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Kaput in Bakhmut! A thread on [Ukraine]
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I am assuming they are scapegoats, and thus screwed.
That’s entirely beside the question. If member states could gang up on each other the union wouldn’t last very long, either.
There are plenty of punitive actions that the EC can take against member states not implementing EU law.
The current situation is pretty tough because what we want to do is way outside of what the EU is supposed to do. But there are workarounds and plans to fix the flaw, and certainly there’s going to be people thinking about what the EU is going to do to counter member states willingly shooting themselves in the foot by embracing populism.
A lot of actions have been taken towards preventing that, but remember the populists are voting along.
If you think the US is doing better on tackling suicide cults, see the Scotus and the Insurrection threads.
(Edit: we also have a living memory of Europeans locked up behind the Iron Curtain. Few of the people making the EU work are willing to again abandon our fellow citizens in the name of political expediency. We all have Hungarian colleagues, and Polish, and Italians… The democratic values of the European project work exactly because it gives all people a path to work for a better society even when member states are by default hell-bent to do the opposite.
I think when North Korea has been able to build a nuclear missile, you want to be very certain people are lying before calling their bluff, regardless of how much of a shambles their economy may be in.
I bolded the REALLY absurd parts:
Original source: https://storage.googleapis.com/istories/stories/2023/05/12/sovremennaya-voina-pokazala-chto-pulevoe-ranenie-eto-samoe-luchshee-chto-ti-mozhesh-slovit/index.html
If there's one thing Ukraine and Russia have in common, it's their hatred of Russian soldiers.
Today he discusses the Russian missile strike, Patriot interceptions and what's going on in Bakhmut. Reading between the lines, it sounds like "the citadel" has indeed been breached and UAF are withdrawing, so the Russians may shortly finally be able to accurately claim that they've taken the city. Meanwhile the UAF are making slow but steady progress on the flanks, not enough to call an encirclement yet but at least pushing back Russia's attempted encirclement, so I'm assuming the play is to turn Russia's attempted encirclement into a counter-encirclement and then pound the shit out of the area with pre-sighted artillery.
He also says there’s evidence that the Patriot missiles are block 3 (hence why they have been able to intercept Kinzhal)
It's grim shit but there are a lot of reports of Russians getting wounded and just offing themselves then and there because nobody is coming to help and if they do, they're probably still dead anyway.
It's astoundingly cruel that a man sent this army, in the year 2022-23, with so little training, equipment or care to die so unnecessarily. It's even more astounding that they continue to let this happen to themselves.
1.9% year over year contraction is what they admit to despite a massive spike in government spending.
EverythingIdFine.jpg
Like, when does that happen? How sunk is this cost fallacy?
Don’t forget the guys behind your line ordered to shoot anyone not moving forward.
I recall a story from early in the war of a Russian soldier who was captured by Ukrainian forces, he'd been left to die by his retreating "allies", and when they came back later rather than helping him they just looted his ammo and left him again.
I simply cannot fathom the sheer fucking cruelty that must be ingrained into the Russian armed forces at every level.
It's hard to be too judgemental. This isn't a battlefield where calling dustoff means you are evaced to an OR within the hour because your life matters. That is the luxury Rolls Royce of being part of a fighting force, I get hurt a helicopter takes me away until I'm better.
Not to downplay the neglected traumas of US forces, just in contrast to this conflict and public perception.
Russia isn't fighting this war like a modern military at any point and its really just weird. Its like the only books they have are from 1880 and they are doing some weird Turtledove trying to recreate a past war with modern equipment nobody knows how to use.
What they didn't say was that they were going to send an entire Ukrainian brigade with them. According to the The Times Sweden has secretly been training a Ukrainian brigade on Swedish soil, and that early in May that brigade came back to Ukraine, ready for the summer offensive.
Source: SVT quoting The Times (The Times article itself is behind a paywall) and independently verified by a Ukrainian source..
Note: 10 Strv122 (ie 1 tank company), 8 archers (1 Artillery company), 50-ish CV90s (4 companies worth) and the rest of the brigade is equipped with "APCs of finnish design" (unclear if it's older XA-180s or newer XA-360s and unclear out of whose stock. Could be Swedens, Finlands or Polands)
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Propaganda works.
Also, bluntly, Russia has trained it's soldiers to to act like monsters in a lot of respects (See all the war crimes reported so far). Which has the double effect of they're primed to expect the same treatment back from the people they're fighting. You can see this in WW2, where Japan was infamously horrific on getting people to actually surrender - in part because the Japanese soldiers expected to be treated like how they'd treated their own prisoners.
Stuff like the Geneva convention isn't for fun - There's actual, serious ramifications behind why treating your opponents humanely is just practical and pragmatic, and we're seeing the bloody and tragic outcome of ignoring that now.
Putin: Just an absolute fucker.
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I remember hearing a possibly apocryphal story that the reason that the US settled on .223 was that it was a wounding round rather than overkill and that it meant three soldiers were taken out of action to care for the wounded one. I'm not sure that that Russian "doctrine" has been shown to support this idea.
You're honestly less likely to survive a 5.56mm than a 7.62mm. The 7.62 has a lower muzzle velocity and a sturdier design, so unless it hits bone it's probably going to stay relatively intact (a high velocity bullet that hits bone will do nasty things). Once the 5.56 (especially the early versions) start to tumble after roughly 10cm they tend to shatter into dozens of little pieces.
