A Great update (as always) Tom. Come timely because some putin-fan I know just send me two videos of the mauled Bradley as it was different vehicles, even stating that was quite a number of them AOO... Well, my laughs went higher than a T-80 turret!
Keep on, we need no more lies, come from where come.
10,000 troops and their equipment crammed into a 50 square km area. Is that what they call a target rich environment?
According to my very rough calculation that puts on average one soldier every 5,000 square meters. A single DPICM canister can cover an area up to 30,000 square meters so Ukraine could fire them at random and stand a good chance of hitting someone, not that I recommend such an approach.
Meanwhile Ukraine has to do their best with this old stuff
"“We just got them (cluster munitions), we haven't used them yet, but they can radically change [the battlefield],” Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the Tavria Joint Forces Operation, said in an interview Thursday with CNN's Alex Marquardt."
...the dumb part of me is looking forward for related videos....
Seriously: I'm really curious to see if there is going to be a difference in the way the ZSU's artillery is deployed.
The last year or so, this was chronically short on ammo, and 'indoctrinated' by the NATO's dogmas about 'single-shot-fire-mission' - although constantly facing hopelessly too many targets (and, thus, calls for fire actions).... now , and if provided with sufficient numbers of DCIPM shells, it might get opportunity to act in an entirely different fashion.
....alone because a single DCIPM hit can easily 'replace' the effects of 2-5 'conventional' shells.
Yesterday I read what Ben Wallace told us. I want to ask: "How can you? How do you have enough conscience?". But, there is no conscience where it was not planned. I know that this question is not for you, you are analyzing technical issues. Just the soul hurts.
Мої учні в Німеччині зараз. Близнюки - хлопчик і дівчинка. Такі позитивні діти, чемпіони України з танців. Питаю їх вчора: як ваша німецька мова? Відповіли, що розуміють добре, а говорять мало. Тому що з ними не спілкуються в школі. А спочатку одноклассники включали гімн Росії на телефонах. Хочуть додому. Не плачуть, просто не вірять в людей.
Bluebird
2 minutes ago2 min ago
My students are in Germany now. Twins - a boy and a girl. Such positive children, Ukrainian dance champions. I ask them yesterday: how is your German? They answered that they understand well, but speak little. Because they don't communicate with them at school. And first, classmates turned on the Russian national anthem on their phones. They want to go home. They don't cry, they just don't believe in people.
Would Serbia really qualify as an "Austro-Hungarian" constituent? Didn't WW1 started because Russia defended Serbia? :)
I wouldn't look for more convoluted explanations than Austria and Hungary are hooked on Russian money / underpriced gas. Although it is true that Hungary seems to have a history at siding with the big bullies against their neighbours, they're probably a bit more irredentist than average.
On the other hand, they could all envy how Ukraine got territorially quite large westward, but Slovakia and Poland could have similar grudge yet they decided to support you because they know Russia irredentism is the worst of all.
Me thinks, not so much 'anti-Ukrainian', as 'Russia-centred'. Ukraine 'doesn't exist', or 'is not important'.
To explain this a bit....
When (most of) people here think about 'Russia', they associate with 'USSR'. They do not even associate 'Ukraine' with 'ex-USSR'. Ukraine is something like 'some strange, unknown country' out there in the 'wild East'. Nobody here is coming to the idea to think in way of 'the mass of the fighting on the Eastern Front of WWII was fought in Ukraine'...
For the roots of this...
'Austria' can be defined with 'what's left of the former Austrian Empire'. An empire that played a crucial role in the European history for almost 1,000 years. That's explaining the 'high nosed' point of view of many of Austrians.
However, Austria - or 'at least plenty of Austrians' - played a crucial role in provoking two world Wars, and the Holocaust, too. This is where we're 'falling silent', or at least: it's a topic we prefer to avoid. One way or the other, we've 'learned (some of) our lessons' and decided we do not want to go fighting wars any more,: wars are (literally) put into museums and we (Austrians) are something like 'focusing on enjoying the life instead'....
One consequence of this is that Austria was de-militarised, literally, and to the bottom. Especially since the end of the Cold War. We've found ourselves 'surrounded' by the 'NATO belly', and thus in no need to care about the defence of the country (not even the defence of our 'strict and neverending neutrality'). To the degree where anybody reading, say, 'a military aviation magazine' in the Viennese underground is receiving 'strange looks' from other passengers, and is likely to feel 'short of being declared a war-monger', definitely a 'Waffennarr'...
Meanwhile, the USSR is 'famous' here: it defeated 'us' in WWII (where 'us' is, of course, 'not us, but Nazi Germany', regardless how many Ausstrians served in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, or participated in the Holocaust) and nobody is proud to talk about being part of 'Nazi Germany' during the WWII, because, you know, 'Austria was a victim of German aggression', and that's official...
As next, and as it became known during the 1990s, during the Cold War, the mass of the Austrian political scene was corrupted by the Soviets and - especially - Czechoslovakia. Numerous top politicians were working for the Czechoslovak intelligence service - to the degree where they were taking and executing its orders. This 'topic' was 'touched' by the Austrian media in the 1990s, but never 'pursued': nobody was ever sanctioned/penalised. Our media can't stop 'complaining' about our misdeeds in regards of the Holocaust, but can't care less about treachery of the Cold War: this was something like, 'ah, that's now history, no need to care'...
