A few days ago Russian war correspondent Sladkov made an interesting post where he showcased two new videos from Western/pro-Ukrainian military experts that go into detail in describing Russian tactics and military strengths in the Ukrainian conflict.
Here's what Brits currently seem to think of Russia's capabilities:
"About the Western perception of the experience of military operations in Ukraine and how it is influenced by the prevailing ideological attitudes in NATO countries. The most striking example of the latter was given by Ilya Kramnik, who analyzed the article of the latest issue of the magazine of the armed forces of Great Britain.
The author of the article claims that the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or the Armed Forces of Ukraine are "2-3 generations" behind what a modern war should look like. Therefore, it is not necessary to draw conclusions from everything you have seen: after all, British intelligence with target designation is better and easily compensates for a multiple of the enemy's ammunition consumption."
Armed forces always reflect the culture and sociology of the society the come from. Westerners are more used to being led by a managerial class that is detached from reality and does not make any sacrifices, thus the western officer/NCO system where an officer never enters the barracks or the trenches. In Russia it's different at least to some degree. I mean, Putin himself spent his childhood and youth in a Leningrad kommunalka (St. Petersburg still has them, BTW), slugging it out with other lads in the backyards. Which western leader has a similar background?
George W. Bush with his totally real Texas accent spent his youth russlin' cattle, killing rattlesnakes, spittin' tobacco, and... going to Yale. Just like any true salt of the earth American.
I can't speak about the rest of NATO, but the junior officers in the US army are responsible for platoon level training. The platoon sergeant has plenty of input of course, but in the end the platoon leader is ultimately responsible for the success or failure. The same for company level. In the army shit rolls downhill and uphill at the same time. A big enough squad failure can result in every officer in the squads chain-of-comnand being relieved to the battalion level.
"But Russian units have such things down to company level or smaller, which grants the company much more autonomy as they have all their own information about the targets/objectives at their fingertips. They don’t have to call up to division command to get ISR data and subsequent “permission” to engage. They have their own drone teams telling them exactly where the enemy is, and can then designate their own approach on how to dislodge or assault him."
The irony is thick. Russians have always been accused of rigid central command structures demanding complete dependence of the tactical squads on central command for every decision, thus making their tactical manoeuvres slow and unwieldy, when in fact it seems the opposite - the American squad leader apparently has to request support centrally and wait for a decision for permission to engage.
We live in a world of lies and obfuscations. Virtually everything we think we know about the world, we don't. It falls to the individual to take the initiative to learn as he won't be taught.
I do want to caution that this is not uniformly the case in every single unit. There have been persistent complaints from some Russian sectors of the complete opposite--that their 'call to trigger pull' time was so long it allowed AFU units to escape because some form of divisional command wasn't giving authorization. That said, many of such complaints came from more marginal or volunteer style units, and their 'overwatch' from higher command is stricter for obvious reasons.
The more elite and proven of a unit, the more they'll typically have in house, and have less authorization chains and things of that nature.
Militaries aren't uniform, there are a lot of differences in various unit types but Russian units, as a generality, *typically* have much more brigade/divisional level assets under company/battalion control than the U.S. equivalents. This is a fact confirmed by military experts like Dr. Philip Karber in the West Point lecture of his I usually post.
And the non-uniformity will occur at all levels within Russian forces. Some Generals will emphasise initiative down to the assault group level, some will micro-manage. Results will vary.
What works versus what doesn't will have to assessed from the bottom up, and promulgated from the top down.
Thus we *should* see poor performing Generals sidelined...
"There have been persistent complaints from some Russian sectors of the complete opposite--that their 'call to trigger pull' time was so long it allowed AFU units to escape because some form of divisional command wasn't giving authorization."
The historical conflict that most closely resembles this war is the American Civil War. There are numerous parallels, not the least of which is the need felt by Ukrainian military leaders, very much in the position of Robert E. Lee, that they must attack because they cannot win a long war of attrition.
Another close parallel to the American Civil War is the similarity between Putin's position and that of Abraham Lincoln with respect to their militaries. Lincoln tried and failed multiple times to find army and corps commanders who would proceed on the offensive. At the brigade level, the Union army was willing, despite horrendous casualties, to attack in most cases, but Lincoln's core and army commanders always had some excuse not to do so: the troops were not fully trained; the enemy was too numerous; some logistical issue; and so forth. Lincoln felt the pain of the war deeply and wanted to stop the bloodshed. He knew that the only way to do so was to attack, but he had to go through how many corps and army-level commanders before finding Sherman and Grant?
Putin needs to find his Sherman and Grant and put an end to this thing before the neo-con lunatics in Washington find some reason to expand the war into a Third World War. The neo-con lunatics are not Palmerston and cannot be counted upon to exercise the same restraint that he did.
The parallels are enticing but the South did not have NATO(the largest, richest and ostensibly the most well armed military alliance on earth) circling all around the North waiting for an opportunity of enough weakness, to pounce. Imagine if European armies and navies circled all around the Union. They would choose a strategy of force depletion too.
Strange how USA uses English language in the polar opposite: Patriot Act, Child Protection Services, World Health Organization, Operation Enduring Freedom.
The best strategic insight and commentary for the moment. Russian army has come to age, adapting and learning straight from the frontlines. I don’t know but a lot of similarities between independent Russian units and British SAS, got some similar training 50 years back, now completely outdated and also canon fodder.
I think it is even worse on the US side than you think: I do believe lawyers have to be involved in arty and air strike decisions as well. At least in Iraq/Afghanistan. Not sure how long they'd keep that "feature" in an actual war. But it beggars belief to think about the Russian forces in Syria having any lawyers on hand when they're fixing to waste some ISIS dude.
Ohhh, and I notice that thread references the old crowdstrike BS of "Russian Hackers" having given Hohol artillerists malware in the GIS ARTA kits. From what I remember it turned out crowdstrike created a web page, created some malware, uploaded the malware to the webpage, and then downloaded the malware like 9 times. Then they made their "Russian Hacker" claims. Crowdstrike did the same thing in the Georgia gubernatorial election.
You make the observation that the west in general, and its ruling institutions in particular, are disconnected from reality. I wonder how much they are captured by their own black propaganda. The best lies are the ones you believe yourself after all.
I think this is not necessarily a fair comparison.
Afghanistan and Iraq (after the initial conquest) were not wars of peer combat or even conquest - they were occupations. In these scenarios - the stated objective of "hearts and minds" is a legitimate factor. Obviously this objective failed, but the attempt was, at a minimum on paper, worthwhile.
I agree. Of course in a total/existential war scenario, JAG officers aren't going to be meddling and U.S. artillery will shell whatever they want, but in a truly 'total war' environment Russia would be doing the same. Despite their artillery/ooda loop advantages, Russia is still fighting with kid gloves due to the same 'hearts and minds' and "brother war" constraints in Ukraine
The lawyers were political cover. If a wedding celebration or school children needed to be taken out a drone strike would be ordered, reviewed and quickly rubber stamped by JAG.
Very informative article - I’m surprised by the honesty of McBeth who usually operates as a full blown propagandist in the most ludicrous way possible.
I think a lot of people in the West especially Europeans cannot fathom the sheer vastness of the field of operations in Eastern Ukraine. A full on centralized command on the operational level would be almost impossible to do. I firmly believe the Russian Army is the best in the world right now and would defeat a head on NATO assault no matter what they throw their way.
I got issues with McBeth. His claims of being a "Heavy Anti-Armor Weapons Infantryman" (that's the proper nomenclature of the 11H (Eleven Hotel as we called it) Military Occupational Specialty or MOS as it's commonly called) is sketchy. It sounds petty AF BUT: I was an 11H10 with an E9 modifier (M901 ITOW Vehicle) from 1990 thru 1996 when I was involuntarily reclassed when the MOS started it's downward spiral. All TOW Gunners (Tube Launched Optically Tracked, Wire Guided Missiles) or the BGM-71B TOW2B all 11Hs either got reclassified into another MOS (job) or became 11B catchalls. Same thing happened with 11M (Bradley Crewman) Me? I got screwed into being a 19K M1A1 Tanker...
He also claims to have been stationed in Germany in Hohenfels with the OPFOR as a TOW Gunner. That would be 1/4 INF CSC (Combat Support Company) where we had ONE TOW Platoon with between 28-35 of us Hotels in the Platoon.
Funny how I don't remember him AT ALL
And I can name almost the entire platoon to this day...
And if -I- don't know them, then someone I know had to have known him
But funny, he's a Cypher on the TOW side of life...
It's a EXCEEDINGLY SMALL Group that had a TRUE 11H MOS back in the day. My Facebook groups, all of them never heard of this guy. To the point I got a guy doing a check 'cos I think this guy is a fantasist and liar. That and I CAN NOT find a single reference to ANY unit he served in... like HIGHLY Unusual for a 20 Year Man not to have -some sort- of Unit affiliation that they make mention of... him? Not a one.
Me? 1/4 CSC OPFOR and Dco 2/187th of the 101st RAKKASAN! baby.
As a career retired E8 Infantry Anti-Tanker who trained on MILAN, having operated it in every environment from the high Arctic, North Western Europe, Southern Africa, Central Asia & the Middle East...from rotary aviation...amphibious craft & all that lies in between - including the intimate support of an Armoured Sqn of MBTs whilst we were mounted in Austrian made soft skinned vehicles in the sand box on operations.
I am positive this guy McBeth is a bulshitter.
I’d go as far as to put him up there with Elliot Higgins from bellingcat .... sorry Bellendcat.
