Russia launches invasion of Ukraine - MASTER THREAD

[Robbie Barrett]

Putin must be one of the few presidents today who isn't a puppet

likely as wealthy and powerful as any of his oligarchs

P is allegedly the wealthiest person in the world. Rumored to have 200 bn

He's a dictator. All dictators are rich and their people relatively poor.

[1bad65]

How much skill did it take the guy to shoot down that helicopter? Is it a heat-seeking rocket launcher, just point in the right direction and you'll hit, or would he have to line up the shot and time it perfectly to be on target?

I remember back in the 80s seeing Afghan goat farmers shooting down Russian helicopters with those Stinger missiles.

They're using those in Ukraine. I'm sure they are even more lethal now, especially with higher trained personnel operating them.

Those Javelin missiles seem to be the anti-tank equivalent.

In the early days of the invasion the Ukrainians were asking for more of those weapons, and saying how effective they were.

[Left Hook Tua]

I remember back in the 80s seeing Afghan goat farmers shooting down Russian helicopters with those Stinger missiles.

They're using those in Ukraine. I'm sure they are even more lethal now, especially with higher trained personnel operating them.

Those Javelin missiles seem to be the anti-tank equivalent.

In the early days of the invasion the Ukrainians were asking for more of those weapons, and saying how effective they were.

The afghans used stinger fim-92 A models. A model was the original that came into service.

Constantly upgraded since then, theyre up to J models now.

I dont know which ones the Ukrainians have received from the other European countries.

But all american stingers are at least the E models since they upgrade late 90s. Any Ukrainian stingers they got from the Americans will probably be E model or newer.

Way more advanced than the ones the afghans had.


Javelin was a game changer for anti tank missiles. Before javelin most anti tank missiles were wire guided or laser guided.

The firer has to manually guide it with a guidance wire or paint the target with a laser all the way to the target.

When a tank sees a missile launch, theyll unload all its guns at the direction of the fire in hopes of either killing the missileer or making him duck so the missile will lose its guidance.

If the missileer is killed or he stops targeting the tank, the missile will not hit the tank.

With javelin, the user just locks on, fire and run away or duck. The javelin is fire and forget and will track the tank on its own with its image tracking.

Game changer. Even if the tank kills the user,, a fired javelin will still hit the target.

[Left Hook Tua]

what would SPETSNAZ be up to right now in Ukraine? assassinating Ukrainian leadership?

The Russians sent Wagner group and the chechens for that.

They tried to assassinate zelensky supposedly.

Remember the news of "saboteurs" in kyiv being hunted and killed 1st couple days of the invasion?

That was them.

[GrandpaBernard]

Has Ukrainian navy and air force been wiped out?

hard to know with all the pro Ukrainian sentiment by establishment media

and Ukraine winning the PR war

[Left Hook Tua]

They had the Chechen forces roaming Kyiv. Ukraine intelligence found out and mayor Klitschko made a curfew to last all Saturday and Sunday last weekend. That way the Ukrainians found them and neutralized them. I haven’t heard about spetznaz in the war so far.

Theyre there

Russians love spetsnaz and VDV (paratroopers)

VDV is who they kept sending to seize the kiev airport in hostomel, the helicopters getting shot at by stingers over the lake during the 1st day

For some weird reason theyre using a lot of VDV paratroopers on mechanized assaults too

Those guys dead hanging off of BMDs were VDV, only the VDV used BMDs, army uses the bigger BMPs

Russian soldiers are 1 year conscripts, barely trained and unmotivated

So Russians have to rely on their elite to do a lot of fighting

They used spetsnaz like crazy in afghanistan

[GrandpaBernard]

Theyre there

Russians love spetsnaz and VDV (paratroopers)

VDV is who they kept sending to seize the kiev airport in hostomel, the helicopters getting shot at by stingers over the lake during the 1st day

For some weird reason theyre using a lot of VDV paratroopers on mechanized assaults too

Those guys dead hanging off of BMDs were VDV, only the VDV used BMDs, army uses the bigger BMPs

Russian soldiers are 1 year conscripts, barely trained and unmotivated

So Russians have to rely on their elite to do a lot of fighting

They used spetsnaz like crazy in afghanistan

why send in cannon fodder first

[Left Hook Tua]

Has Ukrainian navy and air force been wiped out?

hard to know with all the pro Ukrainian sentiment by establishment media

and Ukraine winning the PR war

Navy was small and pretty much wiped out

Ukrainian navy scuttled their 1 frigate in Port to block the harbor i believe


Air force still around but they never really had a lot of fighter aircraft

I read confirmation they still have planes up

Supposedly a su-24 and a su-25 hit the 40 mile convoy near kyiv

For sure their drones are still up and they received more from turkey the other day

Turkish air force sent 3 large cargo planes to Poland to drop off bayraktar tb2 drones

With all the downed russian aircraft recent days for sure they still have air defense up

[GrandpaBernard]

Ukraine largest European country by landmass

[Citizen Koba]

what would SPETSNAZ be up to right now in Ukraine? assassinating Ukrainian leadership?

Anything.. people get the wrong idea about SPETSNAZ.. it's not a specific arm or group of units, more a general term covering any kinda special pupose units operating under any arm of the military or intelligence services. When we saw the early attemts to capture Hostomel airport it's quite likely SPETSNAZ were involved there... if there's an attempt to make a naval assault on Odessa it's more than likely naval SPETSNAZ will go in first to neutralise defenses or secure landing zones... just as with the Western special forces which we can be assured are operating in Ukraine a large part of their work will be reconnasiance and intel gathering but they're also likely to be used to take out high value targets (human or materiel) or sabotage or any of a wide variety of operations that would be beyond the capabilities and scope of regular troops. My guess is that western special forces on the ground already will be held back from the riskiest of operations

Hold on... like I say my knowledge is more to do with Russian and Soviet hardware (particularly the RuAF) strategy and tactics rather than their special forces so you're probably as well reading first hand rather than me reading up on it and regurgitating it to you like I got some special knowledge.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/01/...ng-in-ukraine/

https://sofrep.com/news/russian-spec...-are-spetsnaz/

https://www.globalsecurity.org/intel...etsnaz-org.htm





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