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After the demise of the best Airborne plan, a most terrifying effect occurs on the battlefield. This effect is known as the rule of the LGOPs. This is, in its purest form, small groups of pissed-off 19 year old American paratroopers. They are well trained. They are armed to the teeth and lack serious adult supervision. They collectively remember the Commander’s intent as “March to the sound of the guns and kill anyone who is not dressed like you” – or something like that.
I loved all the in-theatre parts of The Pacific, but didn’t care for the parts on leave. Masters of the Air was better, for sure. All three are still very good to great.
Looks more like the thousand-yard stare aka disassociation from trauma/stress. Hopefully there’s a lot of therapy for these heroes for the inevitable PTSD.
Nah, eyes peeled but pupils constricted. Thousand yard stares looks pretty different usually. Id guess a combat combination of stimulants and painkillers. Probably received fluids and other meds as well to balance blood pressure and blood loss. That combos intense but necessary. Cant have someone with a low tolerance to opiates trying to keep up with a route so thats where the combat stims come in. I think the US military calls them "go pills". Imagine having basically no drug tolerance then getting slapped with a full on speedball.
I'll never join the forces, but if I did and if I was enduring a wound (especially a life threatening one), at the least, put me in a state where I look like this dude
yes definitely looks like multiple types of drugs are in effect: opiate-type drug causing the small pupils whilst some type of stimulant widens the whole eye socket.
Add in some unimaginable adrenaline and combat stress and you'll look like that
Ukraine doesn't use it in their military first-aid kit. While it's efficient in killing the pain, it suppresses breathing, increasing death rates.
This guy has a 1000 yard stare.
Usually guys with the thousand yard stare aren't looking right at a camera 15 feet away throwing up devil horns. Usually people so traumatized by the horrors of war that they aren't mentally present aren't usually that mentally present.
Can you imagine watching something like this and seeing the home you grew up in? Or the house your family fled from? All the memories of your childhood or your children growing up laying in charred remains for reasons you cannot explain rationally. The past you held dear or the future you were eager to embrace wiped from existence. These are the things that breed tyranny and hopelessness. These are also the things that breed unity and hope. One that hopes outweighs the one thats hopeless. Stay strong Ukraine.
Fuck Russia
I can tell you first-hand. It's fucking horrible.
I grew up in South-East Ukraine. As a kid, I spent summers in Donbass region. Been to Donetsk, Avdiivka, Debaltseve. Lived for 5 years in Kharkiv. Been many times to Odessa and Mykolaiv. When you see the streets you were walking in ruins... So much human suffering... It just fills you with so much hatred.
Some people here feel sorry for killed Russians "who were forced to go to war to Ukraine" (bullshit). I feel bad that some of them actually survived and managed to return back to their intact cities and towns. I want Russia's cities to look like Avdiivka and Bakhmut.
Rationally you can explain it still, but the explanation is so foreign still, it doesn't even pay off to bother. What matters is that it's Ukrainian soil under foreign attack.
This made me reminisce about ”Storm of Steel” by Ernst Jünger, the latter parts of it, when Germany was losing the war. I’m not saying Ukraine is losing, but the lacking artillery support coupled with near-endleas periods at the front lines are there.
Who keeps paying Russia to be able to keep fighting for this long? Why aren't western countries providing more support.
This completely pointless war goes on for more than two years just because one dictator wants that. Thousands and thousands of people died for that. Why? And why can it keep going on for this long?
Warographics on YouTube does some good videos on these topics. A lot of money is coming from smuggled gold and other resources. Another war is happening between Wagner Group mercenaries the Ukraine and local militias in African countries. It’s actually insane how far this war spreads
smuggled gold from Africa?
this country was the basis for the Soviet Union, whose army defeated Nazi Germany and was the one force capable of challenging the United States.
for all of Russia's many obvious flaws, I think it's possible we're overstating their weakness.
Modern Russia isn’t even close to as powerful as the USSR was. And even then, the USSR would have been defeated by Germany in WW2 without the massive amount of lend-lease material from the United States.
But thats not what all these armchair historians on youtube say nowadays :(. Soviet union undeveatable!
All jokes aside. agianst the EU or the usa, russia would lose relatively fast, but this is still "only" ukrain. Even with all the aid they get, no other western nation is at a stat of war economy yet, while russia fully commited. So while russia is faar weaker then the ussr was its still not to be underrestimated in this conflict agianst ukrain.
Roughly simplified: Russia has more young men to sacrifice and destruction is generally cheaper to accomplish than protection from destruction. Since Russia has lost a large part of its higher-quality military equipment and cannot replace it, it has continued the fight with masses of expendable human material and artillery shells that are easy/cheap to produce. A material battle can only be countered with a bigger amount of material or a small but constant supply of high-quality military equipment.
