A senior Russian official on June 19 inadvertently confirmed the staggering troop losses incurred by Moscow's forces during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview with CNN, Russian Ambassador to the U.K. Andrey Kelin was asked about Moscow's maximalist intentions in Ukraine and its ability to recruit enough
War is basically all logistics and the value Ukraine is getting out of their drone program is insane
Honestly when they’re done, that manufacturing capacity will do great things for their economy.
God knows we’ll need every little bit to rebuild
The second it is safe, the second the war is over, I’m coming over and spending tourism dollars over there.
Love you. Greetings from elsewhere in Europe.
They’ll need it because the war money will stop immediately. They’re being funded only as much as it hurts Russia. Just like Afghanistan in the 80s.
Slava Ukraine. Be safe if you can. Wish I could do more to help. I tried to do some things with the digital forces but there isn’t much left I can do that you all need.
The shareholders will benefit greatly from more war.
Never let a good tragedy go to waste.
And when enlistment keeps dropping like a rock they will give the suicide drones to our local PDs! :D
It’s what many says, Europe needs Ukraine for many reasons and a big one is (sadly), their knowledge about a mordern war.
“We need people from this big war to fight the next big war!” is the line of thinking that’s going to burn everything to the ground, just like it did a century ago.
Between Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Iran, Britain floating warships off the coast of China, Indian and Pakistan firing on one another, North Africa in a decade long bloodbath, the US sending marines to suppress unrest in local cities… its not good folks.
Europe has not been aggresive at all. Being ready doesn’t mean you want to go to war.
Many are against reaming Europe, thinking weapon = war, but it’s not that simple. Nuke are scaring as hell, but we haven’t had such a long period of peace before nuke came.
France is no stranger to military intervention in Africa. Indeed, a cornerstone of Françafrique, France’s sphere of influence over its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, was France’s permanent military presence on the continent. Since decolonization in 1960, the French military has intervened over fifty times in Africa. These interventions have ranged from brief counter-insurgency missions and evacuations to longer-term peacekeeping operations. While France would scale back the scope of its operations in Africa following it’s failure to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it nevertheless maintained a force of 5,500 troops on the continent.
Over Fifty Times.
Good god, I’m talking about today, and I’m confronting EU against Russia, USA or China.
Pray tell, how many times without explicit invitation/request by local government?
Because last I checked when the Sahel states wanted them gone they packed up and left. And then things went to shit quite quickly: In some areas Wagner has an even worse reputation among the civilian population than Jihadis (now that is an achievement), and figures because Wagner is not there to fix anything but to make money by “protecting” natural resources they don’t care much about fighting the Jihadis, either. France never shied away from throwing down with them, where they were reluctant is stomping Tuaregs, instead opting for endless negotiations and mediating. Which is perfectly sensible because the Tuareg are sane, they want stuff like autonomy within their regions, not massacre people.
Check again.
Operation Barkhane dragged on for eight years. It sparked domestic protests within the first two years. By the end, the Sahel states were in full revolt against French occupation.
The problem is with your language. You seem to think dropping 200 lb bombs on a city to wipe whole neighborhoods off the map constitutes “throwing down”, like its a bar room brawl everyone will walk away from in the morning. You don’t seem to want to acknowledge that they killed thousands of civilians. A 9/11s worth of people, to put it in a parlance you might appreciate.
And much like in Israel and the US occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan, the response from French allies was always “those civilians had it coming”.
That is what spurred widespread opposition to Françafrique policy.
There a) was no occupation and b) not even the Putschists were in “full revolt”.
You seem to be talking about the Russian main forces (which aren’t in the Sahel), not France. Heck, Americans, but again, not France. France drops training ammunition instead of actual bombs on Hilluxes and when Americans make fun of them (“they ran out of ammo”) the French shrug and say “Concrete slabs are perfectly sufficient for pickup trucks”. It’s baked into their core doctrine, they supply their troops with what is necessary, but not more, because they want them to be audacious.
Are you referring to the Bounti airstrike? Like in you strg+f “controversial” and found something? Then just assumed the 200lb and “whole neighbourhoods”? This is Bounti.
Did they get that knowledge from 9 soldiers, one of which carries a cursed burden?
Do they manufacture them in Ukraine? I always assumed they got them for elsewhere.
Very much so, though they import lots of parts. Generally speaking the Ukrainian defence industry is operating under capacity because cashflow.
Ukraine builds rockets and the biggest airplanes in the world and has a vibrant IT sector, they can manage drones. Much of the Soviet high-tech design and manufacturing was Ukrainian, that’s one of the reasons why Russia wants its colony back.
Given the volume they quote each year they either have sourcing figured out or produce at least some of the parts internally. Keep in mind, in FPV drones a lot of the tech is not some cutting edge stuff.
Some of the strikes at the residential complexes can be targeted attacks at distributed micro factories.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/46892
Then they can become the world’s supplier of battle-tested drones.
A man fighting for his home is worth 100 fighting for someone else’s cause. Russia was never going to win the numbers game.
I read that as a man fighting for his drone…
Ukraine playing it smart and understanding how modern warfare is done. Russia only throwing in more and more soldiers.
In Russia’s defence, who could have possibly have thought that invading Ukraine in the winter wasn’t going to be a simple 3 day weekend kind of thing?
If they assassinated Zelensky like they had planned, it probably would have been.
That feels like a big contingency that they failed to adequately plan for
Plus wouldn’t the armed forces still fight?
They would have fought, but they would have been demoralized.
They also would have likely been replaced by a Russian sympathizer or asset and the US/West would be very wary to send all sorts of expensive weapon systems to Ukraine.
All good points, thanks for expanding my understanding
Losing a generation in war that could have added much value to their economy can’t really be smart or worth it, can it?
It works though, that’s why they keep doing it. It’s slow as hell and inhumane, but they can afford it for many more years I’d wager. Their capabilities of data gathering/transmission are much better these days as well. Also don’t forget they set up wired drone production (in serious numbers at least) first, they can be smart at times.
Underestimating them irl is pointless.
Pulling a Napoleon when he went to Russia. Too cocky
I like to call it (Soviet) Star Wars: the Drone Wars (star for clarity)