Drone terror. [Russian soldier runs from drone]
How do you say Beetle Bailey in Russian?
“Hey, Vasily, thanks for leading them back to us. Asshole.”
“Hey, comrades! Check out my Cary Grant impersonation!”
I took a sip of water at just the wrong time and did a minor spit take reading that.
“Don’t Run – You’ll Only Die Tired”
Would a drone expend its payload on a single soldier? I could see using a warhead to eliminate a high level officer.
That’s assuming it is a armed drone.
It was clever to follow the soldier to his unit.
Russia is reportedly using electronic devices to track the locations of Ukrainian-operated drones and their pilots:
A claimed video of a drone pilot being targeted using this system (incoming round at 0:27):
That can’t be a Russian tank. The turret is still attached.
If he survived his new nick name is going to be Human Bread Crumb.
Am I right in seeing this as yet another clusterfuck of a perverse incentive ?
Russia needs the oil and gas revenue. Much of Europe needs the oil and gas.
And Ukraine makes over USD1Bn annually from the transit of LNG through the pipeline.
Russia didn’t have only the one choice (to stop transit of LNG through Ukraine). The other ‘choice’ they may have envisioned is to simply blow through Ukraine and take it over in a weekend.
Free transit, in perpetuity. Even more important if Nord Stream 2 doesn’t go through.
“Of all the parties and stakeholders involved, if NS2 was finally stopped, the biggest loser would be Putin’s Kremlin,” Schmitt believes. “By stopping NS2, Gazprom would still rely on the Ukrainian gas transmission system to deliver volumes to EU markets, thus serving as an additional strategic deterrent against further Russian destabilization of Ukraine.”
Doesn’t look like this was a ‘destabilization’ play. Whatever else it was about, it offered Russia an opportunity to secure pipeline capacity for its largest LNG customer (and cut the transit fees to zero).
Or so they … maybe … thought.
This is probably a larger geopolitical puzzle piece than at least I had imagined (but I still haven’t figured out what other natural resources Ukraine has the Russia lacks).
Meanwhile, the ‘strange bedfellows’ entanglement bit that includes a dependence of Ukraine on Russia is a bit dizzying.
I think this is a fascinating pair of articles, both written before the invasion.
Several ice-free ports?
I’m skeptical on this one. What was he doing so far from his buddies? When you’re in a combat zone you like to be with a bunch of friends unless you’re a scout, and a scout should know better than to expose himself like that.
Also, in the Ukranian population vs. the Russian one debate, the rule of thumb is that when attacking an entrenched enemy you like to have a 3:1 advantage, locally. This is standard mobile warfare tactics: Probe for weak spots and zerg rush where you find one.
Yeah, that’s the thing that’s confused me about this whole nastiness. The Russians never had that advantage, anywhere. Even if they decided to just limit themselves to their current goals, they didn’t really have the manpower to do it. Even at the beginning before Ukraine began to mobilize for defense.
As it is now, they seem to only have the manpower to make this long and drawn out. Ukraine will most likely win, but in how many years and at what cost is a very debatable subject. It will be months, at least. The dark hilarity of the situation is highlighted by a recent report I read that a Russian soldier divulged to a Ukrainian civilian that the plan was to have Kyiv captured in four days. That was never going to happen.
So, as it is now, I’m in the group that says to transport some Ukrainian troops out of Ukraine, train them on modern NATO weapons, and send them back with as much of those weapons you can muster. On top of that, send anything you think they can use now. In the words of the Ukrainian foreign minister, they are offering the fairest of deals:
Russia does still have ONE major warm water port - Murmansk. The warm Atlantic current keeps it clear, despite it being above the Arctic circle (really it’s almost ridiculous how far north it is and still ice-free).
Probably fair to say with modern ice-breakers this is slightly less of an impediment than it used to be in, say, the 19th century. But it certainly is an issue.
While I see your point in that the resister can take more casualties,
- Of course nowhere near that many Ukrainians will take up arms, and
- A civilian with a gun isn’t a soldier. He’s a civilian with a gun.
Ahh, but if your ratio is even just 2000000/200000, you can eventually rotate out enough of your territorial defense troops and train them. Training is how you make a civilian with a gun into a trained soldier, and it’s pretty much the only difference between the two. Ukraine seems to have reached the point where they can start doing that. Heck, they don’t really have much choice.
That article is filled with so many ifs, ands or buts it’s totally useless. It even outright admits there is no confirmation that this has ever happened. And once again, the video tells us nothing. First off, if both the drone and the operator are trackable, hitting the operator would be the priority every time. One less experienced operator, one crashed drone. Plus, it’s a little tough to hit a moving airborne target as small as that drone from any distance, especially with artillery. And that’s if Russia has the ability to track and fire on the drone in the short flight time it has and the short range of the detection system.
For all I know from the video, it was a civilian Ukrainian trying out a homemade IED on a personally owned drone. It’s also edited between takeoff and landing, so we have no idea how long it was airborne or what happened during that time.
Me too. Why is the running guy unarmed? Why does, yet again, the drone footage cut off before the supposed destruction of his position? The follow up pictures are useless as 2 of them don’t appear to be the same area and the one that looks similar seems to have been taken at a different time then the drone footage.
I agree with all you wrote here. If we took every video at face value or, god forbid, believed the titles, Ukraine would have already blown up every Russian military vehicle produced between WWII and the year 2030. While I wish it was true, there is no way it’s possible.
It’s weird to see people go on and on about Russian propaganda but fail to realize Ukraine and Ukrainians might have reasons to do it also. And Ukraine has provably outclassed the Russians in the propaganda wars. That’s a good thing. It’s not necessary to believe Ukraine 100% of the time in what they say to be a strong supporter of their cause.
Well, a lot of these are Western websites running with the whole plucky underdog story. “ONE MAN WITH A SLINGSHOT AND A SLIDE WHISTLE DESTROYS ENTIRE RUSSIA BRIGADE” is your basic clickbait. It’s not always Ukraine itself doing it.