Rather unsurprisingly, when the USSR dissolved, large parts of the political system - and our political system is gravitating around our oligarchy (see: owners and bosses of major corporations) - allied themselves with Russia. Austria was the first 'Western' country to start buying Soviet/Russian gas (back in the mid-1970s). Austrian government was the only one to officially recognize the putchist regime in Moscow of 1991, just for example... Subsequently, major Austrian corporations (especially banks and insurances, but also transport business, car-parts-industry, and then the agriculture sector) began heavily investing and/or exporting to Russia. The process was led 'from the top': not only all the major corporations, but nearly every single of former Austrian chancellors, plenty of ministers and their aides, went working for major Russian corporations (forermost GAZPROM, but also SBER-Bank etc.). Official affiliations with political parties didn't matter: see Gusenbauer (SPÖ), see Fayman (SPÖ), see Schüssel (ÖVP, i.e. 'Christian Democrats' or 'Conservatives'). The FPÖ (populists with strong lean towards neo-Nazism) even openly signed a pact with Putin, etc.
Over the recent years our economy (foremost the 51%-stated-owned OMV oil/gas-corporation, but also the Raiffeisen Bank, and then a myriad of smaller enterprises in car-parts- and transportation branches, 'all the way down' to apple-farmers of Styria) was earning dozens of billions from such and similar business. It became a 'norm', and 'good' to make money from business with Russia, and this thinking was supported by the oligarchy, which was quick in inviting Putin here after his isolation in the wake of invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, and handing him over from one of CEOs to the other...
This process was supported by something like a subtile propaganda campaign: with the time, 'everyday people' began associating 'Russia' with 'sole successor of the USSR', and thus 'good for everyday people'.... Kind of like, 'Putin is trying to recover the USSR and thus make things better for employees in the West, too'. 'While' that 'war-mongering, aggressive and expansionist NATO, driven by imperialist greed' is 'trying to provoke a war with him, to prevent that'...
This went so far that although multiple mid-ranking officers (usually: Colonels or Lieutenant-Colonels) of the Austrian armed forces and intelligence services were caught spying for Russia, over the last 15-20 years, nobody really cares.
'Against' this, Ukraine simply stands no chance....at most it is (mis)declared into 'Russians who lost their orientation'. I.e. one is buying the official Russian line...
Good example: for nearly two decades, my neighbour in Vienna was an Ukrainian from Kyiv. She wasn't considered 'Ukrainian' because nobody knew what to think about 'Ukrainian'. Who cares about Ukraine...? Instead, she was simply declared - and 'colloquially considered' - for 'Russian' (not 100% sure, but I think even her husband considered her as such). Unsurprisingly, eventually she gave up trying and said 'Russian'...
That's something like the 'tip of the iceberg' here in Austria.
Don't know enough to 'describe' this as precisely in the case of Hungary and Serbia, but the way I understand the two countries, it's significantly different.
Hungarians were - just like much of the 'West' of the last 30 years - 'lazy': only about 30% went to the elections and thus have left a Putin-connected populist (Orban) take over. In Austria, we've only narrowly missed a similar situation (see. Kurz), just 3-4 years ago...
Serbia, sadly, is a fundamentally different topic. Although the mass of people there (as obvious from mass demonstrations in Belgrade and other cities going on since May already) is fed up of ultra-chauvinism, wars, degeneration of the politics and its ties to organised crime, the latter combination is still dominating the politics. Correspondingly, Russia is 'brothers', Ukraine 'traitors', and own wrong-doings during the wars in former Yugoslavia of 1991-1995 were all 'self-defence of Serbia'....then, 'Serbia is wherever one Serb is living' (indeed 'to Tokyo').
....and then mind that up to 300,000 Austrians (or at least people living in Austria) are either Serbs or of Serbian origin...
Bottom line: we very much have the same 'broken politics' like much of the 'West'. The politics of administering the status quo in the name of economic profit, and the resulting mix of (endemic) political corruption, chauvinism, bad conscience and other factors.
....and very few people ready to talk openly about all of this.
The mother of the UA girl has complained to the school and it solved is as "normal hazing" - some of the attackers have even pro-Ukrainian parents. Such hazing occurs against strangers from any countries, unfortunately. Germany has even better anti-hazing measures in schools, so your student's parents should turn to the school teachers and the director.
Школа відреагувала. Тепер гімн не включають. Але діти вміють травити тихо. Це ігнорування. І воно дієве. Тому я і сказала, що діти просто не вірять в людей. Без емоцій.
But in general, of the former Austro-Hungarian countries, we are probably the biggest opponents of Russia and supporters of Ukraine. Maybe the year 1968 is to blame, maybe the FSB attack on the ammunition warehouse in Vrbětice in 2014.
He will show me another country the size of ours where people put their own money and bought a tank, 15 anti-drone kits and much more for the UA. https://www.weaponstoukraine.com/
And I'm not talking about the fact that our government (thank God for it) started supplying the UA with heavy weapons 14 days after the Russian attack or about the number of Czech volunteers on the front and in the background https://www.team4ukraine.eu/
Did you read his actual comments, or just the soundbite quote taken out of context by the newspapers? If you read the full comment, he was talking about how Ukraine can be most effective in its requests for support and that the wrong tone detracts from this. To suggest he's not fully supportive of Ukraine is nonsense, or that's he's asking for gratitude - look at the UK's actions on his watch in terms of equipment delivered and being the first to provide new capabilities that catalysed other countries (anti-tank weapons pre-invasion, MBTs, Storm Shadow etc). He was commenting on how Ukraine could be more effective with some of these other, more cautious (touchy?) donors.