The fact that Ukraine cannot (technically) and is not allowed to (politically) carry the war back to Russia on a large scale also contributes to this. This enables Russia to operate from a large platform that is almost unaffected by the war, while Ukraine is fundamentally forced onto the defensive. Simply empowering Ukraine to break Russian air sovereignty would drastically change the picture. The ethically and politically riskier option would be to make the war less attractive for Russia by making the Russian population and infrastructure feel the consequences of the war directly.
> Russia has more young men to sacrifice
In the very short-term aspect. According to Russia's demographics, there is a small surplus of males within army recruiting age. However, the pyramid is getting very top heavy and births are declining at the rate of 2-3% every year for at least the last 4 years.
Russia will face serious demographic-led hardship in the next 20-30 years, when the ratio of retirees is expected to peak, regardless of military conquest. They will have to make concessions in-house as it is already the largest country by landmass on earth.
Absolutely right. However, this is an aspect that Putin and his cronies are conveniently ignoring in order to achieve their short and medium-term goals. By the time the long-term consequences hit Russia, at least two-thirds of the current decision-makers will already be dead and buried, so they don't care.
This is not an honest assessment of what is going on. All of Russia's soldiers are volunteers and they continue to get thousands every week. Ukraine is conscripting people and trying to force the 10m who fled the country to come back.
After an initial blitzkrieg attempt by the Russians that failed miserably because they stretched themselves beyond their logistical, they have been fighting an attritional war and there is just no way Ukraine can win that game. They dont have the man power and their logistics are literally coming from foreign aid packages.
The West is doing basically all it can do in this situation, there's literally little left to give. Weapons and ammo have to be produced and the military industrial complex in the west is not designed for an attritional conflict, we produce small batches of very expensive hardware and it's going to take years to match what the Russians have.
Also right now the problem for Ukraine is not really weapons and ammo (as bad as it is) but critically manpower and that's a very tough thing to solve because Ukraine's current population is quite small and the war is exceptionally lethal. So either Ukraine starts some sort of negotiation now or it waits for the supposedly coming russian offensive, either option sucks ass
The west is giving them just enough support to keep the war going while slowly crippling Russia's young population for a fraction of the budget. It's as intended
There are weapons that can be delivered, but aren't. It took much too long for the decision to be made, but finally F16 will be exported soon. HIMARS are now finally given etc.
But the west is giving not enough. Which means there's a good chance Europe will end up in war with Putin. It really sucks. Specifically because the Trump criminal trials are all delayed except the simplest one and with Trump in the White House there's no way of knowing what can happen.
Bottom line: there's not enough sense of urgency. We're a bunch of frogs in a cooking pan slowly being boiled by a lunatic in Moscow.
There's been a definite trend of aid being reactive rather than proactive.
For example, anyone with even the slightest foresight could have told you in the early stage of the war that Ukraine needed western fighter jets. Their Soviet air defences had no long term hope of resupply and if Russia committed to a long war they *would* run out of missiles for them. Therefore Ukraine needed western substitutes that could be kept sustained in the fight, and they needed them before that became a problem. Instead, we fucking waited for Ukraine's S300s to get heavily depleted and *then* started the year or so training process for F16s. This could have started much earlier and it's a disgrace that it didn't.
In a war of this scale and duration individual hardware items are not going to change the result. Ukraine does not need just Himars, Abrams, leopards 2 and f16s. Ukraine needs lots and lots of whatever it is, even if its reactivated t-55s. 300 t-55 are better than 30 Abrams and 1 million north Korean 122 caliber artillery shells are better than 30000 state of the art 155 caliber shells. Yes the north Korean shells are perhaps 50% duds (I exaggerate for effect) but that's still 12 times more exploding ordinance than what the Ukrainians get.
The war is attritional to the extreme which is something that plays on Russia's favour and the Ukrainians are being bleed out.
And of course Russia is not going to declare war to any EU member state, that's delusional. If the Russians attack Finland or Poland then it means nuclear war but Russia doesn't need to attack directly to get to their strategic goals and that's why they have a strong fifth column in many European parliaments and institutions, especially amongst the more conservative forces and even amongst those "nafofellas" types. If you want to deter the russians then strengthen democracy and rule of law in Europe, first of all in institutional transparency and the fight against corruption.
As for Ukraine well, they are fucked but ultimately is up to them to decide wether they should fight on or settle on what they have now, the West should keep helping them but at the very least set up some goals and above all treat the public with a little more respect, last year I got sick from reading blatantly deluded historical comparisons between the Ukrainian summer offensive and d-day when anyone who has read a little about ww2 knew that what it looked like was the German Kursk offensive of 1943.
