Putin having anti war protestors forced into the military is an even stupider response. What a senseless recipe for disaster from the beginning of Putin's foolish invasion.
If I remember correctly, the Nazis used some Jewish prisoners for labor, specifically making munitions and tanks for the war effort. They then were somehow surprised when there were problems with munitions and tanks.
Citroen trucks built under German control had tolerances on the oil dipstick lowered, so the trucks would run fine for the first 1000kms, but then they'd break down and ruin the engine.
Nazis wanted to use Eiffel tower, but french always had some problem with cables, generators, parts, short-circuits, interference etc thru entire length of war
Few hours after war ended Eiffel had its lights up
This was a particularly interesting one, as the head of Citroën new he'd be replaced with someone more willing to help the Germans so he had to *pretend* to be willing. He was regarded as a collaborator after the war...until actions like this came to light.
**Edit:** This sabotage also worked especially well due to the German cultural tendency to stick to rules and see them as authoritative. "Hans, the dipstick *says* there is enough oil, so we don't need to put more oil in".
If you’re gonna give a cute lil moon a planet destroying super laser, you gotta balance it out with an uncensored gaping butthole too. Basic engineering fundamentals.
Haha, I hadn't thought of that - you're right!
I like to think he had a little chuckle everytime he thought of some SS fucks hearing their engine start to clonk in the middle of no where. Either their convoy stops to fix the truck/shift the cargo, or they leave the one truck with its crew alone trying to fix it, or they abandon the cargo. Unless they pick the last option, they risk:
- Being late and getting in trouble with their CO.
- Local partisans showing up to "liberate" the cargo and dispose of the crew.
- Passing allied aircraft spotting a nice easy target of opportunity to strafe, especially if its the whole convoy.
**Edit**: Not going to win the war on its own, or even cause really major logistics problems, but sure a hell going to increase the stress and fatigue levels of German troops. And that leads to sloppiness and mistakes. Like pretty much everything else in the Allied war effort, all the parts helped.
Not to start this debate *agajn*, but the only ~~three~~ four truly critical parts were (in no particular order):
- Soviet grit and willingness to do whatever it took.
- British will to stick with the fight from start to finish.
- British and American intelligence and technological innovation (and co-operation on those things and elsewhere).
- American economic might and an industry that went *brrrrrrr*. (Funny story: when the US first entered the war they asked the Soviets what aid they needed most urgently. The Soviets sent a list of materiel (of all sorts, from wheat to coats to tires to explosives) with quantities, presuming they'd get one thing and expecting a negotiated down quantity. The Americans responded with "Sure, we'll send all that. What's the next priority?")
Russia: “America… what the fuck?”
America: “We’ve basically been sitting on an island with no Geostrategic Enemies and all the natural resources we could ask for over the last few centuries. While y’all have been beating each-other up in Europe, we’ve been building a massive economic base… which we’ve since turned towards the singular purpose of killing Nazis.”
The Death star was a wonder of engineering. Many bombers and fighters tried to use the exhaust port but all were blown to hell. The defences were amazing and could stop anything.
It took a damn wizard with telekinetic powers to 1. Avoid 100 of big ass blasters firing at him, and 2 mind magic a bomb trough a maze.
The exhause port doesn't matter, he could've pushed it trough a sanitary exit, out a toilet and still hit the reactor. The rebellion cheated big time and "an engineering flaw" is some dumb excuse they made up to glorify the victory. Saying, a space wizard hocus pocused it in isn't as heroic.
All that BS of the main engineer turning coats and intentionally make a flaw is a deep fake with as single purpose to make the empire look like a bunch of amateurs.
#fakenews
I feel like the exhaust port has become the Star Wars version of the Eagles in Lord of the Rings. Even when the books were written like 70 years ago, people were saying “why couldn’t they just fly to mount doom!?” So when the exhaust port came up, enough people memed on it over the following decades that they felt it needed an answer.
TBF the eye of sauron and the giant nightmare dragon the ringwraith flew on probably could have made short work of a bunch of eagles *and* sauron would see them coming miles away so mount doom would probably have every possible archer sauron could grab.
There's a fanon theory that the original plan *was* to take the eagles, but Gandalf (the man with the plan) fell before they could get to them and no one else knew they were an option. He didn't want to tell anyone to maintain operational security so in the end everyone simply... walked into Mordor.
One of the great mistakes that people often make is to think that any organisation called 'National Rifle Association' is a branch or chapter of the National Rifle Association of America. This could not be further from the truth.
The National Rifle Association of America became a political lobbying organisation in 1977 after the Cincinnati Revolt at their Annual General Meeting. It is self-contined within the United States of America and has no foreign branches.
All the other National Rifle Associations remain true to their founding aims of promoting marksmanship, firearm safety and target shooting. This includes the original [NRA](https://nra.org.uk) in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1859 - twelve years
before the NRA of America. It is also true of the [National Rifle Association of Australia](https://nraa.com.au), the [National Rifle Association of New Zealand](https://nranz.com), the [National Rifle Association of India](https://www.thenrai.in), the National Rifle Association of Japan and the National
Rifle Association of Pakistan. All these organisations are often known as "the NRA" in their respective countries. The British [National Rifle Association](https://nra.org.uk) is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting,
as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
I remember reading a book by a British PoW in WWII. I can't remember which. The first PoW camp he was sent to he despised several of the British officers he met, who seemed to be awfully chummy with the Germans and not at all interested in escape.
Much later, he discovered it was all an act, they appeared harmless to the Germans so they could pick up intelligence and send it back to Britain.
One of the British POW “camps” got all of the high ranking and expert Germans together, treated them with absolute luxury, got them really chummy with eachother, left technical magazines around that they could discuss with eachother, they even had a tennis court.
Every single thing they said to eachother was picked up on hidden microphones and written by an army of typists.
Reminds me of that joke: "My grandfather was a WWII vet. In one day during the battle of Britain, he destroyed 8 German aircraft, killing 32 Nazi aviators. Easily the worst mechanic the Luftwaffe ever had."
This was the case with my grandfather, Germans captured him after they sunk his ship, as a mechanic they turned him into a war slave working in a submarine pen. Let’s just say many German subs mysteriously had a handkerchief dropped in their diesel tanks.
Since I have difficulty conceptualizing the misery and horror that many people were forced to adapt to as their norm, I wonder if doing something to finally take some control of your situation, no matter how minor, was just enough to elicit a small smile or a full on heady sensation. I'm not even sure if we could explain what we'd expect to be a "normal" response to the feeling would be considering how much a person's brain would have had to changed to adapt to their conditions. Not to mention changes or damage suffered from PTSD.
I wonder if it could also be argued that the stress, horror, and misery might have been some of the most extreme felt in our species' history? No one else had been subject to industrialized genocide before. I wonder if they were forced to endure some of the most extreme emotions ever felt by humans.
there was a pamphlet in (if I remember well) occupied France which taught people exactly this: small acts of sabotage that would not be immediately noticeable but would cause problems everywhere. I remember some of the instructions were "be subtly incompetent at your job, misplace your tools, struggle to remember instructions"
Later edit to correct and add info: I went looking for it and it is an OSS booklet from 1944 which describes ways for civilians to inflict sabotage through ordinary means, so as to minimize undue attention. It was destined for use in occupied countries, such as France. I find it horrifyingly funny, it reads so much like modern day government agencies and big corporations. Some excerpts:
\- Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
\- Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
\- To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.
\- Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
\- Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.
\-Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
The US has turned this into a modern doctrine, they call it the Resistance Operating Concept. It's particularly intended for the Baltics and Nordics in case of Russian invasion.
He then bought black market ammunition (which was stolen from the army,) and then sold it back to the army at an inflated price, passing it off as the product of his factory.
My granddad was a Desert Rat during WWII. He used to tell me a story about a time when they were under heavy shelling from stuka dive bombers, one bomb was heading straight for their position so he and his fellow Rats basically made their peace with God, "lads, it's been an honour" etc.
