All good points.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US military kicks out 100 people a week for AWOL or people not doing their jobs.
What does it mean to surrender voluntarily? I guess I’m ignorant on what surrendering actually means, but I’m assuming it’s always voluntary - it seems redundant to me…or you’d just die fighting/close to it. Maybe it means very quick to surrender or without a fight? For some reason I’m not seeing an in-between and would like to understand the 20% figure.
My WAG: If you approach the enemy and offer to surrender as opposed to being captured and agreeing to surrender.
That confused me too. All I can figure is that voluntary surrender is similar to defection. Or surrendering when you could have easily avoided capture.
It means you don’t wait until there’s a Ukrainian soldier pointing a gun at you and telling you “surrender or die.” Instead, you pick a moment when there’s no immediate threat to you, and you put down your gun and walk toward Kyiv.
Got it. Makes sense. Thanks for all the responses. And now I see how it’s clearly related to morale, etc.
Not sure if this source is reliable but…
You’re off by about two orders of magnitude
That’s just deserters. I was talking about people being separated for a variety of reasons.
You want to compare the number of Russian deserters to the number of US not-deserters?
I have seen a lot of vid’s lately where UKR troops move agressively into trenches … and quite often they are in shouting distance to the RU troops… and they give them 1 min. to surrender and come out to be hog-tied and brought away.
I have the feeling that the UKR do this a lot, b/c it makes for a less-messy-day-in-the-trenches … and at the end of the day, lots of people die … and if that can be avoided - everybody wins.
quite a few in the vid’s seem to pick the offer up … (I guess getting hammerd by artillery and drones for weeks, does that to people - more often than not groups of russians)
by no means an expert, but the 20% number seems “compatible” with scenarios I have seen.
just bear in mind, that does NOT mean that 20% of all russian troops surrender… thats 20% of the captured russians … my guess is they do NOT capture 80% of the russians but kill them or they manage to retreat, etc…
so mathematically (back of envelope) 20% of 20% = 4% of the total
I’d guess that the 20% of captured Russians surrendering voluntarily refers to those who leave their posts and surrender to Ukrainian forces in non-combat situations, with probably many doing so after using the “I Want to Live” hotline:
It looks like the drone attack on the Pskov airbase was carried out by locally-launched drones using dropped munitions, with targeting by live video feed:
More anti-aircraft fire over Pskov air base tonight:
Yes. I thought my post made that clear
No doubt they’re so spooked they’re launching massive defensive barrages at the slightest hint of danger from the sky – even if that turns out to be an errant owl.
ETA: Like the Battle of Los Angeles incident in World War Two.
On February 25, 1942, an infamous false alarm saw American military units unleash a torrent of anti-aircraft fire in the skies over Los Angeles.
What would be the point of such a comparison, though? Seems kind of apples to oranges. If anything, I suspect the sort of military that can kick people out for minor infractions is likely to be a lot healthier than the military than a military that, in the middle of an unpopular “special operation,” finds itself is actively recruiting prisoners to fill its ranks.
In the US Navy, a series of minor incidents, including going UA (what the Navy more commonly calls AWOL) for short periods of time, will get you kicked out. In the Russian ground forces, by contrast, the fact that you keep coming back voluntarily might just make you a model soldier.
“Why does this drone say “Love, Vlad” on it?”
I really get the “abstract” feeling that the tide in UKR has started to turn notoriously…
- RU has not beein in initiative for months, and then it was only this stupid battle for Bakhmut, which is akin of reaching the summit of Everest with your last drop of oxigen, but no reserve to go down again.
- since then they are on the rear foot - permanently
- weekly “minor catastrophies” (Kerch-brige2, ship destroyed, tankship destroyed, wagner marching to moscow, highly successful UKR attacks on airfield with lots of high value crafts gone, the 2 bridges in Krim, Wagner ceased to exist, you name it …)
- cleansing in RU military’s higher echelons
- UKR really seems to be capable of cranking out a good number of drones … so rather than drawing reserves down, they manage to build new capacity.
- 50% of all RUtank-kills since jun 2023 were through drones
- RU gets hammered really good on all the logistics/warehouse/fuel-deposits, etc… that has not an immediate effect, but eventually starts to filter in … this is happening now
- UKR are fast learners (with lots of help from the west) … RU are notoriously slow and incapable to adapt to changing events.
- this process will only gain in momentum and speed
it looks like autumn 1943 to me
Russia is in the midst of a major counter-offensive (estimates of ~100,000 Russian troops in two big groupings) aimed in the direction of Kupiansk and Lyman respectively in the northeast, which were taken by Russia at the start of the war, then lost to Ukraine’s Kharkiv counter-offensive. Bakhmut wasn’t particularly important. Kupiansk kinda is as a logistical hub. Very hard to tell what is happening, but Russia has inched forward and it is a dangerous sector for Ukraine, especially if pressure forces them to divert reserves from the southern front to the north (which no doubt Russia is hoping for).
It’s all far from over, unfortunately.
Zelenskyy says Ukraine has a new weapon that can hit targets up to 700km (435 miles) away. No detail but they saw it can reach any part of Crimea. They have been making a lot of progress in other areas.
without any doubt - and I am surely guilty of cherry-picking facts to make a point …
but I am convinced that its a sliding slope for the RU … and sliding they are