Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 514

Poland has rushed troops to its eastern border after accusing Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters.

The Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused Poland, a Nato member and one of Ukraine’s most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of inventing the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops.

Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko had earlier taunted Poland over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near their joint border.

Poland’s defence ministry said it was sending “additional forces and resources, including combat helicopters”. It said it had informed Nato of the border violation and Belarus’s chargé d’affaires had been summoned to provide an explanation.

The Polish military initially denied any border violation had occurred but later, after consultations, said the intrusion took place “at a very low height, hard to intercept by radar”.

Belarus’s defence ministry, writing on Telegram, said Warsaw had changed its mind about the incident “apparently after consulting its overseas masters”.

“This statement was not backed up by data from Poland,” it said. “The Belarusian defence ministry views it in the manner of an ‘old wives’ tale’ and notes there were no border violations by Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters.”

People living around the eastern Polish village of Białowieża, close to the Belarus border, shared accounts on social media of what they said were border violations before the defence ministry issued its statement.

Belarus allowed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to use its territory as a launch pad for the Ukraine invasion, but Lukashenko has not committed his own troops to the war.

The former Soviet state has a long history of animosity with Poland, as does Russia.

Last week, Putin accused Poland of harbouring territorial ambitions on Belarus and said it would consider any attack on its neighbour as an attack on itself.

Earlier on Tuesday, Lukashenko mockingly told Poland it should thank him for keeping in check Wagner mercenaries now stationed in Belarus after an abortive mutiny against the Kremlin last month.

An unspecified number of the Wagner fighters have since moved to Belarus and begun training Lukashenko’s army. Poland had already started moving more than 1,000 of its own troops closer to the border.

Lukashenko joked at a meeting with Putin last month that some of the fighters were keen to press into Poland and “go on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszów”.

State news agency Belta quoted him on Tuesday as saying that Polish people “should pray that we’re holding on to [the Wagner fighters] and providing for them. Otherwise, without us, they would have seeped through and smashed up Rzeszów and Warsaw in no small way. So they shouldn’t reproach me, they should say thank you.”

Rzeszów is a city near the Ukrainian border.

On Saturday, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said a group of 100 Wagner fighters had moved closer to the Belarusian city of Grodno, near the Polish border, describing the situation as “increasingly dangerous”.

On August 02 2023 22:09 Magic Powers wrote:


We can all see very clearly that you turn silent each time in response to every comment that proves you wrong, and then you start the process all over again as if nothing had happened. You're selectively ignoring every valid argument and everyone here can see it. If this were a school setting, you'd be receiving one F after another.

An apparent Ukrainian HIMARS strike has reportedly killed hundreds of Russian soldiers as they gathered at a training camp on Dzharylhach Island in the occupied Kherson region.

Footage filmed by a drone shows a long, sandy spit of land before zooming in on a number of troop formations gathered by the shore of the Black Sea.

Toward the end of the video, a large explosion is seen where the soldiers had been gathering. According to Ukrainian sources, the strike was carried out using information provided by local “underground” sources in the occupied territory.



Ukraine’s National Resistance Center said in a post on Facebook: “Thanks to the information provided by the underground in the temporarily occupied territory, dozens of invaders and enemy equipment were destroyed.”

Ukrainian media reports put the death toll at around 200 though this has not been confirmed.

Russian sources also reported the strike, with one milblogger pointing out the location of the troops is 60 km from the nearest Ukrainian forces, saying the attack was likely carried out using HIMARS, the Ukrainian version of which have a range of around 80 km.

In a daily assessment last month, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted that Russia had established camps on Dzharylhach Island where troops from degraded units were sent to recover and train.

Ukraine has scored some big hits on large troop concetrations using HIMARS in recent months – in June, Russian milbloggers said their army is “at war with our own stupidity and sloppiness,” after reports emerged that as many as 100 of Moscow’s troops were killed when a Ukrainian strike struck a gathering of soldiers waiting for their commander to give a speech.

The massacre occurred near Kreminna in Luhansk Oblast when members of the 20th Combined Arms Army gathered in a large group not far from the front lines and in range of Kyiv’s HIMARS rockets for two hours.

Kyiv did not officially confirm it was behind the strike but a Ukrainian official speaking on condition of anonymity, told Kyiv Post: “It’s a really funny situation there. They stood in the open air for two hours listening to the speech.

“That is enough time to fix them, transport the HIMARS, enter the coordinates and hit them.”

Elsewhere, Russian forces undertook one missile attack, 75 airstrikes, and 68 MLRS rocket assaults against Ukrainian settlements and positions, according to the morning update of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukraine undertook eight airstrikes.

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia regional border area, and in the western Zaporizhzhia region on Aug. 1 and made advances in certain areas, according to ISW.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front on Aug. 1 and advanced near Kreminna and Bakhmut, according to ISW.

On August 02 2023 22:42 Magic Powers wrote:


Address my list comparing Putin to Hitler. Do it. Refute it.

On August 02 2023 21:55 zeo wrote:

Highlighting common, underlying factors between events/statements and using them to point out inconsistencies in your agrument is not whataboutism.

Misrepresenting my words to fit into your whataboutism theories also doesnt hold water. You have no argument, so you resort back to blanket statements not backed up by anything that dont prove anything. Because you dont engage in dialog outside of your comfort zones where you can just say 'everyone that doesnt agree with me is Hitler' you don't know how to have a civilized normal conversation where two sides can have reasonable discourse.