The last thing I would have imagined in this war that the Russians run out of AKs. I know, there were museum pieces right after the full scale "non-war" at the separatist volunteer units, but this came from the VSRF stocks.
Thank you, Actually after a few packages of USA aid Ukraine has more Bradleys than in the beginning of offensive.
I think every strategy player knows that concentration of dozen thousands of troops in 10*5 km square isn’t a good idea. I hope that DPICM will make situation simpler for ZSU. I have a few questions
Do you know an influence of FPV drones on war like I’ve seen data that Ukraine produces about 10 000 whereas Russian is 45 000 now?
Forbes writes that ratio of artillery losses is 1 to 4 in ZSU favor Can it create a situation when VSRF will leave without artillery support in certain sectors
That's one of the points: Popov was able to pack as many troops within as limited area - precisely because Ukrainians do not have DPICMs.
....looking forward to see Lyamin's reaction when the ZSU start pounding his amassed troops with DPCIM. Sooner or latter, he'll be left with little other choice but to either grab his AKM and join them, or follow Popov....
If you find it insightful, this account of an Ukrainian soldier and his reconnaissance training program by US Rangers was interesting, the takeaway is that the NATO training is probably in some cases not very tailored to the near-peer war drone-infested reality of Ukraine.
It's what I say all the time since before the start of this war: NATO might be good at training basics, but when it comes to tactics, it can't have clue about a war of this kind - because it never fought such a war.
....which is making things only more terrible because then such people - people having no clue about a war of this kind - are reporting up the chain of command about how are Ukrainians, what are they good at, and what not, and what do they need.... :rolleyes:
NATO has so far offered abbreviated basic training courses of a few weeks to infantry. E.g. the battalion-scale training conducted in Germany over the late winter that included everything from shooting to "combined arms" over SIX weeks.
I'm not sure why anyone would have expected miracles to result. I sure didn't.
I can hardly believe that the US for example is simply *incapable* of training even a brigade as a cohesive formation in all aspects of warfare for six months or more from the ground up. Rather, they just don't want to invest the resources.
Exactly, basic training is basic training. As far as unit level training is concerned, how do you imagine anyone else than the ZSU training a brigade for the Ukrainian army? Different doctrine, command structure, needs, equipment. The only thing similar is the coffee. Never teach others what you dont know, because it's much better for them to be undertrained, than trained incorrectly. The ZSU must conduct training at this level, nobody else.
NATO are and have been training brigades lately, in particular those equipped primarily with NATO heavy weapons systems, but it's unclear how much of that involves brigade-level maneuver and command.
The Ukrainian military cannot train all, or even most, of its mobilized and volunteer soldiers, which has left UFOR a similar hodgepodge of agglomerated warbands with different cultures and levels and methods of professionalism as RuFOR. Whatever drawbacks there would be to emphasizing NATO training for a proportion of that military - I don't see how 6 months of training to actual NATO standards could produce worse results than 6 weeks - beggars really can't be choosers.
But since last year I had the idea, fantastical as it may be to authorize, of the US training up a full heavy mechanized Abrams division as a self-contained formation of the ZSU, to retain a semi-autonomous structure not totally unlike the former relationship between Wagner and the Ministry of Defence. It would be important that the vast majority of personnel be civilian recruits trained in the military arts from scratch over a standard period of time, including all the way up to the staff. This division would have DU domestic Abrams, organic batteries each of HIMARS and Patriot, and other enablers, as well as an ersatz brigade to sustain losses for one campaign.
Ukraine's MoD and veterans could offer weeks or more of force integration and capstone training to such a division once it returned from the US (since overall such a program would take up to a full year to produce a usable force deployed to Ukraine itself).
Besides delivering a breakthrough force of legitimately unique and substantial means and skills to Ukraine in time for the ongoing summer campaign, it would have potentiated the US' own capacities for civil mobilization and divisional-level operations, since these have indeed atrophied - even as both the US and Germany announced months ago an intent to reestablish native divisional structures in the next few year. Gee, what would have been a good test case for that...
Very interesting. I was under the impression that the training outside Ukraine boiled down to basic, specialised small unit and equipment. Do you know if NATO really trained brigade-level combined arms training to any ZSU units?
Your idea is as great as probably unrealistic, huge shame. If it was a brigade, then it's a bit pointless. If it was a division, that could be game changing. Your ideas are far to radical for pencil pushers in the white house and the pentagon. Yankie division would be great though.
They've claimed US-led training in Germany involves everything from basic shooting to "combined arms", but as the Twitter thread at the top of the thread points out, combined arms here probably means a few days of MILES opfor exercises against American trainers.
I want a Ukrainian formation that is veritably equivalent to a regular US Army formation, not the free trial version. Preferably a division, skeletally modeled on a 1980s-1995 "heavy" division. Then we can talk about the effectiveness of American (or Franco-German, since I did also want a Eurodivision - are you in there, Macron?) organization.
