Posted on 03/21/2022 8:34:48 AM PDT by Mariner
“ Maybe the plan all along was to move slowly and cautiously to avoid civilian casualties”
For the first several days, Russian forces scrupulously avoided civilian targets. By the end of the first week they had begun systematically striking civilian areas of Kharkiv with barrages of Grad rockets (area effect weapons), as well as the first use of TOS-1 thermobaric rocket barrages against civilian neighborhoods.
The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure like water, heat, electricity, hospitals and communications has steadily increased. It is now the main effort of Russian forces in the Ukraine, producing the biggest refugee movement in Europe since WWII. This same approach of targeting civilians has characterized every Russian conflict that has occurred under Putin’s reign - Chechnya, Syria, Georgia (somewhat less so in the less urban parts of Georgia that Russia seized there, but perhaps because they were just more difficult to target, being more spread out).
It is no accident. It is Putin’s way of making war, it was the Russian way of war before Putin took over. They are treating Ukrainian cities the same as they treated Grozny, Aleppo and Homs.
It was their own intelligence assessments that were wrong. Therefore they planned operations that would fail catastrophically, with heavy losses.
As to what I am saying, it is plain old honorable Monday morning quarterbacking, or in my former line of work (retired now), we would call it failure analysis. Why can we do this? Because unlike in most wars in this one we can watch at least some of the plays.
The Russians have pretty much quit advancing or “moving strategically” that I can see. They have retreated from Mykolaiev back to Kherson. They have retreated from Kiev, breaking the Dneiper dam on the Irpen river to flood the countryside upriver, apparently to defend on the other side of a water barrier.
just a matter of time til Azov brigade neo-nazi terrorists are eliminated
video embedded at link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBeBSUGvmVs
” Maybe the plan all along was to move slowly and cautiously to avoid civilian casualties”
ROTFLMAO!
What do you know about Russians? They are civilized human beings, the same as us. They are not the monsters you are being led to believe. They are intentional diminishing Putin and the Russian people in an effort to make you want to kill them. In other words, they are prepping the battlefield. It will be a catastrophe if we go to war with Russia. After all the deception we have been through, please don’t fall for it.
Only an Fing idiot would listen to you and ignore the absolutely clear statements of President Trump this morning.
Be gone with your diseased agenda.
Who is paying you? You’re dusgusting.
President Trump DIRECTLY addressed all your stupidity loud and clear.
Stand with Trump!
Look in the mirror!
“What do you know about Russians? They are civilized human beings, the same as us. They are not the monsters you are being led to believe. They are intentional diminishing Putin ...”
I guess you have not seen any of the photos of Putin’s wrath on Ukraine ...
The Russians are now claiming that the shopping center they demolished (with eight dead!) using a hypersonic missile had been in use as a depot or storage facility for armaments.
How dare the Ukrainians store weapons on their own territory! The nerve of those people!
So, of course, Russia had the right to destroy it!
/ mordant sarcasm
Regards,
“What do you know about Russians? They are civilized human beings, the same as us.”
Look at the evidence. They are not the same as us, in how they prosecute wars. They are not the same as us, in how they massacre and oppress those they conquer.
Look at what they did in Grozny in Chechnya, or Aleppo and Homs and swathes of Idlib Province in Syria, or in Pol-i-Charki Prison in Afghanistan, or in Poland, or Hungary or Lithuania, or (then) Czechoslovakia.
They have reverted to form in the Ukraine in less than a week, with pretty much a Soviet style WWIII approach, without yet incorporating chemical and nuclear weapons, and with a much smaller force structure.
Everyone tries to manipulate. The Russians could do better manipulating frankly. They could publish, for instance, the numbers and names of the POW’s they have taken. POW’s are usually the best benchmark of successful operations. They haven’t done that.
What we have seen so far is indisputable proof of heavy casualties among the Russian forces. These amount to a significant fraction of their available forces, as far as we know. That is compelling propaganda, which constitutes both truth and lies. Truth is the best propaganda.
Being as it is there are photos/video of almost 300 destroyed or captured tanks. Tank losses are a good benchmark given the very tank-heavy Russian force structure. We can make a decent assumption that they have lost about 500 of them (since many tank losses would be in Russian held territory, as they have been advancing, and their enemies would not have had the opportunity to document them), which is at least 20% of their entire active force, and maybe 40% of those committed to the Ukrainian operations. One can extrapolate from that estimated personnel losses to maneuver units.
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