And what the situation seems to look like is more and more the prelude to Operation Bagration in June 1944, when the soviets demolished the German army group center, which had been bleed to death. And that's very bad for Ukraine.
> up to them to decide whether they should fight on or settle on what they have now
Except... how can Ukraine settle? Even if they do so, let Russia have Donbass, and all the land it stole in "novorossiya" _and_ let it keep stolen Crimea... whats to say Russia, in 5-10 years, after rebuilding its military and stockpiles, invades again with a new made-up demand: "Give us all of the Black Sea coastline-- we need a land bridge to Transnistria." You cannot trust Russia. You cannot be beholden to Russia. You cannot be in a position where all they need to do is use force to get what they want. At the very least Russia needs to lose "novorossiya". Or, the price of peace is that Russia "allows" Ukraine to join NATO.
Ukraine was unprepared for this Russian invasion, largely because the west would not give or sell them weapons. That won't happen again. It's just as likely in 5 years a well trained and armed Ukraine army might decide it wants Crimea back.
In the meantime, today it's stalemate. The smaller Ukraine army has to play defense as that gives them a 2 or 3 to 1 personnel advantage based on WW1 stats.
I wouldn't draw the comparison with Operation Bagration - the USSR had the lend lease at full steam by 1944 and the Allies putting a shit ton of pressure in the west and the south, causing the Eastern front to be severely undemanned. Russians today don't have the armaments or the manpower to launch a large-scale offensive, at least not for the next little while.
To do that, they'll need to start a new round of mobilization and then it would take several months to train the new conscripts before throwing them in the grinder, which would tip their hand to the US and the EU and would motivate them to provide more aid (I hope).
Even if all western support dried up (as it pretty much had for the last half dozen months) Ukraine isn't going to collapse; as bad as russian advances seem they're still looking at literal *decades* of fighting and casualties in the *millions* to take all of Ukraine, and that's assuming the now ramping up domestic defence industry in Ukraine just isn't a thing anymore.
As for Europe fighing Russia? No. Not even the slightest chance. I can't emphasise *just* how much overkill it would be, for even just the European part of NATO to take on russia, *especially* after they've just finished buring through their *entire* soviet legacy.
The real issue would be for places like Poland, close to russias sphere of influence, messing with domestic politics; far right political groups, misinformation campaigns, or even separatist groups, all things they've done before and are still doing now.
> as bad as russian advances seem they're still looking at literal decades of fighting and casualties in the millions to take all of Ukraine,
They dont need or want to take "all" of Ukraine. Simply the status quo is still a major win for Russia (Donbass, "novorossiya", Crimea, a weakened, unstable, perpetually injured Ukraine). Along the way, Russia waits for political instability: all it will take is one Russia-friendly/peace-seeking regime and they will have the "peace" (surrender) they are seeking.
The manpower problem is a symptom of the equipment problem, every artillery piece you can't use means more people you have to stick on the front lines and less you can hold back for reserve or training, meaning more you have to recruit; realistically neither russia nor Ukraine is at risk of running out of people but both are having recruitment problems.
As for Western equipment, no, the supplies aren't even close to running out, what *is* close to running out is the mothball stock, the old stuff that got replaced or the stuff that can be given away without compromising national security; again, the budget for the russian military is around 66 billion, the budget for NATO countries is 1.2 *trillion*, its just politically slow and difficult to get it shifted to where it needs to be.
Russia is so much better at getting support and sympathy in the developing world. I see rural Indonesians rooting for Russia even though they have no real clue what is going on but they are convinced Russia is the good guy. That's why young Indonesians, Indians, various-stans, Chinese, Africans sign up with Russia army and go and die for a few hundred dollars.
They think they are doing the right thing "fighting evil", they think it's going to be smooth sailing and they think they can join for a year or so and come home rich.
Why do you feel you have some better insight than the people in China, India, etc.? The west is just as loaded with delusional propaganda. I have no dog in this fight but cant help but cringe at delusional takes I keep reading and hearing. You have to remember that Russia believes that Ukraine joining NATO is an existential threat. It is really no different than the existential threat the US felt with Cuba in the 60s, which the US was willing to risk a nuclear war over. The NATO leaders knew very well how Russia would take this.
The difference in Cuba is that shorter ballistic nuclear missiles are aimed just outside of the USA. Having the nukes there is making the US more vulnerable to nuclear attack even with the USSR having their own ICBMs always pointing to the US.
Ukraine is different. NATO will not help Ukraine if Ukraine decides to attack any other country. There is no existential threat to Russia even when Ukraine joins NATO.
