Ukraine´s new waves of reinforcements

[Bleipriester]

Litwin

"“They never even shot in their lives. And they didn’t go through any training at all. They stayed somewhere in the Sumy region for five days. After that they were sent here, to the Bakhmut direction. They were also given machine guns, but people don’t know how to load magazines.” , - he said."

 

[Doug1943]

Litwin

"“They never even shot in their lives. And they didn’t go through any training at all. They stayed somewhere in the Sumy region for five days. After that they were sent here, to the Bakhmut direction. They were also given machine guns, but people don’t know how to load magazines.” , - he said."

I find it difficult to believe that anyone could not know how to load a magazine, unless these magazines are unlike any I've ever seen.

 

[Bleipriester]

I find it difficult to believe that anyone could not know how to load a magazine, unless these magazines are unlike any I've ever seen.

Apparently they were not told how to. Ukraine´s problem is that proper training costs time they don´t have to defend Bakhmut in a time when they are literally forced to prepare a major offensive by the US.

 

[Doug1943]

Apparently they were not told how to. Ukraine´s problem is that proper training costs time they don´t have to defend Bakhmut in a time when they are literally forced to prepare a major offensive by the US.

You just push the bullets down into the slot. There isn't anything to it.

Learning how to fire a military rifle effectively, yes (if you're never fired a rifle before). Clearing a stoppage, yes. Getting used to movement under fire, yes. First aid, especially for things you might see in combat, like sucking chest wounds, yes. Radio procedures, yes. But loading a magazine?

 

[para bellum]

Those would be TDF, not AFU. Volunteers who are recruited by the Ministry of Interior.

AFU basic training is 5 weeks.

 

[Bleipriester]

You just push the bullets down into the slot. There isn't anything to it.

Learning how to fire a military rifle effectively, yes (if you're never fired a rifle before). Clearing a stoppage, yes. Getting used to movement under fire, yes. First aid, especially for things you might see in combat, like sucking chest wounds, yes. Radio procedures, yes. But loading a magazine?

Why would they tell? They are not the only ones by the way:

Reports from the Bakhmut Battlefield

Ukrainian soldiers interviewed by the newspaper Kyiv Independent tell their stories. The main points are: - Russians bomb everything to dust, Ukrainians have nothing - After two weeks of "training", Ukrainians go to Bakhmut - Ukrainians´ daily chance of survival is 30 %...

www.usmessageboard.com

 

[Doug1943]

Why would they tell? They are not the only ones by the way:

Reports from the Bakhmut Battlefield

Ukrainian soldiers interviewed by the newspaper Kyiv Independent tell their stories. The main points are: - Russians bomb everything to dust, Ukrainians have nothing - After two weeks of "training", Ukrainians go to Bakhmut - Ukrainians´ daily chance of survival is 30 %...

www.usmessageboard.com

Not sure what you mean here. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Ukraine, and Russia too for that matter, are pushing poorly-trained men into combat. I'm just skeptical that they don't know how to push bullets into a magazine. They learn how to do that quickly enough in South Chicago, after all.

 

[Bleipriester]

Not sure what you mean here. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Ukraine, and Russia too for that matter, are pushing poorly-trained men into combat. I'm just skeptical that they don't know how to push bullets into a magazine. They learn how to do that quickly enough in South Chicago, after all.

That is what they say, not what Russia says.

 

[Doug1943]

That is what they say, not what Russia says.

Yes, it's what some journalist reported someone as saying. I suspect it was a journalist who knows zero about firearms. (I realized that there are such people when, long ago, I read someone referring to a B52 straffing a Vietnamese village ... and later, about our navy firing shells "the size of Volkwagens" at Lebanese villages.)

Even if a journalist is not ignorant about the technicalities of field about which he is reporting, we should always be skeptical of reported speech and reported events, especially if they confirm what we already want to believe.

I apply this rule to all the reports about Mr Putin being on death's door, or his lieutenants plotting against him. It may be true, but since the West wants it to be true, I take all such reports with a grain of salt.

Something Trotsky said at the beginning of WWII remains universally true: "All sides lie a great deal."

 

[luiza]

You are high on your own supply.

"Laced with absurd bravado" is an excellent description of your claims of Russian successes. BTW, posting the same stupid claims over and over will not make them come true, lol.

I hate to break it to you but this war will be settled on the battlefield, not on Internet forums...

Amazing how I am always right .

Haha. You post Ru MoD nonsense. 8000 tanks, lol. They also claim to have destroyed 52 of the 20 HIMARS in Ukraine...IOW, they aren't even trying anymore. They just recycle the same clips over and over...