There is a smell of a three letter agency about him. I’ve never seen any SNCO wear a dressing gown before.
How bout the other guy who served in similar positions at same time as you: https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123 He claims to have had similar things you describe happening where he got shifted around from Bradleys to many other positions
All of his MOS's listed show as 'older' so to speak. Unlike McDouche, That guy? Seems legit. His first job, 16D was a Vulcan ADA (Air Defense Artillery) guy, which was (back in the day) a M163 Gun Carriage... an M113 with a variant of the M61 20mm Gatling gun? cannon? (LOL) mounted on it. The US DotMil phased those out in favor of the Bradley 'Linebacker' Tracks, which replaced the standard 2-shot TOW Launcher on the right side pod with a 4-shit Stinger Package. His MOS for THAT during the transition was as a Senior Sergeant, so probably an E-6.
As with most guys getting older, and 'later' in their career, he (probably) wanted an "indoor work/no heavy lifting job" and went into intel. 96B was the old designator for Intel Analyst, (which is what it was when I was in, as you stated) which now, according to the goolag, is a 35F
I had a Platoon Sergeant who had spent 80% (like 22 years) in Special Operations, to include the no-shit Delta Team(s). Pulled some strings to become a Supply (Logistics) NCO and retired a 1stSGT after 25 years as a MOS 92Y. I ended up (due to an injury) doing the same thing, but with no 'official modification' to my MOS. I was still a 19K BUT
I OJT'ed (on-the-job-trained) and worked as a Supply guy for the remainder of my career after being injured on the tank (crushed my spine... tanks are large, heavy and dangerous AF even to the users BTW)
As far as the "Secret Squirrel Guy's" videos? REEKS of Propaganda. Runs a "Museum" called the Temple Museum of Modern Warfare. That's juuust outside Fort Hood or whatever the hell they call it now (I was there in 1998 at 1/12CAV) From the looks of his earliest videos, he concentrated mostly on Airsoft games, and then 'stuff' that he'd gotten from the DotMil and the waste behind it. I don't -think- he's at ALL a 'current' analyst in the respect is he -might- have been one 'way back in the day' but his whole 'slava krain' (intentional misspelling) push gives me "someone is paying him" vibes.
Add on that he hadn't posted ANY Videos up until 4/5 months ago. Up until then, he primarily spent from 6 years ago hammering the US DotMil for "fraud, waste and abuse" I.E. misspending tax dollars. Then, his last video BEFORE becoming a Ukrainian Intel Expert was two years ago. SO with the hammering on the fraud, waste and abuse, SOMEONE obviously knew of him, beyond that, everything is conjecture, but at least that guy appears to be somewhat legit, but 'dated' for his real-time intel, unless he's got someone "feeding" him.
It's called stolen valor... not sure if it's a statute where he's at, however
I got my people digging now
Naming and Shaming is a HUGE part of the Cancel Culture these days... depending on if he's a paid asset will show if he's doing this with 'sanction'... if he is, then I don't expect much traction to cancelling his fat punchable ass
Thanks for that background info. I never thought much of him anyway since his analysis is so objectively ridiculous most of the time. He comes across as more of a fat soy boy Bread Tube grifter broadcasting from his mothers basement.
Yeah, Macbeth recently did a video "debunking" Col Macgregor's interview with Tucker Carlson. He tried to pass himself off as a "neutral" observer To the Ukraine war and said he works with a contracted intel outfit. He then states that Russia's main objective is to take Kiev, which obviously is not the case. When talking about precision weapons, he mentions Russia has the Krasnopol but then says he has never seen it used. Some intel outfit this guy works for, there are dozens of videos on open source showing Krasnopol usage.
Well, you see, if they show a Krasnopol round being loaded into a gun and fired, that's not confirmed to be on the front line, they could have faked it on a shooting range or with a fake Krasnopol somewhere. And if they show a Krasnopol directly hitting a designated target, then it produces the same explosive effect as a normal 152 mm that was a lucky shot. There is no way to record unedited video of the laser targeting, loading, firing, and impact of the round, so the standard of proof that would "satisfy" his requirements simply can't exist.
So yes, he is correct in claiming there's no irrefutable evidence of it being used, he's got an audience to please, so he remains willfully blind.
He's skirting the edges. He's trying to obfuscate the situation while not overtly lying. That's the most you're going to get from him. But at least he isn't lying to your face.
Think about his options: He can either just lie by omission, by just framing it through a biased lense, which makes him seem at least somewhat "impartial" to most people on both sides, or he can give unbiased analisys an be called a pro-Russian Putin puppet by 99% of his audience.
It's like a prayer or a magic chant you have to say before saying anything: "Ukraine good, Zelenesky good, Ukrainians amazing, Putin bad, Russia bad, Russians incompetent"
A great write up again. I think these types of articles are more enjoyable than the meat and potatoes facts of the day sitreps you put together (not that they are more/less important). The evolution of an army during war time has to be peak human performance as a species. In their own way the Ukrainians have shown an impressive adaptability as well.
I'm sure you don't have the info, but it would be just as fascinating to see how MoD is handling rotating and reshuffling their growing experienced NCOs and officers. They must be sprinkling them into the new armies being constructed right now. That sort of human capital logistics must be an art of it's own.
QUESTIONS: Thank you for collecting & presenting these videos & texts, which show great vulnerability for both offensive & defensive platoon privates, officers & NCOs, even to a leader such as Prigozhin.
A DIALOGUE CHALLENGE TO THE "GATTLING-GUN" MILITARY MINDED?
Note Well: I respect Russia is obligated in a humane way to protect the 15 million Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language from ongoing violent putsch Ukraine attacks. I deeply respect Russia's commitment as a witness to the Minsk Accords.
HUMANE RESPONSIBILITY
Aren't we also responsible for convening & scheduling Both-sides-Now, Equal-time, Recorded & Published Dialogues as a contest of National Will both within & between all our citizens, organizations & nations, when we are effectively at war with another?
As a Canadian, I'm shocked at the level of cowardice in our nations as citizens, when we are arming, training & financing Ukrainians as well as providing logistic supports. There is effectively no national dialogue among citizens, nor our Oligarch $ captured finance, media, religion, institutions, governments, education, military-industrial, Legislative, Judicial & Pharma-med COMPLEX. Have we been reduced to heartless programmed robots?
Given that;
a) mostly young men are putting their lives on the line to much death (50,000 Russian soldiers killed?) & injury (150,000 Russian soldiers with life-long injury?).
b) goading a perceived enemy to responsible action is more likely through information, intellectual engagement, intellectually engaged populations & as well as economic opportunity.
1) Why aren't there such as Russian Dialogue/Debate teams challenging the west Canada, USA, Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, captured Germany etc. on their reasons for ongoing aggression in Ukraine? Do such debate trainees & spokespersons exist in either camp? Wouldn't such a heightened sphere of dialogue influence on populations, governments & corporations be more effective than most military actions
2) Why aren't their intense Both-sided, Equal-time, Recorded & Published 'Debates' (French 'de' = 'undo' + 'bate' = 'the-fight') where the honour & reputation of each nation is put on the line, as the logics & heart of the issue are discussed? Does soldier unquestioning submission to authority, not enable him to be honest about what he thinks & feels? Or does the soldier abandon his independent thinking & feeling for the sake of surviving a year of military duty?
3) Instead of spending trillions of dollars, as the Oligarch owned USA has spent from the Orange Revolution to Maidan to the present day SVO, why are not even a few million spent on 'intellectual' (Latin 'inter' = 'between' + 'legere' = 'to-choose') engagement. Does the military & soldier have so little connection to the actual people who are taxed or enslaved to produce this expendable wealth?
4) Are mostly men less afraid of being so easily gunned down, as an easy way out, compared with actually having to use their intellectual wit & humane responsibility in dialogue having to stand behind what one says & does?
Mohandas Gandhi stated, "Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Non-violence & cowardice go ill together. I can imagine a fully armed man to be at heart a COWARD."
And answers that are both simple and complicated. We humans are still characterized predominantly by our biology. We are mammals, and more specifically we are omnivores and thus opportunists. Our offsprings need a long time of being taken care off. Thus we, and the human female particularly so, try to gather reserves, establish security and seek comfort. This will not change very much, unless the looming creation of a technically enhanced human being evolves to a state of leaving biology behind and, one way or the other, only machines are left.
Up to this point in time, those traits we find in the human species that result from our social/cultural evolution are rather superfical and malleable compared to the directly biologically rooted characteristics. Of course I'm simplifying the whole matter, rest assured that I'm aware of it.
However, the ruling elites have gathered a wealth of experience about the human condition going back many generations. Now they even can rely on quantifiable results of sciences such as Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Ethology and so on. The ancient science of Demagogy has branched out into advertising and PR. All in all "the rulers" have EVOLVED AND ADAPTED. They know how to control "us" and how to usurp grassroot movements or to even create such movements for us.
Sovial engineering is real, and if you haven't already taken a closer look at the trans- movement or better to say trans-cult you should do it NOW. Whereas other (pseudo-) religious groups have focused on convincing the "heathen" and "pagans" woth the goal to assimilate them, the trans-cult is not only doing that. This movement is utilized to train the average Westerner with his/her natural sciences based education to talk and act against his/her knowledge, to normalize constant self censoring.
Since every movement in society evokes a counter movement, a truth backed up by empirical evidence throughout history, children are now becoming the main target of those who use the trans-cult as a tool of social engineering, especially in parts of the US. Why else the efforts there to severe the parents from oversight over their children's curriculums, even criminalising parents who simply want to know what's going on in school? And without kidding, people who defend this forced distancing of parents from the "education" of their children use terms like "freedom". Well, of course, this term has proven to be a verified Wunderwaffe during the Cold War and up to date.