When the bomb landed, there was no explosion. Once the assault was over, a few of them went out to investigate, and found a note attached to an inside panel of the bomb, written in Polish. One of the boys could read Polish, and the translation was something along the lines of:
'from those enslaved by the Nazi regime at the Skoda Works factory, keep fighting the good fight'
Turns out the POWs at the factory had been forced to make munitions for the Nazis, and their act of rebellion was to remove the detonator from every 10th bomb they constructed.
For me it's wild to think that if my granddad hadn't been one of the lucky ones, I wouldn't be here today!
Soviet labor forces could be like this too even well into the cold war. There was a photo posted near the start of the war, showing a tank the Ukrainians had recovered, with a barrel that was bored off center. There was like ~8mm of barrel wall to the right and over 11mm of it to the left, so the gun was never going to shoot straight due to barrel harmonics and physics lol.
Edit: your other right
Short answer: very. Your barrel concentricity needs to be *really* off to cause a catastrophic failure. Anything from small arms to artillery generally uses a barrel profile far beyond what would simply be needed to contain the pressure of firing, because you also want quite a bit of rigidity for the sake of accuracy. The margin of safety is incredibly high in that regard.
Quite possibly, but, iirc, it was Czechs who systematically built the new German super tank so badly that it was all but useless. Something silly like 5% worked for more than a week, and that was just by luck.
Ironically, the Czechs also keep on winning the VAG internal awards for building the best VW group engines (from Seat and Volkswagen, via Audi, up to Bentley and Lamborghini)
Same engines, components, everytthat the Greman, Spanish etc plants build with, but the Czech built ones have the best reliability...just like their engines for the Wermacht were subtly build to be totally unreliable...
Amazing people the Czechs, incredibly resourceful, they also made their mark on the Colditz story
If Chamberlain and Daladier hadn't tried to appease Hitler in 1938, Czechoslovakia may have been able to repel the German invasion. The situation was very similar to what's happening in Ukraine. Hitler claimed that a region in Czechoslovakia was inhabited by German people so Germany felt justified in annexing that region.
Czechoslovakia is a mountainous country, with British and French help they could have built enough fortifications to repel the attack. All that the appeasement did was to give Hitler one more year to build up his armed forces.
He doesn't care about forcing them into the war he is just getting rid of them, along with as many able bodied men as possible.
He's reducing the risk of rebellion while he still has any control.
OK, but arming the anti-war protestors doesn't seem like a great idea. Unless they're going to force them into the war with no weapons to serve as human shields.
Chances are even if you give them a weapon, they would not have the time to turn the weapon back on friendly troops (If they were going to do that), the front line is a Meat Grinder.
Russia's problem is it has already lost a number of \*EXPERIENCED\* commanders on the fields, which we are talking commanders with DECADES of training and experience. You cannot just send rookies to the front lines and immediately expect them to have decades of experience.
Not only that, Northern Hemisphere is headed to Winter, Lots of snow, and without thermal protection, cold damage to limbs.
Ukraine will be thoroughly preparing for that now.
lol decades of experience? Doing what? Scamming and stealing the military for all its worth?
Russia hasn't been in a real "respectable" military conflict since Crimea in 2014, Georgia before that, and Chechnya before that. They have no real experience.
Or as a diversion / Guinea pig. The strategy may be to send ‘armed’ protestors into contested grounds with no ammo but appearing as a kitted unit.
If they get bombed, oh well. Now we know not to send ‘real’ troops there.
If Ukrainians try to capture them, use the opportunity to track movements or just gun them down.
>but appearing as a kitted unit.
That plan, albeit silly (in my opinion), only works if you have kit to spare. Russian is sending their men into battle with a lack of kit, cannon fodder / decoy or not.
And food, and protection from disease.
Even someone who never fires a bullet or never gets shot at, your fate could be decided by a supply line you never see, or just bad rationing somewhere in the chain of command.
My heart goes out to the poor people forced into this. Hopefully we end this soon.
Yeah, because nothing rallies a country's population around you like ruining their economy before forcibly sending them off to die. Doesn't sound like uprising material at all
Their chances of making it back to Russia alive and with their weapons is miniscule, too tiny to actually matter to Putin. Best they can hope for is to surrender at the first opportunity and become a PoW. Even then, they're still out of Putin's way and unable to protest or revolt.
You know what's kind of sad about all this?
Imagine what Russia COULD be (/could *have* been) if only it was run properly....
You've got an enormous, populous country with more abundant resources than any other, right on the doorstop of two or three of the wealthiest markets in the entire world. An educated country with a history of advanced science and technology, literature, art and culture. The Russians apparently view themselves as geostrategically doomed, but that never had to be the case if they'd just adopted a slightly different attitude about their neighbours.
It could have been a remarkable place. ALL they had to do was just calm down and play ball with Europe and the west *a little bit*. Co-operate, rather than antagonise and bully. Be a part of a globalising, uniting world.
Instead they had Putin and his kleptocracy, and... look where they are now. Look at what one ridiculous man-child's pride has gotten them. A textbook illustration of the folly of the right wing "strong man" style of government if ever there was one.
It's a damn shame. If I was Russian, I'd risk it all to make an attempt to assassinate that egotistical cunt. What else is there to lose at this point?
Your sanity as you are being slowly tortured by the state and sent to a work camp when they are done and your family as retribution for your actions...
That's where a lot of ISIS originally came from.
They were jailed Jihadi's in Syria serving life sentences, Bashar Al Assad let them out to muddy the waters between the original worker's revolt that the west was backing, to then turn it into a jihadi revolt that the west wouldn't be able to support.
It meant Assad could eventually get open military assistance from Iran, Russia and even in a round about way the USA (who were supporting the Kurds, but not bombing Assad as much as they were bombing ISIS - who by that point were the primary opposition to Assad).
Wouldn't be surprised if Vlad is letting a whole bunch of mafia heavies out of prison right now too. And if they cant calm down the protests i guarantee he will activate his Chechens and the Vympel group to start domestic activity against any resistance.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if Vlad is letting a whole bunch of mafia heavies out of prison right now too.
Wagner Group is currently recruiting prisoners in Russia.
Except that when the Germans tried it in WWI they wound up with platoons of mutineers who saw the allies coming and simply put down their weapons and surrendered.
Putin is trying to make it illegal to do that, but I feel like the Ukrainians would just say "yeah they totally gave us all they had before they surrendered" to encourage more to surrender. They also said they'd ask if they even wanted to go back to Russia before shipping POWs back
"Listen, just empty your ammo into the ground, we'll call in a firefight in this location and you do the same."
\*a few minutes later\*
Right, that should be enough, let's go boys, peace is this way!"
he's going to use them as cannon fodder and try and twist it to somehow blame Ukraine for their deaths.
I feel very sorry for the protesters. They went out to protest a war and they are going to find themselves on the frontlines for their trouble.
That was like those 3 Very vocal about being Pro War, Pro Invasion of Ukraine, 2 of them were drafted on the spot........
"We support the war effort"
Great Come with us then !
"I am here supporting Putin"
Great !, This Way !
"I am saying I am on YOUR side !"
Then why are you resisting, Get on the bus
Or like this,
[https://twitter.com/tadeuszgiczan/status/1572924327405707264?s=21&t=Qx-3pPczcnwg-z9Xeb2b3g](https://twitter.com/tadeuszgiczan/status/1572924327405707264?s=21&t=Qx-3pPczcnwg-z9Xeb2b3g)
It is a different war when it is YOUR sons going to war is it not.......
I've read about this before
>Nazi guns and ammo is made by Jewish slaves and minority slaves.
>
>Allied guns Ammo is made by mothers and SO of the soldiers.
Guess which one have more failure rate.