7.62 has one advantage. It's more effective against a target behind a single or double-brick wall (and other similar walls like cinderblock walls). That's it.
I'd recommend anyone interested in the subject to read up on Martin L. Facklers research.
5.56mm
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
You're thinking the rationale behind the less lethal types of landmines various countries use, including the butterfly mines Russia particularly enjoys. The standard NATO rounds very much do the overkill thing, as that "uhh, ouch" chart Fiendishrabbit includes notes. (Along with the results of the daily mass shooting in the States lately...)
That said you're right in that said rationale assumes an opposing military whose soldiers are both able and willing to take care of its wounded.
Unrelated, but damn Sweden, love the flex.
What I understood - and probably acrophical and not backed up by data- is that any rifle shot that hits you, as an individual, is going to probably result in a casualty. Regardless of armor or medical support, a hit is taking you out of combat unless you are lucky.
However, personal weapons purpose is mostly to suppress while squad or heavier weapons are brought to bear. Assuming you have combined arms support and resupply all you need to do is buy time until big bro fucks up the other guy, and maybe you win the fight in the meantime.
Which goes somewhat out the window when combat becomes personal house to house room to room combat.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/13k9gzu/images_of_a_lancet_wreckage_shot_down/
Here's where they all went
The difference--as a few people have mentioned in part--is primarily one of "what do you need the bullet to actually do, and where?"
An 8mm Mauser, 7.62 Nato, 30.06, any "full power rifle" cartridge is going to hit like a truck, sure, and you can shoot out to X. What if you don't... Need that? The little shits are heavy, man. They kick hard. If you don't actually need to be able to land shots out at 1500 meters, why carry a cartridge that's able to do these things, if all your engagements are at like, 150-500m? Weapon gets smaller/lighter/easier to use, you can carry more rounds, your poor bastard ground pounder isn't necessarily carrying as heavy a load for the same volume of potential firepower... Win all around.
"It's more lethal" or "it wounds vs kills" etc aren't even relevant honestly. It's smaller, lighter, easier to manage, and does basically everything the bigger one does, with the trade of it hasn't got the extended maximum range you really weren't using anyway.
The bait in the trap here is the huge importance that Putin has attached to Bakhmut. In a hypothetical situation where they finally capture it, it would be literal suicide for any senior officer to go to Putin and advise withdrawing from it. So the soldiers would have to stay and die no matter what, and the RFAF would have to keep on pouring in resources to hold it.
Body Armor proliferation among near peers like China is leading the US to pivot back to a heavier round fired at a higher muzzle velocity than 5.56.
Edit:
Law and Order ≠ Justice
There is I think a real delusion going around about how durable even shitty oppressive systems can be. Especially these days with how much some groups on social media like to blap about revolutions and violence and what not. That durability is especially true when the situation is not chaotic or uncontrolled but rather structured and ordered and full of people with real power. The truth is that life can get really really really shitty without making anything actually flip over to force change of any kind. People expecting things to get so bad that the people decide to rise up are being optimistic and unrealistic most of the time. And Russia is I think definitely one of those times.
As hopeful as we might all be that this, this bit of shit people are being forced to eat, will finally be the last straw, I think we should also admit that it's probably not gonna be the case. I think oppressive systems have if anything only become more durable over recent history.
Its just not how we've done things in the west since WWI, if not before.
History shows that popular revolutions are really rare, and even less commonly successful. Sucks to be Wat Tyler.
People also have to survive the attack into which they're being forced then also survive the fucking-off part, which drives down the odds of being able to flee enormously. No need to worry about deserters if you just keep killing all your soldiers in suicidal charges.
Five more minutes. You try and do something about the position you're in, either by running or popping a cap in your local commissar equivalent, and that's your ass on the line right there and then. You might not die, but you're putting yourself at risk and the odds aren't good. You do nothing and keep your head down and you'll probably live for five more minutes.
And you make that same decision time after time right up until it's way too late and you don't survive the next five minutes.
One thing that kept smaller caliber ammunition from going into service earlier was that they had a bad reputation from previous wars like the Spanish American war and late 19th century European wars.
But there were a couple of things that were overlooked:
1. The rounds of the late 19th century tended to have shittier powders behind them than the ones of mid 20th century. A heavier bullet is going to be better at penetrating if you are being forced to deal with slower muzzle velocities anyway.
2. In the late 19th century significant consideration needed to be given to the fact that cavalry is still a consideration and it is much easier to hit a horse than a rider. So rounds back then needed to be effective against a horse, which is a lot heavier and sturdier animal than a human being.
By midcentury horses in combat were gone and you had powders that could push a .22 sized bullet fast enough to have a similar kinetic energy profile to a .30 or .45 sized bullet, and the .22 sized round could be fired faster, was gentler on a semiautomatic or automatic action meaning weapons could be built lighter and smaller, was itself lighter and easier to carry, etc.
Really ww2 infantry arms should have been smaller caliber semiautomatics, there was no technological reason they couldn’t have been using M-16 or AK-74 style weapons at that point, there were even rifle designs around that fit that description prior to ww2 (the first gas operated, mass produced semiautomatic rifle actually dates to 1908), doctrine just had not caught up with the reality of the situation yet.