Hi German Woodworker, This mammal has been a vegetarian for 51 years & vegan for 35 years. My son is 23 years old & breast (mammary gland) fed for 2 1/2 years.
Coming from lower Oligarch families, I'll disagree that these often material, energy, status & artificial drug, like the Experimental, EUA mRNA addicted folks are quite the unquestioning submissives, ready to be sacrificed. Like the Elvis Frat Boys & Girls generation, they can be pretty mean to folks & with LGBTQ to themselves. There is big money behind Trans as well as capture of the whole sick institutionalized system. Oligarchy is a pathological-disease of 7000 years with a billion people killed & genocided, but its all that the institutions like fake 'education' (L 'educare' = 'to-lead-forth-from-within'), fake 'religion' (L 'religio' = 'to-relate' not 'indoctrinate') & fake 'media' (L 'medium' = 'middle'as in 'both-sides presented') have ever taught, preached or broadcast. Fake 'overpopulation' is really 'misanthropy' meaning hatred of humanity. 'Indigenous' (L 'self-generating') Natural systems recycle everything, If all someone does is poos & pees in a Biodigestion methanizing toilet, then they have contributed. In 1500 Tenochtitlan (Mexico city) had 350,000 people living on an artificial island on the edge of Lake Texcoco connected by bridges to the shores. When Cortez arrives at Tenochtitlan in 1519, he can't believe his eyes of a city larger than any in Europe with waters surrounding it still very clean. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/b-ecological-design/5-bio-digestion-toilets
One can understand the self-&-nature-defeating psychological fixation we have in preserving our dysfunctional artificial system at all costs in fear, dread & submission to the oligarchy which has ruled much of humanity brutally for 7000 years since Babylon. Many have adversarial beliefs against nature & people as deficits in overpopulation. We ignore the balance of non-consumptive work & play, which children & just hanging out with friends, freely provide. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/e-history/7-work-play-overpopulation
Hi Scott, The goal isn't vegan (all vegetable) or herbivore (herbs?), but optimal health in harmony with my body-ecology, the biosphere & life itself. I do eat significant amounts of mostly wild herbs every day. I'm a cultural learner, learning vegetarian diet from living with 45,000 Russian Doukhobor & other vegetarians, being an active organizer in the BC & Quebec Natural-Food-Co-op networks of the 1970s & 80s as well as gardening & cultivating Polyculture-Orchards over these five decades. Its worked out for me & family, eliminated my consumption of animal products (except for the inevitable hidden insects in the herbs I harvest, lessened my reliance on petroleum based agriculture greatly as well as greatly lessened exploitation of foreign peoples & their lands. The real goal is aligning with the kind awareness & power of life. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/b-ecological-design/2-responsible-compassionate-health
Wordy Weasel, To prove your point I died as a vegetarian 51 years ago & again as a vegan 36 years ago. When I planted 3000 trees in one day, bicycled from Los Angeles California to Castlegar, British Columbia, X-country skied across mountain tops, recently bicycled from Montreal to Aylmer-Gatineau Quebec, coordinated Eco-Montreal Tiohtiake Geographic Information System Green Map & Tetsionitiotiakon Mohawk, Wendat & Algonquian Placename GIS Mapping, walked 12 kilometres & lake swam a few days ago, I guess I'm just unaware of how unevolved I am. Thanks for your innovative redefinition of both 'health' & 'evolution'. With your definitions, what is it like to "walk a mile in your shoes"? https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/5-tiohtiake-mohawk-placenames
At the macro level, no Canadian elected official from any political party advocated for the Minsk 1-2 Accords. It would have given Ukraine the same bilingual federalized system of government that Canada has used for 150 years. Given Canada's historic role as a peacemaker in many external conflicts, the government's silence there was notable.
The reasons are obvious, the politically active Ukrainian diaspora here is predominantly from the western regions. The Russian diaspora in Canada are not at all unified or organized, something that is discussed regularly in our circles.
Opport Knocks, Thank you for reference to Canada's reneging on Minsk 1-2 as a reflection of the bilingualism we have come to expect. I've been involved in the Canadian Political process for decades: Green (Candidate & Shadow Cabinet), NDP (VP Riding Executive), Liberal (Discussion-groups) & Conservative (Election support) parties. The top-down political process of staff, offices, advertising, research, records, endless meetings, etc. is very time-consuming & expensive (beyond that openly acknowledged), so easily captured by Oligarch hidden (Campaign Finance, Advertising, Networking etc.) moneys, in all of the above parties. Hidden private meetings, associations, financial support in inner circles & influencers is the rule along with Censorship & Cancel Culture strategies, not a market-place of initiative & ideas.
While VP of my NDP Riding, I interviewed nine of the NDP Leadership candidates about their 100% voting for the Libyan 2011 No-Fly-Zone, hence Canadian Airforce 23% of all bombing sorties against Libyan infrastructure & people. I was met with a deathly silence & short diversionary distancing. Given that; I have 3 friends/contacts who had personally met with Muammar Gaddafi, I knew that the CSIS / CIA hired typically foreign mercenary hired so-called Libyan ISIS opposition was flaky at best. CSIS works with such as CUSO, SUCO to train students (family) as assets for foreign destabilization through such as introducing Cell-Phone wireless communication infrastructure as captured controlled media to create 'buzz' within populations.
Following a very prominent NDP hyper media 'Orange-Wave' (WAY beyond NDP member finances) election campaign & Jack Layton's victory, the next Oligarch required-step was NDP MP voting en masse for the No-Fly-Zone. The Oligarch issue was Gaddafi's Gold Backed Dinar for Africa as well as his support for Palestinians, a double no-no. I come from mixed Christian & Jewish roots being familiar with global manipulations. Balanced Politics should be rooted as a subset in traditional 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') Economic Democracy. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
Canada's English-French bilingualism is really an oligarch partnership for invasion, genocide, colonization & rape of resources. I'm completely bilingual with French & English ancestry, but shocked at how little either camp know about the 1st Nations, which we continue to genocide so ignorantly. 1st Nation languages are the voice of the biosphere with instructions about how to live here. Here's Mohawk, Wendat & Algonquian Placename mapping, which I helped coordinate in 1997-2001. As an ecological & social-economy baseline this knowledge is extremely helpful. Ukraine will do well to unearth its ancient Slavic roots with the immense productive Polyculture Orchards, rivers, lakes & streams, widespread 3000 years ago before its successive waves of Assyrian, Greek, Roman Oligarch colonization. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/5-tiohtiake-mohawk-placenames & https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/5-mapping-ecological-indigenous-heritage
1971 to 80 I lived among Russian Doukhobor, German Mennonite, English Quaker & American pacifist communities of the West Kootenay region of BC. The past 30 years, I live in a Multihome-Dwelling-Complex of apartment & townhouses on 40 Acres with 3500 people including 450 Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian, Kazakhstan & other Slav speakers with whom I engage with regularly as friends.
Your compassion and objectives are laudable but are discounting the reality that leadership in the West is not in any way interested in any form of feedback from its people that doesn't conform to said leadership's goals.
Western leadership's goals are clearly not about any form of sober analysis based strategy - they are actually about MIC enrichment, trying to damage/destroy Russia, domestic politics and self enrichment.
Clue, Agree with your analysis, but we're not here to cry the blues, retrospectively on Oligarchy's 7000 year 'exogenous' (L. 'other-generated') colonial demise for humanity. We're here to re-empower humanity & our collective intelligence. To successfully capture public narrative in the psychology & neurology of human mind, & hence systems recapture, one employs dialectics (both-sided-dialogue). Human mind constructs are based in contrasting & comparing facts, feelings, views, smells, movement etc. The human eyes, ears, nose, hands, body movement with legs etc. are all paired for this dialectic reason. i.e. It takes both wings left & right to fly. Each eye sees in 2-D & its only within the neural cortex that both discordant images create an assemblage of 3-D, along with dialectic inputs from all the senses. Its time for humanity to rebuild its 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') cultural fractal Economic Memory with bodily autonomy. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/d-participatory-structure/3-economic-memory
Laudable goals again, but my view is that change isn't some magical movie fairy tale.
Change comes when things get bad enough that enough people act.
Nor do I share your view that "capturing public narrative" is possible just through "superior dialectic". The reality is that most people don't pay any attention to anything above what is right in front of them - at least until they are forced to by obvious societal failure.
That time is getting closer but isn't here yet - and all the dialectic in the world isn't going to accelerate it IMO.
"...your view that "capturing public narrative" is possible just through "superior dialectic". The reality is that most people don't pay any attention to anything above what is right in front of them"
I spent 10 days pig shooting on a vast sheep and cattle station once. We spent a couple of days of days helping the grazier with the sheep dipping. The sheep never listen, or do what one wants. They have to be scared in to a certain direction by a scary dog.
I think calling regular people, sheep, is highly inaccurate and unfair.
Making a living/raising children/taking care of their families - there's nothing wrong with that. The entire point of living in an advanced society is that you don't need to be constantly defending against literal threats to life and livelihood.
The fact that this is becoming necessary in the West is a tribute to just how pathetic Western leadership is - they have broken what did not need to be fixed.
Good one. Thank you. About the only real 'technical' essay I've read on the subject of this conflict and it made good reading.
More of this would be good indeed.