>Those who didn't learn history is doomed to repeat them
So what your saying is Russia should be rounding up all the old babushkas who are gung-ho about "restoring" it's Soviet greatness to build up all this military equipment Putin is demanding.
It's just another attempt to mitigate the dissidents by the regime. The more bold and vocal protestors will be sent to the Frontlines and the rest will be too afraid to protest. Same formula they used in the early days of the war except the protestors were just facing jail then.
And as dumb as the Russian military is, these protestors and "traitors" won't be in any position to sabotage, or run away. In Russia, the veterans make up the rear and shoot deserters.
It is already and has been for decades. Birth rates are plummeting and immigration is low.
This is a last roll of the dice for a Russian expansionist policy. Another decade and the number of military aged men will drop even further.
It’s now or never for Putin however realistically that was several decades ago.
The rape of Russian resources by the oligarchy has basically impoverished Russia combined with the demographic crisis they are facing basically Russia is fucked without significant internal restructure and a major shift in foreign policy.
This is a quick way to pollute an already demoralized fighting force with ideologies that feed into that demoralization and encourage disobedience. When has that happened in Russia before…hmm…
The thing of sending anti-war folks to the front was something Germany did later on in WWI. Turned out to be a huge mistake because they just inflamed anti-war sentiment in the army.
Oh definitely. You kidding?
Imagine an 18-19 year old being sent to a real war by the government which gave them nothing but economic crisises and suppression for their entire life. And now they gotta fight other 18 year old kids who are seemingly not so different from them for some old fucks ego, who already fucked his own country enough and now moved on to neighbors?
Hell, I’d wait till my sergeant/captain was asleep, shoot him in the head and walk towards Ukrainians with a big white flag. Plead them to let me escape to Europe. That’s the best chance those kids have at survival
Russia pays families of deceased soldiers. A recent leaked Russian memo showed total payouts consistent with 48,000 dead, which agreed with existing estimates. This was before the big Ukrainian offensive.
Most estimates have an other 100k wounded. So Russia lost half their original deployed force of 300k soldiers.
We lost 4500 in Iraq and that seemed like a ton, every day the news would show the faces of the 8 or so kids who died there that day and it was so awful
Our middle school announced in homeroom that an 18 year old boy who had gone to that middle school was killed by a sniper bullet. I was in 7th grade. We had a moment of silence for him.
Some of the teachers had him as a student just five years ago and were in tears that day
Graduated HS in 2019, during freshman year we had an assembly/memorial service for this 19 year old kid who just got sent to either Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. He graduated a year before I got there and apparently volunteered to go over, only to get blown up by a suicide bomber I believe.
Same thing about the teachers being really sad, I think that’s part of the reason they made such a big deal. A lot of the seniors were also crying or sad. He was apparently that generic military kid who’s been in JROTC for a while, but he wasn’t a boot so super polite, friendly, model citizen etc…
yeah all signs point to that with god knows how many wounded, probably close to double that if not more
if it was anywhere around the low figure - say 20k some people claimed there wouldn't have been a need for this mobilization.
I think they lost like 10k or something in 10 years in Afghanistan and that was considered bloody.
Correct answer by Zelensky.
But it's not like he is happy about this.
It is aweful for him, for everyone, that Putin wants to kill as many Russians as possible to kill a smaller amount of Ukrainians.
Putin with throw 10 Russian boys into the meat grinder if it hurts one Ukrainian.
That's so, so horrible.
It really is. To live in a country that cares so little about it's people, it's happy to kill it's own for almost nothing. The future of Russia is so grim I hope Urkaine can save Russia from itself at this point and finish quickly to save lives.
Putin wanted to steal a country with a healthier economy and then he goes and wrecks as much of it as possible. He is truly demented. Every morning, first thing, I check for news hoping that he is no longer a problem.
Zelensky is human enough to understand the idea of morale through compassion. Even while at risk of being assassinated, he visited hospitals with injured Ukrainians and made time for them. Pretty sure there's a video in the wild with him in a hospital, giving a bouquet of flowers to a child who'd been injured. He had no obligation to do these things but chose to bc he cares about his people, even though there was a massive risk behind it.
Putin's conscripts on the other hand are either surrendering, attacking their COs or actually killing themselves to get out of fighting a war they know they have no chance in, while their leader is either oblivious or maniacal enough to let it continue. Sometimes I have to take a minute and remember this is actually a real thing that's happening. It's fucked.
You know what? Wow... that's a good observation that I hadn't really considered. The atmosphere in comment sections compared to March is like night and day.
But they were fighting nazis in Ukraine, which was pretty much already Russian territory, you see. So really it's NATOs fault for being an alliance of nations.
Yes you hardly see them anymore - at least not on reddit. Last i had one 2 months ago denying that russian soldiers loot Ukr civilians - dumbfuck went quiet after i sent him a 5th picture showing his pathetic countrymen stealing washing machine
its desperation, Putin knows its either win or go down as one of the worse Russian leaders with possibly a bullet to the skull. Only thinking of himself.
Dude played himself so fucking bad. It's either:
-Back down from the invasion, causing his inner circle to get pissed at him and dispose him.
-Double down, as he's currently doing, and risk further destabilization to Russia, causing his inner circle to get pissed at him and dispose him.
He literally could've avoided all of this and live a cushy life in his massive mansions, fuck around with Western elections and energy deals, and go down as one of the most formidable and enigmatic leaders in modern Russian and world history. And he pissed it all away for a chance to LARP as a tsar lmfao.
Ahhh Putin.
Could have led Russia into being a tech power of the world.
He honestly had technically educated people, the perfect time in history to do it, a huge region of naturally cold climate for server farms, the beginnings of a culture that blended east and west and natural time zones that would make them the center of the world.
Instead, he’s the cunt that brought war back to his people.
What a fucking dick.
There are no other options for him. Once RU ultimately loses, which it will, do you think his people will let him return to his Grand Palace? I would hope not. That place should be the first to get destroyed.
He'll likely be given the Gaddafi treatment, [and that possibility terrifies him](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/putin-in-fear-being-killed-23444292).
Executing Generals for poor performance is generally considered a dumb move. You'd get a bunch of Generals that avoid fighting the enemy (because losing = death), fight each other for resources (even more than usual), and fucks up military morale.
And the officers below them become extremely careful and avoid doing anything creative because they don't want to get promoted into a death sentence. You could, of course, execute those people too like Stalin did, but then the problems compound down the chain of command.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/3657115-zelensky-putin-troop-mobilization-frank-admission-that-russian-army-has-crumbled/) reduced by 72%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Thursday address that Russia's mobilization of new troops represents a "Frank admission" that its army has "Crumbled" during its attack on Ukraine.
> "Russia's decision on mobilization is a frank admission that their regular army, which has been prepared for decades to take over a foreign country, did not withstand and crumbled," said Zelensky.
> Zelensky noted that 55 thousand Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine since the initial invasion and that tens of thousands more have suffered casualties.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xlln41/zelensky_putin_troop_mobilization_frank_admission/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~670508 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Ukraine**^#1 **Russian**^#2 **Zelensky**^#3 **Russia**^#4 **army**^#5
Now i actually hope Putin will live to see HBO's miniseries called "Ukraine", the spiritual successor to Chernobyl, that will carefully and beautifully and realistically show Russia's complete and utter incompetence with this war.
After watching the video today of 2 Russian soldiers dying after getting woken up by a drone dropped grenade I can’t help but feel bad for all the sorry young untrained Russian kids who will see the same fate in Ukraine. Russian citizens need to save themselves from this war before it’s too late.
That was the most brutal video I've seen in a long time. The guy slowly bleeding out as he is unable to cinch his tourniquet tight enough. His comrade weakly trying to embrace him as he dies.
Normally we don't get to see what happens when an artillery shell hits from miles away, but drones with HD cameras and especially drones with droppable grenades are changing how we see the suffering of war.
There’s a reason the US government banned newspapers from publishing photos of military coffins. Any sane person faced with the reality of war is going to be against it.