This isnt something contained only to you. Self-reflection and learning from past mistakes is how we as humans developed over the years, yes we were more dogmatic and simple/one minded in the past but id like you think we as humans have moved past calling everything we dont like the Devil, or Hitler, or whataboutism.

On August 02 2023 23:00 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
A Ukrainian HIMARS strike has reportedly killed over 200 Russian troops that were gathered on a beach. Apparently got info from resistance fighters.



Source

On August 02 2023 23:35 KwarK wrote:
In fairness direct experience with HIMARS doesn’t give you much opportunity to learn from your own mistakes. It’s a pretty steep learning curve. You’d have to somehow be able to recognize the mistakes of others and then apply lessons from those to your own plans.

On August 02 2023 21:57 Excludos wrote:
While this thread is mostly discussing the overview and political aspects of the war, I want to drag it down to the men in the trenches a little bit. I just came across this video (No idea how I haven't seen it previously, I usually watch most of these as they come out). It gives an insight into the hard fought battles along a trenches at the so called "Road of Life", between Donetsk and Luhansk, in April. It looks like it could be taken straight out of a Band of Brothers type series. It's pretty grim, and while gore and bodies are pixelated, it's still very much NSFW. There's dead bodies everywhere, and people die on camera.



Some things to note:
I suggest turning on captions. The way they communicate with the drone operators to pinpoint the enemy and call in artillery is pretty interesting.
Ukrainian artillery shells are ridiculously accurate. They're hitting within a meter of the target several times. The drone operators too have clearly become experts at predicting the grenade drops. They're hitting really well.
The Russian soldiers are being pretty brave too. 3 of them climb up over the trenches to encircle the POV fighters. They receive grenades and artillery shells for their efforts.
Russians are also using drones, which you can see at one point when the Ukrainians are trying to shoot it down. You can also see flack explosions several times throughout the clip, which presumably is one of the sides trying to shoot down the drones of the other.
People are shooting over each other's heads. The 45 degree rule we learn in all western militaries to avoid blue on blue clearly goes straight out the window in trench warfare.
At 19:29 you can see them talk English to some people wearing yellow armbands instead of blue (I believe it's to differentiate first and second platoon). Presumably these are foreign fighters, seeing the need to switch language. They also discuss "The Americans" later, and their need for evac. POV guy's English is pretty good tho

The close calls:
6:00 Crossing no mans land, and jumping into the next trench just as an artillery piece explodes behind him. He brushed it off with a casual "God damn.."
14:16 The encirclement I talked about earlier. They come face to face within meters of each other.
18:30 His colleague codenamed "Raptor" runs across the top of the trenches and is hit by the blast wave of a mortar or some kind of artillery. He manages to crawl to safety, but is not having a good time afterwards. I'm not sure "shellshocked" is a proper medical term, but that's basically what happens.
19:15 Did that hit right on top of them? Fuck me
20:19 I don't need to explain this one. This one shook me to the core

On August 03 2023 04:21 iFU.spx wrote:


War never changes. Nothing knew here. I would also suggest you to find information about the guy who filmed the video with nickname Kolovrat. Would be interesting to hear what do you think.

Symbolism based on “kolovrat” can also be seen nowadays at both fighting sides of the Eastern Ukraine conflict (especially the Rusič battalion); for more details I suggest the article by Matouš Vencálek (Vencálek 2018). To its wearer, “kolovrat” represents a symbol which provides God’s protection and strength in battle, and demoralizes the enemy, who is seen in both religious and political opponents

One of the most famous promoters of the symbol is Russian National Unity (see here), which explicitly avows to Nazism, but tries to bear the impression of Russian origin at the same time, through the usage of Slavic history, orthodoxy and mystic symbolism

On August 03 2023 06:08 maybenexttime wrote:
@Excludos

3rd OShB is former Azov. There are some neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian armed forces. That's true of any European/American military. Spx seems to think this is some sort of a revelation.

The difference is that Ukrainian neo-Nazis, as repugnant their ideology may be, are risking their lives to protect innocent people. The Russian neo-Nazis, on the other hand, are in Ukraine to commit a genocide. I'll take Ukrainian neo-Nazis over Russian soldiers any day.

On August 03 2023 05:41 Excludos wrote:


Why? The name of the POV guy is literally the least important bit of this video. Just to entertain you, I did try to Google him, and found nothing. People use aliases for a reason, you're not likely to find much about him.

No, nothing is "new" here, except the new technology. But I bet you no one in here has been in a war before. You can't know what it's like without having been on the battlefield. This is but a slight insight into the realities of fighting in trench warfare, and it shows a lot of interesting aspects about it, not to mention how tough the combat really is. This is incredibly important to understand if you should at all be allowed to have an opinion about it. It's all too easy to be pro-war and claim people should die for the greater good, if you don't understand the personal pain, suffering, hardship, blood, sweat and tears this involves.

Ukraine fights for their lives, homes, family and free will.
Russia fights because one man is on a power trip.
Now watch the video from beginning to end and tell me this shit is worth it?

edit: Oh, I get it now. You're whining about a symbol? Really? Here, let me help you
https://sagy.vikingove.cz/en/origins-of-kolovrat-symbol/



Like the guy above me said, worry about the Nazism on your own side. The symbol itself does not represent Nazism, but the people using this as a Nazi symbol is none other than your own.

On August 03 2023 06:13 iFU.spx wrote:


Yea, probably will be hard to google if you don't understand ukranian or russian. But worth a try.

Bad guess on symbol. No whining here. You suggested interesting information from your point of view, thanks for that. I suggested interesting information from my point of view. Nothing else.