner and that is scary.

My take anyways.

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Good takeaway. And yes its scary. I wonder how many people have thought this angle through.

So many are cheering in the stands as the world has its first real-time on-line war. The bad mews is we are about to cross into uncharted territory !!!!

Still, I can't believe the Russians didn't take down the Ukrainian net. If I, a lowly Tard, was running the Russian op the first thing I would have done is crushed the Ukrainian communications systems. All of them. There wouldn't be a server or server farm in operation.

Now the World is on its feet watching the underdog, say 'Jackson State' hold the equivalent of "Ohio State' to 10 first quarter points. This game has along way to go and with it all the associated uncertainty,

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If the 1st step was to cut all communication and bring down their servers, then the next step should be to establish complete air superiority. Neither has happened. Nor have reliable supply chains been established.

To say this was poorly planned and executed would be the MOA understatements

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it really is baffling as they had literally months to prepare their attack plans down to the company and squad level

it may be that they were simply over confident and believed all they had to do was drive down the highway and capture Kyiv

LMCane said:

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Jayhawk said:

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2wealfth Man said:

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The Kaliningrad thing is touchy for Russia. That could be something the prompts Putin to go even more irrational than he has already seemed to this point.

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I am sure the Russians will issue dire threats over it but it wouldn't be too much trouble for them to re-route air traffic over the Baltic into Koenigsburg ("Kaliningrad").

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I wonder how many of the native Koenigsberg Germans would be happy to see the Russians get their @ss kicked in the next few weeks..

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Well, speaking as some one whose family members were run out of East Prussia by communist Russian scum, I suspect there may still be a few.

Does Russia not own drones? Why a land war? Couldn't they just take everything out with drones first?

LMCane said:

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agent-maroon said:

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ttu_85 said:

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Ernest Tucker said:

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richardag said:

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PWestAg18 said:

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richardag said:

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Kenneth_2003 said:

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I'm no adept student of the matter, but I never figured Putin too be an inept tactician.

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He was KGB not military and who knows how he surrounded himself with his current military leaders.

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I also think Putin legitimately believes the former USSR states want to "get the gang back together" in the same way he does, and he didn't expect the entire populace of Ukraine to unite and fight back like this. My guess is nobody else in the room had the balls to tell him he was wrong either.

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I think this is a very good point.

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If .............. Keiv

Now he is going to face a humiliating defeat/quagmire and this would ruin him and Russia. Putin will double down and see that ukrain is not filled with sympathy for Russia. His perspective will shift to invasion and I fear we will see more of what happened in Syria/grosny. Putin is about to be backed into a corner and that is scary.

My take anyways.

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Good takeaway. And yes its scary. I wonder how many people have thought this angle through.

So many are cheering in the stands as the world has its first real-time on-line war. The bad mews is we are about to cross into uncharted territory !!!!

Still, I can't believe the Russians didn't take down the Ukrainian net. If I, a lowly Tard, was running the Russian op the first thing I would have done is crushed the Ukrainian communications systems. All of them. There wouldn't be a server or server farm in operation.

Now the World is on its feet watching the underdog, say 'Jackson State' hold the equivalent of "Ohio State' to 10 first quarter points. This game has along way to go and with it all the associated uncertainty,

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If the 1st step was to cut all communication and bring down their servers, then the next step should be to establish complete air superiority. Neither has happened. Nor have reliable supply chains been established.

To say this was poorly planned and executed would be the MOA understatements

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it really is baffling as they had literally months to prepare their attack plans down to the company and squad level

it may be that they were simply over confident and believed all they had to do was drive down the highway and capture Kyiv

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What's more baffling is that they tried this very thing in Grozny and it was a colossal failure there too

DapperDanMan said:

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Ag In Ok said:

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Bet most are.
50k plus sent in along with conscripting healthcare workers - they are expecting some serious bloodshed. There won't be a baby boom in Russia after this. If urkraned pulls this off and sues for peace (gets their land back, especially Snake Island) they will experience a huge economic and baby boom. The west will make them rich enough to start buying or building their own hardware.
However i think the blood russia is willing to shed will eventually lead to victory. So long as they can afford to fight the war.

