"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (1 Viewer)

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GrauGeist said:
When the war started, the Ukraine armed forces had over 196,000 active personnel but what most don't hear about, is the 900,000 reserves.
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I was trying to find a list of the small arms, uniforms, helmets, boots, etc. sent to Ukraine. Do they have sufficient numbers to equip 900,000 reserves? The below Wiki pages is out of date.


What rifles and small arms is Ukraine using? Is the rifle still AK based firing the 7.62 mm Soviet-era round? Before the war Ukraine planned to drop the AK. I imagine former WP nations in Europe would have stocks of AKs and ammo just waiting to be replaced with more modern NATO spec rifles.
 
Admiral Beez said:
They got so much wrong back in 2019.

www.defensepriorities.org

Risks of lethal aid to Ukraine — Defense Priorities

www.defensepriorities.org www.defensepriorities.org
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Right. My first thought was, "So, how's that working out for you?"

It's essentially an apologetics for appeasement on the part of the West by spouting stuff we've seen shown wrong in the current conflict.

Here's hoping he fleeced the Russian government with that pieintheskyism. Because they look pretty busy suffering from adventurism.

It also completely ignores the idea that a nation should be able to choose its own destiny. Realpolitik is useful, but you ignore the feelings of the people at your own risk. We Americans have hopefully learnt that over the last fifty years, so this isn't gloating. It's a lesson hard-bought.

It seems the Russians too need another try before they realize it's not a good way to behave. But it doesn't seem that our little mastermind Putin has given this much thought.
 
Admiral Beez said:
I was trying to find a list of the small arms, uniforms, helmets, boots, etc. sent to Ukraine. Do they have sufficient numbers to equip 900,000 reserves? The below Wiki pages is out of date.


What rifles and small arms is Ukraine using? Is the rifle still AK based firing the 7.62 mm Soviet-era round? Before the war Ukraine planned to drop the AK. I imagine former WP nations in Europe would have stocks of AKs and ammo just waiting to be replaced with more modern NATO spec rifles.
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Try this wiki list, it is recently updated.

Well over 500 references, too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine#Assault_rifles
 
Admiral Beez said:
I was trying to find a list of the small arms, uniforms, helmets, boots, etc. sent to Ukraine. Do they have sufficient numbers to equip 900,000 reserves? The below Wiki pages is out of date.


What rifles and small arms is Ukraine using? Is the rifle still AK based firing the 7.62 mm Soviet-era round? Before the war Ukraine planned to drop the AK. I imagine former WP nations in Europe would have stocks of AKs and ammo just waiting to be replaced with more modern NATO spec rifles.
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Don't know about small arms, but they have more antitank weapons than tanks are in the whole world.
 
This is an interesting development. Russia has released 215 Ukrainian prisoners, including over 100 soldiers and key leaders of the Azov Battalion captured in Mariupol. In return, Ukraine released 55 Russian POWs plus that idiot Medvedchuk. Seems like a good deal for Ukraine.

www.reuters.com

Russia frees 215 Ukrainians held after Mariupol battle, Ukraine says

Russia has released 215 Ukrainians it took prisoner after a protracted battle for the port city of Mariupol earlier this year, including top military leaders, a senior official in Kyiv said on Wednesday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
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Ukrainians were tired of feeding this bloody criminal and traitor so they traded him in for a high and valuable price - lots of experienced soldiers. He was probably worth 150 of the 200+ soldiers they got back
 
There are suggestions that Medvechuk was just less important part of POWs exchange- Ukrainians traded russian generals taken POW during last offensive, which is still great deal considering Azov guys has been saved - at least some of them...
 
Interesting analysis (if you like that sort of thing):

Putin's Kremlin Is in Disarray - The Atlantic
The Kremlin Must Be in Crisis
Putin's erratic actions are not those of a secure leader.
By Anne Applebaum

If an American president announced a major speech, booked the networks for 8 p.m., and then disappeared until the following morning, the analysis would be immediate and damning: chaos, disarray, indecision. The White House must be in crisis.

