Everyone who ever bought insurance after their house burned down/they got into a car accident/they got sick?
I agree with this…to a point. Certainly, you aren’t going to train a civilian to be effective in a few hours, or even a few days. However, you could train a civilian to fight from a fixed position on the defensive in a few hours, any while they won’t be anywhere near as effective as a trained soldier, they can still be effective either as a force multiplier when combined with good soldiers or to free up your trained soldiers for other, more advanced missions. This is especially true if the civilians are motivated volunteers who are defending their homes.
Are you going to get blue-on-blue situations? Absolutely. Are these civilians going to take more than usual casualties? Absolutely. Would having more time to train them better be ideal? Well, of course it would. But they could still help out and it’s worth doing.
I agree with you that the West’s aid was short of what we should have done. I think the US was doing what could be done, but there were certainly some who were reluctant to provide the aid needed, and dragged their feet over doing something they saw as potentially pissing off the Russians. Germany was a big one, but they weren’t the only ones. I think, however, that to an extent the Ukrainians themselves are to blame for really trying to ignore what was happening and preparing, especially since things really started to ramp up earlier in the year or even late last year. It’s almost like they were in denial over this, or thought that if they ignored it or pretended it wouldn’t happen that it would all go away.
This takes nothing away from them…they have fought well and hard and my hat is off to them. But they could and should have prepared a lot more than they did. It still might not have mattered, and perhaps had they really prepared a lot more openly Russia would have been a lot more serious about this initially, and sent in a lot more force to start with.
I say “fuck the assholes who attempted the coup against Gorbachev”. I think that Gorby was a thoughtful, mature, intelligent, possibly selfless, and pragmatic leader who was stabbed in the back by (obviously) the coup plotters, and by Yeltsin. I was ten years into my military career when the wall fell and I can still feel the same sense of optimism from that time.
It’s unbelievable and tragic that it’s come to this.
I wonder if an earlier infusion of weapons might have just meant Putin would have mobilized and invaded sooner and given him a stronger casus belli. Timing the arms shipments with massive sanctions and overwhelming condemnation of Russia might have actually been the smart move unless you want to argue that a preemptively armed Ukraine military could have stopped the Russians at the border.
I don’t know how many Ukrainians possess firearms, especially in Kiev. But if that convoy reaches Kiev, I expect guerilla warfare. The Ukrainians are PISSED. Any Russian that invades is going to be a target with any weapon the Ukrainians possess.
And it doesn’t seem that the Russian boots on the ground, or at home have their hearts in this. But admittedly, a few isolated videos is no proof of that.
Vietnam was sort of the same. And while there where plenty of protests, and moral problems with soldiers, the US itself didn’t start starving, or individually lose all their assets.
The BBC has this to report about the column headed for Kyiv. Basically it’s more of the same that Russia was sending before, and it seems like it is in the same condition:
So, if the Russians take Kyiv, it still does not look like it will be a fast operation.
Especially if the defenders’ families have been successfully evacuated. I suspect the main reason entire cities surrender is to save civilian lives. If all non-combatants have left, Russia will have no choice but to level the city to take what’s left of it.
See, I don’t really agree with this. Until the 22nd or 23rd, I wasn’t certain Putin was going to invade. Heck, some folks on the board were saying we were warmongers or believing US government propaganda for even believing it was possible. What the West was doing seemed perfectly reasonable when Putin might do something. I think most those of us who thought it was a real possibility were thinking it would be a limited attack until the 24th.
Putin was simply either more stupid or more crazy than we had considered.
Won’t the Nightmare winter and Thaw that destroyed Napoleon and Hitler’s troops apply equally to Putin’s troops?
Mud doesn’t care who you are and neither does Frostbite.
When will the infamous mud become a factor? I’ve seen photos of German trucks and tanks buried in it.
My understanding is that “the convoy” is using roads.
I also recall seeing news analysts talking about how there was zero chance that Russia would go through Chernobyl, even though it’s a tourist attraction and people live near there so it’s clearly just some ordinary land, no different than any other land for practical purposes.
The ability of the modern world, up to and including professional journalists, to not just google stuff is constantly mystifying.
In Vietnam, how many functioning tanks with fuel still in them were just kind of abandoned on the side of the road, with no evidence of any kind of attack on them? Because there’s been at least one of those in Ukraine already, and possibly several. When the soldiers are tossing away their weapons the first week of the war, that’s pretty damn bad.
A Facebook Friend with some military experience was talking about this a couple of weeks ago, before the attack happened. The general answer is “soon-ish”, but like all weather, it’s not on a solid schedule.
And this is both a benefit and a curse. Sure, they’ll still be able to advance once the thaw starts, but then, they’ll also be limited to the roads. That makes them much more vulnerable to ambushes. Maneuver war only works when you can maneuver 
Ukraine has 20 Turkish drones, which they’ve already used to effect. It seems to me that using them to disrupt logistics would be a good thing; better than using them to take out fighting units.
I had this exact thought.
That’s what I said in post 597, let the pointy end of the spear go by and hack at the shaft. The Ukraine army will not prevail against even the convoy, never mind the rest of the units scattered about. It and the militia can make the logistics columns’ lives miserable and a tank without fuel or munitions is just a war memorial candidate.
IANA military strategist or historian, but isn’t that why you invade in the spring – so you have as long as possible to destroy defenses, subjugate populations and fortify supply lines before winter rolls around again?
That 40-mile column heading to Kyiv is still about in the same place it was 36 hours ago. That seems to be due to both logistical problems and Ukrainian action.
A column like that, on deteriorating roads (due all the heavy armoured vehicles), and passing through narrow choke points, and without air superiority, is very, very vulnerable.
Ukrainian drones have apparently been taking out anti-aircraft systems in the column. It also looks like parts of the column have been attacked with anti-tank weapons.
Maybe I’m being over-optimistic, but I doubt whether that column will ever reach Kyiv. And it’s a long walk home for the Russians, as aceplace57 said.
Russian tanks stuck in the mud and abandoned. Not part of the column, as far as I know.
This seems to be part of the convoy heading to Kyiv.
I’m starting to think Putin set up this convoy specifically to torment American pilots who would be forced to watch but not be allowed to touch, like a cat in a cage looking at rats running outside.