Posted on 02/24/2015 6:51:00 PM PST by tcrlaf
More than half of the Ukrainian casualties in the battle against Russian-backed separatists are killed by friendly fire and lack of training, a British army veteran who volunteered with the Ukrainian forces has revealed. The soldier, known only as “Saffron”, confirmed that the Ukrainian forces were in complete disarray, lacking basic equipment and having no concept of military strategy.
Last week Ukrainian forces suffered defeat at Debaltseve. But Saffron, a 40 year old naturalised Briton of Ukrainian descent, told the Sunday Times that the defeat was inevitable thanks to incompetent leadership and lack of training.
“Six out of 10 casualties among the Ukrainian volunteers occur because of blue-on-blue shooting and the inability to handle weapons. It was clear Debaltseve would turn into a disaster for Ukraine, but the military command and their political bosses just watched it happen in slow motion,” he said.
The command is so bad that it endangers the lives of soldiers,” he said. “They confuse tactics with strategy; they launch attacks without warning each other and for no apparent strategic reason.
“There are nearly 30 voluntary battalions and a number of regular units, but every group is fighting their own war. They don’t have central command, they don’t co-ordinate and they don’t even share radio frequencies between themselves, which makes it impossible to communicate.”
The Maidan activists were the worst, a lot of them seem to be jobless, aimless people who joined the force but are unwilling to learn discipline. I would try to teach them something, and they would say, "Who are you to lecture me? I threw Molotov cocktails during the Maidan. ”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
“Don’t totally belittle the NATO fighting men the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Poland, and the others just to prop up the Russians.”
Stop throwing strawmen.
The American Soldier is the best in the world.
Our POLITICAL LEADERSHIP however, isn’t.
With respect, I don’t think there is much of a comparison. At the time, the USSR was a massively equipped but morale-based vacuum. My understanding (which could be wrong) was that the Russkies were mostly conscripts who hadn’t the slightest interest in Afghanistan anything. Secondly, the Afghans were fighting for their own country and willing to take massive casualties. (I have no idea the relative casualty numbers, I have heard the Russians suffered 15K dead) Now it is true that perhaps the comparison can be made that the Ukrainians would be fighting for their country but the Russians think that way about the Ukraine almost as much as the Ukrs. Thirdly, the Russian forces WILL HAVE that massively superior firepower should they need it. Which is why I don’t think that and foreign-fueled escalation will lead anywhere but to a wider and more bloody war. My opinion is that Putin is in no mood to suffer anything resembling a defeat in Ukr. Let me be clear, it is a complete piece of crap situation IMO but I frankly see no way foreign forces are going to achieve anything there other than a massive episode of bloodshed.
The West made a serious mistake when the USSR imploded. It welcomed membership of former bloc nations into NATO and that on the surface was possibly a good thing from the democracy standpoint, but it rubbed the Russian noses in their own poop and strategically placed potential adversaries on and up to Russias’ borders; something they have the historical right to be very sensitive to. The West took this a bridge too far when they clumsily intervened in the Ukraine.
I just don’t see this turning out well. The part of Ukraine which wants to unite with Russia which as I understand it is the industrialized East, their infrastructure is just going to be destroyed in this internecine fighting. The agricultural 18th century western part of Ukraine probably mostly wants to merge with Europe, so yet another backwards country can be loaded onto the Eurozone and its potential recovery. But not before thousands of people and plenty of industrial capability will be destroyed. It’s a crappy situation.
There is no straw man, except for this heroic Russian fighting man that you guys keep putting over us as the superior man, the superior warrior, able to defeat the United States and the strongest militaries in the world, united against them.
Your constant political propaganda is an effort to defeat American will against Russia, not strengthen it.
Your strawmen have gotten old.
You like to put words in other people’s mouths, but have no idea of much the fool that makes you llok.
The Russian army is much weaker than then, and it still depends on poorly trained, poorly equipped, 1 year draftees.
Let’s bleed the Russians as much as we can, the more they suffer trying to conquer this nation on our NATO borders, then the better position it puts us in if we have to fight to protect ourselves from their next invasion.
There is no straw man, except this all powerful Russian fighting man of yours.
You find every argument that you can to promote Putin’s military goals.
All you have to do is look at Russian Social Media to see that to them this isn’t “Russia taking Ukraine”, but rather “Russians Helping Russians!”.
They look like them, they speak like them, and until some 20 years ago, they WERE them. The Korsun massacre, Russians incinerated in Odessa, and Russians killed in Mariupol by ACTUAL NAZI’s cemented the images of another “Great Patriotic War” into the Russian mindset.
And they clearly blame Obama for it.
Not “America”, but OBAMA...
You listen to too much Dan Carlin.
Heck, maybe I should reconsider my opposition to arming them!
Never heard of him.
Sounds familiar somehow or other. They say that at Agincourt, the French knights charged into a funnel-shaped field and, when they got to the narrow part of the funnel, all trampled each other and that, even had there been no English there with longbows at all, most of them would have died...
Yes. You might even get lucky and be able to count on a Eddie Ray Routh having your back while a Bowe Bergdahl has lookout.
And don't forget the integrity of the officer corps. If we can trust the War College to be telling the truth. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1250
American soldiers are average, with gear they are better. If you want to find excellent world class troops, look a bit further north.
Russia world never get past Poland. They are tenacious.
You guys have gone so far over the edge for the Russian draftees as heroes, that you are attacking our own GIs.
“You guys have gone so far over the edge for the Russian draftees as heroes, that you are attacking our own GIs.”
MORE strawmen?
That’s all you EVER seem to do.
Anonymous source. Great.
Ukraine’s military was looted for years by Russian puppets so of course its like a 3rd world country force.
Took the bait, they did.
You need to explain.
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