Because he’s not worried about NATO attacking. He’s worried about nations formerly within the sphere of Russian influence rejecting close ties with Russia in favour of aligning with the EU.
The Iraqi’s fielded T-52, T-62s and T-72s. The British had the Challenger 1 which destroyed 300 Iraqi tanks without suffering a single loss. The Ukrainians won’t have many Challenger 2s but it’s of a similar level to other provided NATO tanks (and supposedly not as good as the American Abrams tank depending on the situation).
Well, he was - but it’s all about the Benajmin’s and Putin didn’t and doesn’t have many. Note that there were supposed to be 2,300 T-14’s in service by 2020. But that didn’t happen. Instead delivery has been delayed multiple times and is going slowww.
While Russian aircraft and missile development has continued somewhat apace (somewhat), Russian tank development has been in design hell since the USSR collapsed. The fact that they had an enormous stockpile of old rusting hulks no doubt helped them to internally pass the buck as they concentrated their research and procurement dollars elsewhere. The T-95 program languished in limbo from 1988-2010 until being abandoned and revived later as the the new T-14. The T-90 was a bit of a stop-gap - basically yet another upgraded T-72, that then had its production slashed because they were expecting the T-14 to show up a lot earlier than they did.
Those guy haven’t had anyone smart running the shop since Alexander III.
And then they blew his legs off.
I think Stalin was smart. Evil, but smart.
Stalin was an idiot.
Divide up Poland with Germany, What Could Go Wrong?
He went fucking comatose when Germany invaded.
Isn’t that Alexander II?
Alexander III, Nicholas II father, held up the roof of a crashed train car to allow his family to escape. He was one tough son of a bitch. He died of natural causes, lamenting (I do not remember the exact words) “Holy shit, what will happen with that pussy, my son Nicholas II running the joint?”
Alexander II had “freed the serfs” making his assassination the reason the (few) later Tsars kicked serf ass.
Putin apparently did not pay attention.
as does the likelihood they will form an alliance of their resources.
Stalin was also not Russian. His name was Ioseb Dzughashvili. He was from Georgia (which has very much not been fond of Russia for quite some while).
BBC has a story on the map the Ukranians are using to track the Russian command structure.
And while I’m thinking about it-there has been much discussion of people using slanted or Russian-influenced sources. What informational sources do posters usually rely on for good Ukraine stories? Is the BBC reliable?
Ukraine’s best soldiers are all dead.
I hope I’m wrong.
But here’s some pessimistic news about Ukrainian casualties and ability to continue fighting.
There’s something like 20K Ukrainian soldiers who are just now completing their training in Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US. At least some of them (and my guess is that it’s likely all of them) were already experienced members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces prior to that training.
I think the people getting training on advanced systems are probably experienced, but probably most of those are new recruits getting basic marksmanship/first aid/tactics training.
Both Ukraine and Russia are degraded. Ukraine’s equipment is getting better and Russia’s is getting worse though. We’ll see.
Quite right, sorry.
Ukraine may have some shortages of certain weapons/ammo, but we’re getting independent confirmation that things may be considerably worse on the Russian side, due to the strategy of attrition Russia chose to follow since redirecting most of its combat power and resources into an offensive in the Donbas the past eight months.
Russia’s war hawks say attrition has backfired in Ukraine: ‘We have no rounds’ (msn.com)
It’s interesting how sometimes armies get better as the war goes on, sometimes they get worse. It can happen in the same army - the U.S. military improved throughout the Civil War and WW2, but degraded during Vietnam. I wonder what factors are involved in each case.
Russian wars always start disastrously for them. Not sure the Russian army gets better as time goes on but it does get bigger, as they throw vast numbers of men at the problem.
It seems like it’s a combination of two things. Whether or not a country is “all in” and how much untapped reserves there are. With Russia, as noted, the untapped reserves typically consist of throwing large numbers of men into the meat grinder. For Russia it’s a matter of how close they can get to being “all in.” How many men Putin can mobilize before he risks a coup? With Ukraine, obviously they are all in. The question is how much untapped reserves there will be, which in this case are the weapons being provided by the Americans and Europeans.
“Quantity has a quality all its own.” – Joseph Stalin
It’s a very Soviet (and post-Soviet) mindset, but it has its limits.