More stories that mines are the major problem. Hard to fathom the numbers. Need a new method to clear them. What triggers them and how can it be simulated in a wide area at once (field). Is pressure the only trigger? Going one by one doesn't seem like a practical solution. Former Special Forces engineer says Russian minefields are unlike anything he has ever seen and battling these hidden death traps is 'exhausting' (msn.com) "The biggest difference is the sheer number of mines," Ryan Hendrickson, who previously served in Afghanistan with the Green Berets and is now removing deadly mines as a volunteer in Ukraine, told Ukrainian Toronto Television. "There are millions and millions of mines in Ukraine," many put down by the Ukrainians, but significantly more by the Russians. In one field, for instance, Hendrickson and his team found over 700 anti-tank mines, though they estimated there may have been thousands in total. That was just one field.The Russians have "the capability to lay millions and millions of land mines, and they do," he said, stressing that "the biggest shaping factor of this war is land mines." "Everything is landmined," he said in the interview, explaining that in Ukraine right now "all the farm fields are landmined, all the routes are landmined," and, in sectors along the front, "if the routes aren't landmined, then artillery has target reference points along the routes." Hendrickson is involved with the Tip of the Spear initiative, his crowdfunded organization focused on removing land mines and booby traps in areas in the rear, areas where civilians are most at risk of being hurt or killed. In the field, he said, he and his team have encountered complex schemes where the minelayers intended to trap and maim or kill the de-mining crews, which are out in it working primarily on foot using man-portable mine-clearing tools.
few things that seem true. ATACMS would be a big help to remove russian artillery. Mines are a big problem, stacked to destroy mine clearing equipment that could absorb blast from single or double mine. Mined fields are within range or russian artillery. Need ATACMs to move russian artillery out of range so infantry can engage and hold positions and conduct mine clearing operations. destroying weapons dumps will help diminish artillery but not stop it. Kofman points to innovation in Russian mine tactics. "They also have less traditional approaches e.g. stacking multiple anti tank mines on top of each other to destroy and rip off mine clearing tanks or vehicles that have essentially rollers that you typically see for breaching" Kofman: "this is fundamentally a battle of tree lines. If Ukr forces advance to take a tree line, Russian armour moves out & begins to engage that entire tree line within the at the range of a couple of kilometres." Ukr can't reach Ru armour without ATGMS. Area behind them mined.
It is awful, truly awful. Perhaps if Russia left the sovereign boundaries of its neighbor, there wouldn’t be such devastation.
Off topic, but let’s run with it. By your admission, you are taking the position that it’s ok for Russia to murder people in another sovereign country because other countries in the past have done it throughout history? And you believe that logic is persuasive? Endearing?
I get it! You believe our protection of Kuwait from Iraq, which was virtually globally approved, was reprehensible. But when your home team of Russia invades a sovereign nation and murders its citizens, that’s cool. Yep. Some pretty convincing arguments.
I was. I was spitting mad when they even talked about it because I could have told them in 2002 EXACTLY how it would turn out. That said, great analogy. In this case, Putin playing the role of the US by unilaterally invading a sovereign country over the wishes of the UN and most of the world. In both cases, the invader would have done well to heed the advice of the other guy.
No it wasn't. Arguably, the same reasoning (mostly lies). Also, he had the prize in Crimea and when he annexed that and the other parts of Donbass (where the bulk of the pro-Russia votes were), he insured that the rest would be pro-Western. He did it because he thought he could get away with it and because he was horribly misled by the hacks (Shoigu, etc.) at MOD. This is all on him. If their military wasn't a corrupt shitshow, they win this in a week and we're not having these conversations. Conversly, if he leaves Ukraine alone, we probably still think he's a strategic genius. Now it's all out of the bag and, yeah, we're going to finish the job.
He's obviously talking about Iraq 2.0. And this is yet another reason to hate those who created that giant boot to the balls of the US reputation. It's also what precipitated the slide to where we are not politically. We now have one of the few actually just causes, but it's hard to get a consensus due to all the cynical, corporate-backed crap like that, Iran, Guatemala, etc. This is why you only fight when it's absolutely necessary and corporate margins do not qualify as necessary.
Russians in Crimea (2014) and Russians in the four oblast (2022) voted to go home and take their ancestral lands with them. Hey, you’re not one of those crazy MAGA-type election deniers, are you ?
I consider it a self-boot to balls. I suppose a certain amount of flexibility is require to pull that off.
After 10+ years of shell games by Hussein, whom we permitted to remain in power per an agreement (terms of surrender). Else Hussein would have been rotting in jail from '91-'03 when we went back. ...and in between, there was a tiny, itty bitty little thingy that happened, that kinda' altered the calculus ever so slightly, which served to pretty much evaporate any further margin of error--you might not remember it, but it was this event which occurred in September of 2001, in and around NYC, DC, and the sticks of Pennsylvania...
Yes, the massive libby American auto hatred and compulsion to apologize for seeking to insure our own existence, was indeed, self inflicted stupidity. A cancer that has since metastasized, and continues to eat America up from the inside...
Yes, I remember when we went to war against the Afghans over that. And twenty years later we conceded defeat.
I consider myself a better American than most on this thread. That is to say I’m not America right or wrong, however wrong.
Sort of like mythical WMD's. Sounds great, but pretty much a bunch of bullshit. I mean, do you have any evidence (outside of Russian propaganda) that this was real, or was even legit given Putin's henchmen were running the election?