We are - or I am anyway - sick and tired of all the 'high level' 'analysis' of the conflict. Telling what tactic is current and what the overall strategy is etc. All of which over the last two years has proven to be totally unreliable.
They just don't know. And, I think, cannot know.
But some detailed 'low level' analysis similar to this essay is surely well within the reach of those with some knowledge and expertise. Some backwards looks at actions that took place and how they went and why they went. That sort of thing perhaps.
There's many areas of course.
A favourite bugbear of mine for a long time has been 'bombardment' - or the apparent lack of it.
All the videos we get show one or occasionally two vehicles destroyed by pin point shots. That's not artillery in the classic sense. Dumb rounds. It is not GRAD fire, is it?
And we see that one vehicle go up and all the others apparently escape! And what's more we see troops disembark and scatter like ants all over the place. That's a successful 'insertion' I believe.
Why was there no bombardment of anti-personnel rounds at the point of disembarkment? Especially when there's been repeated use of exactly the same place for the same purpose?
When I say 'bombardment' I mean of course multiple simultaneous strikes by artillery pieces. Maybe two or three batteries firing as one. But minimum one battery.
I have never seen it. I thought it would be the thing I would most often see.
The nearest I have come to it was today when I saw for the first time a 'salvo', they called it, perhaps a better word than my 'bombardment' which I realise doesn't necessarily mean more than one round at a time, fired off. I didn't see it land. I've still never seen one land. But this was wonderfully impressive just seeing it fired, frightening to see it launched, terrifying to be at the other end I imagine.
I'd love some detailed 'analysis' of that aspect for instance. I am heartily sick of the Ritters et al and their monotous deliveries of the same uninformative messages.
There's a few reasons for the vehicle escapes you're talking about:
1. in many cases the footage is heavily edited together and actually depicts a much wider timescale than it may seem. Many of the vehicles are coming and going over hours and shows a dynamic/shifting battle, where sometimes Russian forces have repositioned, ran out of ammo, etc., or any number of other vicissitudes
2. what you're often seeing is engagements between relatively small counterparties. So the type of huge bombardment you may be envisioning doesn't exist because in the particular corner of the battlefield that the drone footage is capturing, it may be a small vehicle platoon against just 1 Russian artillery battery or less. Ukraine is a gigantic country over which is spread out a relatively tiny force. I.e. the doctrinal force density used in ww1/ww2 etc. is innumerably higher than what you see here. There are brigades holding 20-30km swaths when entire divisions should be deployed. That's to say, the battlefield is very 'sparse' in terms of density--there are very few units per square kilometer compared to what doctrine recommends. Half the time it's just squads/platoons vs. other squads/platoons.
3. Footage is so heavily edited it's really difficult to determine time/space/events/or make any other real conclusions. Artillery fired from tens of kilometers away can take as long as several minutes to fly through the air and arrive at the target. Sometimes a moving convoy is out of sight long before further shots can even arrive.
Sometimes you'll see a guided artillery round like Krasnopol or its mortar sibling Kitolov-2M precisely hit a target but those are in much shorter supply, then other less accurate rounds may follow.
There are rarely gigantic 'salvos' and bombardments done simply because Ukraine rarely bunches up enough forces to necessitate it. The day you see armored columns full of 500 tanks in one place, then you'll see Russia position dozens of MLRS trucks and launch massive salvos at them. But Ukraine sends small per direction a few vehicles at a time and rarely more.
Thank you for taking the trouble to spell all that out. It was kind of you.
I well recognise the 'troop density' element having swotted up on it recently, or begun to.
Associated with it, of course, is the question then of 'local densities'. There not being what we might call 'standard' density along the whole line but objective realities still obtaining 'standard densities' for the occasion will be needed at pressure points.
Which would to me indicate we're bound to see much shuffling of units. Which in turn would seem to indicate a higher 'risk quotient' as you simply have to take the risk of moving columns hither and thither and congregating at assembly areas.
Which in turn would seem to predicate a need for special attention towards that feature so that specialised personnel or units perhaps seek out these signs of movement and learn to predict assembly areas and quickly assemble 'volley' or 'bombardment' capabilities to deal with them.
Which then would seem to suggest an increased incidence of that kind of action.
Which brings me back where I started: I don't see it.
Consider that ISR works both ways, RuAF can't bunch up artillery and MRLS because it would be fed to Ukrainians through intel and then they'd get hit too.
Consider that 'volleys' or multiple unit bombardments don't need to be bunched up at all. It's the target they need to share. Not the shooting position.
I think all militaries are built on their past history and traditions, and struggle to change fast enough, even when the pressure of war compels them to do so.
I have a good pal who served in the UK Royal Marines and obviously we discuss matters military from time to time. He said that in the British military only really the Paras and Marines were trained as aggressive "assault forces", the remainder primarly had a defensive orientation. This goes back to the Cold War of course where the operational posture was largely defensive, but is actually engrained in the British Army from way back. I doubt the USA is much different and its leading assualt units will be the Marines and Airborne, same with France with the Legion, Marines and Airborne. Germany always was highly geared to attack and counter attack but have one functioning Brigade just now. However the point is that most armies have very few actual "assault" units compared to the larger mass of troops. This is not to say the majority cannot "assault", just institutionally they are not geared up for the aggressive tempo and violence of that sort of operation.
This history also explains to an extent the difference between NATO and Russia in how it views the roles and balance between NCO and officiers. The Germans again take this to extremes and certainly in the Kaiser's army and the Wehrmacht, NCOs more often than not commanded platoons and officers were to be found at company level and above - in contrast to say US and UK practice.
The Cold War Soviet Army had to rely on conscripted and under-trained NCO;s because that was really all it had, and thus Officers were forced to be employed in larger numbers and undertake roles that would have been performed by NCOs in a western army. Being an NCO in the Soviet Army was no fun. The modern Russia army cannot in the space of a few decades transform itself to a western model, even if it thought hat was a good idea. It appears to recognise the need for a more experienced and professional NCO cadre but to an extent is constrained by its past.
Whose system works best? That is really the wrong question in my view. It is like saying the Wehrmacht was on a man for man and unit for unit basis superior to the Red Army in WW2 - and this was the case until at least 1944. However it was the Red Army that raised their flag on the Reichstag in 1945. To a point war is about exploiting your enemies weaknesses and mitigating your own. It is foolish for western commentators to claim that the NATO system is superior when it ignores the overall conditions in which armies are fighting. It might be a valid claim but then if Russia needs to build up 10 divisions in a year - which they have said they are doing - then maybe the Russia approach is correct.
Much written about the war in the West is ill informed and contains more than a small dose of anti-Russian racism. That is, the Russians are doing things differently because they are stupid and not as smart as we are. Sometimes this ubermensch attitude is hidden by a so called analysis, at others not at all. back in the day NATO feared the Soviet Army. I'd argue that sometime since 1989 the current crop of NATO leaders and commentators seem to have developed the belief that NATO actually fought and defeated the Soviets, and this has led to a strange superiority complex that was not evident back in the day.
Managerial and technical skills can be taught in school--as can the basic principles of leadership. Actual leadership, if it is learned at all, is learned in the real world--by watching, intelligently, how effective leaders operate. It takes a combination of intelligence, humility, instinct and humaneness--on top of managerial/technical competence. There is a special magic in well-led military units. It's something that is wondrous and very difficult to describe. It is almost as if everything becomes possible. There is so much potential for dynamism locked up in human beings that it is like an unstoppable force of nature when released. Praise be to the officer or NCO who releases it.
Every pic was 100% taken and published based on feedback from a highly paid propaganda/"marketing" outfit employed by Wagner.
Viewed in this light - it is not actually that clear that Prigozhin was even necessarily brave - just that he has better advisors than numb-nuts westerners who are continuously caught lying about "being under fire" - Bryant Gumbel, Hilary Clinton, etc etc being prominent examples:
I think you have highlighted why we see no "Big Arrow" offensives. Neither side has sufficient forces with the necessary training and practice, but the West forced an attempt at one anyway.
From Russian military experts (real experts, not TV ones; there couple communities on telegram filled to the brim with current/recent professionals): there will be no big arrows offensives unless something extraordinary happens. You will only see these if it's safe, when Ukraine can't attack it, basically. Sparsity of front is not a bug - it's a feature. With modern ISR large formations is just big fat targets.
Here's what Brits currently seem to think of Russia's capabilities:
"About the Western perception of the experience of military operations in Ukraine and how it is influenced by the prevailing ideological attitudes in NATO countries. The most striking example of the latter was given by Ilya Kramnik, who analyzed the article of the latest issue of the magazine of the armed forces of Great Britain.
The author of the article claims that the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or the Armed Forces of Ukraine are "2-3 generations" behind what a modern war should look like. Therefore, it is not necessary to draw conclusions from everything you have seen: after all, British intelligence with target designation is better and easily compensates for a multiple of the enemy's ammunition consumption."
Excellent write up once again
+1
Thank you Simplicius for a balanced, well though out and thorough article.
Also congratulations on mearshimer referencing you in his latest piece multiple times in his sources.
Thanks, I didn't see it, I'll go check it out
You are under 24 & 27 at the list of sources at the end. Pretty cool imo.
Can you send the link please.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/bound-to-lose
Thank you.
Armed forces always reflect the culture and sociology of the society the come from. Westerners are more used to being led by a managerial class that is detached from reality and does not make any sacrifices, thus the western officer/NCO system where an officer never enters the barracks or the trenches. In Russia it's different at least to some degree. I mean, Putin himself spent his childhood and youth in a Leningrad kommunalka (St. Petersburg still has them, BTW), slugging it out with other lads in the backyards. Which western leader has a similar background?