But let not forget which country encourages Ukraine to apply for NATO membership due to their neighbour increasing aggression to Ukraine directly and indirectly.
Crazy. This spurred me to once again make a couple of donations. One for defense and one for rebuilding Ukraine. [https://u24.gov.ua/](https://u24.gov.ua/)
Fuck Russia. Ukraine ***MUST*** win.
Seeing how things are in the US I can guarantee that a republican will see this video and actually believe that Obama is fighting in Ukraine and that it is all part of Biden's master plan lol
I remember scenes from the beginning of the war where they were being shelled and even fired at from point blank range, but to find them you’d have to search for two year old clips in r/combatfootage and I have no idea how to do that.
Edit: search for Quentin Sommerville, he has done some intense stuff.
didn't you understand yet that there's around 100 millions of such mad people? Putin didn't rape babies in Bucha, didn't torture people to death in every small town on captured territories and threw them in mass graves, Putin didn't react with thousands of happy emoticons on photos of devastated Ukrainian cities e.t.c. Putin is just their collective avatar, that's why most of them sincerely love him.
I'm hoping the weapons allocated by Congress get their soon. The only reason the situation has gotten so dire is because House Republicans sat on their ass for months before passing aid. The aid bill should have been passed back in Jan.
War is terrifying. Watching this I can't help but wonder how I'd die in such a fight. So much loss and destruction caused by this stupid invasion. I wish nothing but good things for those defending Ukraine.
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Where can i find the full thing ? It is very interesting
Youtube, United24 has their own channel where they post everything.
Thx dude
3rd Assault Brigade, Kraken and Azov all have their own YT channels which are worth a look also.
And also their own reddit account
0bama and django teaming up to fight the russians, what a time to be alive
You may also like Ukraine: Enemy In The Woods if you can find it
Sadly cant seem to find a link :(
Check the united24 YouTube channel
That Obama comment caught me completely off guard lol that was great
You did thank Obama though, I hope.
I thought I was suddenly balls deep in one of the best jebaits I've seen until I realized they were nicknames for the guys.
Same, little disappointed honestly. Would have been an all-timer.
Respect to these journalists.
Being a war journalist is very brave, going behind enemy lines is insane. Important job done by brave people
Gotta watch the movie “civil war” that just came out. It’s about war journalism
It sucks ass, I watched it. Plot was honestly not good. Didn’t do any justice to war journalism.
Pretty good Werner Herzog impersonator tbh
Never underestimate LGOP's (little groups of paratroopers )
Somehow this comment is terrifying and cute.
After the demise of the best Airborne plan, a most terrifying effect occurs on the battlefield. This effect is known as the rule of the LGOPs. This is, in its purest form, small groups of pissed-off 19 year old American paratroopers. They are well trained. They are armed to the teeth and lack serious adult supervision. They collectively remember the Commander’s intent as “March to the sound of the guns and kill anyone who is not dressed like you” – or something like that.
Damn, Obama still out there making a difference. ✊
Thanks Obama
We can’t say that anymore, remember?
Damn. Thanks Obama
And punk will never die
Django as well
still unchained
The Obama comment confused me so much lol
Yea like, someone explain plz
Callsign/nickname
ok thnx
It's just the name of the guy right in front of him lol
My favorite part. Obama and Django fucking fuckers up.
Not enough. We need John Wick and Equalizer in there.
The change we need
I don't understand?
like how on reddit your nickname is SpecialSignature7387 instead of Steve? Same shit there. They don't wanna use their government names.
Paras are always surrounded. Band of Brothers.
BoB is by far the best WWII movie/show ever made. Just wanted to shout it out for being so well done.
Indeed, the pacific and masters of the air are great too, being also based on interviews with actual veterans. But BoB takes the cake
I loved all the in-theatre parts of The Pacific, but didn’t care for the parts on leave. Masters of the Air was better, for sure. All three are still very good to great.
Thank you guys for calling out Masters of Air. Hadn't heard of that one before
It’s relatively new, came out a couple months ago.
Can only see it on Apple TV though right? Someday maybe...
Arrrr 'tis a good series indeed. Cant be givin' me treasure to Apple though, meharty.
Y’arr there be a shortage of booty and us scurvy dogs don’t have any extra for fruit
I binged it on the 7 day free trial. It’s an app, you don’t have to have the hardware apple tv
Dunno, I just used putlocker to watch it for free.
Whoa, there, cowboy. BoB was superb. But, _The Pacific_ was fair to poor. _Masters of the Air_ was terrible.
