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Very quick turnaround seems to be going on here. Unless China is simply going two different messages at the same time to whoever they are talking to.
Fu Cong, China’s Ambassador to the EU, said that statements about "no limits to friendship" between China and Russian are "nothing but rhetoric".
Fu Cong said China was not on Russia’s side in the war and that some people deliberately misinterpreted the declaration about ‘no limit friendship’ between China and Russia, signed on the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
According to him, as quoted by the NYT, the ties between the countries may not be as limitless as their leaders once claimed.
"‘No limit’ is nothing but rhetoric," Fu Cong emphasised.
Beijing has not condemned the invasion, he said, because it understood Russia’s claims about a defensive war against NATO encroachment, and because his government believes "the root causes are more complicated" than Western leaders say.
Fu Cong insisted the lack of a call was of no great importance, that Mr. Xi was very busy, and that there were frequent lower-level contacts between the two countries.
"I know people are focused on the presidential call. The fact that President Xi is not speaking to Zelenskyy does not signify that China is on the side of Russia on the Ukrainian issue," Fu Cong added.
Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, commenting on his words, said that the Kremlin was focused on the "content and spirit of the contacts" that took place between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Moscow, and they "fully cover the entire range of issues that are on the joint agenda daytime".
Footage from the frontline how UA tanks clear Russian trenches.
Part 2 of the same video
Slight NSFW warning. There's no gore, but people are literally being driven over by a tank in this video. It's incredibly brutal to watch it repeatedly drive into the trench, knowing there's people down there
Part 3 is out as well now, with more angles, a voiceover, comms, an interview with the prisoner they dug up from the trench 20 hours later, and a pov shot from someone going walking through the trench afterwards.
I'm not going to link it, as it's perhaps even more brutal than the previous one, and it does show uniforms and gear that clearly belongs to someone who's buried beneath them (Tho no actual dead bodies that isn't censored), but it's a very interesting watch
On April 05 2023 19:47 Magic Powers wrote: It should be mentioned that both UK and France were hesitant to trigger another great war. They tried to prevent it using diplomacy over military retaliation. A number of historians agree that this inaction allowed Germany to go on a rampage, because a quick invasion would've likely crippled the German military. Then again, the mindset shift towards diplomacy and democracy and away from intervention is what has, so far, prevented another great war since WW2. It's easy to say a sleepy mindset caused WW2, but it has also prevented a nuclear war. But I guess that's a difficult argument. We can't know how things would've unfolded in a timeline that didn't happen.
What happened then is that when Germany invaded Poland both France and UK declared war with Germany. France pushed 43 divisions into Germany, capturing 12 settlements and securing a solid foothold. Meanwhile UK sent bombers over German cities but instead of bombs they dropped flyers. UK wanted to pursue the diplomatic solution and persuaded the French to withdraw their forces (despite protests from some of the French generals). Historians pretty much agree that at the time Germany was completely unprepared to fight war on several fronts and would be defeated quickly, but after this they adjusted and tightened their air defense. We all know what happened to France after that...
On April 06 2023 00:23 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Very quick turnaround seems to be going on here. Unless China is simply going two different messages at the same time to whoever they are talking to.
That would be consistent with their drone ban for Russia I wrote about earlier. China is definitely not sitting in Russia's corner this time. One could argue it's quite the opposite and they're trying to weaken Russia further without getting too involved.
On April 06 2023 09:01 Manit0u wrote: Historians pretty much agree that at the time Germany was completely unprepared to fight war on several fronts and would be defeated quickly,
They really don't. Remilitarizing and fortifying the western frontier (the Siegfried Line) had been a major German effort for years by 1939 for exactly this reason. Hitler knew that they would eventually face conflict with France and that they needed to prepare for it. The idea that the warmonger was somehow unprepared for war is absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that Britain and France finally committed to a war against Germany, something they had been trying to avoid for a decade, but also didn't really care about it.
Perhaps you're thinking of Munich. Historians agree that Germany was not ready for war in 1938 (and that Hitler would have been deposed by his own military for committing to one).
