Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I think you described it very well when you said "...at will, now and again..." Yes, they can fire missiles whenever they want, but they don't have enough to use them regularly. They seem to only now use them in petulant retaliatory strikes against civilian population centres. Usually in response to Ukrainian strikes against airfields, Kerch bridge etc. They definitely don't have enough of them to achieve any military objective on the battlefield.

Doubt it. Lots of Tory "rats leaving the sinking ship" over the last year thanks to the disastrous polling outlook for the party.

He also announced he is leaving politics when his term is up.

I think that's still a widely underappreciated aspect of this war. Ukraine is basically able to tap into all but the most sophisticated recon assets of the western world, whether directly, or by regular sanitized reports. Those long-endurance drone and manned ELINT & SIGINT assets that were a a staple during the early days of the war are still there as well, and you can bet that a lot of the stuff they pick up finds its way to AFU headquarters ASAP. This is a massive advantage for Ukraine, and they've been utilizing it to the fullest from what I can see.

I'm no supporter of Russia but people need to be realistic. it still has massive natural resources, a huge military industrial base, no election cycle, little pushback form most of the worlds countries and the support of China which wants access to those natural resources and arctic shipping routes. European governments have already changed their tone on Crimea and they know this will end with diplomacy. Comparing Russia now to Germany 1944 is not analogous. Unless Putin or the Chinese gov falls, there will certainly be negotiations before any NATO tanks or F16s enter Crimea. From some of the posts here you would think the the UA are releasing accurate figures on RA casualties. If so they would be the first army in the history of mankind to do that.

I seen a video a while back showing a train in Russia transporting artillery towards Ukraine. They were older systems that need twice the crew to fire half the shots in double the time and had a reduced range.

I haven't seen any videos lately showing the type of weapons being transported but considering the claimed losses I'd love to. Long may the trend continue.

Anywho back in the real world it is a serious cause for optimisation that Ukraine can now strike so far inside Russian territory with extreme accuracy on such a regular basis. Taking the battle to Russia's front door is the only way i can see discontent growing against the Moscow dwarf and a possible overthrow.

As well as that they are not just symbolic... they are taking out Russian assets that will be difficult to replace, and forcing Russia to redeploy more assets to deep defence.

Of course it's a win win, it's just i think Russian citizens seeing the death and destruction in front of their very eyes might just wake them from a slumber and have more of an effect than the actual destruction of military assets. Unfortunately sanctions haven't produced the effect one would have wanted at the speed one would have wanted so this is a good thing. Let's hope the west can up their game in regards supporting this route.

I don't think that Ukraine are looking to deliberately stir up discontent among the Russian populace, although they clearly don't mind if that's a byproduct of their strikes. From what I can see, these strikes have two broad aims:

• Force Russia to redeploy its limited air defense and anti-drone assets across a wider area, thereby reducing the "density" of SAM/AAA and anti-drone cover over crucial bits of their supply & military infrastructure.
• Force the redeployment of key logistics & military assets farther away from the Ukraine operational area, thus further weakening the already shaky supply lines.

Earlier in the war, Ukraine already managed to force Russia to redeploy a lot of its Tu-95 long-range bomber force away from their regular bases to operating sites up on the Kola peninsula or close to the Ural mountains. The recent drone strike on Soltsy air base that saw the destruction of yet another Tu-22M3 bomber will probably not have helped matters either. While this in itself doesn't eliminate the threat posed by these bombers, it does drastically increase the difficulty Russia faces when conducting bomber or ALCM strikes against Ukraine, especially since Russia has also moved the launch areas for ALCMs as far back as the Caspian in order to not endanger their limited number of strategic bombers.

Now, you could obviously point at the drone strikes against high-rise buildings in and around Moscow as a counterpoint, since those are very definitely civilian buildings. However, from what I've seen in the public domain, which admittedly isn't much, it appears as if those drones suffered guidance failures, possibly because of GPS jamming, which caused those drones to stray from their initial targets, which were likely military targets in the Moscow region, of which there are many. What's more, the most recent series of strikes would seem to indicate that Ukraine has found a way to mitigate these jamming efforts, since a lot of those seem to have found their mark.

What's mindboggling about it?

Ukraine have more modern artillery than Russia. It's more accurate, can shoot further and they have the benefit of access to US satellite intel (as well as their own surveillance drones) to identify the location of Russian artillery pieces. It'd be mindboggling if they weren't taking out high numbers of Russian artillery.

Maybe, maybe not. Hitting Moscow on a regular basis is key for me as to bringing it to the front door and waking the masses. Yeah it's a dodgy road and could easily backfire but i think when push comes to shove Moscow citizens would rather see Putin gone than be dragged into the conflict.

You have disarmed me with this analogy

Russia's population skews heavily towards their major cities, and Putin seems very hesitant to let the invasion affect those cities as it would undermine the lie that it's all going great. They were also reportedly having population issues before the invasion even started, and there has since been a mass exodus of people of mobilisation age trying to avoid being called up, to the point where they've had to change the law to increase the maximum age and to bar anyone in that age group from leaving the country.

They need to keep their own country running too, while trying to scale up their wartime production as they're burning through ammo and equipment right now.

They might be able to do another big mobilisation, and I'm sure they'll continue to quietly mobilise quite a few each month, but I don't think they really can afford to call up people on the scale that some fear without it being the beginning of the end for Putin.

It's telling that each time they move troops around they have to make concessions elsewhere on the line, their numbers aren't limitless and the constant degradation of their equipment and forces these past few months is starting to create real dilemmas. Ukraine's growing ability to hit locations like Crimea, Russia and the black sea fleet with impunity and the slow uptick of progress on the frontline is testament to that.

Nice 😊

also what user says and what user supports can get one or the other label. Usually pro-russian posters somehow manage to include pro-russian lines in almost every post they make and as typical would never thank any pro-Ukraine post. Instead their own posts are thanked by other pro-russian posters.