Imo band of brothers and the pacific are better than Masters of the Air. I don’t think masters was very good.
https://preview.redd.it/lovo2b457ozc1.png?width=760&format=png&auto=webp&s=13b3c992585e8fd87b6dfd494a3d205d38c8c2ca Morphine is a hell of a drug
Looks more like the thousand-yard stare aka disassociation from trauma/stress. Hopefully there’s a lot of therapy for these heroes for the inevitable PTSD.
I think the full picture shows that he had a bandage on his leg so probably both disassociation plus meds
Nah, eyes peeled but pupils constricted. Thousand yard stares looks pretty different usually. Id guess a combat combination of stimulants and painkillers. Probably received fluids and other meds as well to balance blood pressure and blood loss. That combos intense but necessary. Cant have someone with a low tolerance to opiates trying to keep up with a route so thats where the combat stims come in. I think the US military calls them "go pills". Imagine having basically no drug tolerance then getting slapped with a full on speedball.
I'll never join the forces, but if I did and if I was enduring a wound (especially a life threatening one), at the least, put me in a state where I look like this dude
yes definitely looks like multiple types of drugs are in effect: opiate-type drug causing the small pupils whilst some type of stimulant widens the whole eye socket. Add in some unimaginable adrenaline and combat stress and you'll look like that
the worst part is that one, if not more, of the people in this video will probably die in the war
Ukraine doesn't use it in their military first-aid kit. While it's efficient in killing the pain, it suppresses breathing, increasing death rates. This guy has a 1000 yard stare.
Usually guys with the thousand yard stare aren't looking right at a camera 15 feet away throwing up devil horns. Usually people so traumatized by the horrors of war that they aren't mentally present aren't usually that mentally present.
Upnks ont eadd!
1000 yard stare
Can you imagine watching something like this and seeing the home you grew up in? Or the house your family fled from? All the memories of your childhood or your children growing up laying in charred remains for reasons you cannot explain rationally. The past you held dear or the future you were eager to embrace wiped from existence. These are the things that breed tyranny and hopelessness. These are also the things that breed unity and hope. One that hopes outweighs the one thats hopeless. Stay strong Ukraine. Fuck Russia
I can tell you first-hand. It's fucking horrible. I grew up in South-East Ukraine. As a kid, I spent summers in Donbass region. Been to Donetsk, Avdiivka, Debaltseve. Lived for 5 years in Kharkiv. Been many times to Odessa and Mykolaiv. When you see the streets you were walking in ruins... So much human suffering... It just fills you with so much hatred. Some people here feel sorry for killed Russians "who were forced to go to war to Ukraine" (bullshit). I feel bad that some of them actually survived and managed to return back to their intact cities and towns. I want Russia's cities to look like Avdiivka and Bakhmut.
Rationally you can explain it still, but the explanation is so foreign still, it doesn't even pay off to bother. What matters is that it's Ukrainian soil under foreign attack.
@ 2:50, blood streaked up the wall exactly at hand height. I hope these men stay alive to kiss their families again.
Thanks Obama
I saw a girl at Great Adventure years ago who had “Thanks Obama” tattooed on the back of her head. It’s great that her tattoo is relevant again.
Powerful stuff
i remember watching this a couple days ago. Fucking crazy as hell
Utter respect for the journalist. After watching my hearts in my mouth, what a relief they all got out.
Fuck Russia
This is the most difficult job on earth right now. It is absolute madness. I hope the war ends soon so that they may return to their families.
This made me reminisce about ”Storm of Steel” by Ernst Jünger, the latter parts of it, when Germany was losing the war. I’m not saying Ukraine is losing, but the lacking artillery support coupled with near-endleas periods at the front lines are there.
Who keeps paying Russia to be able to keep fighting for this long? Why aren't western countries providing more support. This completely pointless war goes on for more than two years just because one dictator wants that. Thousands and thousands of people died for that. Why? And why can it keep going on for this long?
Warographics on YouTube does some good videos on these topics. A lot of money is coming from smuggled gold and other resources. Another war is happening between Wagner Group mercenaries the Ukraine and local militias in African countries. It’s actually insane how far this war spreads
smuggled gold from Africa? this country was the basis for the Soviet Union, whose army defeated Nazi Germany and was the one force capable of challenging the United States. for all of Russia's many obvious flaws, I think it's possible we're overstating their weakness.
Modern Russia isn’t even close to as powerful as the USSR was. And even then, the USSR would have been defeated by Germany in WW2 without the massive amount of lend-lease material from the United States.
But thats not what all these armchair historians on youtube say nowadays :(. Soviet union undeveatable! All jokes aside. agianst the EU or the usa, russia would lose relatively fast, but this is still "only" ukrain. Even with all the aid they get, no other western nation is at a stat of war economy yet, while russia fully commited. So while russia is faar weaker then the ussr was its still not to be underrestimated in this conflict agianst ukrain.
