Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest:

The local military commissariat (recruitment office) of the Russian army in Murmansk, Russia, is burning.

Source: https://t.co/IPDC8cPKeh#Russia #Murmansk pic.twitter.com/UosRbqShge

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) May 14, 2023

Originally Posted By wwglen:


Any you can find "Spec Op" military firearms experts who will tell you that the AR-15 is the same weapon they use over in XXXX and will bounce through the body and blow a man's heart out with a hit to the foot.

The F-16 has better radar, better electronic warfare and longer range weapons, so of course it can't even do as much as the Soviet fighters can.

Originally Posted By Ryan_Ruck:

And the Overton Window shifts left while some vociferously defend it.

Originally Posted By Capta:

My own hot take.  I’ve been thinking about this for some time.
Prigozhin’s real role and function is still a mystery.  There was some speculation a while back that Prigozhin and Wagner were really a GRU asset.  To me it makes more sense if he was really an FSB asset.  He’s Putin’s boy and Putin is from the FSB faction.
His relationship with the Army is publicly problematic.   He often verbally attacks the Army, yet he still gets what he needs from the army.  He claims that Wagner supply is obstructed by the Army command - but these claims are refuted (with credibility) by both the Russian Army and the Ukrainian Army, both of whom claim he either gets the same or more supply than the average Russian unit.
Prigozhin doesn’t have any real military experience.  What he is mostly known for is Bakhmut - an operation which both sides say has little or no strategic value and which both sides are openly using toward the end of inflicting attrition on the other.   He has inflicted high casualties on Ukraine in return for even higher Russian casualties, and furthermore the political imperative to take Bakhmut at any cost is now draining men and supplies that Russia can ill afford.  Is that Prigozhin’s ego or Putin’s demand?  Prigopzhin is obviously an intelligent, charismatic man, a self-promoter, and a proven liar, but I question whether he personally has any real competence beyond the PR aspects of the war.
What is Wagner doing?  Allegedly (per Prigozhin) buying time.  For what?  The October mobilization is by most accounts nearly burned up.  There is no 100,000 strong tank army hiding in the forests.  Wagner is nearly used up and the Army has taken over the prison pipeline.  Per “Murz” (a usually reliable Russian source) the last good troops in the Russian army are being used up holding the flanks of Bakhmut.
Wagner probably has a role in developing new (old) infantry tactics to replace what has failed thus far.  But that probably isn’t Prigozhin’s doing - he doesn’t have the background.  He probably is setting the tone with draconian, prison-style discipline to overcome poor morale and lack of motivation.  Even that isn’t a game-changer.  Wagner learns, Ukraine learns.  Ukraine claims Wagner in itself is nothing special - they move forward because (contrary to Prigozhin’s statements) they control massive artillery and support assets.
IMO Prigozhin is simply the most charismatic member of a heavily fractured military establishment, and he is part of that problem, not the solution to that problem.  I don’t think there is a solution to that problem while Putin is in power, because Putin doesn’t want a solution.  The Army is the only power base that could really oppose him and he’s keeping the Army divided against itself.
It’s worth repeating that the entire Ukraine plan was the FSB’s doing.  The FSB fucked the Army and the Army is being bled to death because of it.  It stands to reason that there are patriotic Army officers who know the score, who see Russia being destroyed by the FSB and Putin, and who might have the will and the ability to do something about it.
If Prigozhin rises to the top of the military/quasi-military heap it will be via his PR efforts, not competence, and the end goal will be to put an FSB asset in charge of the Army to prevent resistance to Putin from the Army.
Putin’s goals are:
1)To win outright if the west blinks.  To do so he’ll continue to send men to their deaths en masse, and expend irreplaceable equipment, until Russia literally cannot continue.  This is not necessarily a goal shared by the Army whatever its public statements are.
2)To stay in power during the war, and if/when Russia comes to the point it cannot continue, after the war.
Therefore, Prigozhin, as a Putin/FSB asset, is there to
1)Politically force the Army to continue to comply with Putin’s will even at its own and the nations expense by shaming it and invoking the cult of the Great Patriotic War.
2)Stage a takeover of what’s left of the Army on the basis of his manufactured/PR popularity, so that the Army can’t move against Putin in the postwar.

Originally Posted By j_hooker:
I strayed out of this thread after 7 months, clicked on another UA thread and wow, damn that's some dumb ass shit being posted. "I wish we would have armed the Russians."  WTF is wrong with people? Is it the millennials that have never seen or studied what the USSR era did?

Man, I hate losing faith in people around this place, and very disheartening.

Originally Posted By AlmightyTallest:
Calendar guy with some of the Storm Shadow cruise missile damage.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwCf8LwXoAAVtcc?format=jpg&name=large

Originally Posted By PolarBear416:


I would assume the Russians have the most advanced AA they've got at either end of the bridge and on ships near it.


So it'll depend on how good the SS is at evading AA over water.

Originally Posted By weptek911:


It well past time to pull the Predator off the front line and send him to a training unit or to sell war bonds.

Originally Posted By Capta:

Girkin, Prigozhin, and a lot of other “superpatriots” put out a lot of pie-in-the-sky advice going back to last April - I.E. that full mobilization/“DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?” Was always the answer.
It was NEVER the answer, both from the perspective of Russian internal realities and from the perspective of the Western reaction.
First, as demonstrated pretty conclusively from October 2022 to now, Russia does not have the capability to mobilize, train, equip, and supply a mass army of millions.  Even mobilizing 300K men showed that Russia could barely manage to hand them AKs and get them to the front.  They didn’t train them and they can’t really supply them.  Mobilizing 2 million men would’ve been a disaster of Biblical proportions.
Second, Russia picked a fight with a coalition with something like 40 times their GDP.  So the objective answer to the question “Do you want total war?” Should be a resounding “FUCK NO.”  Russia could never, ever win a production battle with NATO.  The whole situation is eerily similar to Japan vs the US in WW2, with likely the same outcome.
Third, if, hypothetically, Russia tried to fully mobilize, that would be seen by Europe as an existential threat.  The foot-dragging and half-measures that have characterized the European response for much of the last year would go away.  Europe (combined with the US) can turn the pain up to 11 on a scale of 1-10 literally any time they want.  Storm-shadows supplied in numbers a year ago would’ve done catastrophic damage to the Russian war machine in Ukraine.  And that’s only one system.  And that doesn’t consider the possibility of direct support like a no-fly zone.