George W. Bush with his totally real Texas accent spent his youth russlin' cattle, killing rattlesnakes, spittin' tobacco, and... going to Yale. Just like any true salt of the earth American.
Yes, I agree. It's why the most common saying in the NCO Corps is "Don't call me 'Sir,' I work for a living."
I can't speak about the rest of NATO, but the junior officers in the US army are responsible for platoon level training. The platoon sergeant has plenty of input of course, but in the end the platoon leader is ultimately responsible for the success or failure. The same for company level. In the army shit rolls downhill and uphill at the same time. A big enough squad failure can result in every officer in the squads chain-of-comnand being relieved to the battalion level.
Very interesting write-up. Well worth reading.
"But Russian units have such things down to company level or smaller, which grants the company much more autonomy as they have all their own information about the targets/objectives at their fingertips. They don’t have to call up to division command to get ISR data and subsequent “permission” to engage. They have their own drone teams telling them exactly where the enemy is, and can then designate their own approach on how to dislodge or assault him."
The irony is thick. Russians have always been accused of rigid central command structures demanding complete dependence of the tactical squads on central command for every decision, thus making their tactical manoeuvres slow and unwieldy, when in fact it seems the opposite - the American squad leader apparently has to request support centrally and wait for a decision for permission to engage.
We live in a world of lies and obfuscations. Virtually everything we think we know about the world, we don't. It falls to the individual to take the initiative to learn as he won't be taught.
I do want to caution that this is not uniformly the case in every single unit. There have been persistent complaints from some Russian sectors of the complete opposite--that their 'call to trigger pull' time was so long it allowed AFU units to escape because some form of divisional command wasn't giving authorization. That said, many of such complaints came from more marginal or volunteer style units, and their 'overwatch' from higher command is stricter for obvious reasons.
The more elite and proven of a unit, the more they'll typically have in house, and have less authorization chains and things of that nature.
Militaries aren't uniform, there are a lot of differences in various unit types but Russian units, as a generality, *typically* have much more brigade/divisional level assets under company/battalion control than the U.S. equivalents. This is a fact confirmed by military experts like Dr. Philip Karber in the West Point lecture of his I usually post.
And the non-uniformity will occur at all levels within Russian forces. Some Generals will emphasise initiative down to the assault group level, some will micro-manage. Results will vary.
What works versus what doesn't will have to assessed from the bottom up, and promulgated from the top down.
Thus we *should* see poor performing Generals sidelined...
"There have been persistent complaints from some Russian sectors of the complete opposite--that their 'call to trigger pull' time was so long it allowed AFU units to escape because some form of divisional command wasn't giving authorization."
The historical conflict that most closely resembles this war is the American Civil War. There are numerous parallels, not the least of which is the need felt by Ukrainian military leaders, very much in the position of Robert E. Lee, that they must attack because they cannot win a long war of attrition.
Another close parallel to the American Civil War is the similarity between Putin's position and that of Abraham Lincoln with respect to their militaries. Lincoln tried and failed multiple times to find army and corps commanders who would proceed on the offensive. At the brigade level, the Union army was willing, despite horrendous casualties, to attack in most cases, but Lincoln's core and army commanders always had some excuse not to do so: the troops were not fully trained; the enemy was too numerous; some logistical issue; and so forth. Lincoln felt the pain of the war deeply and wanted to stop the bloodshed. He knew that the only way to do so was to attack, but he had to go through how many corps and army-level commanders before finding Sherman and Grant?
Putin needs to find his Sherman and Grant and put an end to this thing before the neo-con lunatics in Washington find some reason to expand the war into a Third World War. The neo-con lunatics are not Palmerston and cannot be counted upon to exercise the same restraint that he did.
The parallels are enticing but the South did not have NATO(the largest, richest and ostensibly the most well armed military alliance on earth) circling all around the North waiting for an opportunity of enough weakness, to pounce. Imagine if European armies and navies circled all around the Union. They would choose a strategy of force depletion too.
You said it: '... a world of lies and obfuscations...' From the very people supposed to protect us from them
Strange how USA uses English language in the polar opposite: Patriot Act, Child Protection Services, World Health Organization, Operation Enduring Freedom.
Orwellian Double Speak.
...and the dreaded "democratic" party.
The best strategic insight and commentary for the moment. Russian army has come to age, adapting and learning straight from the frontlines. I don’t know but a lot of similarities between independent Russian units and British SAS, got some similar training 50 years back, now completely outdated and also canon fodder.
I think it is even worse on the US side than you think: I do believe lawyers have to be involved in arty and air strike decisions as well. At least in Iraq/Afghanistan. Not sure how long they'd keep that "feature" in an actual war. But it beggars belief to think about the Russian forces in Syria having any lawyers on hand when they're fixing to waste some ISIS dude.
You're right, the famous thread I've quoted several times: https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1523791073994506240
It goes into detail how JAG officers had to vet each trigger pull, putting loop times to 20+ minutes to an hour for a target
Ohhh, and I notice that thread references the old crowdstrike BS of "Russian Hackers" having given Hohol artillerists malware in the GIS ARTA kits. From what I remember it turned out crowdstrike created a web page, created some malware, uploaded the malware to the webpage, and then downloaded the malware like 9 times. Then they made their "Russian Hacker" claims. Crowdstrike did the same thing in the Georgia gubernatorial election.
You make the observation that the west in general, and its ruling institutions in particular, are disconnected from reality. I wonder how much they are captured by their own black propaganda. The best lies are the ones you believe yourself after all.
I think this is not necessarily a fair comparison.
Afghanistan and Iraq (after the initial conquest) were not wars of peer combat or even conquest - they were occupations. In these scenarios - the stated objective of "hearts and minds" is a legitimate factor. Obviously this objective failed, but the attempt was, at a minimum on paper, worthwhile.
I agree. Of course in a total/existential war scenario, JAG officers aren't going to be meddling and U.S. artillery will shell whatever they want, but in a truly 'total war' environment Russia would be doing the same. Despite their artillery/ooda loop advantages, Russia is still fighting with kid gloves due to the same 'hearts and minds' and "brother war" constraints in Ukraine
The lawyers were political cover. If a wedding celebration or school children needed to be taken out a drone strike would be ordered, reviewed and quickly rubber stamped by JAG.
I
Very informative article - I’m surprised by the honesty of McBeth who usually operates as a full blown propagandist in the most ludicrous way possible.
I think a lot of people in the West especially Europeans cannot fathom the sheer vastness of the field of operations in Eastern Ukraine. A full on centralized command on the operational level would be almost impossible to do. I firmly believe the Russian Army is the best in the world right now and would defeat a head on NATO assault no matter what they throw their way.
I got issues with McBeth. His claims of being a "Heavy Anti-Armor Weapons Infantryman" (that's the proper nomenclature of the 11H (Eleven Hotel as we called it) Military Occupational Specialty or MOS as it's commonly called) is sketchy. It sounds petty AF BUT: I was an 11H10 with an E9 modifier (M901 ITOW Vehicle) from 1990 thru 1996 when I was involuntarily reclassed when the MOS started it's downward spiral. All TOW Gunners (Tube Launched Optically Tracked, Wire Guided Missiles) or the BGM-71B TOW2B all 11Hs either got reclassified into another MOS (job) or became 11B catchalls. Same thing happened with 11M (Bradley Crewman) Me? I got screwed into being a 19K M1A1 Tanker...
He also claims to have been stationed in Germany in Hohenfels with the OPFOR as a TOW Gunner. That would be 1/4 INF CSC (Combat Support Company) where we had ONE TOW Platoon with between 28-35 of us Hotels in the Platoon.
Funny how I don't remember him AT ALL
And I can name almost the entire platoon to this day...
And if -I- don't know them, then someone I know had to have known him
But funny, he's a Cypher on the TOW side of life...
It's a EXCEEDINGLY SMALL Group that had a TRUE 11H MOS back in the day. My Facebook groups, all of them never heard of this guy. To the point I got a guy doing a check 'cos I think this guy is a fantasist and liar. That and I CAN NOT find a single reference to ANY unit he served in... like HIGHLY Unusual for a 20 Year Man not to have -some sort- of Unit affiliation that they make mention of... him? Not a one.
Me? 1/4 CSC OPFOR and Dco 2/187th of the 101st RAKKASAN! baby.
HIGHLY Suspect.
I agree.
As a career retired E8 Infantry Anti-Tanker who trained on MILAN, having operated it in every environment from the high Arctic, North Western Europe, Southern Africa, Central Asia & the Middle East...from rotary aviation...amphibious craft & all that lies in between - including the intimate support of an Armoured Sqn of MBTs whilst we were mounted in Austrian made soft skinned vehicles in the sand box on operations.
I am positive this guy McBeth is a bulshitter.
I’d go as far as to put him up there with Elliot Higgins from bellingcat .... sorry Bellendcat.
There is a smell of a three letter agency about him. I’ve never seen any SNCO wear a dressing gown before.
From a retired grey haired E8 Door Kicker.
Per Mare Per Terram
How bout the other guy who served in similar positions at same time as you: https://twitter.com/secretsqrl123 He claims to have had similar things you describe happening where he got shifted around from Bradleys to many other positions
https://www.youtube.com/@allera44/videos
All of his MOS's listed show as 'older' so to speak. Unlike McDouche, That guy? Seems legit. His first job, 16D was a Vulcan ADA (Air Defense Artillery) guy, which was (back in the day) a M163 Gun Carriage... an M113 with a variant of the M61 20mm Gatling gun? cannon? (LOL) mounted on it. The US DotMil phased those out in favor of the Bradley 'Linebacker' Tracks, which replaced the standard 2-shot TOW Launcher on the right side pod with a 4-shit Stinger Package. His MOS for THAT during the transition was as a Senior Sergeant, so probably an E-6.
