History in the Making: Russian Invasion

In reply to alfadriver :

Hitler was Austrian and Napoleon was Corsican.

In reply to alfadriver :

That was one of the interesting in hindsight things about The Death of Stalin.  All of the actors spoke English with wildly different accents, which turned out to be reasonably accurate as things go.

Putin signs law stipulating ten years behind bars for desertion and surrender

One of the new ones is Article 352.1 ("Voluntary surrender"). A Russian soldier can face 3-10 years in prison for this, if there are no indications of treason.

It is noted that "a serviceman who has committed a crime under this article for the first time may be exempted from criminal liability if he took measures to secure his release, returned to his unit or place of service, and committed no other crimes during his captivity." 

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/24/7368918/

In reply to aircooled :

I actually wonder if any of them will try to immediately become POWs. 

In reply to alfadriver :

Defection is literally their only option.

They will not be able to win without attritional losses that make playing lottery look like a sound investment policy.  If they surrender, they must escape and return to their unit in order to avoid prosecution.  Which means going back into the meat grinder, and no mulligan this time - it is win, die, or imprisonment.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Groups I'm in are amazed some of these can even fire. The gas chambers and even springs are pitted.

As if it could get worse for them, that's got to be a terrible feeling for the new draftees. My heart and hopes are 100% with the Ukrainians, but we need to remember that there's people on both sides that are being pulled into this when all they wanted to do was live their lives and be with their families. 
 

As an aside, the current state of the conflict in the south doesn't really use small arms fire. It's a longer distance artillery duel. Article I read yesterday (NY Times or Washington Post, I forgot which) most of the Ukrainian soldiers in the south haven't ever fired their rifles. 
 

 The one with the rifle shoots!

One out of two gets rifle.

The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!

I think one thing, that might be obvious, that needs to be kept in mind here:

Throwing ill trained low moral troops into the fight is very likely to be worse then not having them at all! 

Such troops will have almost zero combat effectiveness.  I think there was a study somewhere that talked about that in WWII, even well trained troops, 80% where effectively not combat effective (e.g. not accurate shooters, shot randomly, or didn't shot at all).  They can also have a serious effect on surrounding troops (thus o2 comment about making sure they where in their own units) and if wounded can cause logistical issues (or, hey it's Russia, just let them die), or killed, more moral issues.  There is also the potential to seed dissent and of course the Security Forces needed to keep a close eye on them.

The only real use I see of such troops, in frontline positions, is as sort of "blow up doll" of soldiers to make it look like soldiers are there, when it's really just a facade, that will crumble easily.

I wonder what the odds are of Russian units defecting to Ukraine?

GIRTHQUAKE said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Groups I'm in are amazed some of these can even fire. The gas chambers and even springs are pitted.

I am surprised that they are allowed to keep their phones.

I am suspicious of the fact they have their phones.

In reply to Noddaz :

"their" phones?

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

I wonder what the odds are of Russian units defecting to Ukraine?

Previous discussion, I think it was O2 Pilot, addressed that. The conscripts will be in front of much more heavily armed and loyal forces, who are there as enforcers. As I recall, he said that the Russians have that down to an art. 

Noddaz said:

GIRTHQUAKE said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Groups I'm in are amazed some of these can even fire. The gas chambers and even springs are pitted.

I am surprised that they are allowed to keep their phones.

I am suspicious of the fact they have their phones.

Russian units having personal phones has been a huge security issue for Russia for the whole conflict.  They where even using public cell networks for unit communications early in the war!  Russian soldiers have regularly supplied rather useful info through the use of their phones.  If nothing else, the calls back to home about how bad it is going.  

I am not entirely sure why the Russian army does not more strongly restrict it, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the command ranks not wanting to give theirs up and of course moral issues.  The Russians will jam cell networks in areas occasionally to try and prevent such leakage.

So, Russian soldiers having cell phones and sending out potentially damaging info is not all that surprising.  I will say though, those guns looked a bit more like they had been pulled out of a sunken APC or something.  Though, problems with stored Russian equipment certainly isn't a new thing either.

NOT A TA said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to Noddaz :

Not really, not anymore.  Russia has less than 1/2 of America's population.  And 3 times the land mass. 
 There are really big parts of Russia where it's a long way to someone else.   So if they go to the wilderness and grab some kid, who's going to keep the wolf population down? 
  They can't grab many off the street because so many are either drug addicts or alcoholics. That or suffer from VD  or other diseases.    Those are real serious problems in Russia. Massively higher percentage then here in America. 
     Finally with every educated person that can leaving Russia anyway they can get out, taking 300,000 semi decent young men will seriously hurt any productivity. 
 If you go on those Russian dating sites you'll see that there are 11 million more women than men.  Because of the high mortality rate of young men.   