And I am 100 % right again .btw ,your Himars claim is Fake .
Your ignorance is profound .
DYOR and listen to your vastly better informed fellow posters

 

[luiza]

Russian advances everywhere as Bakhmut is wrapped up .

The situation in the Ukrainian SMO on April 15 2023

Step back from the brink of Nuclear Annihilation - Countering the MSM's biased coverage of the Treason and Genocide perpetrated by NATO and MNNA

blogdogcicle.blogspot.com

 

[Bleipriester]

Yes, it's what some journalist reported someone as saying. I suspect it was a journalist who knows zero about firearms. (I realized that there are such people when, long ago, I read someone referring to a B52 straffing a Vietnamese village ... and later, about our navy firing shells "the size of Volkwagens" at Lebanese villages.)

Even if a journalist is not ignorant about the technicalities of field about which he is reporting, we should always be skeptical of reported speech and reported events, especially if they confirm what we already want to believe.

I apply this rule to all the reports about Mr Putin being on death's door, or his lieutenants plotting against him. It may be true, but since the West wants it to be true, I take all such reports with a grain of salt.

Something Trotsky said at the beginning of WWII remains universally true: "All sides lie a great deal."

But the "journalist" has the guy with the MG with him. He confirms it.

 

[Doug1943]

But the "journalist" has the guy with the MG with him. He confirms it.

I suppose you don't know what a rifle magazine is. Loading one is practically as easy as putting a coin in a coin-operated candy machine.

Maybe he meant that they haven't been trained on how to put a belt of ammunition into a machine gun, which would require a few minutes of training.

In any case, let's assume that Ukraine is so desperate that they're sending men to the front with very little, inadequate, training. So what? This doesn't speak one way or the other to the justice of their cause. In fact, it would support the idea that they're engaged in a war of national liberation.

The whole Soviet Union, Ukrainians, Russians, and other nationalities, had to match the superior German war machine by throwing large numbers of men at it -- it was the only way to beat the Nazis. Please note: I'm not comparing Putin to Hitler here -- there is a lot more to this situation than just who fired the first shot.

And the real solution -- although a long-term one -- is for the brave Russians who want to live in a free society to overthrow Putin and his gangster regime.

 

[Bleipriester]

Maybe he meant that they haven't been trained on how to put a belt of ammunition into a machine gun, which would require a few minutes of training.

That is what we are talking about.

In any case, let's assume that Ukraine is so desperate that they're sending men to the front with very little, inadequate, training. So what? This doesn't speak one way or the other to the justice of their cause. In fact, it would support the idea that they're engaged in a war of national liberation.

The cause here is a gangster regime that sacrifices its own people to deal as much damage to Russia as possible for the West, that started all this in 2014.

The whole Soviet Union, Ukrainians, Russians, and other nationalities, had to match the superior German war machine by throwing large numbers of men at it -- it was the only way to beat the Nazis. Please note: I'm not comparing Putin to Hitler here -- there is a lot more to this situation than just who fired the first shot.

The first shot was an Ukrainian, the last will be a Russian. The German war machine is overestimated. During the advance in the USSR, Germany exhausted its troops. Although the numbers look like a great success it doesn´t change that Germany was forced into the defense already in 1941.

And the real solution -- although a long-term one -- is for the brave Russians who want to live in a free society to overthrow Putin and his gangster regime.

Wet Western dreams. It won´t happen. The Russians ain´t very happy but they have accepted that it is necessary to fight and defeat the hostile forces at their borders. Everywhere Western war criminals deploy murderous nazi and islamist forces, armies and fleets, they must be destroyed. Their sole cause is the oppression of people, the destruction of sovereignty and the roll-back of countries´ development.

 

[para bellum]

Amazing how I am always right .

Yeah, I remember that "march on Odessa" you went on about for 2 months. By Christmas was it?

You're so pathetic, you don't even know where to begin. So you post in really big fonts and cross-post to multiple threads, as if that will make your silly fictions come true.

Situation in Bakhmut: unchanged.
Wanker PMC: decimated.

 

[Doug1943]

That is what we are talking about.


The cause here is a gangster regime that sacrifices its own people to deal as much damage to Russia as possible for the West, that started all this in 2014.


The first shot was an Ukrainian, the last will be a Russian. The German war machine is overestimated. During the advance in the USSR, Germany exhausted its troops. Although the numbers look like a great success it doesn´t change that Germany was forced into the defense already in 1941.


Wet Western dreams. It won´t happen. The Russians ain´t very happy but they have accepted that it is necessary to fight and defeat the hostile forces at their borders. Everywhere Western war criminals deploy murderous nazi and islamist forces, armies and fleets, they must be destroyed. Their sole cause is the oppression of people, the destruction of sovereignty and the roll-back of countries´ development.