As with most guys getting older, and 'later' in their career, he (probably) wanted an "indoor work/no heavy lifting job" and went into intel. 96B was the old designator for Intel Analyst, (which is what it was when I was in, as you stated) which now, according to the goolag, is a 35F
I had a Platoon Sergeant who had spent 80% (like 22 years) in Special Operations, to include the no-shit Delta Team(s). Pulled some strings to become a Supply (Logistics) NCO and retired a 1stSGT after 25 years as a MOS 92Y. I ended up (due to an injury) doing the same thing, but with no 'official modification' to my MOS. I was still a 19K BUT
I OJT'ed (on-the-job-trained) and worked as a Supply guy for the remainder of my career after being injured on the tank (crushed my spine... tanks are large, heavy and dangerous AF even to the users BTW)
As far as the "Secret Squirrel Guy's" videos? REEKS of Propaganda. Runs a "Museum" called the Temple Museum of Modern Warfare. That's juuust outside Fort Hood or whatever the hell they call it now (I was there in 1998 at 1/12CAV) From the looks of his earliest videos, he concentrated mostly on Airsoft games, and then 'stuff' that he'd gotten from the DotMil and the waste behind it. I don't -think- he's at ALL a 'current' analyst in the respect is he -might- have been one 'way back in the day' but his whole 'slava krain' (intentional misspelling) push gives me "someone is paying him" vibes.
Add on that he hadn't posted ANY Videos up until 4/5 months ago. Up until then, he primarily spent from 6 years ago hammering the US DotMil for "fraud, waste and abuse" I.E. misspending tax dollars. Then, his last video BEFORE becoming a Ukrainian Intel Expert was two years ago. SO with the hammering on the fraud, waste and abuse, SOMEONE obviously knew of him, beyond that, everything is conjecture, but at least that guy appears to be somewhat legit, but 'dated' for his real-time intel, unless he's got someone "feeding" him.
Love the stack... keep up the good work.
Isn't falsely impersonating an army NCO/Officer a crime in the USA?
Couldn't he be sued buy a private person such as yourself for example?
It's called stolen valor... not sure if it's a statute where he's at, however
I got my people digging now
Naming and Shaming is a HUGE part of the Cancel Culture these days... depending on if he's a paid asset will show if he's doing this with 'sanction'... if he is, then I don't expect much traction to cancelling his fat punchable ass
It’s only illegal if you do it for monetary gain, IIRC.
No.
Thanks for that background info. I never thought much of him anyway since his analysis is so objectively ridiculous most of the time. He comes across as more of a fat soy boy Bread Tube grifter broadcasting from his mothers basement.
Yeah, Macbeth recently did a video "debunking" Col Macgregor's interview with Tucker Carlson. He tried to pass himself off as a "neutral" observer To the Ukraine war and said he works with a contracted intel outfit. He then states that Russia's main objective is to take Kiev, which obviously is not the case. When talking about precision weapons, he mentions Russia has the Krasnopol but then says he has never seen it used. Some intel outfit this guy works for, there are dozens of videos on open source showing Krasnopol usage.
Well, you see, if they show a Krasnopol round being loaded into a gun and fired, that's not confirmed to be on the front line, they could have faked it on a shooting range or with a fake Krasnopol somewhere. And if they show a Krasnopol directly hitting a designated target, then it produces the same explosive effect as a normal 152 mm that was a lucky shot. There is no way to record unedited video of the laser targeting, loading, firing, and impact of the round, so the standard of proof that would "satisfy" his requirements simply can't exist.
So yes, he is correct in claiming there's no irrefutable evidence of it being used, he's got an audience to please, so he remains willfully blind.
He's skirting the edges. He's trying to obfuscate the situation while not overtly lying. That's the most you're going to get from him. But at least he isn't lying to your face.
"But at least he isn't lying to your face."
He is if the fucker was a NG Part-Time-Wannabe TOW Gunner...
Think about his options: He can either just lie by omission, by just framing it through a biased lense, which makes him seem at least somewhat "impartial" to most people on both sides, or he can give unbiased analisys an be called a pro-Russian Putin puppet by 99% of his audience.
It's like a prayer or a magic chant you have to say before saying anything: "Ukraine good, Zelenesky good, Ukrainians amazing, Putin bad, Russia bad, Russians incompetent"
A great write up again. I think these types of articles are more enjoyable than the meat and potatoes facts of the day sitreps you put together (not that they are more/less important). The evolution of an army during war time has to be peak human performance as a species. In their own way the Ukrainians have shown an impressive adaptability as well.
I'm sure you don't have the info, but it would be just as fascinating to see how MoD is handling rotating and reshuffling their growing experienced NCOs and officers. They must be sprinkling them into the new armies being constructed right now. That sort of human capital logistics must be an art of it's own.
QUESTIONS: Thank you for collecting & presenting these videos & texts, which show great vulnerability for both offensive & defensive platoon privates, officers & NCOs, even to a leader such as Prigozhin.
A DIALOGUE CHALLENGE TO THE "GATTLING-GUN" MILITARY MINDED?
Note Well: I respect Russia is obligated in a humane way to protect the 15 million Ukrainians who speak Russian as their first language from ongoing violent putsch Ukraine attacks. I deeply respect Russia's commitment as a witness to the Minsk Accords.
HUMANE RESPONSIBILITY
Aren't we also responsible for convening & scheduling Both-sides-Now, Equal-time, Recorded & Published Dialogues as a contest of National Will both within & between all our citizens, organizations & nations, when we are effectively at war with another?
As a Canadian, I'm shocked at the level of cowardice in our nations as citizens, when we are arming, training & financing Ukrainians as well as providing logistic supports. There is effectively no national dialogue among citizens, nor our Oligarch $ captured finance, media, religion, institutions, governments, education, military-industrial, Legislative, Judicial & Pharma-med COMPLEX. Have we been reduced to heartless programmed robots?
Given that;
a) mostly young men are putting their lives on the line to much death (50,000 Russian soldiers killed?) & injury (150,000 Russian soldiers with life-long injury?).
b) goading a perceived enemy to responsible action is more likely through information, intellectual engagement, intellectually engaged populations & as well as economic opportunity.
1) Why aren't there such as Russian Dialogue/Debate teams challenging the west Canada, USA, Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, captured Germany etc. on their reasons for ongoing aggression in Ukraine? Do such debate trainees & spokespersons exist in either camp? Wouldn't such a heightened sphere of dialogue influence on populations, governments & corporations be more effective than most military actions
2) Why aren't their intense Both-sided, Equal-time, Recorded & Published 'Debates' (French 'de' = 'undo' + 'bate' = 'the-fight') where the honour & reputation of each nation is put on the line, as the logics & heart of the issue are discussed? Does soldier unquestioning submission to authority, not enable him to be honest about what he thinks & feels? Or does the soldier abandon his independent thinking & feeling for the sake of surviving a year of military duty?
3) Instead of spending trillions of dollars, as the Oligarch owned USA has spent from the Orange Revolution to Maidan to the present day SVO, why are not even a few million spent on 'intellectual' (Latin 'inter' = 'between' + 'legere' = 'to-choose') engagement. Does the military & soldier have so little connection to the actual people who are taxed or enslaved to produce this expendable wealth?
4) Are mostly men less afraid of being so easily gunned down, as an easy way out, compared with actually having to use their intellectual wit & humane responsibility in dialogue having to stand behind what one says & does?
Mohandas Gandhi stated, "Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Non-violence & cowardice go ill together. I can imagine a fully armed man to be at heart a COWARD."
Both-sides-now, Equal-time, Recorded & Published Dialogue, part of all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') COUNCIL PROCESS, once a dialectic-right to raise issues positive for agreement or for Conflict Resolution. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/d-participatory-structure/1-both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues
CONVERTING SOCIAL MEDIA FROM 'MONO' TO 'DIALOGUE' . Why is there not a debate interest & process button not available on Social Media articles? https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/d-participatory-structure/1-communication-converting-social-media-from-mono-to-dialogue-libya
So many "why nots".
And answers that are both simple and complicated. We humans are still characterized predominantly by our biology. We are mammals, and more specifically we are omnivores and thus opportunists. Our offsprings need a long time of being taken care off. Thus we, and the human female particularly so, try to gather reserves, establish security and seek comfort. This will not change very much, unless the looming creation of a technically enhanced human being evolves to a state of leaving biology behind and, one way or the other, only machines are left.
Up to this point in time, those traits we find in the human species that result from our social/cultural evolution are rather superfical and malleable compared to the directly biologically rooted characteristics. Of course I'm simplifying the whole matter, rest assured that I'm aware of it.
However, the ruling elites have gathered a wealth of experience about the human condition going back many generations. Now they even can rely on quantifiable results of sciences such as Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Ethology and so on. The ancient science of Demagogy has branched out into advertising and PR. All in all "the rulers" have EVOLVED AND ADAPTED. They know how to control "us" and how to usurp grassroot movements or to even create such movements for us.
Sovial engineering is real, and if you haven't already taken a closer look at the trans- movement or better to say trans-cult you should do it NOW. Whereas other (pseudo-) religious groups have focused on convincing the "heathen" and "pagans" woth the goal to assimilate them, the trans-cult is not only doing that. This movement is utilized to train the average Westerner with his/her natural sciences based education to talk and act against his/her knowledge, to normalize constant self censoring.