Frenchy, are you just making this ^^^ stuff up off the top of your head or do you have references?  Your post reads like an old man rambling about stuff he thinks, making up stuff as he writes. Do you survey Russian dating sites for statistics? If you're making stuff up, please keep that type of writing to the Jaguar threads, threads like this can easily be derailed. I follow a couple Russian youtubers and when they post videos of the poor sections of cities I haven't seen the type of drug addiction, homelessness, etc. like I've seen in videos of US cities. 

 

You won't see homelessness in Russia like you do here in the US.  Part of the heritage of Communism.  
    Drug addiction is a fact as is alcoholism.  You can see little Bushka's  selling Vodka  shots at subway entrance.  Plus the Russian national consumption of vodka  in Russia  should clearly  show that.  
  The issue of diseases  available from WHO ( World Health Orhanization )  according to. Several. Sources though claim under reporting. 
Yes the dating sites number is old.  However I doubt suddenly those numbers have turned around. 

alfadriver said:

bobzilla said:

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands. 

A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug. 

Communism. 
Nobody ever brings up either the number of soviets who died in the war (~20M), nor the slaughter of anyone in the Soviet Union. 
 

Once China went red, we forgot everything they did. 

Along those lines, I've always wondered why the other 6 million people Hitler killed (mentally challenged, homosexual, etc) are never mentioned either. 

z31maniac said:

Along those lines, I've always wondered why the other 6 million people Hitler killed (mentally challenged, homosexual, etc) are never mentioned either. 

There is a "kids" book that addresses this, called ,"Six Million Paperclips." It is well worth the short time it takes to read. It is a story of a teacher bringing this topic into the classroom.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to Noddaz :

"their" phones?

Yes, their phones.  At this point I find it had to believe that the Russian authorities would continue to allow a conscript to keep their personal cell phone.  The Russians should have learned by now that the Ukrainians can use cell phone information to find targets.

frenchyd said:

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

 The one with the rifle shoots!

One out of two gets rifle.

The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!

If you watch Enemy at the Gates. 

That's  exactly what the Russians did in WW2 

This scene is essentially Nazi propaganda and does a great disservice to our allies in the red army who made tremendous sacrifices to defeat fascism.

In reply to red_stapler :

tl;dw:  Order 227 existed but it was directed at commanders whose default tactic was to retreat for defense in depth, which is unsustainable.

red_stapler said:

...our allies in the red army who made tremendous sacrifices to defeat fascism.

 Not to get too far off topic here, but while your statement quoted above is factually correct, it is also incomplete. Consider that the Soviets were allied with the UK only after Barbarossa, and the US only after Hitler's 11 Dec 41 declaration of war on the US, for the simple reason that the new allies all shared a common enemy, not because of any ideological kinship or shared sense of values or war aims. And before and while allied, they also heavily infiltrated the US and UK governments with operatives, including the Cambridge Five and influential US Treasury official Harry Dexter White; these operatives were active throughout the war. In 1940, the Soviets executed thousands of Polish officers at Katyn Forest, and in the months following VE Day, that same Red Army carried out as policy the systematic rape of German women. I could go on, but the point is that considering the Soviets as allies in anything but the narrowest sense overlooks the fact that they viewed the alliance purely as a means to an end, as well as a confirmation of the Marxist model of historical progress in which wars between non-Socialist countries served only to weaken them and open them to exploitation and control. In Stalin's eyes, the defeat of fascism was merely a step on the path to the eventually victory of Soviet Communism, nothing more.

02Pilot said:

red_stapler said:

...our allies in the red army who made tremendous sacrifices to defeat fascism.

 Not to get too far off topic here, but while your statement quoted above is factually correct, it is also incomplete. Consider that the Soviets were allied with the UK only after Barbarossa, and the US only after Hitler's 11 Dec 41 declaration of war on the US, for the simple reason that the new allies all shared a common enemy, not because of any ideological kinship or shared sense of values or war aims. And before and while allied, they also heavily infiltrated the US and UK governments with operatives, including the Cambridge Five and influential US Treasury official Harry Dexter White; these operatives were active throughout the war. In 1940, the Soviets executed thousands of Polish officers at Katyn Forest, and in the months following VE Day, that same Red Army carried out as policy the systematic rape of German women. I could go on, but the point is that considering the Soviets as allies in anything but the narrowest sense overlooks the fact that they viewed the alliance purely as a means to an end, as well as a confirmation of the Marxist model of historical progress in which wars between non-Socialist countries served only to weaken them and open them to exploitation and control. In Stalin's eyes, the defeat of fascism was merely a step on the path to the eventually victory of Soviet Communism, nothing more.

You make an excellent point, the Soviets weren't pure beings of goodness; but we can at least be factual when criticizing them.

In reply to frenchyd :

That is the movie I quoted.