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I've already told my wife we're going there on vacation as soon as they win and everything is back to normal. I want to share my tourist dollars with these true warriors!

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saw a news broadcast on Deutsche Weil TV- their reporter stating the Ukes were very hostile to the media and press condemning them as Europeans who would not help them but left them to die on their own

it could be that if/when Kyiv is free, they may not be so friendly to NATO countries.

hard to tell right now

they might despise Biden for not putting on sanctions when Zelensky was begging him to do it

JobSecurity said:

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WOW @fpleitgenCNN is live on CNN right now showing an enormous column of Russian tanks moving toward the border near Kharkiv as night has fallen in Russia and Ukraine pic.twitter.com/Ge14jiO51x

— Nora Neus (@noraneus) February 26, 2022

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Maybe I have watched too many movies or don't understand rules of engagement (which to me personally go out the door once a Russian tank enters Ukraine), but why can't you have to snipers, grenades, land minds, rocket launchers taking all of these out? If CNN can get that close, I'd think Ukranians could get a sniper well close enough.

Edit- I now see this video is actually in Russia. Of course CNN is in enemy territory.

This is beyond overconfidence.

Some of the Russians thought they were on exercise and not part of an invasion.

I wonder if those big beautiful staging areas that Russia had formed up at the border are still full of material? Sure would be juicy targets.

74OA said:

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Eliminatus said:

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jabberwalkie09 said:

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Looks like that cage armour worked really well

— Dom 🇬🇧💞🇺🇸 (@_smartcasual) February 26, 2022

Out-****ing-standing Ukrainians!

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That's a T72.

One thing just clicked in my head.

I haven't seen any ERA on any Russian vehicles yet in Ukraine. Credence that these are NOT first line units?

(Explosive Reactive Armor, brick shape layerings used to defeat shape charges. Russia absolutely has it and I have no idea why these tanks didn't have it.)

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There have been numerous photos of Russian tanks with reactive armor in Ukraine. The most iconic is the shot of a turret laying out in the street from a blown-up Russian tank-it was covered with ERA blocks.

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I have also seen a ton of media clips with uparmored T-80s on the move with reactive armor plating

I have no idea how the Ukes are stopping those monsters

74OA said:

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LMCane said:

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2wealfth Man said:

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74OA said:

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ATX_AG_08 said:

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chris1515 said:

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How much faith do you have in what you're reading about the ongoing results/situation? To me it seems that anyone that really know, has strong incentive to exaggerate the numbers to support their side.

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Lots of propaganda prob taking place, but I've seen enough real footage of destroyed Russian equipment to know without a doubt the ukes are taking it to them in a major way.

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Yep. Cut the numbers in half and the Russians still appear to have lost a division's worth of armor.

---

This trending into an infantry slog if they want to take, cities, seats of government, infrastructure, etc. Putin may order it, but I wonder if Ivan on the ground will have the stomach for it.

---

someone posted pics of massive self-propelled artillery pieces moving to Belogorod with the invasion "Z" markings

my guess is Putin starts shelling Kiev

before he would just send in troops to be sniped from all sides

---

Current invasion plan isn't working as designed. So I think the gloves come off of the Russian war machine soon and we see a reversion to brutal type.

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I think you are right. Reason being is I don't think Putin survives with his head if the Russians lose a major ground war. He will be put to a firing squad. This may be the end of him anyway.

Go Ukraine! Beat Russia!

LMCane said:

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jabberwalkie09 said:

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Dan Scott said:

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So was Putin really dumb enough to think he could stroll into a country where a lot of its people favor the West and not have pushback. If you're going to attack a country then you attack a country. If that means blowing stuff up then you blow things up. He didn't have winning strategy from the start.

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Hubris can be blinding.

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the Russians pretty much strolled into Crimea and parts of Donbas back during the Obama Administration and no one did anything.

Russia has been bombing civilians in Syria for the last 3 years and no one did anything.

Russia took over Georgia in a few days and no one did anything.