In the past 24 hours, this is exactly what happened in Moscow. The Russian president really did announce a major speech, alert state television, warn journalists, and then disappear without explanation. Although Vladimir Putin finally gave his speech to the nation this morning, the same conclusions have to apply: chaos, disarray, indecision. The Kremlin must be in crisis.

In fact, no elements of the delayed speech were completely new or unexpected. Russian authorities have long intended to hold sham referenda in the Ukrainian territories they occupy. Putin and his television propagandists have been making subtle and unsubtle nuclear threats since February. Quietly, a creeping mobilization has been going on for many weeks too, as the Russian army has sought to recruit more men to replace the soldiers whom it still does not admit have been killed, wounded, or exhausted by the war. But now that Ukraine has successfully recaptured thousands of square miles of Russian-held territory, the sham referenda are being rushed, the nuclear language is being repeated, and the mobilization expanded. These are not the actions of a secure leader assured of his legitimacy and of the outcome of this war.

In part, the crisis stems from Putin's fears that he will lose whatever counts as his international support. No ideology holds together the global autocrats' club, and no sentiment does either. As long as they believed Russia really had the second largest army in the world, as long as Putin seemed destined to stay in power indefinitely, then the leaders of China, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, along with the strongmen running India and Turkey, were happy to tolerate his company.

But Putin's supposedly inevitable military victory is in jeopardy. His army looks weak. Western sanctions make problems not just for him but his trading partners, and their tolerance is receding. At a summit in Uzbekistan last week, he was snubbed by a series of Central Asian leaders. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told him that "today's era is not an era of war," and Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his "concerns" as well. On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told PBS that he had urged Putin to end the war: "The lands which were invaded will be returned to Ukraine." And those lands, he made clear, should include Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, following a sham referendum much like the ones it now plans to stage in other parts of occupied Ukraine.

But while losing support abroad is bad, losing support at home is worse, and there are some signs of that too. Putin might not care much about the Russian liberals and exiles who oppose the war, but he may worry (and should worry) about people who are supposed to be on his side—people such as Alla Pugacheva, a Soviet-era pop star who has millions of mainstream followers and has recently proclaimed both her patriotism and her opposition to the war. Putin may also worry about the disappointed, pro-war nationalist bloggers, active on social media, who have been criticizing the conduct of the war for some time. "Mobilization is, let's put it bluntly, our only chance to avoid a crushing defeat," one of them recently wrote. No one has stopped or arrested these critics, perhaps because they have protectors high up inside the security services, or perhaps because they are connected to the heavily armed mercenaries who are now doing much of the important fighting in Ukraine. If their loyalty isn't assured, then Putin isn't secure either.

At the same time, the Russian president has to balance the discontent of that heavily armed minority against the wishes of the mostly apathetic, mostly silent majority. For the past six months, Putin has been telling the latter that there is no war, just a special military operation; that Russia has suffered no losses, just some temporary setbacks. Given that the army is victorious and everything is fine, most people need not alter their lives in any way. Now events have forced Putin to change his language, but it seems there are limits. Thus he speaks not of a true mass mobilization—which would involve conscripting young men in enormous numbers—but of partial mobilization: no students, no general call-up, just the activation of reservists with past military experience. Supposedly Russia has 300,000 such people, though it's not clear how many of them are actually fit to fight or whether there are enough weapons and gear for them either. Presumably, if better equipment were available, it would already be on the battlefield.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the speech and a series of legal changes announced yesterday reflect a crisis inside the military. In truth, the Russian army faces not just a logistical emergency or some tactical problems but also a collapse in morale. That's why Putin needs more soldiers, and that's why, as in Stalin's time, the Russian state has now defined "voluntary surrender" as a crime: Under a law approved by the Russian Parliament yesterday, you can be sent to prison for up to 10 years. If you desert your guard post in Donetsk or Kherson (or change into civilian clothes and run away, as some Russian soldiers have done in the past few weeks). The state has also decreed new penalties for mutiny—"using violence against a superior"—and stealing while in uniform. If the Russian army were a reliable, enthusiastic, dedicated fighting force, then the state would not need to declare harsh punishments for deserters, looters, and mutineers. But it is not.