No idea what training staff or field officers get, if any, from NATO, though perhaps it's modeled on the seminar-type courses some officers participated in pre-war.
These types of conflicts between field commanders and the General Staff are not uncommon or unnatural, given the differences of "conditioning" or training between these 2 distinct types of officers. .One thinks he is the center of the World, his sector is the most important, while the latter have to deal will multiple ones, all at once and have a better view of all the issues, as a whole. When you move to a General Staff position you are encouraged to let go of your skills set and habbits as a field commander and the "course" is designed to give you a different set of skills and to change the way you see things and approach issues. The truth is that even if don't want to let go to you field command skills, in time you will loose them because of lack of practice. The differences between these 2 ways of thinking are even more obvious in the Russian Army , where there is a very clear distinction between these 2 and are considered different career paths. We are missing a lot info to be able to decide who was right and wrong but given this particular situation, the Russian General Staff did what any General Staff would have done.
What, do you think, are the odds that the Russian units being pushed into that section of the front are fully staffed? I'd guess that the 'regular' VSRF units chewed up by the Ukrainians have been filled in by mobilized troops, but I can't imagine the BARS and Spetznaz units have been reinforced in the same way. And if they have, I question how much more effective they are than the units that were just shredded.
I can only assess the condition of the 58th CAA. Perhaps that of the 36th CAA, to its 'right' (i.e. east of it). And that's what's described above.
The 22nd and 45th Spetsnaz are in combat since 5 June: they're used as 'fire brigades', and have been significantly reduced already. Most of BARS units are fresh, though.
How many BARS detachments (battalions) are there, 20-30? At the beginning of the war it was commonly cited that ~5K individuals were enrolled in the BARS program, which is obviously not sufficient to staff all the formations that were attested by fall of 2022. Is my understanding correct that some of the volunteers from the summer regional recruitment drive were funneled into BARS?
Thanks for the info on the number of BARS units. But while I haven't got your book for now, I do recall that the 100K figure was Shoigu's target for BARS back in 2021. ISW's report at the beginning of the war (I did misremember the context of the 5K figure):
"According to a 2019 RAND analysis, Russia only had 4,000 to 5,000 troops in what would be considered an active reserve in the Western sense, meaning soldiers attending regular monthly and annual training.[13] Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has repeatedly stated that the Russian Armed Forces hoped to have 80,000-100,000 active reserve members.[14]
In 2021, the Russian military started a new initiative to remedy its lack of a ready reserve, the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS-2021). BARS-2021 aimed to establish an active reserve by recruiting volunteer reservists for three-year contract service.[15]
...
The Southern Military District (SMD) announced a goal of having a 38,000-person reserve corps of service veterans, up from 400 people.[19] There is limited information on how many reservists returned to military service; Novokuznetsk data shows that the city planned to gain 220 reservists, but reported only recruiting 20.[20] The Central Military District (CMD) reported conducting a BARS-2022 program from January 24-26, 2022, during which the CMD gained 9,000 reservists.
The Russian Armed Forces sought to create exclusively reservist units but likely did not accomplish its goals due to low engagement.[21]"
In this interview with a barsovets btw, it is noted that only volunteers from before and after the summer recruitment drive were directed to BARS, and that the formal status of their employment or contractual obligation is unclear (or at least was before the recent controversial MoD edict).
If Russia had a 100K ready and motivated trained reserve pool at the start of the war, it seems unlikely they would have been leaning on regional governments, state enterprises, and the prison network to deliver men so soon into the war.
Как ваш настрой?
I wanted to say “Stay safe”, but this is obviously such a dumb thing to say to a soldier-to-be. So, thank you 💙💛
Explained in an entire stream of my reports since mid-June... one does have to read them, though...
Oh dear.... now I've got to start blocking whataboutists and online-psychoanalysts here, too... :rolleyes:
Least unhinged Serbian, still butthurt for losing their first post-yugo civil war.
Thx for your trust: glad to be of help.
"There are so many blogs, articles, and opinion pieces out there but of all of them, this blog is the most useful I’ve found. " Completely agree!
Lightyears ahead. No offense, but 99,9% of the others draw maps based on geolocates images or copy/paste from GenStab of UKR.
Спасибо.
Привет Вам из Запорожья :)
Great work again, Thank you for spreading the truth and we do not have to listen to puddings sewer rat Facebookers words.
A Great update (as always) Tom. Come timely because some putin-fan I know just send me two videos of the mauled Bradley as it was different vehicles, even stating that was quite a number of them AOO... Well, my laughs went higher than a T-80 turret!
Keep on, we need no more lies, come from where come.
...saw a video yesterday, where a turret of a blown-up T-80 narrowly missed an Ukrainian UAVs...
Nice thing to see!
That was most likely an intended and innovative interception which just barely missed.
10,000 troops and their equipment crammed into a 50 square km area. Is that what they call a target rich environment?
According to my very rough calculation that puts on average one soldier every 5,000 square meters. A single DPICM canister can cover an area up to 30,000 square meters so Ukraine could fire them at random and stand a good chance of hitting someone, not that I recommend such an approach.
But hey: the most modern Russian weapons are already on the way...
https://twitter.com/region776/status/1679430629094752256
Meanwhile Ukraine has to do their best with this old stuff
"“We just got them (cluster munitions), we haven't used them yet, but they can radically change [the battlefield],” Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the Tavria Joint Forces Operation, said in an interview Thursday with CNN's Alex Marquardt."
