Re Slava's pm to Ronivek. A nasty ignorant coward shows his true colours.
I mean of course I'm emotionally invested. Russia has invaded a sovereign nation for no good reason other than to flex its muscles and grab some land; and its soldiers are destroying and violating their villages, cities, infrastructure, and most importantly their people. How would any right-minded person not be emotionally invested?
And that's aside from my own personal connections to Ukraine which I have no intention of going into on this forum.
Oh god forbid anyone would engage in debate...
I hear you Ron, but if I may the mistake you're making is trying to be dispassionate in passionate times. Such times quite naturally make some people very reactive and if you're not 100% with us, you're 100% against us. While missing the irony that the same dynamic is likely happening on Russian Telegram if anyone dares to suggest that maybe the Ukrainians aren't all "nazi Khokhols". If it's happening at all on Russian Telegram. You can bring up nuance, they can't. Which again those who shout you down in a free society can miss. Scarily so.
This would pretty much be my general take in this GM.
The "Rules of War", particularly when it comes to an invading force in your homeland is at best a tightrope, and a damned thin one.
An enemy tank and infantry support show up in your town and your guy's crosshairs. You loose an anti tank missile at the tank, it hits and if it's a Russian tank it goes up like a zippo and their turrets pop off like a fúcking jack in the box and the men inside are fried alive. If they're lucky. If not they cook as they claw screaming at the hatches to get out. Either way what's left could be buried in a shoebox. You open fire on their support and mow them down and as it's not Hollywood, few enough will be "instant kills", there'll be many barely out of their teens screaming for their mothers as they bleed out on a foreign field for the ambitions of a rich old prick.
And whoever is still standing puts their hands up in surrender.
OK... Now the problem is they have come to your land, killed your men, often men you knew and had that unique connection of men under fire with, bombed and raped and murdered your women and civilian men, even your sons and daughters. And that's where you apply the Rules? Never mind that if they had got the drop on you and yours first, they'd have been the ones who'd have fried you, mowed you down and cheered while recording the aftermath of your corpses on their phones. For their motherland and their rich old prick.
To be perfectly honest I'm more surprised that the Ukrainians and any military(even the Russians) for that matter in history in such circumstances accept surrender and the whole "Geneva convention" stuff. I grew up with rellies who had fought in WW2(And no, not on the nazi side. Feck off. 😁) and I did hear discussion around this sorta thing. It seemed to be a mix of:Well we let them surrender because by doing so we hoped they'd do the same with us if positions were reversed and We let them surrender because we wanted to show and know we were the ones in the right.
With Ukrainian forces I would say that first reason is a dead duck at this stage, but the second is still in play.
The other reason to accept surrenders is that you want the next set of soldiers to surrender too.
The issue is serious but its an online forum with a virtual identity, don't get too upset lads.
Where in god's name is it TLP? 😮🙂
Someone important flying into Moscow now?
There was this one time on boards during the last presidential election when someone put up a poll asking who people were going to vote for. The winner of the poll was Peter Casey. However, Peter Casey did not win the election. He did come second, but Miggeldy was returned in a landslide. Point being that Internet communities are not always an accurate microcosm. Now I've seen a fair amount of bashing of Daly even before Russia invaded Ukraine, but the fact remains that some fair amount of people in the wider world must have liked what she was offering at the time.
But trying to keep this related to the topic at hand, I do think that if the likes of Daly and Wallace contest the next EUP elections, they will get absolutely hammered over their rigid adherence to criticising the EU at a time when solidarity is the most needed thing. If they're willing to stump up for Russia and challenge the 'western narrative' just because RT once gave them a 15 minute interview or something, their principles can't be all that solid.
I hear you Ron, but if I may the mistake you're making is trying to be dispassionate in passionate times. Such times quite naturally make some people very reactive and if you're not 100% with us, you're 100% against us.
What really gets me is that I'm thinking of the future of Ukraine and its people and children; both over the coming weeks and the months and years ahead where they'll be forced to turn to the West to rebuild. It isn't even dispassionate; or rather it is my considered thoughts after I've calmed down from the latest massacre perpetrated by the Russians which makes me want to kill the bastards myself.
