Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Didn't a lot of them get bumped off after the Russian army got trounced after attacking Finland?

I think even now, that the Russian generals only get to be generals depending on their support of the regime, and that military skill doesn't really come into it. They occasionally get lucky and accidentally promote someone with the necessary skill. 😁

No, Russian lost that 2nd best military in the world big time when they failed in Ukraine. But in terms of manpower and equipment, they really outrank Ukraine. Where they lose to Ukraine though is in the quality of that manpower, and in the equipment and logistics stakes, Russian corruption levels the playing fields. But strictly speaking and on paper, Zelenski is right.

[from today's Telegraph,generally one of ukraine's most steadfast supporters in the media'] Ukraine’s counter-offensive did not achieve its “desired results”, Volodymr Zelensky has admitted.  The Ukrainian president said: “We wanted faster results. From that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.” He added that Ukraine did not obtain all the weapons it needed from its allies, and that limits on the size of its military halted a quick advance. “There is not enough power to achieve the desired results faster. But this does not mean that we should give up, that we have to surrender,” he said. “We are confident in our actions. We fight for what is ours.” He also admitted that “only the blind” could fail to see the consequences of international attention shifting because of the conflict in the Middle East, adding that Ukraine had to “fight for attention”.

so does that make the Summer offensive hark back to the battle of Kursk? an attack telegraphed months in advance giving time for the Russians to prepare defences to bog down the opposition, the Leopard 2 being the touted wonderwaffe like the Tiger was for that battle. The Russians have also shown the ability to adapt this time round too and bring lots of weapons into play they didnt have 18 months ago?

Kursk was the strategic end for Germany and the Summer offensive looks like the strategic end for Ukraine.

I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment there.

Kursk was the end of Germany's ability to not only launch major summer offensives, but crucially also resist offensives from the Red Army. It did (largely) maintain operational excellence and remained capable of inflicting defeats on the Red Army, but no amount of tactical/strategic ability could overcome the overwhelming numerical superiority they faced.

After Kursk the front line was continuously moving westward, with multiple large scale offensives on multiple axis, Germany had precisely zero hope of stemming that tide and suffered catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat in the wider scheme of things.

They had no way to replace the equipment, manpower and fuel lost while the Soviet's could replace all those things with relative ease.

Ukraine may not be capable of launching another big offensive, but their ability to effectively defend appears relatively intact and I'm not sure I can see Russia launching a major war-winning offensive on any single front let alone multiple fronts anytime soon either.

Ukraine hasn't suffered a catastrophic defeat just because the offensive didn't achieve a breakthrough.

But at the same time they are slowly gaining ground in Ukraine, especially in Avdiivka which was considered unthinkable by some only very recently and now it's back to that's Russian propaganda

They the Russians are inside of Avdiivka since last week,

At least try to keep up with what is actually going on in Ukraine

He's just over there ... and over there ... and waaaay over there!

No, there's folk like yourself who will take any tweet they can find as long it backs up their view, and anything that doesn't back up their view is simply labelled "Russian propaganda".

Just need to pick on the myth of the initial shock of the T-34 being invunerable. They lost 2300 of the 2800 produced in 1941.

Ukraine claim they are behind explosion on Russian railway near Mongolia

I think any "Russian" improvements you are impressed with could represent Iran's technology (and maybe China's as well, that wouldn't shock me in the slightest).

The Shaheds are of course from Iran, think they have gotten other kinds of drones off Iran too.

Since Russia is going to be or already is building these itself, it has involved full technology transfer which (I imagine) can be applied to Russia's own drones.

Unfortunately the sanctions have not worked as well as hoped (?) to stop the access to low level dual use type components that they need for weapons. They seem to be able to buy stuff like this made by Western companies (via Turkey, some neighbouring countries, China etc.), acc. to reports by Ukraine of the parts that crop up in their newly made missiles and drones etc.

Even if there is a large mark up, they presumably have the money for it when Putin is dumping an obscene amount of the national earnings into prosecuting his war (edit: 30 % of GDP according to themselves, so could be even more).

Like everyone else they cottoned on to how cheap and quickly you can produce drones from quad copters which can be bought for a few euros to the lancet and bigger surveillance and reconnaissance type drones , unlike aircraft they don't need years of testing and eventually launching, people have been building drones and flying drones since the early 2000s they aren't exactly overly complicated , as long as you can get the lipo batteries and motors you can build quads by the boatload in a relatively short period