...the dumb part of me is looking forward for related videos....
Seriously: I'm really curious to see if there is going to be a difference in the way the ZSU's artillery is deployed.
The last year or so, this was chronically short on ammo, and 'indoctrinated' by the NATO's dogmas about 'single-shot-fire-mission' - although constantly facing hopelessly too many targets (and, thus, calls for fire actions).... now , and if provided with sufficient numbers of DCIPM shells, it might get opportunity to act in an entirely different fashion.
....alone because a single DCIPM hit can easily 'replace' the effects of 2-5 'conventional' shells.
With so many packed into the the Robotyne sector, south of Orikhiv I hope they do the obvious with the DCIPM shells and have enough supplied.
Thank you very much.
Yesterday I read what Ben Wallace told us. I want to ask: "How can you? How do you have enough conscience?". But, there is no conscience where it was not planned. I know that this question is not for you, you are analyzing technical issues. Just the soul hurts.
....a part of me is always happy that most of Ukrainians can't see 'Ukraine-related' reporting on Austrian or German TV.....
Мої учні в Німеччині зараз. Близнюки - хлопчик і дівчинка. Такі позитивні діти, чемпіони України з танців. Питаю їх вчора: як ваша німецька мова? Відповіли, що розуміють добре, а говорять мало. Тому що з ними не спілкуються в школі. А спочатку одноклассники включали гімн Росії на телефонах. Хочуть додому. Не плачуть, просто не вірять в людей.
Bluebird
2 minutes ago2 min ago
My students are in Germany now. Twins - a boy and a girl. Such positive children, Ukrainian dance champions. I ask them yesterday: how is your German? They answered that they understand well, but speak little. Because they don't communicate with them at school. And first, classmates turned on the Russian national anthem on their phones. They want to go home. They don't cry, they just don't believe in people.
Sorry to hear about such experiences.... leaves me deeply ashamed....
Would Serbia really qualify as an "Austro-Hungarian" constituent? Didn't WW1 started because Russia defended Serbia? :)
I wouldn't look for more convoluted explanations than Austria and Hungary are hooked on Russian money / underpriced gas. Although it is true that Hungary seems to have a history at siding with the big bullies against their neighbours, they're probably a bit more irredentist than average.
On the other hand, they could all envy how Ukraine got territorially quite large westward, but Slovakia and Poland could have similar grudge yet they decided to support you because they know Russia irredentism is the worst of all.
Me thinks, not so much 'anti-Ukrainian', as 'Russia-centred'. Ukraine 'doesn't exist', or 'is not important'.
To explain this a bit....
When (most of) people here think about 'Russia', they associate with 'USSR'. They do not even associate 'Ukraine' with 'ex-USSR'. Ukraine is something like 'some strange, unknown country' out there in the 'wild East'. Nobody here is coming to the idea to think in way of 'the mass of the fighting on the Eastern Front of WWII was fought in Ukraine'...
For the roots of this...
'Austria' can be defined with 'what's left of the former Austrian Empire'. An empire that played a crucial role in the European history for almost 1,000 years. That's explaining the 'high nosed' point of view of many of Austrians.
However, Austria - or 'at least plenty of Austrians' - played a crucial role in provoking two world Wars, and the Holocaust, too. This is where we're 'falling silent', or at least: it's a topic we prefer to avoid. One way or the other, we've 'learned (some of) our lessons' and decided we do not want to go fighting wars any more,: wars are (literally) put into museums and we (Austrians) are something like 'focusing on enjoying the life instead'....
One consequence of this is that Austria was de-militarised, literally, and to the bottom. Especially since the end of the Cold War. We've found ourselves 'surrounded' by the 'NATO belly', and thus in no need to care about the defence of the country (not even the defence of our 'strict and neverending neutrality'). To the degree where anybody reading, say, 'a military aviation magazine' in the Viennese underground is receiving 'strange looks' from other passengers, and is likely to feel 'short of being declared a war-monger', definitely a 'Waffennarr'...
Meanwhile, the USSR is 'famous' here: it defeated 'us' in WWII (where 'us' is, of course, 'not us, but Nazi Germany', regardless how many Ausstrians served in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, or participated in the Holocaust) and nobody is proud to talk about being part of 'Nazi Germany' during the WWII, because, you know, 'Austria was a victim of German aggression', and that's official...
As next, and as it became known during the 1990s, during the Cold War, the mass of the Austrian political scene was corrupted by the Soviets and - especially - Czechoslovakia. Numerous top politicians were working for the Czechoslovak intelligence service - to the degree where they were taking and executing its orders. This 'topic' was 'touched' by the Austrian media in the 1990s, but never 'pursued': nobody was ever sanctioned/penalised. Our media can't stop 'complaining' about our misdeeds in regards of the Holocaust, but can't care less about treachery of the Cold War: this was something like, 'ah, that's now history, no need to care'...