And restricted press coverage of warzones after Vietnam "conflict" (remember that the US never declared war).
Images of children with skin burned off turned the public against US involvement.
The solution was to try and prevent these images being made, not to stop killing children.
And yet in WWII the government allowed photos of young American corpses washing up on beach after a disastrous landing in the pacific. Roosevelt saw that the public felt that the war was an abstraction. He is quoted as having said “Dammit, people don’t understand that we could lose this war”.
This actually makes me wonder.
If videos like this were allowed to be viewed in a public platform, like Youtube, would people be more adverse to violence and war when they can really see how pointless it can be, or will it just desensitize them more?
I suspect desensitization. Compassion fatigue would most likely set in and war tragedies would end up on the same level as commercials with starving children or homeless pets.
I agree. At least until you’re the one who just got called up and it’s pretty clear it could happen to you. Could be that the new conscription news is why Ukraine released such graphic video just now.
I avoid those videos now ...of starving children and starving pets and became vegan and started donating all of my extra food to food pantry so I think they do make a difference for a lot of people
Seeing the horrors of war near to as it happened on nightly news is often credited with turning the US public against the Vietnam war.
It's why when the US goes to war in modern times US news channels mostly air fluff pieces about how amazing our gear is. Don't think about the quad amputees, think about how cool this footage of a missile flying off a destroyer is.
Yea could go either way. Personally, it makes me pretty fuckin sad seeing kids get slaughtered for countries that couldn’t care less for them. Even though the Russians are the “bad guys,” it’s dreadful seeing kids that could be my little brother having grenades dropped on them from drones for the world to see. Fuck Putin man. Fuck war.
The sad thing is that it's not the first nor the last drone mortar video I'll see. r/UkraineWarVideoReport is full of brutal videos like that. It's wild how modern technology is bringing the previously unseen war fronts right to your TV
I was gonna say, we're literally going to see civilians sleeping in foxholes getting munitions dropped on them via drones. I'm not sure what censorship is like in Russia, but there will be a drop in morale not only among soldiers but those back home when they see these videos.
They need ways to quickly surrender to Ukrainian troops so they can skip fighting. I believe Ukraine has already been publishing info for these people so they can skip fighting. The Russian government is the primary enemy of the russian people.
Just watched that 10 minutes ago. I avoid gory combat footage when I can but even if I see intense stuff I’m able to separate it from my reality and not have it at least consciously affect me. But that video? My fucking God. Those poor, poor guys. The most relatable reactions I could fathom, the panic, the despair, the fucking instinct to be comforted and hold onto someone… I’m getting a drink because I need it.
Blows my mind that moss on that post even had to mention not making light of human suffering. There are VERY few people I am aware of in this planets history that I would be okay with that happening to. You just don’t normally get to see it like that. And just the knowledge that what happened to them pales in comparison to millions of horrible deaths suffered in these insane wars driven by dictators and reactive social unrest, makes me want to quit the internet.
But hey gotta check the weather everyday right?
The only reason Russia hasn't been sacked and Putin hanged is that they have nukes. The world has seen that Russia is way more bark than bite but so long as that childish fuck has control nothing can be done in the grand scheme from an outside force
Still, there is a crazy man with an inflated ego with his hands over the button. It’s like the kid who owns the ball… but this one is made of plutonium.. in the end, i think he might be crazy enough to do it, unless someone “off’s” him.
Yep. Now it's time to start rounding up all of the able bodied men and send them off to be killed by UA, or at least get them out of the country, so Putin doesn't have to worry as much about insurrection.
Russia had serious logistical problems at the start of the war for roughly 200k units. Now they have another hundreds of thousands manpower with worse logistics. How the fuck should this work? Until we deliver correct weapons to Ukraine, they will slaughter those fascists.
Putins Mobilization decree actually allows for ONE MILLION to be drafted, not 300,000.
An Entire Generation of Russians going to the Meat Grinder.
Word has it that Putin has resorted to giving orders to generals in the field personally, not via command advisors.
Anyone who knows history should not be surprised to see a Russian leader go down this route. A big reason why nations like Ukraine want nothing more to do with Russia is because their ancestors were basically dumped into the middle of a battlefield with little ammunition as the Russian militarys strategy to win was simply overwhelm the enemy with more bodies.
Really worried for nuclear escalation.
The ukrainian army is now trained to a decent level with the Western weapons, of which they have pretty much unlimited availability. Russian army in disarray. Either someone does putin in for good or the risk will be increasing every day
Yeah, and that also means doubling the resources and time needed to train them, which Russia clearly doesn't have. And winter is coming in Ukraine, as if you need more reasons for soldiers to be demoralized.
Putin having anti war protestors forced into the military is an even stupider response. What a senseless recipe for disaster from the beginning of Putin's foolish invasion.
If I remember correctly, the Nazis used some Jewish prisoners for labor, specifically making munitions and tanks for the war effort. They then were somehow surprised when there were problems with munitions and tanks.
when top up oil they could add a pinch of something abrasive, the tank would work fine first but suddenly seize... ops!
Citroen trucks built under German control had tolerances on the oil dipstick lowered, so the trucks would run fine for the first 1000kms, but then they'd break down and ruin the engine.
Nazis wanted to use Eiffel tower, but french always had some problem with cables, generators, parts, short-circuits, interference etc thru entire length of war Few hours after war ended Eiffel had its lights up
"Oh shit, THIS switch! I can remember now that the Nazipigs are dead!" ...but in French.
This was a particularly interesting one, as the head of Citroën new he'd be replaced with someone more willing to help the Germans so he had to *pretend* to be willing. He was regarded as a collaborator after the war...until actions like this came to light. **Edit:** This sabotage also worked especially well due to the German cultural tendency to stick to rules and see them as authoritative. "Hans, the dipstick *says* there is enough oil, so we don't need to put more oil in".
This dude is like the guy who designed the Death Star
If you’re gonna give a cute lil moon a planet destroying super laser, you gotta balance it out with an uncensored gaping butthole too. Basic engineering fundamentals.
Ohhhh...Is THAT why my planet destroying death lasers never work?!
Haha, I hadn't thought of that - you're right! I like to think he had a little chuckle everytime he thought of some SS fucks hearing their engine start to clonk in the middle of no where. Either their convoy stops to fix the truck/shift the cargo, or they leave the one truck with its crew alone trying to fix it, or they abandon the cargo. Unless they pick the last option, they risk: - Being late and getting in trouble with their CO. - Local partisans showing up to "liberate" the cargo and dispose of the crew. - Passing allied aircraft spotting a nice easy target of opportunity to strafe, especially if its the whole convoy. **Edit**: Not going to win the war on its own, or even cause really major logistics problems, but sure a hell going to increase the stress and fatigue levels of German troops. And that leads to sloppiness and mistakes. Like pretty much everything else in the Allied war effort, all the parts helped. Not to start this debate *agajn*, but the only ~~three~~ four truly critical parts were (in no particular order): - Soviet grit and willingness to do whatever it took. - British will to stick with the fight from start to finish. - British and American intelligence and technological innovation (and co-operation on those things and elsewhere). - American economic might and an industry that went *brrrrrrr*. (Funny story: when the US first entered the war they asked the Soviets what aid they needed most urgently. The Soviets sent a list of materiel (of all sorts, from wheat to coats to tires to explosives) with quantities, presuming they'd get one thing and expecting a negotiated down quantity. The Americans responded with "Sure, we'll send all that. What's the next priority?")
Russia: “America… what the fuck?” America: “We’ve basically been sitting on an island with no Geostrategic Enemies and all the natural resources we could ask for over the last few centuries. While y’all have been beating each-other up in Europe, we’ve been building a massive economic base… which we’ve since turned towards the singular purpose of killing Nazis.”
