Article

2014-11-23 Europe

The war in Ukraine is killing lots of Russian soldiers

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Posted by Frozen Al 2014-11-23 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 But this one mentions casualties.

And if Chris covert is correct about 6,400 troops in the border area, then a substantial % are coming back in body bags.

Two things are going wrong for Putin:
1) The Ukrainians are learning how to fight.
2) The ethnic Russians living in the Ukraine do not want to live under Putin.

Posted by Frozen Al 2014-11-23 09:38|| 2014-11-23 09:38|| Front Page Top

#2 "Gruz 200", meaning "Cargo 200", a well-known military term for the bodies of men killed in action.

Posted by JohnQC 2014-11-23 09:52|| 2014-11-23 09:52|| Front Page Top

#3 What has gone wrong for Putin is:

1) His GRU officers, who started the war, have started a nascent independence movement called Novorossiya. Originally, the idea was a plebecite for separation (which was voted on last May) followed by another one to join the federation. Right now local politics are all about independence.

Not surprisingly, the traditional Novorossiya includes much of the left bank of the Dnepr River east and from Kharkov south: a land bridge to Crimea.

IOW Putin may have created a Frankenstein monster in Donetsk and Lugansk of political leaders who want independence from both Ukraina and Russia.

All this is subject to change if conditions get bad enough that both republics have to join Russia because of economic pressures of rebuilding from a nasty war.

2) A Russian federal law was passed back after the first Chechen war stating the Russian chief executive and his departments may not send troops into a foreign land without approval from the Duma. This happens to be a prosecutable offense, so that anyone involved in sending troops to a foreign land, from the president on down to military formation commanders, can be prosecuted.

3) His military is sick and tired of defending repeated allegations of Russian military formations in Ukraina, so much so, they have stopped answering the charges altogether.

***

As far as Russian troops in Ukraina are concerned, I have seen dozens (soon to be hundreds) of videos and none of them show any professional Russian troops or Russian troops formations. I think what may be happening is that the rebels have been receiving Russian military surplus railed to the border, where rebels, after training from the Russians, board their tanks and rumble into Ukraina.

Incidentally, and as an aside, I watched a video from the fighting at the Donetsk airport, and it appears that some of the rebel soldiers were using PTRDs to attack Ukrainian T-64s, and I am seeing more and more of those as time goes by. This is not top of the line equipment: this is a weapon that Stalin issued by the hundreds of thousands to his rifles troops to stop German light armor. This weapons is amongst the military surplus that Russians have sold to the Donbas rebels

Not to say Russians are completely hands off. A number of special forces formation have been filmed inside Ukraina, and so a number of those troops are probably inside Ukraina on LRRPs, a practice every military in the planet would be doing were they in Russia's position.

Something else to note: Ukrainian have failed, repeatedly despite claiming to kill a large number of Russian soldiers, to come up with evidence showing a massive Russian invasion by Russian military formations. I have read stories about Russian paratroopers in Ukraina, but most of those are individual officers sent inside to advise about fighting a modern war.

Just my two kopeks...

Posted by badanov 2014-11-23 10:33|| http://www.chriscovert.net 2014-11-23 10:33|| Front Page Top

#4 However, they're giving the Ukrainians a lot of 'Darwinistic' training doing the slow-mo military operations. They're sorting out competent vs incompetent leadership and organization. The Ukrainians are also getting a real good touchy feely with knowing the aspects of the immediate local terrain. It's a bloody NTC. The longer this lasts without any gain by the Russians, the harder its going to be to introduce more resources to leverage a decisive result short of outright overwhelming the opponent with massive use of force.

Posted by Procopius2k 2014-11-23 10:53|| 2014-11-23 10:53|| Front Page Top

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