Rather unsurprisingly, when the USSR dissolved, large parts of the political system - and our political system is gravitating around our oligarchy (see: owners and bosses of major corporations) - allied themselves with Russia. Austria was the first 'Western' country to start buying Soviet/Russian gas (back in the mid-1970s). Austrian government was the only one to officially recognize the putchist regime in Moscow of 1991, just for example... Subsequently, major Austrian corporations (especially banks and insurances, but also transport business, car-parts-industry, and then the agriculture sector) began heavily investing and/or exporting to Russia. The process was led 'from the top': not only all the major corporations, but nearly every single of former Austrian chancellors, plenty of ministers and their aides, went working for major Russian corporations (forermost GAZPROM, but also SBER-Bank etc.). Official affiliations with political parties didn't matter: see Gusenbauer (SPÖ), see Fayman (SPÖ), see Schüssel (ÖVP, i.e. 'Christian Democrats' or 'Conservatives'). The FPÖ (populists with strong lean towards neo-Nazism) even openly signed a pact with Putin, etc.
Over the recent years our economy (foremost the 51%-stated-owned OMV oil/gas-corporation, but also the Raiffeisen Bank, and then a myriad of smaller enterprises in car-parts- and transportation branches, 'all the way down' to apple-farmers of Styria) was earning dozens of billions from such and similar business. It became a 'norm', and 'good' to make money from business with Russia, and this thinking was supported by the oligarchy, which was quick in inviting Putin here after his isolation in the wake of invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, and handing him over from one of CEOs to the other...
This process was supported by something like a subtile propaganda campaign: with the time, 'everyday people' began associating 'Russia' with 'sole successor of the USSR', and thus 'good for everyday people'.... Kind of like, 'Putin is trying to recover the USSR and thus make things better for employees in the West, too'. 'While' that 'war-mongering, aggressive and expansionist NATO, driven by imperialist greed' is 'trying to provoke a war with him, to prevent that'...
This went so far that although multiple mid-ranking officers (usually: Colonels or Lieutenant-Colonels) of the Austrian armed forces and intelligence services were caught spying for Russia, over the last 15-20 years, nobody really cares.
'Against' this, Ukraine simply stands no chance....at most it is (mis)declared into 'Russians who lost their orientation'. I.e. one is buying the official Russian line...
Good example: for nearly two decades, my neighbour in Vienna was an Ukrainian from Kyiv. She wasn't considered 'Ukrainian' because nobody knew what to think about 'Ukrainian'. Who cares about Ukraine...? Instead, she was simply declared - and 'colloquially considered' - for 'Russian' (not 100% sure, but I think even her husband considered her as such). Unsurprisingly, eventually she gave up trying and said 'Russian'...
That's something like the 'tip of the iceberg' here in Austria.
Don't know enough to 'describe' this as precisely in the case of Hungary and Serbia, but the way I understand the two countries, it's significantly different.
Hungarians were - just like much of the 'West' of the last 30 years - 'lazy': only about 30% went to the elections and thus have left a Putin-connected populist (Orban) take over. In Austria, we've only narrowly missed a similar situation (see. Kurz), just 3-4 years ago...
Serbia, sadly, is a fundamentally different topic. Although the mass of people there (as obvious from mass demonstrations in Belgrade and other cities going on since May already) is fed up of ultra-chauvinism, wars, degeneration of the politics and its ties to organised crime, the latter combination is still dominating the politics. Correspondingly, Russia is 'brothers', Ukraine 'traitors', and own wrong-doings during the wars in former Yugoslavia of 1991-1995 were all 'self-defence of Serbia'....then, 'Serbia is wherever one Serb is living' (indeed 'to Tokyo').
....and then mind that up to 300,000 Austrians (or at least people living in Austria) are either Serbs or of Serbian origin...
Bottom line: we very much have the same 'broken politics' like much of the 'West'. The politics of administering the status quo in the name of economic profit, and the resulting mix of (endemic) political corruption, chauvinism, bad conscience and other factors.
....and very few people ready to talk openly about all of this.
Extremely accurate depiction of the Austrian related question. Excellent write up, many thanks!
Similar thing happened in CR, see https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-zivot-v-cesku-deti-plivly-do-tvare-ukrajinske-spoluzacce-utok-odsoudili-rakusan-i-ambasada-232243
The mother of the UA girl has complained to the school and it solved is as "normal hazing" - some of the attackers have even pro-Ukrainian parents. Such hazing occurs against strangers from any countries, unfortunately. Germany has even better anti-hazing measures in schools, so your student's parents should turn to the school teachers and the director.
Школа відреагувала. Тепер гімн не включають. Але діти вміють травити тихо. Це ігнорування. І воно дієве. Тому я і сказала, що діти просто не вірять в людей. Без емоцій.
Yes, such things sometimes happen here in the Czech Republic. And we are ashamed of it https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-zivot-v-cesku-prezident-pavel-odsoudil-sikanu-ukrajinske-holcicky-prijal-ji-na-hrade-232359.
But in general, of the former Austro-Hungarian countries, we are probably the biggest opponents of Russia and supporters of Ukraine. Maybe the year 1968 is to blame, maybe the FSB attack on the ammunition warehouse in Vrbětice in 2014.
He will show me another country the size of ours where people put their own money and bought a tank, 15 anti-drone kits and much more for the UA. https://www.weaponstoukraine.com/
And I'm not talking about the fact that our government (thank God for it) started supplying the UA with heavy weapons 14 days after the Russian attack or about the number of Czech volunteers on the front and in the background https://www.team4ukraine.eu/
We are Czechs, we will never give up.