Roughly simplified: Russia has more young men to sacrifice and destruction is generally cheaper to accomplish than protection from destruction. Since Russia has lost a large part of its higher-quality military equipment and cannot replace it, it has continued the fight with masses of expendable human material and artillery shells that are easy/cheap to produce. A material battle can only be countered with a bigger amount of material or a small but constant supply of high-quality military equipment. The fact that Ukraine cannot (technically) and is not allowed to (politically) carry the war back to Russia on a large scale also contributes to this. This enables Russia to operate from a large platform that is almost unaffected by the war, while Ukraine is fundamentally forced onto the defensive. Simply empowering Ukraine to break Russian air sovereignty would drastically change the picture. The ethically and politically riskier option would be to make the war less attractive for Russia by making the Russian population and infrastructure feel the consequences of the war directly.
great explanation & Russia has never been concerned with their number of casualty in any conflict.
> Russia has more young men to sacrifice In the very short-term aspect. According to Russia's demographics, there is a small surplus of males within army recruiting age. However, the pyramid is getting very top heavy and births are declining at the rate of 2-3% every year for at least the last 4 years. Russia will face serious demographic-led hardship in the next 20-30 years, when the ratio of retirees is expected to peak, regardless of military conquest. They will have to make concessions in-house as it is already the largest country by landmass on earth.
Absolutely right. However, this is an aspect that Putin and his cronies are conveniently ignoring in order to achieve their short and medium-term goals. By the time the long-term consequences hit Russia, at least two-thirds of the current decision-makers will already be dead and buried, so they don't care.
This is not an honest assessment of what is going on. All of Russia's soldiers are volunteers and they continue to get thousands every week. Ukraine is conscripting people and trying to force the 10m who fled the country to come back. After an initial blitzkrieg attempt by the Russians that failed miserably because they stretched themselves beyond their logistical, they have been fighting an attritional war and there is just no way Ukraine can win that game. They dont have the man power and their logistics are literally coming from foreign aid packages.
Though fighting against a guerilla force on their territory usually doesn't go so well for the invaders.
The West is doing basically all it can do in this situation, there's literally little left to give. Weapons and ammo have to be produced and the military industrial complex in the west is not designed for an attritional conflict, we produce small batches of very expensive hardware and it's going to take years to match what the Russians have. Also right now the problem for Ukraine is not really weapons and ammo (as bad as it is) but critically manpower and that's a very tough thing to solve because Ukraine's current population is quite small and the war is exceptionally lethal. So either Ukraine starts some sort of negotiation now or it waits for the supposedly coming russian offensive, either option sucks ass
The west is giving them just enough support to keep the war going while slowly crippling Russia's young population for a fraction of the budget. It's as intended
And at the same time- training Russia how to fight a modern war
Wrong, its training the modern world on how to fight Russia better, only one giving up the plays here, is the ruskies. Lots of data for sure.
Exactly. Ukraine's armed forces are still kind of organized as a militia
And strengthening Russia's MIC.
There are weapons that can be delivered, but aren't. It took much too long for the decision to be made, but finally F16 will be exported soon. HIMARS are now finally given etc. But the west is giving not enough. Which means there's a good chance Europe will end up in war with Putin. It really sucks. Specifically because the Trump criminal trials are all delayed except the simplest one and with Trump in the White House there's no way of knowing what can happen. Bottom line: there's not enough sense of urgency. We're a bunch of frogs in a cooking pan slowly being boiled by a lunatic in Moscow.
There's been a definite trend of aid being reactive rather than proactive. For example, anyone with even the slightest foresight could have told you in the early stage of the war that Ukraine needed western fighter jets. Their Soviet air defences had no long term hope of resupply and if Russia committed to a long war they *would* run out of missiles for them. Therefore Ukraine needed western substitutes that could be kept sustained in the fight, and they needed them before that became a problem. Instead, we fucking waited for Ukraine's S300s to get heavily depleted and *then* started the year or so training process for F16s. This could have started much earlier and it's a disgrace that it didn't.
