I haven’t seen an accounting of Russia’s mothballed armor units in a while but it sure seems like they aren’t risking armor as much any more. This is indicative of the losses they have taken.
That second headline can’t be right.
Usually the donkeys are rear-echelon.
Covert Cabal’s most recent comprehensive video on tanks remaining in storage.
tl:dw Tanks in storage visible in satellite imagery are 50% gone, and most of those remaining are in pretty dismal condition. Reserves of other armoured vehicles are roughly similar.
For those unaware, Covert Cabal et al are amateur open source intelligence nerds who spend significant amounts of money on hi-res imagery from satellite companies.
Including General Sobolev?
The British Army in WW1 was - after the event - referred to as “lions led by donkeys”. History repeating itself?
For Russia, the decoupling means its Kaliningrad exclave, located between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea, is cut off from Russia’s main grid, leaving it to maintain its power system alone.
That…might lead to interesting consequences…and possibly interesting times…
They still have some T34s in storage I heard? or WW2 tanks anyway. I had also read that a lot of the vehicles in storage had been looted for valuables, like batteries, etc.
I think that at this point, anything that could possibly have been put back into service, already has. Thus, anything that’s still in storage must have something so wrong with it that Russia is no longer capable of fixing it. Which in turn suggests that there’s some specific essential component that they’re now all (or almost all) missing, or they could still put some back into service by cannibalizing others.
It’d be interesting to know what that specific component is, and what efforts Russia is trying to make to get more of them.
No, there are no T-34s. Aside from a few used for parades. The oldest tanks in storage are T-55s, and not many of those. It’s mostly T-72s and T-62s left.
There’s a limit to how quickly the repair depots can take tanks from storage and get them operational, so no, it does not follow that the remaining are irredeemable. Though obviously they would have been refitting those in best condition first, which does mean they’re getting to the bottom of the barrel, and that the repair depots will take longer and longer to turn out operational tanks, as they’ll need to do more and more work on each of them.
Okay, those must have been the ones i saw, thanks for the update.
Igor Potapov, a spokesperson for Russian manufacturer JSC NPP, told state-controlled news agency TASS that an individual donated the goggles as humanitarian aid. …
TASS did not specify whether there had been any injuries or fatalities. …
It said that the goggles contained between 10-15 grams of plastic explosive and that the boxes showed signs of tampering.
How big of a boom does 10 to 15 grams of plastic explosive make?
Well, the pagers used against Hezbollah apparently used 3 grams of PETN. So, more than enough to blow your head off if you were wearing it like a hat.
Yes. You wouldn’t get much property damage from that amount, but even a small explosion literally next to your head will have very unpleasant results.
Meanwhile, President Trump offers a strong and definite assessment of the situation:
And otherwise the war continues:
The BBC is currently reporting that Trump is saying negotiations to end the war will begin “immediately” after he phoned Putin. He apparently also called Zelensky. I suppose we’ll see what happens.
How apt that this is all happening in Munich. Is it too soon to talk about hamburger-eating surrender monkeys?
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/europe-fears-its-second-munich-moment-has-come/
My god, I can’t believe these jackasses actually believe they’re the ones who are “great at making deals”. Every time he opens his stupid mouth, he’s giving away more to Russia, before Russia has even sat down at the table.
Everything is on the table? Including, say, sending in the Air Force? Because that’d be the quickest way to end the war.