Glory to Ukraine,
Glory to the heroes.
Did you read his actual comments, or just the soundbite quote taken out of context by the newspapers? If you read the full comment, he was talking about how Ukraine can be most effective in its requests for support and that the wrong tone detracts from this. To suggest he's not fully supportive of Ukraine is nonsense, or that's he's asking for gratitude - look at the UK's actions on his watch in terms of equipment delivered and being the first to provide new capabilities that catalysed other countries (anti-tank weapons pre-invasion, MBTs, Storm Shadow etc). He was commenting on how Ukraine could be more effective with some of these other, more cautious (touchy?) donors.
The last thing I would have imagined in this war that the Russians run out of AKs. I know, there were museum pieces right after the full scale "non-war" at the separatist volunteer units, but this came from the VSRF stocks.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1679427187097624578
....just another conspiracy of Jewish bankers that already sponsored the Bolshevik revolution... :P
Thank you, Actually after a few packages of USA aid Ukraine has more Bradleys than in the beginning of offensive.
I think every strategy player knows that concentration of dozen thousands of troops in 10*5 km square isn’t a good idea. I hope that DPICM will make situation simpler for ZSU. I have a few questions
Do you know an influence of FPV drones on war like I’ve seen data that Ukraine produces about 10 000 whereas Russian is 45 000 now?
Forbes writes that ratio of artillery losses is 1 to 4 in ZSU favor Can it create a situation when VSRF will leave without artillery support in certain sectors
That's one of the points: Popov was able to pack as many troops within as limited area - precisely because Ukrainians do not have DPICMs.
....looking forward to see Lyamin's reaction when the ZSU start pounding his amassed troops with DPCIM. Sooner or latter, he'll be left with little other choice but to either grab his AKM and join them, or follow Popov....
Thank you Tom.
Slow and painful advance.
One thing is constant - ruzzians don't want to disappoint their Illustrious Leader with lack of ... trying.
If you find it insightful, this account of an Ukrainian soldier and his reconnaissance training program by US Rangers was interesting, the takeaway is that the NATO training is probably in some cases not very tailored to the near-peer war drone-infested reality of Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/SmartUACat/status/1679223826398212096
I'm sure the training is higher quality and probably more relevant in more technical branches and when tailored to use specific equipment.
It's what I say all the time since before the start of this war: NATO might be good at training basics, but when it comes to tactics, it can't have clue about a war of this kind - because it never fought such a war.
....which is making things only more terrible because then such people - people having no clue about a war of this kind - are reporting up the chain of command about how are Ukrainians, what are they good at, and what not, and what do they need.... :rolleyes:
NATO has so far offered abbreviated basic training courses of a few weeks to infantry. E.g. the battalion-scale training conducted in Germany over the late winter that included everything from shooting to "combined arms" over SIX weeks.
I'm not sure why anyone would have expected miracles to result. I sure didn't.
I can hardly believe that the US for example is simply *incapable* of training even a brigade as a cohesive formation in all aspects of warfare for six months or more from the ground up. Rather, they just don't want to invest the resources.
Exactly, basic training is basic training. As far as unit level training is concerned, how do you imagine anyone else than the ZSU training a brigade for the Ukrainian army? Different doctrine, command structure, needs, equipment. The only thing similar is the coffee. Never teach others what you dont know, because it's much better for them to be undertrained, than trained incorrectly. The ZSU must conduct training at this level, nobody else.
NATO are and have been training brigades lately, in particular those equipped primarily with NATO heavy weapons systems, but it's unclear how much of that involves brigade-level maneuver and command.
The Ukrainian military cannot train all, or even most, of its mobilized and volunteer soldiers, which has left UFOR a similar hodgepodge of agglomerated warbands with different cultures and levels and methods of professionalism as RuFOR. Whatever drawbacks there would be to emphasizing NATO training for a proportion of that military - I don't see how 6 months of training to actual NATO standards could produce worse results than 6 weeks - beggars really can't be choosers.
But since last year I had the idea, fantastical as it may be to authorize, of the US training up a full heavy mechanized Abrams division as a self-contained formation of the ZSU, to retain a semi-autonomous structure not totally unlike the former relationship between Wagner and the Ministry of Defence. It would be important that the vast majority of personnel be civilian recruits trained in the military arts from scratch over a standard period of time, including all the way up to the staff. This division would have DU domestic Abrams, organic batteries each of HIMARS and Patriot, and other enablers, as well as an ersatz brigade to sustain losses for one campaign.
Ukraine's MoD and veterans could offer weeks or more of force integration and capstone training to such a division once it returned from the US (since overall such a program would take up to a full year to produce a usable force deployed to Ukraine itself).
Besides delivering a breakthrough force of legitimately unique and substantial means and skills to Ukraine in time for the ongoing summer campaign, it would have potentiated the US' own capacities for civil mobilization and divisional-level operations, since these have indeed atrophied - even as both the US and Germany announced months ago an intent to reestablish native divisional structures in the next few year. Gee, what would have been a good test case for that...
Very interesting. I was under the impression that the training outside Ukraine boiled down to basic, specialised small unit and equipment. Do you know if NATO really trained brigade-level combined arms training to any ZSU units?