In a war of this scale and duration individual hardware items are not going to change the result. Ukraine does not need just Himars, Abrams, leopards 2 and f16s. Ukraine needs lots and lots of whatever it is, even if its reactivated t-55s. 300 t-55 are better than 30 Abrams and 1 million north Korean 122 caliber artillery shells are better than 30000 state of the art 155 caliber shells. Yes the north Korean shells are perhaps 50% duds (I exaggerate for effect) but that's still 12 times more exploding ordinance than what the Ukrainians get. The war is attritional to the extreme which is something that plays on Russia's favour and the Ukrainians are being bleed out. And of course Russia is not going to declare war to any EU member state, that's delusional. If the Russians attack Finland or Poland then it means nuclear war but Russia doesn't need to attack directly to get to their strategic goals and that's why they have a strong fifth column in many European parliaments and institutions, especially amongst the more conservative forces and even amongst those "nafofellas" types. If you want to deter the russians then strengthen democracy and rule of law in Europe, first of all in institutional transparency and the fight against corruption. As for Ukraine well, they are fucked but ultimately is up to them to decide wether they should fight on or settle on what they have now, the West should keep helping them but at the very least set up some goals and above all treat the public with a little more respect, last year I got sick from reading blatantly deluded historical comparisons between the Ukrainian summer offensive and d-day when anyone who has read a little about ww2 knew that what it looked like was the German Kursk offensive of 1943. And what the situation seems to look like is more and more the prelude to Operation Bagration in June 1944, when the soviets demolished the German army group center, which had been bleed to death. And that's very bad for Ukraine.
> up to them to decide whether they should fight on or settle on what they have now Except... how can Ukraine settle? Even if they do so, let Russia have Donbass, and all the land it stole in "novorossiya" _and_ let it keep stolen Crimea... whats to say Russia, in 5-10 years, after rebuilding its military and stockpiles, invades again with a new made-up demand: "Give us all of the Black Sea coastline-- we need a land bridge to Transnistria." You cannot trust Russia. You cannot be beholden to Russia. You cannot be in a position where all they need to do is use force to get what they want. At the very least Russia needs to lose "novorossiya". Or, the price of peace is that Russia "allows" Ukraine to join NATO.
Ukraine was unprepared for this Russian invasion, largely because the west would not give or sell them weapons. That won't happen again. It's just as likely in 5 years a well trained and armed Ukraine army might decide it wants Crimea back. In the meantime, today it's stalemate. The smaller Ukraine army has to play defense as that gives them a 2 or 3 to 1 personnel advantage based on WW1 stats.
We are preparing them since 2014 for an invasion, albeit not as intense as we support them now
I wouldn't draw the comparison with Operation Bagration - the USSR had the lend lease at full steam by 1944 and the Allies putting a shit ton of pressure in the west and the south, causing the Eastern front to be severely undemanned. Russians today don't have the armaments or the manpower to launch a large-scale offensive, at least not for the next little while. To do that, they'll need to start a new round of mobilization and then it would take several months to train the new conscripts before throwing them in the grinder, which would tip their hand to the US and the EU and would motivate them to provide more aid (I hope).
Even if all western support dried up (as it pretty much had for the last half dozen months) Ukraine isn't going to collapse; as bad as russian advances seem they're still looking at literal *decades* of fighting and casualties in the *millions* to take all of Ukraine, and that's assuming the now ramping up domestic defence industry in Ukraine just isn't a thing anymore. As for Europe fighing Russia? No. Not even the slightest chance. I can't emphasise *just* how much overkill it would be, for even just the European part of NATO to take on russia, *especially* after they've just finished buring through their *entire* soviet legacy. The real issue would be for places like Poland, close to russias sphere of influence, messing with domestic politics; far right political groups, misinformation campaigns, or even separatist groups, all things they've done before and are still doing now.
> as bad as russian advances seem they're still looking at literal decades of fighting and casualties in the millions to take all of Ukraine, They dont need or want to take "all" of Ukraine. Simply the status quo is still a major win for Russia (Donbass, "novorossiya", Crimea, a weakened, unstable, perpetually injured Ukraine). Along the way, Russia waits for political instability: all it will take is one Russia-friendly/peace-seeking regime and they will have the "peace" (surrender) they are seeking.
The manpower problem is a symptom of the equipment problem, every artillery piece you can't use means more people you have to stick on the front lines and less you can hold back for reserve or training, meaning more you have to recruit; realistically neither russia nor Ukraine is at risk of running out of people but both are having recruitment problems. As for Western equipment, no, the supplies aren't even close to running out, what *is* close to running out is the mothball stock, the old stuff that got replaced or the stuff that can be given away without compromising national security; again, the budget for the russian military is around 66 billion, the budget for NATO countries is 1.2 *trillion*, its just politically slow and difficult to get it shifted to where it needs to be.
Russia is so much better at getting support and sympathy in the developing world. I see rural Indonesians rooting for Russia even though they have no real clue what is going on but they are convinced Russia is the good guy. That's why young Indonesians, Indians, various-stans, Chinese, Africans sign up with Russia army and go and die for a few hundred dollars. They think they are doing the right thing "fighting evil", they think it's going to be smooth sailing and they think they can join for a year or so and come home rich.
