The Ukranian prosecutor general’s office plans to prosecute at least 10 of these guys. The statement is in Ukranian, of course, but here’s some of it translated:
Under the procedural guidance of prosecutors of the Office of the Prosecutor General, 10 servicemen of the Russian Federation who looted the property of the civilian population of the Buchan city territorial community of the Kyiv region were identified and notified of suspicion of violating the laws and customs of war (Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
According to the investigation, from February 24 to March 31, 2022, servicemen of the military unit of the National Guard of the Russian Federation during the occupation of Bucha were engaged in plundering the values of the local population. Solely for personal gain, the Russian military took the private property of the townspeople, which could not be used for military purposes: from underwear and clothing to large household appliances.
After the liberation of the territories of the Kiev region, the occupiers, retreating to the Security Council, from the city of Mozyr sent the looted property in Ukraine by mail to their relatives.
They’ve got camera footage from the post office where this was done.
I’m not finding any good links for it now, but yesterday apparently Ukrainian forces sprung a trap on Russians forces storming Severodontesk. If you were following the news you probably saw that it appeared Ukrainian forces very quickly lost ground when Russians began to storm the city. I figured they were falling back to higher ground in Lysychansk. At one point Russians occupied over 70% of the city. Then Ukrainian forces unexpectedly counterattacked the forces that had been drawn in to the city center, where they proceeded to take heavy casualties. It should be noted the Russian troops storming were their experienced combat soldiers).
Ukraine may yet strategically withdraw to Lysychansk in short order but I was pleased to see the Russians get yet another bloody nose fighting a supposedly weaker opponent.
Anyone got any good links to share with an account of the battle?
Sanctions forcing Russia to use appliance parts in military gear, U.S. says
Now you know where all of those washing machines are going.
Which brings up a mental image of a Russian tank with its turret spinning around – because the repurposed washing machine chip went into “spin dry” mode.
And all those turrets popping into the air? Not the dangerous autoloader magazine design, just chips from toasters deciding the turret was browned enough.
If I remember correctly, in the 70s they were buying early electronic games for the microchips. They had some way to repurpose those.
Simple games, like a handheld racing or football games and the like. I think that was one of those news stories that the writers of Barney Miller took for the inspiration for one episode.
The guys in the field doing the actual refit are showing impressive technical skills. The “point and laugh” part is where the Russian military is so badly mismanaged that they need to do these sort of field repairs in the first place.
That one lasted well past the '70s. During the first Gulf War, there were lots of panic pieces about Saddam Hussein buying PS2s and using their chips for missile guidance systems.
I’m having a hard time getting too wound up about Russian looting; that’s been an element of warfare since the very beginning. I’ve even heard old US WWII vets talk about how they basically stole anything that wasn’t nailed down in Germany as they advanced into the country.
I suspect we just haven’t seen much in the recent US wars, because Iraq, and especially Afghanistan, don’t seem to be very lootable when compared to what US troops likely already had back home.
It’s just indicative of poor discipline. Looting is a massive waste of time and resources - a soldier looking for loot, or a truck carrying washing machines, could be doing something that actually contributes to winning the war, instead. There’s a reason modern military forces try to keep looting to a minimum, and it’s not because they care that much about civilian property.
It’s not necessarily as impressive as it sounds. The article says they found repurposed semiconductors, then conflates that with “computer chips”. It could just as well be talking about relatively generic components like power transistors. Even a lot of integrated circuits are likely to be pretty standard; they might be repurposing basic timer chips, regulators, and similar items. Most component-level techs probably have experience scavenging and reusing things like that.
(Not to say they’re not pretty savvy, just that it’s not the deep magic people might imagine, based on the article.)
It’s really a challenging conundrum because in this case it will be so dependent on the mental/emotional state of Putin and/or Russia, IMO. I don’t think that we should deliberately set out to humiliate Russia but I suspect that anything the west does will have that effect, regardless.
And how much choice will we have anyway, bearing in mind the whole nuclear arsenal issue.
Russia is already humiliated, and they will continue to be humiliated as long as their military continues to fight so ineffectively. There’s nothing we can do to stop that. And we can’t (and shouldn’t) tell Ukraine to go easy on them.
How exactly does he (or anyone else with the dumb “Don’t poke the BEAR!” idea in their heads) expect them to be pushed back to their borders without being humiliated?
Sadly, I don’t see any good ending of this war that doesn’t leave Ukraine with a sullen, angry Russia sitting on its doorstep.
Similarly, calls for Ukraine to trade land for peace are just as idiotic. If they do that, they won’t get either for very long. Russia would have been rewarded for its war, and they’d probably just bide their time for a few years and invade again.
Even a successful conquest of all Ukraine still leaves Russia in a worse position, post-war, then they had been pre-war on every metric except total land size. And given that there’s effectively a zero chance on even that level of success, the humiliation basically started from day 7 (or whenever), when they were dropped from Swift.