On April 06 2023 09:01 Manit0u wrote: Historians pretty much agree that at the time Germany was completely unprepared to fight war on several fronts and would be defeated quickly,
They really don't. Remilitarizing and fortifying the western frontier (the Siegfried Line) had been a major German effort for years by 1939 for exactly this reason. Hitler knew that they would eventually face conflict with France and that they needed to prepare for it. The idea that the warmonger was somehow unprepared for war is absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that Britain and France finally committed to a war against Germany, something they had been trying to avoid for a decade, but also didn't really care about it.
Perhaps you're thinking of Munich. Historians agree that Germany was not ready for war in 1938 (and that Hitler would have been deposed by his own military for committing to one).
I'm talking about the Saar Offensive in 1939.
The French stopped short of the Siegfried line, although they came within a few kilometres south of it, immediately east of Saarbrücken.
The French held German territory along all of the Rhine-Moselle front, but after the collapse of Poland,[6] General Maurice Gamelin on 21 September ordered French units to return to their starting positions on the Maginot Line. Some French generals, such as Henri Giraud, saw the withdrawal as a wasted opportunity and made known their disagreement with it.
Never ceases to amaze me how much talk there is from Poland how they were 'let down' by everyone in WW2 while simultaneously completely ignoring the fact that Poland straight up supported Hitler's claims during the Sudeten crisis and prevented USSR from defending Czechoslovakia with whom both the Soviets and the French had mutual defense treaties.
On April 06 2023 09:01 Manit0u wrote: Historians pretty much agree that at the time Germany was completely unprepared to fight war on several fronts and would be defeated quickly,
They really don't. Remilitarizing and fortifying the western frontier (the Siegfried Line) had been a major German effort for years by 1939 for exactly this reason. Hitler knew that they would eventually face conflict with France and that they needed to prepare for it. The idea that the warmonger was somehow unprepared for war is absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that Britain and France finally committed to a war against Germany, something they had been trying to avoid for a decade, but also didn't really care about it.
Perhaps you're thinking of Munich. Historians agree that Germany was not ready for war in 1938 (and that Hitler would have been deposed by his own military for committing to one).
The French stopped short of the Siegfried line, although they came within a few kilometres south of it, immediately east of Saarbrücken.
The French held German territory along all of the Rhine-Moselle front, but after the collapse of Poland,[6] General Maurice Gamelin on 21 September ordered French units to return to their starting positions on the Maginot Line. Some French generals, such as Henri Giraud, saw the withdrawal as a wasted opportunity and made known their disagreement with it.
So it didn't really have much to do with the Brits, but was rather worry that the Germans would in fact be able to fight and the French were overexposed. In hindsight it seems like a full committal of the Allied forces in the Saar offensive would have worked, but hindsight is a fantastic thing. At the time, the main problem was that nobody knew the relative power of the German and Allied forces. Another case in point: Germany thought their blitz into France was a desperate attempt that was going to fail, but the best they could do. Instead it was a rout and they had to scramble to come up with Fall Rot due to the utterly crushing victory of Fall Gelb.
The Brits did indeed send pamphlets. So did the Germans, it was a weird, naive, thing that the US suggested to avoid the total destruction of multiple cities. It might even have worked to avoid further civilian deaths (although after the destruction of Warsaw the writing was on the wall). The Germans betrayed the agreement when they invaded Netherlands, and carpet bombed Rotterdam. From there onwards there was no stopping the erasing of cities by mass bombing campaigns on all sides.
On April 06 2023 12:11 Salazarz wrote: Never ceases to amaze me how much talk there is from Poland how they were 'let down' by everyone in WW2 while simultaneously completely ignoring the fact that Poland straight up supported Hitler's claims during the Sudeten crisis and prevented USSR from defending Czechoslovakia with whom both the Soviets and the French had mutual defense treaties.
This is yet another time when You come to this or EU thread to spill complete lies about Polands history. WTF is Your problem dude? Beneš himself refused to go to war without the help of western powers (becuase he knew that Soviets were bulshiting). Also the idea that Poland would allow Soviet Troops inside its border is absurd given that Soviet state was openly hostile towards Poland... Not to mention this is completly offtopic.
