Since the special operation in Ukraine started up....I've probably poured ninety minutes each week into analayzing the war from open-source reporting.
Some comes from within Russia itself. Some comes from Russians describing their local economy or the local grocery. Some comes from non-Russians inside of Russia and giving general descriptions of day-to-day affair, with the evolution underway. Some comes from Ukrainians in Germany, or Ukrainians still back and fighting. Amongst this....a lot of video viewing....mostly of damaged buildings and damages after a battle (disabled tanks).
I have a special category which I've termed....effects of poor training/crappy equipment, which I tend to shake my head over.
Boot-camp for Conscripts is mostly a brief orientation thing....then a unit exercise. This is your first two months. At the end of the 12 months of conscription.....you go home and your one-year of duty is ended.
If you tried to equate this to a US Marine? Boot-camp is 13 weeks, and for the most part....another 12 weeks of some type of hands-on/arms training occur....with your specialty training coming after that. A Marine could write up a list of the 100 bad scenarios to run into, and he's got the talent to handle most all of these, with brief guidance given by 'Sarge'. That's not what the Russian conscript gets or receives.
If you look at a lot of the battles in Ukraine....the Russians did poorly because they didn't have conscripts ready for the action required. But added to this....the equipment wasn't as great as you'd expect. Same for combat rations, gear, etc.
So here's the thing....every single weakness for the Russians that US intelligence suggested for forty-odd years? You know.....the ones that no one really wanted to believe? Well....in seven months, they've all been proven true.
The Russians want to fight a normal 1945 land-battle, with tanks.....and they've practiced that way for decades. If you refuse to fight the 1945 land-battle? Then their key strength is zeroized.
What strength is left? Well....nuke warfare. Even if you display this option....then what? In the mid-1990s, as the Soviet Empire dissolved.....there was an agreement on paper that various 'republics' of the USSR would hand their nukes over to Russia and the 'republics' would be pure (without nuke weapons). Most everyone assumes that the Ukraine was honest and the audit was clear at the end. If the Ukraine retained rockets or element of nuke weapons? That's the problem left now.....wondering if Ukraine stayed pure/clean or cheated in some way.
The odd factor of this nuke chatter? Basically, you come to admit that you (Russia) worked up a 2nd-rate military system, and probably were not even capable of taking on a marginal border country. And in the process of your demonstration.....you actually craved-up or dissolved probably 50-percent of your best assets, and maybe 50,000 conscripts were buried to prove your worthless point. Then you add this one problem in explaining this.....these evil 'Nazis' that are openly discussed daily.....seem to be even stronger than your own army?
Presently? Even the conscripts admit this problem in training and equipment.
Putin's bluff? There's nothing much left now.
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