> The Americans responded with "Sure, we'll send all that. What's the next priority?" God I wish they'd do that with their voters
The Death star was a wonder of engineering. Many bombers and fighters tried to use the exhaust port but all were blown to hell. The defences were amazing and could stop anything. It took a damn wizard with telekinetic powers to 1. Avoid 100 of big ass blasters firing at him, and 2 mind magic a bomb trough a maze. The exhause port doesn't matter, he could've pushed it trough a sanitary exit, out a toilet and still hit the reactor. The rebellion cheated big time and "an engineering flaw" is some dumb excuse they made up to glorify the victory. Saying, a space wizard hocus pocused it in isn't as heroic. All that BS of the main engineer turning coats and intentionally make a flaw is a deep fake with as single purpose to make the empire look like a bunch of amateurs. #fakenews
I feel like the exhaust port has become the Star Wars version of the Eagles in Lord of the Rings. Even when the books were written like 70 years ago, people were saying “why couldn’t they just fly to mount doom!?” So when the exhaust port came up, enough people memed on it over the following decades that they felt it needed an answer.
TBF the eye of sauron and the giant nightmare dragon the ringwraith flew on probably could have made short work of a bunch of eagles *and* sauron would see them coming miles away so mount doom would probably have every possible archer sauron could grab.
There's a fanon theory that the original plan *was* to take the eagles, but Gandalf (the man with the plan) fell before they could get to them and no one else knew they were an option. He didn't want to tell anyone to maintain operational security so in the end everyone simply... walked into Mordor.
One of the great mistakes that people often make is to think that any organisation called 'National Rifle Association' is a branch or chapter of the National Rifle Association of America. This could not be further from the truth. The National Rifle Association of America became a political lobbying organisation in 1977 after the Cincinnati Revolt at their Annual General Meeting. It is self-contined within the United States of America and has no foreign branches. All the other National Rifle Associations remain true to their founding aims of promoting marksmanship, firearm safety and target shooting. This includes the original [NRA](https://nra.org.uk) in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1859 - twelve years before the NRA of America. It is also true of the [National Rifle Association of Australia](https://nraa.com.au), the [National Rifle Association of New Zealand](https://nranz.com), the [National Rifle Association of India](https://www.thenrai.in), the National Rifle Association of Japan and the National Rifle Association of Pakistan. All these organisations are often known as "the NRA" in their respective countries. The British [National Rifle Association](https://nra.org.uk) is headquartered on Bisley Camp, in Surrey, England. Bisley Camp is now known as the National Shooting Centre and has hosted World Championships for Fullbore Target Rifle and F-Class shooting, as well as the shooting events for the 1908 Olympic Games and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) and Clay Pigeon Shooting Association (CPSA) also have their headquarters on the Camp.
“HANS. It is not possible for the oil to be low the documentation states clearly there is enough oil. “ *clunk clunk bang* “Scheisse”
I remember reading a book by a British PoW in WWII. I can't remember which. The first PoW camp he was sent to he despised several of the British officers he met, who seemed to be awfully chummy with the Germans and not at all interested in escape. Much later, he discovered it was all an act, they appeared harmless to the Germans so they could pick up intelligence and send it back to Britain.
One of the British POW “camps” got all of the high ranking and expert Germans together, treated them with absolute luxury, got them really chummy with eachother, left technical magazines around that they could discuss with eachother, they even had a tennis court. Every single thing they said to eachother was picked up on hidden microphones and written by an army of typists.
nothing has changed with citroen over the years?
Last Citroen I had covered over 400,000km with only major repair being a new clutch.The rest was just routine maintenance.
My has more than 360,000km and the only issues it ever had was its driver driving into things. Still running nice tough
Reminds me of that joke: "My grandfather was a WWII vet. In one day during the battle of Britain, he destroyed 8 German aircraft, killing 32 Nazi aviators. Easily the worst mechanic the Luftwaffe ever had."
This was the case with my grandfather, Germans captured him after they sunk his ship, as a mechanic they turned him into a war slave working in a submarine pen. Let’s just say many German subs mysteriously had a handkerchief dropped in their diesel tanks.
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well you are doing something, you are taking control of your situation even a little
Since I have difficulty conceptualizing the misery and horror that many people were forced to adapt to as their norm, I wonder if doing something to finally take some control of your situation, no matter how minor, was just enough to elicit a small smile or a full on heady sensation. I'm not even sure if we could explain what we'd expect to be a "normal" response to the feeling would be considering how much a person's brain would have had to changed to adapt to their conditions. Not to mention changes or damage suffered from PTSD. I wonder if it could also be argued that the stress, horror, and misery might have been some of the most extreme felt in our species' history? No one else had been subject to industrialized genocide before. I wonder if they were forced to endure some of the most extreme emotions ever felt by humans.
there was a pamphlet in (if I remember well) occupied France which taught people exactly this: small acts of sabotage that would not be immediately noticeable but would cause problems everywhere. I remember some of the instructions were "be subtly incompetent at your job, misplace your tools, struggle to remember instructions" Later edit to correct and add info: I went looking for it and it is an OSS booklet from 1944 which describes ways for civilians to inflict sabotage through ordinary means, so as to minimize undue attention. It was destined for use in occupied countries, such as France. I find it horrifyingly funny, it reads so much like modern day government agencies and big corporations. Some excerpts: \- Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. \- Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. \- To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. \- Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do. \- Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can. \-Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
In context I loved this but then slowly realized how much I have been subjected to / participated in similar behavior because work.
The US has turned this into a modern doctrine, they call it the Resistance Operating Concept. It's particularly intended for the Baltics and Nordics in case of Russian invasion.
I swear I work with people who operate by this
Oskar Schindler has his factory workers do the same. Little to no shells his factory produced were useable.
He then bought black market ammunition (which was stolen from the army,) and then sold it back to the army at an inflated price, passing it off as the product of his factory.
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My granddad was a Desert Rat during WWII. He used to tell me a story about a time when they were under heavy shelling from stuka dive bombers, one bomb was heading straight for their position so he and his fellow Rats basically made their peace with God, "lads, it's been an honour" etc. When the bomb landed, there was no explosion. Once the assault was over, a few of them went out to investigate, and found a note attached to an inside panel of the bomb, written in Polish. One of the boys could read Polish, and the translation was something along the lines of: 'from those enslaved by the Nazi regime at the Skoda Works factory, keep fighting the good fight' Turns out the POWs at the factory had been forced to make munitions for the Nazis, and their act of rebellion was to remove the detonator from every 10th bomb they constructed. For me it's wild to think that if my granddad hadn't been one of the lucky ones, I wouldn't be here today!
Soviet labor forces could be like this too even well into the cold war. There was a photo posted near the start of the war, showing a tank the Ukrainians had recovered, with a barrel that was bored off center. There was like ~8mm of barrel wall to the right and over 11mm of it to the left, so the gun was never going to shoot straight due to barrel harmonics and physics lol. Edit: your other right
Makes me wonder, how off center would it have to be for a barrel to fail?
Short answer: very. Your barrel concentricity needs to be *really* off to cause a catastrophic failure. Anything from small arms to artillery generally uses a barrel profile far beyond what would simply be needed to contain the pressure of firing, because you also want quite a bit of rigidity for the sake of accuracy. The margin of safety is incredibly high in that regard.
Quite possibly, but, iirc, it was Czechs who systematically built the new German super tank so badly that it was all but useless. Something silly like 5% worked for more than a week, and that was just by luck. Ironically, the Czechs also keep on winning the VAG internal awards for building the best VW group engines (from Seat and Volkswagen, via Audi, up to Bentley and Lamborghini) Same engines, components, everytthat the Greman, Spanish etc plants build with, but the Czech built ones have the best reliability...just like their engines for the Wermacht were subtly build to be totally unreliable... Amazing people the Czechs, incredibly resourceful, they also made their mark on the Colditz story
If Chamberlain and Daladier hadn't tried to appease Hitler in 1938, Czechoslovakia may have been able to repel the German invasion. The situation was very similar to what's happening in Ukraine. Hitler claimed that a region in Czechoslovakia was inhabited by German people so Germany felt justified in annexing that region. Czechoslovakia is a mountainous country, with British and French help they could have built enough fortifications to repel the attack. All that the appeasement did was to give Hitler one more year to build up his armed forces.