Since every movement in society evokes a counter movement, a truth backed up by empirical evidence throughout history, children are now becoming the main target of those who use the trans-cult as a tool of social engineering, especially in parts of the US. Why else the efforts there to severe the parents from oversight over their children's curriculums, even criminalising parents who simply want to know what's going on in school? And without kidding, people who defend this forced distancing of parents from the "education" of their children use terms like "freedom". Well, of course, this term has proven to be a verified Wunderwaffe during the Cold War and up to date.
Hi German Woodworker, This mammal has been a vegetarian for 51 years & vegan for 35 years. My son is 23 years old & breast (mammary gland) fed for 2 1/2 years.
Coming from lower Oligarch families, I'll disagree that these often material, energy, status & artificial drug, like the Experimental, EUA mRNA addicted folks are quite the unquestioning submissives, ready to be sacrificed. Like the Elvis Frat Boys & Girls generation, they can be pretty mean to folks & with LGBTQ to themselves. There is big money behind Trans as well as capture of the whole sick institutionalized system. Oligarchy is a pathological-disease of 7000 years with a billion people killed & genocided, but its all that the institutions like fake 'education' (L 'educare' = 'to-lead-forth-from-within'), fake 'religion' (L 'religio' = 'to-relate' not 'indoctrinate') & fake 'media' (L 'medium' = 'middle'as in 'both-sides presented') have ever taught, preached or broadcast. Fake 'overpopulation' is really 'misanthropy' meaning hatred of humanity. 'Indigenous' (L 'self-generating') Natural systems recycle everything, If all someone does is poos & pees in a Biodigestion methanizing toilet, then they have contributed. In 1500 Tenochtitlan (Mexico city) had 350,000 people living on an artificial island on the edge of Lake Texcoco connected by bridges to the shores. When Cortez arrives at Tenochtitlan in 1519, he can't believe his eyes of a city larger than any in Europe with waters surrounding it still very clean. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/b-ecological-design/5-bio-digestion-toilets
One can understand the self-&-nature-defeating psychological fixation we have in preserving our dysfunctional artificial system at all costs in fear, dread & submission to the oligarchy which has ruled much of humanity brutally for 7000 years since Babylon. Many have adversarial beliefs against nature & people as deficits in overpopulation. We ignore the balance of non-consumptive work & play, which children & just hanging out with friends, freely provide. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/e-history/7-work-play-overpopulation
Being a vegetarian/vegan doesn't make you an herbivore.
Hi Scott, The goal isn't vegan (all vegetable) or herbivore (herbs?), but optimal health in harmony with my body-ecology, the biosphere & life itself. I do eat significant amounts of mostly wild herbs every day. I'm a cultural learner, learning vegetarian diet from living with 45,000 Russian Doukhobor & other vegetarians, being an active organizer in the BC & Quebec Natural-Food-Co-op networks of the 1970s & 80s as well as gardening & cultivating Polyculture-Orchards over these five decades. Its worked out for me & family, eliminated my consumption of animal products (except for the inevitable hidden insects in the herbs I harvest, lessened my reliance on petroleum based agriculture greatly as well as greatly lessened exploitation of foreign peoples & their lands. The real goal is aligning with the kind awareness & power of life. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/b-ecological-design/2-responsible-compassionate-health
Being vegan is unhealthy and anti-evolution. But i respect your right to do and be so.
Wordy Weasel, To prove your point I died as a vegetarian 51 years ago & again as a vegan 36 years ago. When I planted 3000 trees in one day, bicycled from Los Angeles California to Castlegar, British Columbia, X-country skied across mountain tops, recently bicycled from Montreal to Aylmer-Gatineau Quebec, coordinated Eco-Montreal Tiohtiake Geographic Information System Green Map & Tetsionitiotiakon Mohawk, Wendat & Algonquian Placename GIS Mapping, walked 12 kilometres & lake swam a few days ago, I guess I'm just unaware of how unevolved I am. Thanks for your innovative redefinition of both 'health' & 'evolution'. With your definitions, what is it like to "walk a mile in your shoes"? https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/5-tiohtiake-mohawk-placenames
At the macro level, no Canadian elected official from any political party advocated for the Minsk 1-2 Accords. It would have given Ukraine the same bilingual federalized system of government that Canada has used for 150 years. Given Canada's historic role as a peacemaker in many external conflicts, the government's silence there was notable.
The reasons are obvious, the politically active Ukrainian diaspora here is predominantly from the western regions. The Russian diaspora in Canada are not at all unified or organized, something that is discussed regularly in our circles.
Opport Knocks, Thank you for reference to Canada's reneging on Minsk 1-2 as a reflection of the bilingualism we have come to expect. I've been involved in the Canadian Political process for decades: Green (Candidate & Shadow Cabinet), NDP (VP Riding Executive), Liberal (Discussion-groups) & Conservative (Election support) parties. The top-down political process of staff, offices, advertising, research, records, endless meetings, etc. is very time-consuming & expensive (beyond that openly acknowledged), so easily captured by Oligarch hidden (Campaign Finance, Advertising, Networking etc.) moneys, in all of the above parties. Hidden private meetings, associations, financial support in inner circles & influencers is the rule along with Censorship & Cancel Culture strategies, not a market-place of initiative & ideas.
While VP of my NDP Riding, I interviewed nine of the NDP Leadership candidates about their 100% voting for the Libyan 2011 No-Fly-Zone, hence Canadian Airforce 23% of all bombing sorties against Libyan infrastructure & people. I was met with a deathly silence & short diversionary distancing. Given that; I have 3 friends/contacts who had personally met with Muammar Gaddafi, I knew that the CSIS / CIA hired typically foreign mercenary hired so-called Libyan ISIS opposition was flaky at best. CSIS works with such as CUSO, SUCO to train students (family) as assets for foreign destabilization through such as introducing Cell-Phone wireless communication infrastructure as captured controlled media to create 'buzz' within populations.
Following a very prominent NDP hyper media 'Orange-Wave' (WAY beyond NDP member finances) election campaign & Jack Layton's victory, the next Oligarch required-step was NDP MP voting en masse for the No-Fly-Zone. The Oligarch issue was Gaddafi's Gold Backed Dinar for Africa as well as his support for Palestinians, a double no-no. I come from mixed Christian & Jewish roots being familiar with global manipulations. Balanced Politics should be rooted as a subset in traditional 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generating') Economic Democracy. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
Canada's English-French bilingualism is really an oligarch partnership for invasion, genocide, colonization & rape of resources. I'm completely bilingual with French & English ancestry, but shocked at how little either camp know about the 1st Nations, which we continue to genocide so ignorantly. 1st Nation languages are the voice of the biosphere with instructions about how to live here. Here's Mohawk, Wendat & Algonquian Placename mapping, which I helped coordinate in 1997-2001. As an ecological & social-economy baseline this knowledge is extremely helpful. Ukraine will do well to unearth its ancient Slavic roots with the immense productive Polyculture Orchards, rivers, lakes & streams, widespread 3000 years ago before its successive waves of Assyrian, Greek, Roman Oligarch colonization. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/5-tiohtiake-mohawk-placenames & https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/a-home/5-mapping-ecological-indigenous-heritage
1971 to 80 I lived among Russian Doukhobor, German Mennonite, English Quaker & American pacifist communities of the West Kootenay region of BC. The past 30 years, I live in a Multihome-Dwelling-Complex of apartment & townhouses on 40 Acres with 3500 people including 450 Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian, Kazakhstan & other Slav speakers with whom I engage with regularly as friends.
Your compassion and objectives are laudable but are discounting the reality that leadership in the West is not in any way interested in any form of feedback from its people that doesn't conform to said leadership's goals.
Western leadership's goals are clearly not about any form of sober analysis based strategy - they are actually about MIC enrichment, trying to damage/destroy Russia, domestic politics and self enrichment.
Clue, Agree with your analysis, but we're not here to cry the blues, retrospectively on Oligarchy's 7000 year 'exogenous' (L. 'other-generated') colonial demise for humanity. We're here to re-empower humanity & our collective intelligence. To successfully capture public narrative in the psychology & neurology of human mind, & hence systems recapture, one employs dialectics (both-sided-dialogue). Human mind constructs are based in contrasting & comparing facts, feelings, views, smells, movement etc. The human eyes, ears, nose, hands, body movement with legs etc. are all paired for this dialectic reason. i.e. It takes both wings left & right to fly. Each eye sees in 2-D & its only within the neural cortex that both discordant images create an assemblage of 3-D, along with dialectic inputs from all the senses. Its time for humanity to rebuild its 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') cultural fractal Economic Memory with bodily autonomy. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/d-participatory-structure/3-economic-memory
Laudable goals again, but my view is that change isn't some magical movie fairy tale.
Change comes when things get bad enough that enough people act.
Nor do I share your view that "capturing public narrative" is possible just through "superior dialectic". The reality is that most people don't pay any attention to anything above what is right in front of them - at least until they are forced to by obvious societal failure.
That time is getting closer but isn't here yet - and all the dialectic in the world isn't going to accelerate it IMO.
But good luck trying.
"...your view that "capturing public narrative" is possible just through "superior dialectic". The reality is that most people don't pay any attention to anything above what is right in front of them"
I spent 10 days pig shooting on a vast sheep and cattle station once. We spent a couple of days of days helping the grazier with the sheep dipping. The sheep never listen, or do what one wants. They have to be scared in to a certain direction by a scary dog.