There are thousands of Ukrainians currently in Russian captivity. We don't know the real number but if some reports are to be believed it's in the tens of thousands. What do people genuinely think is going to happen to those people if Russian troops get the wholesale torture and execution treatment? Or what do they think the thousands of Chechen animals and Wagner mercenaries are going to feel vindicated to do?
I honestly don't get it; but I'm clearly pissing into the wind trying to communicate that. Or maybe I'm the one who is just factually wrong; who knows.
And you think they were safe before that? Why would you think that?
Oh sweet jesus. Even your back tracking, apart from being boring, is a cringefest!
And yet they’re falling over one another trying to get into here. It’s high time the west tightened up and woke up majorly to our enemies and act accordingly. India top of the list. They love Russia so much? Let them piss off there and emigrate to there so.
These nationalities want to live here, enjoy our economic and social freedoms. We are entitled to loyalty as a bare minimum in return.
It's about relative safety.
If Ukraine take many Russian prisoners and treat them relatively well that is both political leverage against Russia; and it is real emotional leverage against the Russian troops and officers on the ground. It is an incentive both for Russian troops and officers to surrender; but also an incentive for them to minimise mistreatment of prisoners and civilians.
It is also a means to get more Ukrainian prisoners released via prisoner exchanges; which have already happened in certain cases.
Conversely if significant numbers of Russian prisoners are tortured or executed, if wives and girlfriends are sent taunting messages from Ukrainians, if Ukraine doesn't have many Russian prisoners; they lose that leverage. Russian officers and grunts won't be as willing to surrender; they'll be more inclined to fight to the death or flee and exact revenge later. They'll be more inclined to mistreat prisoners and civilians; or even have senior officers order pogroms against particular towns or villages that might be associated with particular military units.
I mean maybe by logic is flawed; but that's how I see it.
Yep given what we have seen of the Russian behaviour towards Ukrainian civilians I highly doubt they are being treated "nicely". It appears from the evidence in hand that whether they stay alive or unmolested is purely random.
From what I can see the incident in question is isolated and if indeed it was a war crime I have confidence that the Ukrainians will deal with it. We already know the Russians aren't going to lift a finger and are denying war crimes despite clear evidence to the contrary. In fact they have already handed out medals to some of the units who were in the Bucha area. I wonder are there special medal types in the Russian military for looting, torturing civilians, child murder or rape?
Feel free to find even one post which contradicts anything I've stated there.
Don't bother replying to me again though; I'm ignoring you.
Today's lesson, boys and girls, is on 'cause and effect'
"Dmitry Medvedev announces "a lot of" assassinations of Ukrainians abroad and more "denazification" of Ukraine and the whole of Europe up to Lisbon."
Will get you:
"Portugal will send "defensive and offensive war material to Ukraine" João Gomes Cravinho confirmed today that Portugal will send "in the near future" war material, either "defensive" or "offensive", to Ukraine. The country will send "ammunition and weapons" to Ukraine."
Keep it up, Medvedev.
You make many good points if you weren't talking about Russians, the same Russians that have already killed civilians without provocation.
Ukrainians killing prisoners might also make it more likely Russian conscripts get out of Dodge
And my worry is that as bad as the Russian atrocities have been until this point (or at least the ones we know about or suspect); they have the capacity to ramp that up significantly. They have done it before; I have no doubts they would do it again and on a greater scale.
It is also possible as you suggest that it might tempt some conscripts to flee; but again as you say we're talking about Russians: they're not exactly strangers to summarily executing or torturing their own soldiers to keep discipline.
I think the risk of escalations against civilians and Ukrainian prisoners coupled with longer term issues in the international community just aren't worth whatever gains I can see.
I'm pretty sure he still has a backlog of like 200 Russian vehicles he hasn't been able to process yet; too.
Would love to see more expensive modern aircraft confirmed shot down though; they really don't seem to like losing aircraft or pilots whereas they don't seem to care about their conscripts or tanks.
Reminds me of Sarajevo, Romeo and Juliet and the bridge in 1993. If they catch those snipers, I don't care if they are mistreated.
Where some of the Russian loot ended up getting shipped to.
The DM has a nasty story about 15 and 16 year old sisters who were raped in Ivankiv, a small village, and how the women of the village were trapped there with Russian troops for a month and suffered accordingly.
