bucho
Hey, so what the fuck was Obama and Biden doing in :ukkkraine: 10 years ago?
Very little. When Russia invaded the last time around, the US was too scared to send military hardware for fear of provoking Putin. So they sent MREs instead. Fucking MREs. What a joke.
Hey - if you're invader scum, you can get fucked.
Right. Yes. I said that in the very next sentence. It's an investment. The hardware is being spent towards some purpose. But the original guy I responded to seemed to think that we were giving away all our old hardware 'cause we just didn't want to pay for upkeep, which is dumb.
I don't know what you expect the Ukrainians to do. Give up? Just accept another huge chunk of their territory being taken from them? Fuck that. They're fighting an oppressive imperialist power. They have my full support. Y'all can get fucked.
Uh... what the fuck are you on? Can I have some?
The coup in 2014 happened because Yanukovych chose at the last minute to not sign a free trade deal with the EU, but rather wanted closer economic ties to Russia. This is despite the fact that the parliament had overwhelmingly approved the original deal. Protests began immediately (this was in November of 2013). Hundreds of thousands of people across the nation were pissed off. Both the protestors and parliament called for Yanukovych to step down. He refused, and enacted harsh anti-protest laws in response. Things escalated. Eventually, after weeks of clashes with the police, the protestors won out and Yanukovych fled. He then begged Moscow to intervene.
This gave Russia all the justification it needed to seize Crimea so that they could have unfettered access to Sevastopol, which is where they had been basing their Black Sea fleet for like 200 years.
So, like... I get that you're all rah rah communism rah rah... but how are you going to then shit on an extremely popular people's movement that ousts the entrenched power system? That seems pretty in-line with your professed beliefs.
Were you also dropped on your head as a baby?
Ok? Well, they're either lying, or they're stupid. There is a massive amount of evidence that that is not true. For instance, just look at how they approached taking Bakhmut using human wave tactics into entrenched, well armed forces. Or their multiple failed attempts to retake Vuhledar. In both cases, it was not exactly tactical. They just kept pouring men and machines into a heavily fortified area just hoping, I guess, that the Ukrainians were asleep at the trigger. And the kicker is, neither place was particularly tactically important.
They gained no additional ground after taking Bakhmut because it's in the low ground and to advance, they'd have to take the fortified heights around it. Bakhmut offered no strategic benefit as far as logistical hubs go, and that's even before it was leveled. A smarter army would have bypassed it, but word came down from on high to take it at any cost, so that's what they did.
if they have the wrong equipment for the task at hand, wouldn’t that mean that they are worse equipped?
No? If you're talking about air force, they're definitely worse equipped than Russia. But on the ground, their equipment is newer and in better repair. They are just dealing with a unique situation from the perspective of NATO countries. You can't train on shit that you have no experience with.
if they have run through their “last reserve brigades” as the redditor in the OP screenshot says, when will they have the time to train their new guys “better”?
I don't believe they have. I'm not in Ukraine, and I don't have an in with the Ukrainian military, so I can't say for sure. But all of the Ukrainian sources that I have read suggest that they still have reserves left. They have deployed one of their most highly trained reserve forces on the south bank of the Dnipro, but they probably still have more in the areas around Kramotorsk.
As far as training, that's perpetually ongoing. Remember, the Ukrainians were invaded; they aren't the invaders. So morale among their armed forces is on average much higher than that among the Russians. They have lots of volunteers to draw on as well, both foreign and domestic. So, even though their losses have been high in meat grinders like Bakhmut, and millions of Ukrainians have fled to other countries, they're still getting a steady stream of new recruits to fill out their ranks.
you are for sure optimistic about Ukraine’s willingness to throw lives into the grinder
I mean, what choice do they have? They can't just magic the Russians away. Do you suggest that they just give up their territory and all of the people who live there? Of course they're fighting. I applaud that in them. And despite your snark, there is a very big difference tactics-wise between how the Ukrainians are approaching this fight than the Russians. For example, when Wagner was attacking Bakhmut, they would use literal human wave tactics to gain ground; they'd send several poorly armed squads at once to test multiple paths through the city. If one of them didn't die, they'd know that Ukrainian firepower was weakest in that area, so then they'd send in their better trained forces to concentrate there. THAT'S throwing people into the grinder. Ukraine does everything it can to avoid unnecessary bloodshed among their troops.