Some of what you say is true. I believe the US rulers missed a huge chance in the 1990s to bring Russia into the European community, and instead, preferred to see it break up. We should have offered Russia the same 'Marshall Plan' style aid we did give to Poland.

Russia is a great nation, and the Russians have made many contributions to civilization -- anyone who knows anything about great world literature, mathematics, chemistry, physics knows this to be true.

What has happened since the Russians voluntarily, peacefully, gave up their Eastern European buffer zone, bought at the cost of so much Russian blood, is a tragedy.

I lived in Kharkov, as it then was, for several months in 1985. (My Russian-speaking then-wife was a Fulbright Exchange Scholar.) Kharkov was in Ukraine, but was very 'Russian'. We made several very good friends there. Even the KGB man in charge of us, and of all foreigners in the city, was a very decent person.

So I appreciate the clash of nationalisms that has occurred in Ukraine -- yet another disproof of the idiotic Leftist slogan, "Diversity is Strength". And now the Ukrainians are on a nationalist anti-Russian kick, forbidding the teaching of the Russian language at some of their universities. A huge tragedy.

And if it leads to WWIII, an immensely greater tragedy.

 

[Bleipriester]

Some of what you say is true. I believe the US rulers missed a huge chance in the 1990s to bring Russia into the European community, and instead, preferred to see it break up. We should have offered Russia the same 'Marshall Plan' style aid we did give to Poland.

Russia is a great nation, and the Russians have made many contributions to civilization -- anyone who knows anything about great world literature, mathematics, chemistry, physics knows this to be true.

What has happened since the Russians voluntarily, peacefully, gave up their Eastern European buffer zone, bought at the cost of so much Russian blood, is a tragedy.

I lived in Kharkov, as it then was, for several months in 1985. (My Russian-speaking then-wife was a Fulbright Exchange Scholar.) Kharkov was in Ukraine, but was very 'Russian'. We made several very good friends there. Even the KGB man in charge of us, and of all foreigners in the city, was a very decent person.

So I appreciate the clash of nationalisms that has occurred in Ukraine -- yet another disproof of the idiotic Leftist slogan, "Diversity is Strength". And now the Ukrainians are on a nationalist anti-Russian kick, forbidding the teaching of the Russian language at some of their universities. A huge tragedy.

And if it leads to WWIII, an immensely greater tragedy.

Russia has recovered from the collapse. And it has the potential to be a very mighty nation. Some people in the West don´t like this idea and prefer the idea of permanent confrontation with Russia, instead. The angry Russia might take longer to become this mighty nation but it will and we will face the anger.

 

[ESay]

Some of what you say is true. I believe the US rulers missed a huge chance in the 1990s to bring Russia into the European community, and instead, preferred to see it break up. We should have offered Russia the same 'Marshall Plan' style aid we did give to Poland.

Russia is a great nation, and the Russians have made many contributions to civilization -- anyone who knows anything about great world literature, mathematics, chemistry, physics knows this to be true.

What has happened since the Russians voluntarily, peacefully, gave up their Eastern European buffer zone, bought at the cost of so much Russian blood, is a tragedy.

I lived in Kharkov, as it then was, for several months in 1985. (My Russian-speaking then-wife was a Fulbright Exchange Scholar.) Kharkov was in Ukraine, but was very 'Russian'. We made several very good friends there. Even the KGB man in charge of us, and of all foreigners in the city, was a very decent person.

So I appreciate the clash of nationalisms that has occurred in Ukraine -- yet another disproof of the idiotic Leftist slogan, "Diversity is Strength". And now the Ukrainians are on a nationalist anti-Russian kick, forbidding the teaching of the Russian language at some of their universities. A huge tragedy.

And if it leads to WWIII, an immensely greater tragedy.

The very point is they didn't give up the buffer zone 'voluntarily'. They just didn't have a choice. The Soviet Union itself was collapsing under the fight of national, social and economic problems.

 

[Doug1943]

The very point is they didn't give up the buffer zone 'voluntarily'. They just didn't have a choice. The Soviet Union itself was collapsing under the fight of national, social and economic problems.

Everyone has a theory of Soviet collapse that fits his preconceptions. Some people in the conservative movement want to give Ronald Reagan all the credit. Others want to say it was simply the inevitable outcome of having a socialist economy.

Who knows? After every great historic event, there are those who claim it was inevitable, that powerful social forces made what happened, inevitable.