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I would say that's a bit of a revisionist take on 2014. Crimea was taken before anybody knew what was going on or Ukraine had even really reformed their government. The Donbas situation was a bloody conflict that pushed much deeper into Ukraine at one point before they reversed the tide at the established borders of today (or at least prior to the war).

LMCane said:

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jabberwalkie09 said:

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Dan Scott said:

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So was Putin really dumb enough to think he could stroll into a country where a lot of its people favor the West and not have pushback. If you're going to attack a country then you attack a country. If that means blowing stuff up then you blow things up. He didn't have winning strategy from the start.

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Hubris can be blinding.

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the Russians pretty much strolled into Crimea and parts of Donbas back during the Obama Administration and no one did anything.

Russia has been bombing civilians in Syria for the last 3 years and no one did anything.

Russia took over Georgia in a few days and no one did anything.

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Yeah and the Ukrainians are clearly more resolved that's they were 8 years ago and better equipped to boot. Ukrainians, at least most of them appear to, understand that this is their fight not NATO's and not their neighboring country. While NATO supports them, it has been made clear that this is their war. If it spills over into other neighboring countries the game changes.

Syria the world will likely soon forget because it was ISIL.

Georgians had some hubris too since they were thinking that NATO was going to help them militarily. IIRC we flew quite a few of their troops back when that happened.

You're responding to one

ttu_85 said:

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BD88 said:

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❗️The websites of the #Russian government and the State Duma and Kremlin stopped working pic.twitter.com/Mj7OQQ3J6p

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 26, 2022

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Interesting. I hope it was the Ukrainians and not us. Cyber attacks from the west could destabilize things and spread the conflict.

Hmm, if I am China I'd kick around the idea of launching cyber attacks against both the US and Russian Federation. And make it look like it sourced from either side. Evil I know but I half expect China to try something like this.

I hope we are very, very careful on this front and make no mistake this is a major 21st C battle front.

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The international hacker group "Anonymous" has been taking public credit for attacks all across Russia

I am still blown away by their failure to take out the air force. Where are they refueling and landing these planes? Could ruskies not have taken out virtually all landing strips with cruise missiles and rockets? Were they thinking they could take them early and easily and use them to resupply and reinforce?

IDaggie06 said:

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JobSecurity said:

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WOW @fpleitgenCNN is live on CNN right now showing an enormous column of Russian tanks moving toward the border near Kharkiv as night has fallen in Russia and Ukraine pic.twitter.com/Ge14jiO51x

— Nora Neus (@noraneus) February 26, 2022

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Maybe I have watched too many movies or don't understand rules of engagement (which to me personally go out the door once a Russian tank enters Ukraine), but why can't you have to snipers, grenades, land minds, rocket launchers taking all of these out? If CNN can get that close, I'd think Ukranians could get a sniper well close enough.

Edit- I now see this video is actually in Russia. Of course CNN is in enemy territory.

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Land mines, AT mines, and sea mines present problems when employed in theater where the civilian population is still, largely, freely moving about. Then you deal with cleaning all that mess up.

If the videos of the convoys and reporrs from new orgs like the Israeli group in Kharkiv is any indication, those tanks will see Javelins and NLAWS. Who knows what other fortifications that Kharkiv has done. That city has been seeing fighting for some time and last I saw is still being held by the Ukrainians.

Good point regarding the civilians.

Irish 2.0 said:

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Something I just noticed, the weather got a lot warmer in Ukraine today? Lots of melted snow and the temps aren't going to be below freezing for sustained periods of time. Could this hinder the progression of the Russians as they try to move in heavier equipment?

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Yes

the same thing that stopped the Germans in Ukraine in late 1941 (as the rains started in the late fall turning to mud before it hardened) and along the Volga bend in late 1942

buzzardb267 said:

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I am still blown away by their failure to take out the air force. Where are they refueling and landing these planes? Could ruskies not have taken out virtually all landing strips with cruise missiles and rockets? Were they thinking they could take them early and easily and use them to resupply and reinforce?

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I don't know why they didn't focus on military runways away from Kiev.

If the plan was to airdrop and occupy airports around Kiev leaving those intact makes sense.

Would the Russians really use the thermobaric warheads. Serious escalation if so.