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I’m guessing there must be some additional support for Poland’s Air defence as they must be short of F16 pilots whilst the Mig pilots retrain.

The SU25 is a ground attack aircraft, the Soviet A10 btw

Honestly the history, religion and politics of Yemen are completely beyond me and I don’t feel competent to use my western analysis if it.

What about Sierra Leone?

You could view the Palestinian situation as Western Democracies supporting another democracy which has been under threat from Soviet/Russian supported Dictatorships with the Palestinians as unlucky pawns.

A lot of the shot up Russian units belong to the Rosgvardiya, I didn’t know who they were but Wikipedia tells me they are Internal Security Troops reporting directly to Putin and he had 340,000 of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_Russia

They seem analogous to the old KGB troops except the KGB was balanced by the army and the party so no one person could have too much power.

Putin might just be using his most loyal units but if they get badly mauled?

I think the interviews with Russian captives are against The Rules of War.

Having done this myself....Long shot but you haven’t stripped the hub recently and rebuilt it with the knurled washer the wrong way round?

Is Paddington doing a Nazi salute there? A lot of them ended up in South America.
Maybe we have found out where Putins worries come from.

I hesitated to use it because I realise it is an unpleasant thing to say but negotiations have to be carried out in good faith.

We need to get to negotiations and see what Russia actually does want, and find an acceptable solution. Nobody knows what it would be yet. But the only way to end the war quickly is to give Putin a way out that allows him to save face. I'd rather that was permitted than war continued with people killed and lives ruined.

I’m sorry to say but that has a whiff of appeasement about it

Wouldn’t Western governments prefer Russia to be a source of raw materials and a market for consumer goods.

You know “The Devils Own”bit is a piss take

Attaching regiments to regional areas started in the 1870s with the Cardwell reforms for example The 15th of Foot became The East Yorkshire Regiment who were amalgamated into The Prince of Wales Own Yorkshire Regiment who amalgamated with The Duke of Wellingtons Regiment and The Green Howard’s (by far the best of the 3) into The Yorkshire Regiment.
Pals regiments were part of The Kitchener army the Hull ones may have been called 6th battalion The East Yorkshire Regiment ? They used to take on regular regiments traditions.
For example The Green Howard’s have a regimental day Alma Day a battle in the Crimean war.

There were also reserve regiments based on occupations The Post Office rifles, Civil service etc, there is still The Inns of Court Yeomanry(The Devils Own).

Oh and The Artists Rifles.

Presumably Putin hasn’t watched “A Bridge too Far” or looked up why the Germans didn’t jump much after Crete.

I’ll also argue the point in that tweet that Paras have to be physically large. Unless the Russian parachute has a greater maximum load than ours. I did an Orienteering exercise in the snow on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales with a Para who told me if you added his weight and it he weight of his CEFO(complete equipment fighting order). It was more than the max load of a parachute. We got seriously lost in the snow and did a lot of chatting waiting for dawn.

There is another possible reason for the use of so many Paratroopers (lots of the destroyed vehicles are BMD s which are used by them).
Until late in WWI both the British and the Germans chose soldiers for regiments on a regional basis, the London Regiment etc. Towards the end of the war the Germans started forming Stormtrooper battalions from their best and most eager soldiers. It was felt by the British this weakened the regular line infantry.
When the Wehrmacht regrew in the 30s they carried on the idea of elite units, if you weren’t very physical or keen you ended up guarding a sewage works near Brussels.
The British took a while to firm Commando and Paratroop units.
German fighting (not guarding) units tended to press attacks harder than British units.
If you have mass armies it’s advantageous to group the keen soldiers together, it doesn’t take many soldiers in a unit to stay in their foxholes rather than charge for an attack to fail.
What I’m saying in brief is conscript armies tend to be of variable quality and reliability Russia may have just used their best and most reliable troops.

Perhaps they are worried about the number of SAMs in the area they suffered losses in Afghanistan from Stingers.
(Quickly Googles range of Stinger) maybe they don’t gave enough precision guided munitions that they can launch from 4,800m.
On a he subject of stuff they haven’t used yet not much sign of mortars and they have loads of very big ones.

Does your friend know why there are so few pictures of destroyed Russian armour? The Ukrainians have thousands of various missiles I’d expect them to have fired a lot.
Could it be the terrain the photos on that Twitter account show lots of open ground with little cover for a tank stalk.

The Bunderswehr have an incredible little tracked vehicle the Wiesel it has composite tracks and is the GTI of Panzers particularly as it has a VW turbo Diesel engine.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hJpxmmzZFag

Similarities to cycling here..... tank tracks are a lot like bike chains and wear whatever you are doing. You then have to do a session of“track bashing” which is incredibly hard work and tough on your hands. I’ve only done it on little Spartan CVRTs it must be far worse on Tanks. We seemed to have to do a bit, maybe just tensioning about every day.
If you don’t do it you can throw a track at the wrong moment. For me this was generally a miserable dark muddy ditch in Wales, looking on the bright side I didn’t have Ukrainians creeping up on me with Panzerfausts.

Other Track Trivia....CVRTs could snap tracks which then could snake over the vehicle hitting the top of the turret/your head.
I gave a girlfriend a candle holder made from a long spiral of Aluminium that a track ripped off the side of an apc , romantic eh.

Military units start to become ineffective once they take 10% casualties so some Russian units must be over that by now.

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I think his strategy was to take Kyiv then “give” it away in return for territory in the south.

We haven’t seen many front echelon troops captured or T72/90 and BMP3 vehicles destroyed. Or indeed seen much of them at all. Lots of unarmoured stuff, some recce vehicles and some airportable apcs.
Could be you don’t hang around to do a selfie with a tank.

The risk of running out of fuel is priced in, in that each unit is only expected to do X before running out of fuel/food/breaking down. Whoever did the pricing underestimated the level of resistance so they aren’t replacing them fast enough.
You only get replaced if you are doing well, reserves are only sent to successful attacks . If as a commander your attack bogs down you will be left until you can be sent to Siberia.

Donated

At the moment Russian supply lines are relatively short from the railheads they rely on and the Ukrainians are a long way from Poland. The ground is fairly firm but apparently Eastern Ukraine gets fairly muddy in spring this will be worse for the Russians once they gave churned it up ( they do have specialist armoured vehicles for soft ground). Trying to clog the enemy roads with terrorised civilians is a tactic, Russian calls for civilians to leave the cities isn’t a humanitarian thing it’s to make it easier to fight through the area and hamper the Ukrainians logistics. It’s also safer to have no enemy civilians in your rear areas. I had to do Geneva Convention training once a year which included not raping Displaced Persons,the Russians obviously don’t, I’d be moving my family personally.
The advancing forces need more and more trucks to replenish their troops and to replenish the trucks who are replenishing their troops, the defenders fall back on their supplies. Russians don’t have a lot of trucks.
But Russian tactics don’t really include resupply they set off with enough fuel food etc. You often see tanks with fuel drums on the back BTR apc have special tanks in the rear doors.Then when they are spent the entire unit is replaced with fresh troops. (They have a specific word for this level of consumables I’ll look it up when I get home). I’ll also look up what we expected a unit to do but I think the maximum was 200km or 5 days