Humans are the same.
I think calling regular people, sheep, is highly inaccurate and unfair.
Making a living/raising children/taking care of their families - there's nothing wrong with that. The entire point of living in an advanced society is that you don't need to be constantly defending against literal threats to life and livelihood.
The fact that this is becoming necessary in the West is a tribute to just how pathetic Western leadership is - they have broken what did not need to be fixed.
Except when they also manufacture crisis from thin air
Good one. Thank you. About the only real 'technical' essay I've read on the subject of this conflict and it made good reading.
More of this would be good indeed.
We are - or I am anyway - sick and tired of all the 'high level' 'analysis' of the conflict. Telling what tactic is current and what the overall strategy is etc. All of which over the last two years has proven to be totally unreliable.
They just don't know. And, I think, cannot know.
But some detailed 'low level' analysis similar to this essay is surely well within the reach of those with some knowledge and expertise. Some backwards looks at actions that took place and how they went and why they went. That sort of thing perhaps.
There's many areas of course.
A favourite bugbear of mine for a long time has been 'bombardment' - or the apparent lack of it.
All the videos we get show one or occasionally two vehicles destroyed by pin point shots. That's not artillery in the classic sense. Dumb rounds. It is not GRAD fire, is it?
And we see that one vehicle go up and all the others apparently escape! And what's more we see troops disembark and scatter like ants all over the place. That's a successful 'insertion' I believe.
Why was there no bombardment of anti-personnel rounds at the point of disembarkment? Especially when there's been repeated use of exactly the same place for the same purpose?
When I say 'bombardment' I mean of course multiple simultaneous strikes by artillery pieces. Maybe two or three batteries firing as one. But minimum one battery.
I have never seen it. I thought it would be the thing I would most often see.
The nearest I have come to it was today when I saw for the first time a 'salvo', they called it, perhaps a better word than my 'bombardment' which I realise doesn't necessarily mean more than one round at a time, fired off. I didn't see it land. I've still never seen one land. But this was wonderfully impressive just seeing it fired, frightening to see it launched, terrifying to be at the other end I imagine.
I'd love some detailed 'analysis' of that aspect for instance. I am heartily sick of the Ritters et al and their monotous deliveries of the same uninformative messages.
Here's that video if you haven't seen it:
https://t.me/CyberspecNews/41044
There's a few reasons for the vehicle escapes you're talking about:
1. in many cases the footage is heavily edited together and actually depicts a much wider timescale than it may seem. Many of the vehicles are coming and going over hours and shows a dynamic/shifting battle, where sometimes Russian forces have repositioned, ran out of ammo, etc., or any number of other vicissitudes
2. what you're often seeing is engagements between relatively small counterparties. So the type of huge bombardment you may be envisioning doesn't exist because in the particular corner of the battlefield that the drone footage is capturing, it may be a small vehicle platoon against just 1 Russian artillery battery or less. Ukraine is a gigantic country over which is spread out a relatively tiny force. I.e. the doctrinal force density used in ww1/ww2 etc. is innumerably higher than what you see here. There are brigades holding 20-30km swaths when entire divisions should be deployed. That's to say, the battlefield is very 'sparse' in terms of density--there are very few units per square kilometer compared to what doctrine recommends. Half the time it's just squads/platoons vs. other squads/platoons.
3. Footage is so heavily edited it's really difficult to determine time/space/events/or make any other real conclusions. Artillery fired from tens of kilometers away can take as long as several minutes to fly through the air and arrive at the target. Sometimes a moving convoy is out of sight long before further shots can even arrive.
Sometimes you'll see a guided artillery round like Krasnopol or its mortar sibling Kitolov-2M precisely hit a target but those are in much shorter supply, then other less accurate rounds may follow.
There are rarely gigantic 'salvos' and bombardments done simply because Ukraine rarely bunches up enough forces to necessitate it. The day you see armored columns full of 500 tanks in one place, then you'll see Russia position dozens of MLRS trucks and launch massive salvos at them. But Ukraine sends small per direction a few vehicles at a time and rarely more.
Thank you for taking the trouble to spell all that out. It was kind of you.
I well recognise the 'troop density' element having swotted up on it recently, or begun to.
Associated with it, of course, is the question then of 'local densities'. There not being what we might call 'standard' density along the whole line but objective realities still obtaining 'standard densities' for the occasion will be needed at pressure points.
Which would to me indicate we're bound to see much shuffling of units. Which in turn would seem to indicate a higher 'risk quotient' as you simply have to take the risk of moving columns hither and thither and congregating at assembly areas.
Which in turn would seem to predicate a need for special attention towards that feature so that specialised personnel or units perhaps seek out these signs of movement and learn to predict assembly areas and quickly assemble 'volley' or 'bombardment' capabilities to deal with them.
Which then would seem to suggest an increased incidence of that kind of action.
Which brings me back where I started: I don't see it.
Consider that ISR works both ways, RuAF can't bunch up artillery and MRLS because it would be fed to Ukrainians through intel and then they'd get hit too.
Consider that 'volleys' or multiple unit bombardments don't need to be bunched up at all. It's the target they need to share. Not the shooting position.
I think all militaries are built on their past history and traditions, and struggle to change fast enough, even when the pressure of war compels them to do so.
I have a good pal who served in the UK Royal Marines and obviously we discuss matters military from time to time. He said that in the British military only really the Paras and Marines were trained as aggressive "assault forces", the remainder primarly had a defensive orientation. This goes back to the Cold War of course where the operational posture was largely defensive, but is actually engrained in the British Army from way back. I doubt the USA is much different and its leading assualt units will be the Marines and Airborne, same with France with the Legion, Marines and Airborne. Germany always was highly geared to attack and counter attack but have one functioning Brigade just now. However the point is that most armies have very few actual "assault" units compared to the larger mass of troops. This is not to say the majority cannot "assault", just institutionally they are not geared up for the aggressive tempo and violence of that sort of operation.
This history also explains to an extent the difference between NATO and Russia in how it views the roles and balance between NCO and officiers. The Germans again take this to extremes and certainly in the Kaiser's army and the Wehrmacht, NCOs more often than not commanded platoons and officers were to be found at company level and above - in contrast to say US and UK practice.
The Cold War Soviet Army had to rely on conscripted and under-trained NCO;s because that was really all it had, and thus Officers were forced to be employed in larger numbers and undertake roles that would have been performed by NCOs in a western army. Being an NCO in the Soviet Army was no fun. The modern Russia army cannot in the space of a few decades transform itself to a western model, even if it thought hat was a good idea. It appears to recognise the need for a more experienced and professional NCO cadre but to an extent is constrained by its past.
Whose system works best? That is really the wrong question in my view. It is like saying the Wehrmacht was on a man for man and unit for unit basis superior to the Red Army in WW2 - and this was the case until at least 1944. However it was the Red Army that raised their flag on the Reichstag in 1945. To a point war is about exploiting your enemies weaknesses and mitigating your own. It is foolish for western commentators to claim that the NATO system is superior when it ignores the overall conditions in which armies are fighting. It might be a valid claim but then if Russia needs to build up 10 divisions in a year - which they have said they are doing - then maybe the Russia approach is correct.
Much written about the war in the West is ill informed and contains more than a small dose of anti-Russian racism. That is, the Russians are doing things differently because they are stupid and not as smart as we are. Sometimes this ubermensch attitude is hidden by a so called analysis, at others not at all. back in the day NATO feared the Soviet Army. I'd argue that sometime since 1989 the current crop of NATO leaders and commentators seem to have developed the belief that NATO actually fought and defeated the Soviets, and this has led to a strange superiority complex that was not evident back in the day.
Managerial and technical skills can be taught in school--as can the basic principles of leadership. Actual leadership, if it is learned at all, is learned in the real world--by watching, intelligently, how effective leaders operate. It takes a combination of intelligence, humility, instinct and humaneness--on top of managerial/technical competence. There is a special magic in well-led military units. It's something that is wondrous and very difficult to describe. It is almost as if everything becomes possible. There is so much potential for dynamism locked up in human beings that it is like an unstoppable force of nature when released. Praise be to the officer or NCO who releases it.
Those pics made me kind of miss Priogozhin. What a character.
I don't.
Every pic was 100% taken and published based on feedback from a highly paid propaganda/"marketing" outfit employed by Wagner.
Viewed in this light - it is not actually that clear that Prigozhin was even necessarily brave - just that he has better advisors than numb-nuts westerners who are continuously caught lying about "being under fire" - Bryant Gumbel, Hilary Clinton, etc etc being prominent examples:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-williams-admits-that-his-story-of-coming-under-fire-while-in-iraq-was-false/2015/02/04/d7fe32d0-acc0-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/23/recalling-hillary-clintons-claim-of-landing-under-sniper-fire-in-bosnia/
Thank you Simplicius for this analysis.
I think you have highlighted why we see no "Big Arrow" offensives. Neither side has sufficient forces with the necessary training and practice, but the West forced an attempt at one anyway.
From Russian military experts (real experts, not TV ones; there couple communities on telegram filled to the brim with current/recent professionals): there will be no big arrows offensives unless something extraordinary happens. You will only see these if it's safe, when Ukraine can't attack it, basically. Sparsity of front is not a bug - it's a feature. With modern ISR large formations is just big fat targets.
Another home run. Thanks again.
I don't know if the PLA still does it, but assault troops always elected their NCOs when Mao was CiC.
Of course, Mao himself was elected CiC by the PLA itself, so that may have colored his view of military democracy.