Is there any news of the planned UA offensive? I feel a strong start into year two would bolster morale not only in UA but across the board of all supporting countries
On April 06 2023 21:11 Harris1st wrote: Is there any news of the planned UA offensive? I feel a strong start into year two would bolster morale not only in UA but across the board of all supporting countries
It was supposedly postponed because of bad weather.
There were voices that counteroffensive was posptponed because of weather. Recently temperature plumeted in Eastern Europe to around 0 Celsius with heavy snow/rainfall so there might be something to it.
On April 06 2023 12:11 Salazarz wrote: Never ceases to amaze me how much talk there is from Poland how they were 'let down' by everyone in WW2 while simultaneously completely ignoring the fact that Poland straight up supported Hitler's claims during the Sudeten crisis and prevented USSR from defending Czechoslovakia with whom both the Soviets and the French had mutual defense treaties.
This is yet another time when You come to this or EU thread to spill complete lies about Polands history. WTF is Your problem dude? Beneš himself refused to go to war without the help of western powers (becuase he knew that Soviets were bulshiting). Also the idea that Poland would allow Soviet Troops inside its border is absurd given that Soviet state was openly hostile towards Poland... Not to mention this is completly offtopic.
Benes himself annexed Trans-Olza.
Nothing about Salazarz' comment is factually incorrect.
So Bakhmut has not been taken according to Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted on April 6 that Ukrainian forces are not retreating from Bakhmut and said that a Russian offensive is "out of question" at the moment.
It contradicted his own earlier statement that Russian forces "had taken Bakhmut de jure."
"It should be clearly said that the enemy (Ukrainian forces) is not going anywhere (from Bakhmut). They have organized defense inside the city, first by the railway, then in the area of high-rise buildings in the western district of the city," Prigozhin said in a comment shared by his press service on Telegram.
According to Prigozhin, Russian forces are faced with three issues, namely a lack of "properly organized command," weak flanks, and not enough ammunition.
The Kremlin-controlled mercenary group has been assisting Russia’s military in trying to capture Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut for months as Moscow tries to consolidate its grip over the entirety of Donetsk Oblast.
Prigozhin claimed on April 2 that his forces had captured the city administration building in Donetsk Oblast's Bakhmut, raising the Russian flag there.
The head of Russia's state-backed private mercenary group added that Bakhmut is "de jure taken" and the Ukrainian forces were "concentrated in the western area" of the city.
The Ukrainian military promptly denied his claims, saying that the building had long been destroyed by shelling.
"(Wagner Group founder Yevgeny) Prigozhin probably goes to Bakhmut because it is not safe for him in St. Petersburg right now. There, you see, restaurants explode. So he sets flags on buildings that have long since physically ceased to exist," Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson Serhiy Cherevatyi said while speaking on national television on April 4.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in its assessment on March 16 that the Wagner Group's offensive on Bakhmut "appears to be nearing culmination."
“Since May last year, between 20,000-30,000 Wagner and regular Russian forces have been killed and wounded in the area around Bakhmut alone – a huge loss of human life for a total territorial advance of approximately just 25 kilometers,” U.K. military advisor Ian Stubbs noted on March 15.
Ukraine does seem to have given up the eastern part of the city. Though they still hold parts of the centre and has another defensive line in the western part of the city prepared for later.
It appears Russia is engaged in launching a limited offensive; with Ukraine, so far, repelling all of them.
Russian troops are concentrating their efforts on conducting offensives toward Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Marinka in Donetsk Oblast, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on April 6.
Ukrainian troops repelled more than 20 Russian attacks in those areas in the past day, according to the report.
The most intense fighting continues for the settlements of Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Marinka in Ukraine's east, the General Staff wrote.
Over the past 24 hours, Russian troops reportedly carried out four missile and seven air strikes as well as more than ten attacks with multiple launch rocket systems against Ukrainian military positions and civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine's military also reported conducting eight strikes on Russian temporary bases, attacks on two Russian warehouses with fuel, lubricants, and an electronic warfare station.