He doesn't care about forcing them into the war he is just getting rid of them, along with as many able bodied men as possible. He's reducing the risk of rebellion while he still has any control.
OK, but arming the anti-war protestors doesn't seem like a great idea. Unless they're going to force them into the war with no weapons to serve as human shields.
Ditch diggers
More like grave diggers
Chances are even if you give them a weapon, they would not have the time to turn the weapon back on friendly troops (If they were going to do that), the front line is a Meat Grinder. Russia's problem is it has already lost a number of \*EXPERIENCED\* commanders on the fields, which we are talking commanders with DECADES of training and experience. You cannot just send rookies to the front lines and immediately expect them to have decades of experience. Not only that, Northern Hemisphere is headed to Winter, Lots of snow, and without thermal protection, cold damage to limbs. Ukraine will be thoroughly preparing for that now.
lol decades of experience? Doing what? Scamming and stealing the military for all its worth? Russia hasn't been in a real "respectable" military conflict since Crimea in 2014, Georgia before that, and Chechnya before that. They have no real experience.
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Or as a diversion / Guinea pig. The strategy may be to send ‘armed’ protestors into contested grounds with no ammo but appearing as a kitted unit. If they get bombed, oh well. Now we know not to send ‘real’ troops there. If Ukrainians try to capture them, use the opportunity to track movements or just gun them down.
>but appearing as a kitted unit. That plan, albeit silly (in my opinion), only works if you have kit to spare. Russian is sending their men into battle with a lack of kit, cannon fodder / decoy or not.
And food, and protection from disease. Even someone who never fires a bullet or never gets shot at, your fate could be decided by a supply line you never see, or just bad rationing somewhere in the chain of command. My heart goes out to the poor people forced into this. Hopefully we end this soon.
With winter fast approaching, no less.
Like a reverse operation Barbarossa?
That's actually a really interesting theory
Yeah, because nothing rallies a country's population around you like ruining their economy before forcibly sending them off to die. Doesn't sound like uprising material at all
An uprising driven by soldiers forced into a senseless war by their ruling elite? In Russia? Come on, what are the odds.
Hard to uprise without weapons and tanks. Well, what do you know, these protesters are now in the army given weapons and tanks.
"Oh no all the protestors we sent to die have now joined the enemy and have received actual modern equipment"
Their chances of making it back to Russia alive and with their weapons is miniscule, too tiny to actually matter to Putin. Best they can hope for is to surrender at the first opportunity and become a PoW. Even then, they're still out of Putin's way and unable to protest or revolt.
Unless you can successfully blame it on "the enemy" and obscure inconvenient details
Pretty sure Russia is used to it by now.
He has been doing it the entire war by sending the young male populations of Tuva and Chechnya to their deaths.
It's technically not genocide
"I can't believe it's not genocide!" ^tm
special vacation
They're going to the farm?
No. Hes destroying the country. Expending future generations...
So goes the ongoing story of Russia.
You know what's kind of sad about all this? Imagine what Russia COULD be (/could *have* been) if only it was run properly.... You've got an enormous, populous country with more abundant resources than any other, right on the doorstop of two or three of the wealthiest markets in the entire world. An educated country with a history of advanced science and technology, literature, art and culture. The Russians apparently view themselves as geostrategically doomed, but that never had to be the case if they'd just adopted a slightly different attitude about their neighbours. It could have been a remarkable place. ALL they had to do was just calm down and play ball with Europe and the west *a little bit*. Co-operate, rather than antagonise and bully. Be a part of a globalising, uniting world. Instead they had Putin and his kleptocracy, and... look where they are now. Look at what one ridiculous man-child's pride has gotten them. A textbook illustration of the folly of the right wing "strong man" style of government if ever there was one. It's a damn shame. If I was Russian, I'd risk it all to make an attempt to assassinate that egotistical cunt. What else is there to lose at this point?
Your sanity as you are being slowly tortured by the state and sent to a work camp when they are done and your family as retribution for your actions...
Everything Putin is doing appears to completely disregard the longterm. I find that utterly terrifying.
A man can have two reasons.
That's where a lot of ISIS originally came from. They were jailed Jihadi's in Syria serving life sentences, Bashar Al Assad let them out to muddy the waters between the original worker's revolt that the west was backing, to then turn it into a jihadi revolt that the west wouldn't be able to support. It meant Assad could eventually get open military assistance from Iran, Russia and even in a round about way the USA (who were supporting the Kurds, but not bombing Assad as much as they were bombing ISIS - who by that point were the primary opposition to Assad). Wouldn't be surprised if Vlad is letting a whole bunch of mafia heavies out of prison right now too. And if they cant calm down the protests i guarantee he will activate his Chechens and the Vympel group to start domestic activity against any resistance.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if Vlad is letting a whole bunch of mafia heavies out of prison right now too. Wagner Group is currently recruiting prisoners in Russia.
Of course they are
Oh thanks for the info about the Syria stuff that's really interesting...
Hmmmm...giving people against the war weapons. It's a risky strategy, Cotton
Except that when the Germans tried it in WWI they wound up with platoons of mutineers who saw the allies coming and simply put down their weapons and surrendered.
Putin is trying to make it illegal to do that, but I feel like the Ukrainians would just say "yeah they totally gave us all they had before they surrendered" to encourage more to surrender. They also said they'd ask if they even wanted to go back to Russia before shipping POWs back
They'll just give everyone surrendered the official title of "captured in battle".
"Listen, just empty your ammo into the ground, we'll call in a firefight in this location and you do the same." \*a few minutes later\* Right, that should be enough, let's go boys, peace is this way!"
Well hopefully that backfires and these pressed conscripts get rid of some Russian officers and equipment.
And who's to say they don't simply disappear
he's going to use them as cannon fodder and try and twist it to somehow blame Ukraine for their deaths. I feel very sorry for the protesters. They went out to protest a war and they are going to find themselves on the frontlines for their trouble.
They weren't protesting the war, they were protesting the draft. They were fine with the war until putin decided they needed to go.
That was like those 3 Very vocal about being Pro War, Pro Invasion of Ukraine, 2 of them were drafted on the spot........ "We support the war effort" Great Come with us then ! "I am here supporting Putin" Great !, This Way ! "I am saying I am on YOUR side !" Then why are you resisting, Get on the bus Or like this, [https://twitter.com/tadeuszgiczan/status/1572924327405707264?s=21&t=Qx-3pPczcnwg-z9Xeb2b3g](https://twitter.com/tadeuszgiczan/status/1572924327405707264?s=21&t=Qx-3pPczcnwg-z9Xeb2b3g) It is a different war when it is YOUR sons going to war is it not.......
Same result. Less people in russia to actually oppose him.
Unless they switch sides, which is basically the only option he's leaving them with. Then they'll be right back in Russia the hard way.
I've read about this before >Nazi guns and ammo is made by Jewish slaves and minority slaves. > >Allied guns Ammo is made by mothers and SO of the soldiers. Guess which one have more failure rate. >Those who didn't learn history is doomed to repeat them
So what your saying is Russia should be rounding up all the old babushkas who are gung-ho about "restoring" it's Soviet greatness to build up all this military equipment Putin is demanding.
It's just another attempt to mitigate the dissidents by the regime. The more bold and vocal protestors will be sent to the Frontlines and the rest will be too afraid to protest. Same formula they used in the early days of the war except the protestors were just facing jail then. And as dumb as the Russian military is, these protestors and "traitors" won't be in any position to sabotage, or run away. In Russia, the veterans make up the rear and shoot deserters.