Your idea is as great as probably unrealistic, huge shame. If it was a brigade, then it's a bit pointless. If it was a division, that could be game changing. Your ideas are far to radical for pencil pushers in the white house and the pentagon. Yankie division would be great though.
For example:
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3347269/dod-official-says-training-for-ukrainians-is-ongoing/
They've claimed US-led training in Germany involves everything from basic shooting to "combined arms", but as the Twitter thread at the top of the thread points out, combined arms here probably means a few days of MILES opfor exercises against American trainers.
I want a Ukrainian formation that is veritably equivalent to a regular US Army formation, not the free trial version. Preferably a division, skeletally modeled on a 1980s-1995 "heavy" division. Then we can talk about the effectiveness of American (or Franco-German, since I did also want a Eurodivision - are you in there, Macron?) organization.
No idea what training staff or field officers get, if any, from NATO, though perhaps it's modeled on the seminar-type courses some officers participated in pre-war.
These types of conflicts between field commanders and the General Staff are not uncommon or unnatural, given the differences of "conditioning" or training between these 2 distinct types of officers. .One thinks he is the center of the World, his sector is the most important, while the latter have to deal will multiple ones, all at once and have a better view of all the issues, as a whole. When you move to a General Staff position you are encouraged to let go of your skills set and habbits as a field commander and the "course" is designed to give you a different set of skills and to change the way you see things and approach issues. The truth is that even if don't want to let go to you field command skills, in time you will loose them because of lack of practice. The differences between these 2 ways of thinking are even more obvious in the Russian Army , where there is a very clear distinction between these 2 and are considered different career paths. We are missing a lot info to be able to decide who was right and wrong but given this particular situation, the Russian General Staff did what any General Staff would have done.
What, do you think, are the odds that the Russian units being pushed into that section of the front are fully staffed? I'd guess that the 'regular' VSRF units chewed up by the Ukrainians have been filled in by mobilized troops, but I can't imagine the BARS and Spetznaz units have been reinforced in the same way. And if they have, I question how much more effective they are than the units that were just shredded.
I can only assess the condition of the 58th CAA. Perhaps that of the 36th CAA, to its 'right' (i.e. east of it). And that's what's described above.
The 22nd and 45th Spetsnaz are in combat since 5 June: they're used as 'fire brigades', and have been significantly reduced already. Most of BARS units are fresh, though.
Do you, or another source, know if the BARS units receive contract volunteers as replacements or conscripts?
Either way, thank you for the insight.
AFAIK, BARS are all volunteers: reservists fresh from national service, that signed a 3-years-contract.
How many BARS detachments (battalions) are there, 20-30? At the beginning of the war it was commonly cited that ~5K individuals were enrolled in the BARS program, which is obviously not sufficient to staff all the formations that were attested by fall of 2022. Is my understanding correct that some of the volunteers from the summer regional recruitment drive were funneled into BARS?
AFAIK, BARS was much larger already before the war. 100,000 or so (check the book here for details: https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/war-in-ukraine-volume-2-russian-invasion-february-2022.php?sid=2548d38f3393eba2a59ebfb0b9a3498f - we've discussed the BARS in it, but I do not recall the details and lack the time to search for them).
Based on known designations, there are meanwhile over 50 BARS regiments.
Thanks for the info on the number of BARS units. But while I haven't got your book for now, I do recall that the 100K figure was Shoigu's target for BARS back in 2021. ISW's report at the beginning of the war (I did misremember the context of the 5K figure):
"According to a 2019 RAND analysis, Russia only had 4,000 to 5,000 troops in what would be considered an active reserve in the Western sense, meaning soldiers attending regular monthly and annual training.[13] Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has repeatedly stated that the Russian Armed Forces hoped to have 80,000-100,000 active reserve members.[14]
In 2021, the Russian military started a new initiative to remedy its lack of a ready reserve, the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS-2021). BARS-2021 aimed to establish an active reserve by recruiting volunteer reservists for three-year contract service.[15]
...
The Southern Military District (SMD) announced a goal of having a 38,000-person reserve corps of service veterans, up from 400 people.[19] There is limited information on how many reservists returned to military service; Novokuznetsk data shows that the city planned to gain 220 reservists, but reported only recruiting 20.[20] The Central Military District (CMD) reported conducting a BARS-2022 program from January 24-26, 2022, during which the CMD gained 9,000 reservists.
The Russian Armed Forces sought to create exclusively reservist units but likely did not accomplish its goals due to low engagement.[21]"
In this interview with a barsovets btw, it is noted that only volunteers from before and after the summer recruitment drive were directed to BARS, and that the formal status of their employment or contractual obligation is unclear (or at least was before the recent controversial MoD edict).
https://www.fontanka.ru/2023/02/27/72092162/
If Russia had a 100K ready and motivated trained reserve pool at the start of the war, it seems unlikely they would have been leaning on regional governments, state enterprises, and the prison network to deliver men so soon into the war.
Looks like that area of 10x5km is begging to be tested by cluter amnunition (which looks like is already in ukraine) :)
Well, yes, the Russians say they were hit by CBUs today:
https://t.me/rsotmdivision/8918
Not yet sure, though: mind they began claiming 'destroyed Leopards' and 'Bradleys' before any were even in Ukraine...
According to my poor mathematics, 1,600 cluster munitions would saturate the whole area.