Although I definitely believe in the power of 'social forces', I'm also a big believer in historical accident, and the historical accident here is the personality of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the great figures of the 20th Century.

I don't believe the Soviet leadership had 'no choice'. They had plenty of precidents that would justify repression, if necessary, as in E. Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The Chinese Communist Party has successfully held on to power, while ridding itself of the socialist millstone around its neck. North Korea and Cuba haven't even done that.

Of course, it's impossible to come to a 100% certain conclusion when we play 'what-if' with 'alternative histories'. But I believe that if the idiot new Kaiser had retained wise old Bismarck as Chancellor of the German Empire, we would have avoided World War I. If Lenin had not been able to return to Russia in 1917, we wouldn't have had the Bolshevik Revolution. Perhaps other catastrophes would have ensued, but not those particular ones.

I lived in the Soviet Union for a few months in 1985, in Kharkov. It was not my sense that there was widespread, active discontent. It was certainly true that the intelligentsia knew that their system couldn't keep up with the modern world.

Microcomputers were just coming in at that time, and I took my BBC Micro with me [roughly equivalent to the Apple II, but better ], and gave some talks on "Microcomputers and Education" in Kharkov, Academgoroduk (in Siberia) and in Tallin, Estonia. Soviet computer people were very interested in my little micro, and especially in the fact that it had cost me less than one month's salary.

The Moscow bureaucrats had supplied them with mini-computers (a knock-off of the PDP-11, I believe) but had neglected to equip it with software -- so every university had to write its own compilers. Similarly, they had purchased microcomputers, but neglected to make them compatible with the Cyrillic alphabet.

When we returned home, I predicted to my then-wife that we might see the end of the Soviet Union within our lifetimes -- despite the fact that most academic 'expert opinion' in the West was that the Soviet Union was rock-solid and would endure indefinitely. This was not because people were starving, which they were not. It was because the system had lost the support of its intelligentsia. Rather like the US today.

 

[ESay]

Everyone has a theory of Soviet collapse that fits his preconceptions. Some people in the conservative movement want to give Ronald Reagan all the credit. Others want to say it was simply the inevitable outcome of having a socialist economy.

Who knows? After every great historic event, there are those who claim it was inevitable, that powerful social forces made what happened, inevitable.

Although I definitely believe in the power of 'social forces', I'm also a big believer in historical accident, and the historical accident here is the personality of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the great figures of the 20th Century.

I don't believe the Soviet leadership had 'no choice'. They had plenty of precidents that would justify repression, if necessary, as in E. Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The Chinese Communist Party has successfully held on to power, while ridding itself of the socialist millstone around its neck. North Korea and Cuba haven't even done that.

Of course, it's impossible to come to a 100% certain conclusion when we play 'what-if' with 'alternative histories'. But I believe that if the idiot new Kaiser had retained wise old Bismarck as Chancellor of the German Empire, we would have avoided World War I. If Lenin had not been able to return to Russia in 1917, we wouldn't have had the Bolshevik Revolution. Perhaps other catastrophes would have ensued, but not those particular ones.

I lived in the Soviet Union for a few months in 1985, in Kharkov. It was not my sense that there was widespread, active discontent. It was certainly true that the intelligentsia knew that their system couldn't keep up with the modern world.

Microcomputers were just coming in at that time, and I took my BBC Micro with me [roughly equivalent to the Apple II, but better ], and gave some talks on "Microcomputers and Education" in Kharkov, Academgoroduk (in Siberia) and in Tallin, Estonia. Soviet computer people were very interested in my little micro, and especially in the fact that it had cost me less than one month's salary.

The Moscow bureaucrats had supplied them with mini-computers (a knock-off of the PDP-11, I believe) but had neglected to equip it with software -- so every university had to write its own compilers. Similarly, they had purchased microcomputers, but neglected to make them compatible with the Cyrillic alphabet.

When we returned home, I predicted to my then-wife that we might see the end of the Soviet Union within our lifetimes -- despite the fact that most academic 'expert opinion' in the West was that the Soviet Union was rock-solid and would endure indefinitely. This was not because people were starving, which they were not. It was because the system had lost the support of its intelligentsia. Rather like the US today.

Of course personalities also play very important part in historical processes. And yes, it is possible to speculate what would have been had Andropov lived longer or the GKCHP retained the power. But hardly there is a reason to do so.

Gorbachev is quite unpopular among the Russians, btw. Quite telling, isn't it?

1985 was still a year of relative stability in the USSR. The beginning of Perestroika. After that there was Chernobyl, sweeping deficits, the rise of racketeering and organised crime syndicates, the prohibition, the parade of sovereignties etc.