Ukraine War

[GTB365]

Originally Posted by Listener2307

You're not the first to note this reality.
Historically, taking Crimea has been tough for everyone who has tried. It is surprising that Ukraine was able to just stroll across the Dnipro; no one knows what is going to happen.

In WW 2 the German Army did it by using the largest railway gun ....
Schwerer Gustav....it fired 4.7 ton high explosive shells and 7 ton concrete piercing shells....
causing huge destruction during the siege of Sevastopol ....July 1942....
they knocked the sh*t out of that place...

[JohnBoy64]

Originally Posted by GTB365

In WW 2 the German Army did it by using the largest railway gun ....
Schwerer Gustav....it fired 4.7 ton high explosive shells and and 7 ton concrete piercing shells....
causing huge destruction during the siege of Sevastopol ....July 1942....

Yep. This is an interesting history. It was the largest gun of its class. More suited to WW1 than WW2 though.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf3fgfHoTOc

[erasure]

Originally Posted by rumsunel

A simple semantic analysis of the construction of messages allows you to determine a native English speaker with good accuracy. And it is easy to find a native Russian speaker who uses Google translation to be an "American" here on the forum, possibly hiding behind a VPN channel. Au administrator, do you need this? I can easily see at least 5 people here who do not speak English, but impersonate Americans.

A simple semantic analysis is telling me that "hello administrator" that's what it sounds like in English.
"Au" - that's typical for Russian/Ukrainian. Oh and for abbreviation of Australia too)))
Just letting you know.
So welcome to the forum, I am sure you will find a lot of friendly admirers here because you know who YOU are.

[uggabugga]

a good, in-depth article

The Grim Life and Brutal Death of a Wagner Recruit

[erasure]

Originally Posted by uggabugga

a good, in-depth article

The Grim Life and Brutal Death of a Wagner Recruit

"Nikita Nuzhin said his family hasn’t received the body or any information. He blamed Ukrainian authorities for his father’s death. “He was their prisoner, and they were responsible for his life,” he said. “But they handed him over. They knew what would happen.”"


That's right.
They handed him back to Russians during the regular prisoners exchange, knowing perfectly well what was going to happen to him.

And THIS served as yet another warning to all those potential Russian admirers of the "free and democratic" Ukrainian state.

Don't try to switch sides - you will end up like Nuzhin.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by amyrich

Completely agree with you. Both sides are pretending that this is ideological or "existential." But all it's accomplishing is draining our resources and flushing the world economies down the toilet.

And there seems to be no resolution in sight. Only that everyone now knows for sure that whenever this "invasion" ends, the world's power axes are going to shift significantly. Meanwhile, Ukrainians, under the guise of nationalism, are probably hurting themselves the most because they seem to have been grossly misled by their own TV personality President.

Because they are fighting to keep their country, their freedom, their lives and their children that Russia is kidnapping?

Where do you people come up with this stuff that they are hurting themselves? Are you the type who would just tell a bully to stomp your face in instead of fighting back?

Putin is the only one hurting Ukrainians.

[exm]

Originally Posted by ukrkoz

Biden’s team fears the aftermath of a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive

Behind closed doors, the administration worries about what Ukraine can accomplish.
The Biden administration is quietly preparing for the possibility that if Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive falls short of expectations, critics at home and allies abroad will argue that America has come up short, too.


https://www.politico.com/news/2023/0...fense-00093384

The Biden admin is completely incompetent, so I don't care what they're thinking. Remember the days when they thought Kiev would fall in 2 days?

[bu2]

Originally Posted by Listener2307

You're not the first to note this reality.
Historically, taking Crimea has been tough for everyone who has tried. It is surprising that Ukraine was able to just stroll across the Dnipro; no one knows what is going to happen.

Yes. Russia must be short of troops and leaving positions unguarded. I thought that was an easily defended position.

And yes, Crimea has always been difficult. I think the only good reason to try to retake Crimea is to force Russia to the negotiating table and accept going back to Russia and pulling out of the Donbas. The Donbas really has no strategic value to Russia.