Some of the military aircraft at leninavan where that special op plane was flying from tonight.
Google earth from from. July I think.
Other planes there too on other runways don't know if they're military or civilian.
Haven't a clue on different aircraft.
Although it doesn't look like a big airport.
Savages.
You'd be thinking they'd have some humanity about them.
Be thinking that they're some mothers son, someone's father, brother, (not sure how many female soldiers they would have, or would they be sent there.)
But to be able to do what they're doing consciously, I have absolutely no sympathy for any of them barbarians.
What a joke that is. Those sanctions are worth the same as pi$$ing on a tree. They aren't doing enough damage.
What is he getting at here? Is Russia going to step up the litvonienko/skripal type assassinations in the West? If that’s the case no Russian should get past an airport without a full radiation detection procedure and a full verified explanation of there reason for travel. Chilling stuff to think a high ranking politician could make insidious threats like that.
Let's see...
Starting at the bottom, the first plane looks like a Su-25, a ground-attack aircraft. That type is seeing regular use over Ukraine, on both sides.
Above that is a helicopter, probably a Mil Mi-8 or one of its successors, the Mi-17. They're basically the Huey or Black Hawk of the USSR, a bit larger, but equally widespread and with an equally dizzying array of variants, from transport via sub hunting to electronic warfare, gunship and even crop duster and Search & Rescue.
Above that an on the left side of the taxiway is a Sukhoi Su-27 or one of its successor models. In use by both sides in Ukraine, this is basically the USSR counterpart to the F-15 and is equally capable.
Going back to the right hand side of the taxiway, next up is a Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer. This is an old ground-attack aircraft from the 1970s, roughly analogous with the old American F-111 or early models of the Tornado. The Fencer is on its way out, but still has some combat value.
Back on the left side, we have another helicopter, and an interesting one at that. That looks very much like a Mil Mi-28 Havoc, one of Russia's newest attack helicopters, comparable in role and capability to early model AH-64 Apaches.
Finally, on the right hand side, there is a MiG-29 Fulcrum. Apart from being the subject of fierce debates in this thread, this design, while old, still packs a punch, being robust, agile and surprisingly flexible.
Now, whether Leninavan is a combat air base is another matter entirely. Looking at the satellite imagery, I'm not so sure about that. Most of the Revetments and aircraft shelters seem to be either demolished or in a state of disrepair, at least on Google Maps. There are a number of military airlifts parked in the central part of the base, most Antonov AN-12s, with a few An-26s and even an ancient Ilyushin Il-18 (possibly its Electronic Warfare counterpart Il-20?) in the mix. Three equally ancient Tupolev 134 airliners, probably used for military liaison or in reserve, are also present in the Google Maps images. There are also a few helicopters visible in the northern part of the base, what looks like six additional Mi-28 Havoc and five heavy-lift Mi-26 Halo, currently the largest helicopters in service worldwide.
This weird mix leads me to two possible scenarios for Leninavan:
1) It's a military transport air base. The amount of transport aircraft and helicopters would clearly speak for that, as would the poor conditions of aircraft shelters and revetments, particularly in the southern part of the base.
2) It's a maintenance depot of some sort, or possibly a boneyard. This would explain the numerous different aircraft types, as outlined above. However, the lack of a substantial number of large scale hangars for actual maintenance works goes against that scenario, and the Russian weather isn"t really conducive to outdoors maintenance work on aircraft, even when they're as rugged as Russian designs.
There is however, nothing that indicates that this airfield is some sort of special operations hub or similar. It also likely hasn't seen any real maintenance in a long time. Compared to other Russian air bases such as Engels, the home of the Russian strategic bomber force, that airfield looks like a callback to the bad old days. I'd say it's just close to the combat area in Ukraine, hence its use.
Google Earth dates your photo as 27-10-21, Interesting that corner of the airport was a sorry state of disrepair before 2019, but by September 2019 they upgraded the surfaces and widened parts of the apron. I was expecting the upgrade to date back to around 2014 / 2015, so I'm assuming Putin started his ambitious war plan of the invasion of Ukraine as early as mid 2019.
Sad fact is people like Matt Le Tissier etc actually believe these pictures are made up.
Claire Daly and his ilk shows us that this war isn’t over anytime soon and Russia have sympathiser’s all over the world.
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