According to the General Staff, Russian forces "continue to suffer huge losses in manpower" in Ukraine, with hospitals on the occupied territories "fully loaded."
Russia has reportedly set up a tent city in one of the settlements of occupied Crimea, where nearly 100 wounded Russian soldiers were being treated as of April 4.
This video talks about russia running out of soldiers, time for another mobilization perhaps? Maybe Russia should mobilize 1 million this time, as long as he avoids St petersburg and Moskva no one (important) in Russia will care
It appears that not only is Russia losing tanks faster than they can replace them, but as a result their experienced Tank crews, or what's left of them, might be getting killed off at a faster rate being put into older models.
Having lost at least 2,000 tanks in its 14-month wider war on Ukraine, and struggling to source the high-tech components its needs to build new tanks, Russia has been pulling out of long-term storage hundreds of 60-year-old T-62s and 70-year-old T-55s. Tanks that were obsolete decades ago.
A 41-ton T-62 with its 115-millimeter smoothbore gun, or a 40-ton T-55 with its 100-millimeter rifled gun, isn’t just easier for Russian industry to restore than a newer T-90 or T-72 is—after all, the T-62 or T-55 requires fewer ball bearings and electronic components. The older tank also is easier for its crew to operate.
That has training implications. "The crews prepare for them [the T-55s and T-62s] in a shorter timeframe," Ukrainian commentator Oleksandr Kovalenko said.
The T-55 and T-62 are from a generation of Soviet tanks before the introduction of automatic gun-loaders, sophisticated fire-controls and crew layouts that allow a gunner and commander independently to search for targets.
The upside is that a four-person crew could learn to operate its old tank fast—as in, after just a few weeks of training. The downside, of course, is that the crew still is riding in an obsolete tank. A T-55 or T-62 is easier to use because it’s old, crude tech.
Old, crude tech that might not last long in combat—and which might end up getting new tankers killed faster.
Still, the Russians seem to appreciate the old tanks’ less demanding training requirement. After all, many of those 2,000 tanks they’ve lost in Ukraine took their crews with them when they blew up. It’s possible thousands of experienced Russian tankers have died in the wider war; replacing them might be as difficult as replacing their tanks is.
Kovalenko noted Russia’s growing shortage of good tank crews when he tracked a batch of a dozen restored T-72s, T-80s and T-90s reaching a Russian army motorized unit near Svatove in eastern Ukraine. "The most interesting thing is that there are no crews in the unit who can operate these tanks," Kovalenko said.
Assigning new crews to old tanks might seem like a solution to this problem. In reality, it’s a short-term expedient—and a self-defeating one, at that.
It’s possible to upgrade the optics in a T-55 or T-62 by swapping out the 70-year-old TSh 2-22 gunner’s sight for a 1PN96MT-02 analog sight that, while not as sophisticated as the state-of-the-art Sosna-U digital sight is, at least is new and reliable. It also is possible to boost an older tank’s protection by bolting reactive armor blocks onto the hull and turret.
But there’s very little Russian industry can do to improve a T-55 or T-62’s main gun, internal layout or turret-hull integration. And all are problematic.
“The T-62's most significant weakness is its slow rate of fire,” the U.S. Army explained in a 1979 bulletin. Where the crew of a Ukrainian T-64, Leopard 2 or M-1 can fire 10 or even 12 rounds a minute, a T-55 or T-62 crew might manage three or four rounds a minute.
The reasons are myriad. “The ammunition is inconveniently stored for rapid loading,” according to the U.S. Army bulletin. “Under certain conditions, the gun must be elevated before the loader can place a new round in the breech. The automatic ejection system requires six seconds to complete a cycle.”
While the T-55 and T-62 suffer other limitations—slow turret-traverse mechanisms, for instance—the lethargic rate of fire is one constraint that’s bound to get a lot of Russian tankers killed in direct clashes with the Ukrainians.
During the pivotal battle around Chernihiv in north-central Ukraine in the spring of 2022, the Ukrainian 1st Tank Brigade hid its T-64s in the forests around the city. When Russian tanks rolled past, the T-64 crews opened fire.