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by GTB365

In WW 2 the German Army did it by using the largest railway gun ....
Schwerer Gustav....it fired 4.7 ton high explosive shells and 7 ton concrete piercing shells....
causing huge destruction during the siege of Sevastopol ....July 1942....
they knocked the sh*t out of that place...

I always felt the Gustav was a classic example of German waste of resources.

They loved their big, cool, uber weapons but instead of the Gustav they could have had how many more 88's and crews in service? Dozens and dozens if not hundreds.

*shrug*

[NickB1967]

Originally Posted by bu2

Because they are fighting to keep their country, their freedom, their lives and their children that Russia is kidnapping?

Where do you people come up with this stuff that they are hurting themselves? Are you the type who would just tell a bully to stomp your face in instead of fighting back?

Putin is the only one hurting Ukrainians.

Really now? To be honest, both with and Russia now, AND Ukraine now, "Nationalism is a hell of a drug".

If you look at the Ukraine War objectively, knowing all the background, it is tragedy.

Russian military performance has actually been quite pathetic. The areas that Russia has "taken"? They *did not* conquer them; they were *invited in* by ethnic Russian supermajorities in those areas, ethnic Russians unhappy at - and backlashing against - the hyper-nationalistic turn that ethnic Ukrainians have taken in recent years, which has led to ethnic Ukrainians metaphorically pooping all over the ethnic Russians.

And this Ukrainian hyper-nationalism is totally understandable, as the Soviet system was pooping all over them for decades. But that wasn't the fault of the average Ethnic Russian, who was just a pawn in that whole system too.

And it gets worse when you realize that the boundaries of the former "Soviet Republics" (sic) were not drawn with the various ethnics in mind, but rather for internal Party reasons. Stalin certainly ruthlessly moved many ethnics around, resentments that drive Ukrainian nationalism now, but even long before him, many areas of (the on a paper map) Ukraine today were full of ethnic Russians. The Crimea region has been overwhelmingly ethnic Russian for centuries, and Sevastopol was an important Russian port back to Peter the Great days.

And even granting Stalin's brutal moving of people around, after 80 odd years, we have to accept that people are where they are. What are we going to do? Kick the Russians that came into the on paper Ukraine during Stalin's time, as I am sure the Ukrainian nationalists wish? So, will Poland want the "Kresy" back? And Germany East Prussia and Silesia? Those borders that we have today were also made by Stalin's brutality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kresy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Prussia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesia

And even if Putin is the greatest nogoodnik around today, his views were shared by Russian leaders before him and will be shared by those who follow him, even those who might topple him. Even Boris Yeltsin, the most pro-American leader Russia ever had, raised concerns about millions of ethnic Russians in "the near abroad" and how the map might have to be redrawn to address those ethnic Russians.

And maybe that is just the fate of Empires: when they break up, they do not break up along nice neat national and ethnic lines:
--The Ottoman Empire fell apart, and the Armenian Genocide followed.
--Austria-Hungary fell apart, millions of ethnic Germans found themselves on the wrong side of a line, and Adolf Hitler took advantage of that.
--And let's not forget the former Yugoslavia, with Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and ethnic Albanians killing each other in a free-for-all of wars.

What we are seeing now is just the long delayed fruits of the breakup of the Soviet Empire. I predict a former "Soviet Republic" (sic) like Moldova, made up of (1) ethnic Russians who want to be with Russia (in a strip called Transnistria), (2) ethnic Ukranians in the southern tips who want to be with Ukraine, and (3) ethnic Romanians in the rest of it who never wanted to leave Romania to begin with but Stalin did it to them, might get carved up like a cake, hopefully peacefully.

Even relatively peaceful ends of empires, like The British Empire, had:
--the India/Pakistan/Bangladesh Wars, with thousands killed and millions of people forced to move.
--Cyprus, with ethnic Greeks and Turks killed and many more forced to move.
--the Biafra War in formerly British Nigeria.