My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take over.
I don't know about China, but Russian exports are mostly soviet-era models, and they are known to have huge maintenance issues. Also note this: in the USSR they knew how to build things, but modern Russia can't. We have no electronics industry, no machine industry, we can't really make commercial airplanes, and we can't build a decent car. How would country with such capabilities make state of the art military equipment?!
I'd rather trust my national security on equipment that's subpar but reliable and predictable, instead of trying to make my own and failing. Kind of like home security: I'd rather buy a lock for my front door that may be not perfect rather than trying to machine my own better version, even if I technically know how it works and could maybe make a working prototype. Military development is really, really expensive and extremely hard to do right when your state is still developing and running low on qualified engineers, physicists and mathematicians.
In any case, having recent russian weapons is more than enough when your neighbours are equipped with leftovers from the fifties.
I just don't understand how that could happen unless they literally run out of fuel on the way, or if some serious airforce intervenes.
surprise (not), but they literally ran out of fuel on the way [0]
that 65km convoy is just a 65km sitting duck of a traffic jam at the moment. without fuel and food
all of this war is a festival of glorious russian corruption and incompetency at its best. i, as a ukrainian, must thank them for that
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-move-kyiv-stall...
We don't they just count the vehicles, I would imagine even basic computer vision software could do that with reasonable accuracy.
If 100 vehicles are in a 10 mile long convoy and then they space out more and are now in a 20 mile long convoy, it's still 100 vehicles.
I do enjoy reading each day the different lengths and distances to Kyiv.
Pop the leader with a Javelin. Pop a couple more vehicles that try to get around it. Presto, instant traffic jam and the Russians have repeatedly shown they clump up in traffic jams. Now you hit the vehicles in the rear, you're not likely to need sophisticated weapons to do that.
Now you have a huge mess that you can rain mortar fire on.
Finland did a lower-tech version of it to them long ago with trees rather than mud as the barrier.
It's going to be a slaughter, on both sides :(
this seems to be happening quite a bit
If anything, it is unthinkable for an advanced army to move in such disposition. They what, cosplay the Freedom Convoy?
Putin did say his troops will be fighting for "Freedom" of Ukraine.
And what did Putin lose in that country anyway? The entire population hates Russians and are willing to die for their freedom. Let's say he can capture it. They have no natural resources of interest or anything like that. Meanwhile his own economy, that was already as tiny as the Benelux, goes completely to the shitterhole.
He has nukes, yes, he has nukes.
I highly doubt this, considering https://nikopol.nikopolnews.net/nikopol/uvaga-informaciya-pr... claims the image is of Ukrainian military. In addition to that, all the claims of them being Spetsnaz seem to originate from social media.
> The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general.
Once again, there is no solid source for this that doesn't circle back to some social media post.
I don't think there's currently way to confirm whether any of these claims are true or not, not until the conflict is over.
Russian army is amazing.
Saddam had a very powerful army at the time, and the US military walked through it like it was nothing. Occupying Iraq and building a new regime went terribly, as almost all such projects do. Even if Russia manages to conquer Ukraine entirely, which is a massive if, I've seen absolutely nothing in the past 6 days to make me think that an occupation by them would be anything other than a horrid disaster.
Aside from pure propaganda, I have no idea what information you could be looking at to come to the conclusion that Russia is executing the invasion well at this point.
Which part exactly?
The elite spetsnaz that got captured?
The Chechenian army that got drone striked including the general?
The failure of securing the airspace?
The total cluelessness of the soldiers?
The inability to defend the airfield once captured?
The failed logistics?
Yeah, great army, never seen anything like it!
My opponents usually disagreed, pointing to a big military budget and some modern-ish new weapons shown here and there. No, they do look cool at a show or a parade, but does the personnel know how to use it? Are they built en masse? Is the quality good enough? (With all that corruption!)
Turns out, things are even worse then I imagined, but in the hindsight it shouldn't be surprising: this is far from the first time in history when decaying russian institutions and imperial hubris had led Russia to a disastrous war, which was planned as a 'small victorious' one: Crimean War (1853), Japan war (1905), Winter war with Finland (1940), Afghanistan war (1980), Chechena war (1994).
Now Putin has one of his own. I hope his regime will crumble in the fallout from a resounding defeat.