“Better crew training combined with short-ranged engagements where their armament was competitive, and the faster autoloader on the T-64, allowed Ukrainian tank crews to achieve significant damage against surprised Russian units,” analysts Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds explained in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
As T-55s and T-62s replace T-72s in Russian formations, the Ukrainians’ gunnery advantage only will grow.
But comparing an old Russian tank to a newer Ukrainian tank really is missing the point. The Kremlin’s tank-crew crisis is a reminder that, in warfare, people matter more than machines do. Rushing new tankers through a short training course in order to squeeze them into old T-55s and T-62s and speed those tanks to the front line might create an impression of Russian strength. But it won’t win battles.
Because those crews—tank commanders, or TCs, especially—will lack experience. “It is ... important that deciders in crews and platoons (TCs and platoon leaders) have the necessary experience to allow them to react to rapidly changing future battlefields,” Billy Burnside noted in a 1979 study for the U.S. Army.
In ‘solving’ their tanker-shortage by equipping crews with obsolete tanks, the Russians might end up creating an even deeper tanker shortage—by getting a bunch of four-man T-55 and T-62 crews killed in lopsided fights with better-equipped, better-trained Ukrainian forces.
On April 09 2023 06:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: It appears that not only is Russia losing tanks faster than they can replace them, but as a result their experienced Tank crews, or what's left of them, might be getting killed off at a faster rate being put into older models.
If you're losing tanks it's usually more than you can replace. For more modern tanks it takes 5 months to assemble a single Abrams for example. Russia is capable of producing about 20 tanks/month or resurrect 90 tanks from its deep storage boneyards (I really doubt this last number though as I think that most of the tanks in deep storage in Russia have been left in a state of disrepair and ransacked over the years but that's just my thoughts on the matter).
And speaking to earlier post about Russia running out of men and mobilizing more, it might be too little too late. It doesn't really matter if they can mobilize 1 million men if it'll take months to train them (and then you need to equip them) before you can send them to the front. In this time most if not all territory might be lost. If indeed Russia has personnel problem then a complete collapse of their offensive and Ukraine recapturing huge swaths of land is not unreasonable (how they caught Russia off-guard in the east and pushed them back significantly previously).
On April 09 2023 06:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: It appears that not only is Russia losing tanks faster than they can replace them, but as a result their experienced Tank crews, or what's left of them, might be getting killed off at a faster rate being put into older models.
If you're losing tanks it's usually more than you can replace. For more modern tanks it takes 5 months to assemble a single Abrams for example. Russia is capable of producing about 20 tanks/month or resurrect 90 tanks from its deep storage boneyards (I really doubt this last number though as I think that most of the tanks in deep storage in Russia have been left in a state of disrepair and ransacked over the years but that's just my thoughts on the matter).
And speaking to earlier post about Russia running out of men and mobilizing more, it might be too little too late. It doesn't really matter if they can mobilize 1 million men if it'll take months to train them (and then you need to equip them) before you can send them to the front. In this time most if not all territory might be lost. If indeed Russia has personnel problem then a complete collapse of their offensive and Ukraine recapturing huge swaths of land is not unreasonable (how they caught Russia off-guard in the east and pushed them back significantly previously).
There's also the fact that you lose the experienced crews that are meant to be training new recruits. If you don't have the ability to rotate experienced crews out to train new crews, you lose all the experience they've gained. The Japanese air force in WW2 is a pretty good example of this, they kept veteran pilots in service until they were captured, killed or wounded to a point where they could not fly.
Rotating pilots out regularly so that they can assist with pilot training and allow new pilots to join experienced squadrons improves effectiveness. America did this in WW2, with pretty decent success from what I know.
I'd be willing to bet that Russia is following the Japanese school of thought here (WW2, pilot training was cut down to 200h prior to readiness for combat later in the war. Roughly 2.5 weeks of 12h training days. Quality suffers hard, and it gets even worse if your trainers get sent to combat and killed, so you have people teaching out of textbooks.
EPT
