The West has got them right where they want them. Now to just keep the trickle of foreign fighters into Ukraine going, this profitable adventure will go on for a long time.
The lack of Russian combined arms is still just baffling to me. Like with US operations generally if you don’t have a dedicated close air support asset, or at a bare minimum some kind of ISR overwatch asset, the mission doesn’t happen.
Makes more sense when you remember that most of the troops going in are from impoverished regions and/or ethnic minorities...it's almost like genocide is what Putin and wealthy Russians do... They love that meat grinder.
I mean yes Russian military tactics have typically been “we’ll find a good army by killing all the bad and unlucky soldiers” but they have armed ISR assets and REALLY good helicopters and so by just having a UAV loiter over a patrol until Ukraine shoots at it and then 1) hitting them with a missile or 2) following them back to base and then hitting that with a bomb they’d be making a lot of gains. They’ve been watching the US do that in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years and Syria for ten.
Something fucky going on with the Russkie air force, yeah. Seems like we should see a lot more over UKR.
I’ve been reading more that Russia is using combined arms now in the east where they heavily outnumber defenders fighters believe the long range us artillery can counter much of it but not much is in place and available yet
Self preservation? OK. But they have numbers to overcome that if they want. The air part of this seems very half-assed from the Russians.
Ukranian estimates are around ~200 planes. Most estimates place russia's total airforce (including transports,trainers, etc) at like 1500-3000 planes. That's a heavy blow especially since they can't really replace them and its unknown how many actual airworthy planes they have since russian numbers tend to be inflated by leftover unusable soviet stockpiles.
the russians have been bragging openly about just needing to not lose until the midterms when the GOP will cut off aid. Up to the rest of the west to keep the weapons flowing.
what are you talking about? Russia is making tiny gains in the east and losing it right back in the north.