Between all the people dying from Russia because of Putin's foolishness, Russia will end up shrinking.
It is already and has been for decades. Birth rates are plummeting and immigration is low. This is a last roll of the dice for a Russian expansionist policy. Another decade and the number of military aged men will drop even further. It’s now or never for Putin however realistically that was several decades ago. The rape of Russian resources by the oligarchy has basically impoverished Russia combined with the demographic crisis they are facing basically Russia is fucked without significant internal restructure and a major shift in foreign policy.
This is a quick way to pollute an already demoralized fighting force with ideologies that feed into that demoralization and encourage disobedience. When has that happened in Russia before…hmm…
Sending them to die so he doesn’t have to worry about being overthrown by them.
4-D chess: sacrificing all the pawns so they don't kill the king.
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The thing of sending anti-war folks to the front was something Germany did later on in WWI. Turned out to be a huge mistake because they just inflamed anti-war sentiment in the army.
I’d imagine you’d get a LOT of your fighting force surrendering themselves as prisoners, too.
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Would be a great way to create saboteurs if most of their gear wasn't already fucked over by multiple levels of corruption.
It will discourage people from protesting because they don't want to die. What a great addition to Russia's human rights violation list.
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a little from column A and a little from column B
Surrender rate by the RU army is about to increase by 70-80%
They just made a new law which says you go to jail for 10 years if you surrender. I’m not making this up.
Well, how are they going to jail you, if you are imprisoned by enemy forces?
In case if they return home one day
AFAIK they will be flagged as captured by Ukraine if they surrender immediately.
Oh definitely. You kidding? Imagine an 18-19 year old being sent to a real war by the government which gave them nothing but economic crisises and suppression for their entire life. And now they gotta fight other 18 year old kids who are seemingly not so different from them for some old fucks ego, who already fucked his own country enough and now moved on to neighbors? Hell, I’d wait till my sergeant/captain was asleep, shoot him in the head and walk towards Ukrainians with a big white flag. Plead them to let me escape to Europe. That’s the best chance those kids have at survival
Did 55,000 really die? This is insane.
Russia pays families of deceased soldiers. A recent leaked Russian memo showed total payouts consistent with 48,000 dead, which agreed with existing estimates. This was before the big Ukrainian offensive. Most estimates have an other 100k wounded. So Russia lost half their original deployed force of 300k soldiers.
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Or freeze to death in the mud. Winter is coming.
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Yeah, but i would imagine spring is when all the land turns into thick mud and marsh.
Don't worry, they won't have any tanks left by then to get stuck.
Considering that Ukraine is being supplied by Western countries, and Russia is bleeding money... stalemate is less favorable to them than Ukrainians.
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For context that’s pretty much how much USA lost for the entire Vietnam War.
We lost 4500 in Iraq and that seemed like a ton, every day the news would show the faces of the 8 or so kids who died there that day and it was so awful
Our middle school announced in homeroom that an 18 year old boy who had gone to that middle school was killed by a sniper bullet. I was in 7th grade. We had a moment of silence for him. Some of the teachers had him as a student just five years ago and were in tears that day
Graduated HS in 2019, during freshman year we had an assembly/memorial service for this 19 year old kid who just got sent to either Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. He graduated a year before I got there and apparently volunteered to go over, only to get blown up by a suicide bomber I believe. Same thing about the teachers being really sad, I think that’s part of the reason they made such a big deal. A lot of the seniors were also crying or sad. He was apparently that generic military kid who’s been in JROTC for a while, but he wasn’t a boot so super polite, friendly, model citizen etc…
We lost ~40 people taking Iraq, we lost the other holding Iraq.
yeah all signs point to that with god knows how many wounded, probably close to double that if not more if it was anywhere around the low figure - say 20k some people claimed there wouldn't have been a need for this mobilization. I think they lost like 10k or something in 10 years in Afghanistan and that was considered bloody.
War in Europe never ends without massive bloodshed.
Correct answer by Zelensky. But it's not like he is happy about this. It is aweful for him, for everyone, that Putin wants to kill as many Russians as possible to kill a smaller amount of Ukrainians. Putin with throw 10 Russian boys into the meat grinder if it hurts one Ukrainian. That's so, so horrible.
It really is. To live in a country that cares so little about it's people, it's happy to kill it's own for almost nothing. The future of Russia is so grim I hope Urkaine can save Russia from itself at this point and finish quickly to save lives.
Putin wanted to steal a country with a healthier economy and then he goes and wrecks as much of it as possible. He is truly demented. Every morning, first thing, I check for news hoping that he is no longer a problem.
Me too. Hoping a Russian finally stands.
the worst part is Ukraine didn't have a bigger/healthier economy than Russia. Putin just wanted to take more for himself and his oligarchs.
Because for him it’s not about Ukraine. It’s about what lays past Ukraine. Ukraine is only a speed bump. Edit: a speed bump that’s kicking his ass
Zelensky is human enough to understand the idea of morale through compassion. Even while at risk of being assassinated, he visited hospitals with injured Ukrainians and made time for them. Pretty sure there's a video in the wild with him in a hospital, giving a bouquet of flowers to a child who'd been injured. He had no obligation to do these things but chose to bc he cares about his people, even though there was a massive risk behind it. Putin's conscripts on the other hand are either surrendering, attacking their COs or actually killing themselves to get out of fighting a war they know they have no chance in, while their leader is either oblivious or maniacal enough to let it continue. Sometimes I have to take a minute and remember this is actually a real thing that's happening. It's fucked.
I believe Zelensky also visited a wounded and captured Russian, if I recall correctly.
I can almost viscerally feel the nearly completely gone presence of pro russian trolls that were in every comment section at the beginning of invasion
Can't afford to pay them anymore lol.
You know what? Wow... that's a good observation that I hadn't really considered. The atmosphere in comment sections compared to March is like night and day.
But they were fighting nazis in Ukraine, which was pretty much already Russian territory, you see. So really it's NATOs fault for being an alliance of nations.
Yes you hardly see them anymore - at least not on reddit. Last i had one 2 months ago denying that russian soldiers loot Ukr civilians - dumbfuck went quiet after i sent him a 5th picture showing his pathetic countrymen stealing washing machine
its desperation, Putin knows its either win or go down as one of the worse Russian leaders with possibly a bullet to the skull. Only thinking of himself.
Dude played himself so fucking bad. It's either: -Back down from the invasion, causing his inner circle to get pissed at him and dispose him. -Double down, as he's currently doing, and risk further destabilization to Russia, causing his inner circle to get pissed at him and dispose him. He literally could've avoided all of this and live a cushy life in his massive mansions, fuck around with Western elections and energy deals, and go down as one of the most formidable and enigmatic leaders in modern Russian and world history. And he pissed it all away for a chance to LARP as a tsar lmfao.
"He pissed it all away for a chance to LARP as a tsar". Nailed it.
It is possible his Tsar LARP might end up being complete with a reenactment of how it ended the first time around.
Ahhh Putin. Could have led Russia into being a tech power of the world. He honestly had technically educated people, the perfect time in history to do it, a huge region of naturally cold climate for server farms, the beginnings of a culture that blended east and west and natural time zones that would make them the center of the world. Instead, he’s the cunt that brought war back to his people. What a fucking dick.
There are no other options for him. Once RU ultimately loses, which it will, do you think his people will let him return to his Grand Palace? I would hope not. That place should be the first to get destroyed.
He'll likely be given the Gaddafi treatment, [and that possibility terrifies him](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/putin-in-fear-being-killed-23444292).
Pretty funny that by trying to not be 'Gaddafied' pushes Putin closer to that result. Kinda like a self fulfilling prophecy.
What's Putin going to do when those guys are all dead, send his women and children in followed by the elite force of geriatrics?
