There’s some really good analysis and good info in that thread. One thing that strikes me is that in the past 125 years the Russian and Soviet army has usually done poorly. It performed horribly against the Japanese in 1905, collapsed in WW1, and beat back the Germans in WW2 largely because it was willing to throw millions of men into a meat grinder to defend their own homes. In other words, the Russian performance in Ukraine is historically typical.
The 11th tweet in the series:
The Russian army is disproportionally manned by people from people from poorer regions and lower socioeconomic groups (especially non-Russian ethnic minorities) who see military service as a means of economic or social advancement. But most didn’t join to fight wars.
Boy, does that sound rather familiar.
What Ukrainian soldiers are going through
What Russian soldiers are going through
16 posts were split to a new topic: Hitler or Stalin: Who’s Worse? Who Cares?
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From the Guardian liveblog:
The Ukrainian authorities have said they are capturing so many prisoners-of-war among Russian soldiers retreating from occupation of the north-eastern region that the country is running out of space to put them, the Associated Press reports.
As Ukrainian troops retook a wide swath of territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the northeastern border in some places, it was not yet clear if the Ukrainian blitz could signal a turning point in the war.
Momentum has switched back and forth before, but rarely with such a big and sudden swing.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich did not specify the number of Russian prisoners but said the POWs would be exchanged for Ukrainian service members held by Moscow.
Military intelligence spokesman Andrey Yusov said the captured troops included “significant” numbers of Russian officers.
Ukraine’s deputy interior minister accused fleeing Russian forces of burning official documents and concealing bodies in an attempt to cover up rights violations in the areas they controlled until last week.
Here is some footage with subtitles (and a warning of blurred images of bodies) tweeted by the UK’s Sky News from its reporter in Zaliznychne, which the channel explains is a rural village that was occupied after the Russian invasion and until three days ago.
Sounds like Putin is having a really bad week.
It’s wild how much stuff Russia has been apparently leaving behind to get captured by the Ukrainian forces, especially given the limited supplies they had in the first place. One would think that they’d have procedures for destroying that stuff rather than leave it to fall in enemy hands.
They probably do have procedures for destroying equipment, but the soldiers didn’t have enough time or couldn’t be bothered. Or they were too busy looting.
When soldiers are running scared they always tend to forget those procedures pretty quickly. I’m reading a book right now about a Revolutionary War battle where the rebels managed to capture several British cannons in a gun battery and turn them against British positions. The gunners had hammers and special barbed spikes placed right there next to the cannons so that they could disable them in just seconds by plugging up the touch holes, but none of the fleeing soldiers got around to doing that. I have to imagine that it’s a common theme in wars everywhere.
Insert Keenen Ivory Wayans “They shootin’” gif here…