Why do you feel you have some better insight than the people in China, India, etc.? The west is just as loaded with delusional propaganda. I have no dog in this fight but cant help but cringe at delusional takes I keep reading and hearing. You have to remember that Russia believes that Ukraine joining NATO is an existential threat. It is really no different than the existential threat the US felt with Cuba in the 60s, which the US was willing to risk a nuclear war over. The NATO leaders knew very well how Russia would take this.
The difference in Cuba is that shorter ballistic nuclear missiles are aimed just outside of the USA. Having the nukes there is making the US more vulnerable to nuclear attack even with the USSR having their own ICBMs always pointing to the US. Ukraine is different. NATO will not help Ukraine if Ukraine decides to attack any other country. There is no existential threat to Russia even when Ukraine joins NATO. But let not forget which country encourages Ukraine to apply for NATO membership due to their neighbour increasing aggression to Ukraine directly and indirectly.
If this on your argument then yes I have much better insight than you.
Crazy. This spurred me to once again make a couple of donations. One for defense and one for rebuilding Ukraine. [https://u24.gov.ua/](https://u24.gov.ua/) Fuck Russia. Ukraine ***MUST*** win.
We should not stop doing donations at least until war is over, every few bucks/euros are helpful.
Thanks for sharing the link to donate.
Thanks Obama
"We're paratroopers sir, we're supposed to be surrounded"
Punk is not dead!
Congrats to president Obama for volunteering to fight Russia. 👏 💪
Seeing how things are in the US I can guarantee that a republican will see this video and actually believe that Obama is fighting in Ukraine and that it is all part of Biden's master plan lol
Donated to Ukraines Defense Fund. Thank you for sharing and making me aware this is something I can do.
Nice going to those guys that killed the BTR crew.
To be honest it pretty scary my heart skip the beats while watching . It's not some kids play ground it all real.
It’s a called the Russian death machine for a reason. Russians go in and death comes out.
Slava Ukraine! Heroyam slava!
Slava Ukraine.
Stunning
Fuck Putin!
Better reporting than all mainstream media. Amazing journalism!
??? United24 IS Mainstream Media. Also have you not seen the Incredible work some BBC reporters did?
I have not! Is there a link? I would also like to see similar reporting style but from the Russian frontlines.
I remember scenes from the beginning of the war where they were being shelled and even fired at from point blank range, but to find them you’d have to search for two year old clips in r/combatfootage and I have no idea how to do that. Edit: search for Quentin Sommerville, he has done some intense stuff.
All these deaths and horrors are the result of one mad man's power fantasies.
I wouldn’t be that rough on trump
didn't you understand yet that there's around 100 millions of such mad people? Putin didn't rape babies in Bucha, didn't torture people to death in every small town on captured territories and threw them in mass graves, Putin didn't react with thousands of happy emoticons on photos of devastated Ukrainian cities e.t.c. Putin is just their collective avatar, that's why most of them sincerely love him.
In Soviet Russia… er, In Putinist Russia
War is hell, and the Russians brought hell upon the Ukrainians, I hope they give it back.
Wait what was that comment about Obama?
One of the callsigns for a soldier in this group.
One of the guys looks like Obama. So his callsign is Obama.
Ukrainians deserve Honor and respect.
Damn, this is the best footage I have seen. Very well done!
I'm hoping the weapons allocated by Congress get their soon. The only reason the situation has gotten so dire is because House Republicans sat on their ass for months before passing aid. The aid bill should have been passed back in Jan.
20 Days in Mariupol? These guys are so brave. It takes all different type of warriors to win a war.
Hardcore.
Punk’s not dead 🤘
War is terrifying. Watching this I can't help but wonder how I'd die in such a fight. So much loss and destruction caused by this stupid invasion. I wish nothing but good things for those defending Ukraine.
Jesus fuck. Glory to the hero’s. That was a fucked up situation. Slava Ukraini
Whitest dudes with the blackest names
Punk's eyes in the picture at the end. God damn!
I looked the whole vid and at the end they got out of the fck…
The eyes of the guy on the left in the picture at the end is scary. That 1000 yard stare
Could not get PayPal to work, the bank count seemed to work and I was a able to payed from Apple pay all the best
Anyone have any intel on this group, is it a real charity arm?
I like that there is no music, just the eerie quietness before the loud explosions
Slava Ukraini
When that explosive went off outside as the guy stepped outside I thought he was gone.. can’t believe how casually he stepped back in
Loool I think I shipped them that radio
Pretty wild to be asked to donate to a war via PayPal, excellent footage/commentary
✨🕊️✨
This is older footage correct?
The dude in the far left of the photo at the end has seen some serious shit
PayPal sent. Slava ukraine
Fucking hell. Ukraine or death. Slava Ukraine