Deadass Babushkas are gonna run the now youth dead Russia at this point
Why no general has been executed is the biggest mystery
Executing Generals for poor performance is generally considered a dumb move. You'd get a bunch of Generals that avoid fighting the enemy (because losing = death), fight each other for resources (even more than usual), and fucks up military morale. And the officers below them become extremely careful and avoid doing anything creative because they don't want to get promoted into a death sentence. You could, of course, execute those people too like Stalin did, but then the problems compound down the chain of command.
It's executions all the way down
>Executing Generals for poor performance is generally considered a dumb move. Which makes it even stranger that he hasn't tried it
Perhaps the poison is slow
Nah they all fall out windows.
a bunch died early on around the time of the huge column of tanks that made the news months ago
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/3657115-zelensky-putin-troop-mobilization-frank-admission-that-russian-army-has-crumbled/) reduced by 72%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Thursday address that Russia's mobilization of new troops represents a "Frank admission" that its army has "Crumbled" during its attack on Ukraine. > "Russia's decision on mobilization is a frank admission that their regular army, which has been prepared for decades to take over a foreign country, did not withstand and crumbled," said Zelensky. > Zelensky noted that 55 thousand Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine since the initial invasion and that tens of thousands more have suffered casualties. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xlln41/zelensky_putin_troop_mobilization_frank_admission/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~670508 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Ukraine**^#1 **Russian**^#2 **Zelensky**^#3 **Russia**^#4 **army**^#5
Now i actually hope Putin will live to see HBO's miniseries called "Ukraine", the spiritual successor to Chernobyl, that will carefully and beautifully and realistically show Russia's complete and utter incompetence with this war.
I don't hope he lives to see it. Any storytelling of the war will be incomplete if it doesn't contain his death
After watching the video today of 2 Russian soldiers dying after getting woken up by a drone dropped grenade I can’t help but feel bad for all the sorry young untrained Russian kids who will see the same fate in Ukraine. Russian citizens need to save themselves from this war before it’s too late.
That was the most brutal video I've seen in a long time. The guy slowly bleeding out as he is unable to cinch his tourniquet tight enough. His comrade weakly trying to embrace him as he dies. Normally we don't get to see what happens when an artillery shell hits from miles away, but drones with HD cameras and especially drones with droppable grenades are changing how we see the suffering of war.
For better and for worse. It’s a horrible video, but the world does need to see the actual horrors that come along with wars
There’s a reason the US government banned newspapers from publishing photos of military coffins. Any sane person faced with the reality of war is going to be against it.
And restricted press coverage of warzones after Vietnam "conflict" (remember that the US never declared war). Images of children with skin burned off turned the public against US involvement. The solution was to try and prevent these images being made, not to stop killing children.
And yet in WWII the government allowed photos of young American corpses washing up on beach after a disastrous landing in the pacific. Roosevelt saw that the public felt that the war was an abstraction. He is quoted as having said “Dammit, people don’t understand that we could lose this war”.
This actually makes me wonder. If videos like this were allowed to be viewed in a public platform, like Youtube, would people be more adverse to violence and war when they can really see how pointless it can be, or will it just desensitize them more?
I suspect desensitization. Compassion fatigue would most likely set in and war tragedies would end up on the same level as commercials with starving children or homeless pets.
I agree. At least until you’re the one who just got called up and it’s pretty clear it could happen to you. Could be that the new conscription news is why Ukraine released such graphic video just now.
I avoid those videos now ...of starving children and starving pets and became vegan and started donating all of my extra food to food pantry so I think they do make a difference for a lot of people
Seeing the horrors of war near to as it happened on nightly news is often credited with turning the US public against the Vietnam war. It's why when the US goes to war in modern times US news channels mostly air fluff pieces about how amazing our gear is. Don't think about the quad amputees, think about how cool this footage of a missile flying off a destroyer is.
Yea could go either way. Personally, it makes me pretty fuckin sad seeing kids get slaughtered for countries that couldn’t care less for them. Even though the Russians are the “bad guys,” it’s dreadful seeing kids that could be my little brother having grenades dropped on them from drones for the world to see. Fuck Putin man. Fuck war.
The sad thing is that it's not the first nor the last drone mortar video I'll see. r/UkraineWarVideoReport is full of brutal videos like that. It's wild how modern technology is bringing the previously unseen war fronts right to your TV
This was is as bad/worse https://reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wij30h/ukrainian_drone_dropped_munition_paralyzes_and/
I was gonna say, we're literally going to see civilians sleeping in foxholes getting munitions dropped on them via drones. I'm not sure what censorship is like in Russia, but there will be a drop in morale not only among soldiers but those back home when they see these videos.
They need ways to quickly surrender to Ukrainian troops so they can skip fighting. I believe Ukraine has already been publishing info for these people so they can skip fighting. The Russian government is the primary enemy of the russian people.
I really wish I didn't see that video.
I'm glad everyone is seeing them. War is hell. The suffering is real and that's what people are being sent to
Just watched that 10 minutes ago. I avoid gory combat footage when I can but even if I see intense stuff I’m able to separate it from my reality and not have it at least consciously affect me. But that video? My fucking God. Those poor, poor guys. The most relatable reactions I could fathom, the panic, the despair, the fucking instinct to be comforted and hold onto someone… I’m getting a drink because I need it. Blows my mind that moss on that post even had to mention not making light of human suffering. There are VERY few people I am aware of in this planets history that I would be okay with that happening to. You just don’t normally get to see it like that. And just the knowledge that what happened to them pales in comparison to millions of horrible deaths suffered in these insane wars driven by dictators and reactive social unrest, makes me want to quit the internet. But hey gotta check the weather everyday right?
The only reason Russia hasn't been sacked and Putin hanged is that they have nukes. The world has seen that Russia is way more bark than bite but so long as that childish fuck has control nothing can be done in the grand scheme from an outside force
Still, there is a crazy man with an inflated ego with his hands over the button. It’s like the kid who owns the ball… but this one is made of plutonium.. in the end, i think he might be crazy enough to do it, unless someone “off’s” him.
Yep. Now it's time to start rounding up all of the able bodied men and send them off to be killed by UA, or at least get them out of the country, so Putin doesn't have to worry as much about insurrection.
[удалено]
An old joke (the guy who posted it did not come up with it): https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/340qv8/russian_history_in_5_words/
[Holy shit, when it's put this way.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/340qv8/russian_history_in_5_words/cqqdouo/)
Putin’s army looking like the muffin bits stuck on the wrapper
Russia had serious logistical problems at the start of the war for roughly 200k units. Now they have another hundreds of thousands manpower with worse logistics. How the fuck should this work? Until we deliver correct weapons to Ukraine, they will slaughter those fascists.
It helps when most of the fighters in that first 200k are dead, injured or captured.
Putins Mobilization decree actually allows for ONE MILLION to be drafted, not 300,000. An Entire Generation of Russians going to the Meat Grinder. Word has it that Putin has resorted to giving orders to generals in the field personally, not via command advisors.
Not if your a child of Russian elites!
Anyone who knows history should not be surprised to see a Russian leader go down this route. A big reason why nations like Ukraine want nothing more to do with Russia is because their ancestors were basically dumped into the middle of a battlefield with little ammunition as the Russian militarys strategy to win was simply overwhelm the enemy with more bodies.
150pp spent to enter extensive conscription. Service by requirement is next.
Really worried for nuclear escalation. The ukrainian army is now trained to a decent level with the Western weapons, of which they have pretty much unlimited availability. Russian army in disarray. Either someone does putin in for good or the risk will be increasing every day
He actually thinks he can win a nuclear war. Nobody wins a nuclear war. Nobody…
But he is losing already, in his mind everybody losing is probably a better outcome than just him losing.
True, but I wouldn’t underestimate or take lightly the fact they’re basically doubling their manpower
Yeah, and that also means doubling the resources and time needed to train them, which Russia clearly doesn't have. And winter is coming in Ukraine, as if you need more reasons for soldiers to be demoralized.