Over the next few days, the bogus referenda will gather headlines, and the nuclear threats will create fear, as they were designed to do. But we should understand these attempts at blackmail and intimidation as a part of the deeper story told by this delayed speech: Support for Putin is eroding—abroad, at home, and in the army. Everything else he says and does right now is nothing more than an attempt to halt that decline.
 
Here's an interesting bit of info:
Did you know that the list of Putin allies that have died, is long enough to warrant it's own wiki page?

Yes, it's true - and the count is up to 14 so far.
The number 14 is for instances, the body count is higher, because family members have died in several of these cases.

Find the list here:

2022 Russian businessmen mystery deaths - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
This doesn't come as a surprise...Russian hawks are confused at the exchange of Azov Battalion prisoners:

Release of Azov fighters leaves pro-Russian commentators bewildered
Laura Gozzi
BBC News
Returning to the news about last night's major prisoner exchange which saw Ukrainian Azov fighters released alongside foreign nationals who fought for Ukraine.
Azov fighters are part of Ukraine's national guard and have long been reviled in Russia, where they are described as Nazis. From the start of the war, President Putin has said that Russian troops have been fighting to liberate Ukraine from the Neo-Nazi regime.
Many members of the Azov Regiment were entrenched in the Azovstal steel plant for weeks earlier this year, until they were taken captive by Russia.
In July, the Russian Supreme Court recognised Ukraine's Azov Regiment as a terrorist organisation and banned its activities in Russia.
At the time, the chairman of the Public Monitoring Commission of Moscow, Georgy Volkov, alleged that cannibalism was practised by Azov members, referring to what he said was the testimony of a captured militant.
Yet, among those released last night were Azov commander Denys Prokopenko and his deputy, Svyatoslav Palamar. The development has caused considerable anger and confusion among Russian pro-war commentators online.
"Will anyone explain what just happened? Will anyone be held responsible for all this? Shame Stalin is not with us anymore," said one Telegram account.
"This is worse than a crime… and worse than a mistake. This is unbelievable stupidity. Or deliberate sabotage," said former military chief of pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk Igor Strelkov.
And Telegram channel Rybar said: "A serious reputational blow no matter how you look at it."

Moscow's stated intent was to eradicate nazi elements from Ukraine, of which the Azov Battalion was a specifically-identified element. How does releasing these prisoners help Moscow achieve it's intent? It makes no sense...unless their initial intent was nonsense.
 
KYIV/NEW YORK, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Some draft-age Russians headed abroad on Thursday to escape their country's biggest conscription drive since World War Two, while explosions shook southeastern Ukraine on the eve of referendums planned there by pro-Moscow separatists.

[...]

Though polls have suggested widespread domestic backing for Russia's intervention in Ukraine, mass conscription may be a domestically risky move after past Kremlin promises it would not happen and a string of battlefield failures in Ukraine.

"Every normal person is (concerned)," said one man, identifying himself only as Sergey, disembarking in Belgrade after a flight from Moscow. "It is OK to be afraid of the war."


Anti-war protests in 38 Russian cities saw more than 1,300 people arrested on Wednesday, a monitoring group said, with more planned for the weekend. Some of the detainees had been ordered to report to enlistment offices on Thursday, the first full day of conscription, independent news outlets said.

[...]

Prices for air tickets out of Moscow soared above $5,000 for one-way flights to the nearest foreign locations, with most sold out for coming days. Traffic also surged at border crossings with Finland and Georgia.

www.reuters.com

Russia holds annexation votes; Ukraine says residents coerced

The referendums are aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine, drawing condemnation from Kyiv and Western nations which dismissed the votes as a sham and pledged not to recognize the results.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com

They're voting with their feet. Good to see solid evidence that Russian public opinion is more diverse than is often stated.
 
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