War

printer said:

Previous wars point to Putin's tactics in Ukraine
From wars in Chechnya to Syria, Vladimir Putin has overseen military campaigns that have inflicted vast and often indiscriminate damage on civilian infrastructure, raising fears he might repeat the tactics in Ukraine, observers say.

With his latest invasion seen by Western officials as going more slowly than expected, they see him turning increasingly to the use of artillery and missile strikes that, if continued, will lay waste to residential areas.

Putin's more than twenty-year career at the top of Russian politics was founded on his ruthlessness in military affairs.
Back in 1999, he was a surprise nomination for prime minister by then ailing president Boris Yeltsin whose popularity had been sapped by the country's economic woes, corruption and a bloody separatist war in the region of Chechnya.
One of Putin's first major acts as premier was to oversee a whole-scale offensive against the rebels in the breakaway Muslim-majority region in the far south-east.

Although he denied that a ground invasion was being prepared, tens of thousands of troops were ordered into Chechnya along with an aerial and artillery bombardment that reduced the capital Grozny to rubble.
"Putin behaved like a political kamikaze, throwing his entire political capital into the war, burning it to the ground," Yeltsin later wrote in his memoirs.

Grozny, already damaged during what was known as the First Chechen War in 1994-96, was described by the United Nations as the most destroyed city in the world following this second conflict from 1999.

But the fighting, reported by state media under tightly controlled conditions, turned Putin from a relative unknown to a favourite for the presidential election the following year which he went on to win.

- Syrian action -
After the invasion of neighbouring Georgia in 2008, which saw Russian troops easily overpower their badly equipped rivals, Putin ordered Russian troops into Syria in 2015 in support of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The move, which caught the West by surprise, saw Russian warplanes play a central role in a bombing blitz against rebels that devastated Syrian cities, most notably during the siege of Aleppo in 2016.

"Aleppo is now a synonym for hell," then UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in December that year after a blocade trapped tens of thousands in the city which was pummelled with artillery and air strikes.

Charles Lister, an expert on the Syrian conflict at the Middle East Institute, wrote on Twitter this week that images of the shelling of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv were "like Aleppo all over again".

Elie Tenembaum, a security expert at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), said that Putin had in fact initially attempted different tactics in Ukraine. Apparently anticipating little resistance, air-borne special forces were landed near Kyiv last week in an attempted "thunder run" to take out the government, but were quickly killed or captured.

"It didn't work. They were up against too great a resistance, so what we're seeing now is a return to fundamentals," Tenembaum told AFP.
"Their main firepower is unguided munitions which risk devastating Ukrainian forces while causing very, very large numbers of civilian casualties which will increase the exodus (of refugees)," he added.

Images coming out of the country from Ukraine's second-city of Kharkiv, the southern port of Kherson and the suburbs of Kyiv showed damage to apartment blocks, schools, university buildings or government offices.

Critics of the Russian leader have long warned that he has been emboldened by previous operations which have gone unchallenged.
Russian chess master and opposition figure Garry Kasparov told Times Radio in London this week that "war crimes on an industrial scale" is "not new" for Putin.

Amnesty said it was "documenting the escalation in violations of humanitarian and human rights law, including deaths of civilians resulting from indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and infrastructure."

Previous wars point to Putin's tactics in Ukraine

From wars in Chechnya to Syria, Vladimir Putin has overseen military campaigns that have inflicted vast and often indiscriminate damage on civilian infrastructure, raising fears he might repeat the tactics…

www.france24.com

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Antidote Man said:

This is how its going to end:

A. The Russians will gather and rally against him forming a coup to take him out of power

or

B. After he holds enough power and has things in place for him in Ukraine, he's going to sneak out of there like the worm he is and promise that although it was necessary for Russia, he won't ever do it again.

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captainmorgan said:

Russia is preparing to disconnect from the global internet, limiting access to information for the Russian people.

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Russia has been preparing to have its internet cut off

The US is considering cyberattacks on Russia, as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions experts even talk about cutting Russia's internet off. But Russia has been preparing for this for years.

qz.com

Roger A. Shrubber said:

i don't understand what you mean by B, sneak out of where? he can't sneak out of Ukraine, anything he does there will be undone the minute he turns his back..

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printer said:

Russia-Ukraine war: Turkey's Bayraktar TB2 drones proving effective against Russian forces
Despite worries over their capability against the Russian military, Turkey's armed drones appear dangerous and resilient when deployed by Ukraine
Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 combat drones have become famous in recent years, appearing to play decisive roles in various conflicts. But many experts questioned how effective the Bayraktars would truly be against a serious military power.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears to have given them the opportunity to test that theory out.

Footage released by the Ukrainian military over the weekend indicated that TB2s were operating against Moscow's forces, destroying long Russian military columns in Kherson, near Kyiv. Dozens of lives and equipment were reportedly lost in the Bayraktar strikes.

TB2s have a proven track record of success against several adversaries in conflicts in Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, yet they have never faced an army with sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities and state-of-the-art air defence systems.

Before Russia attacked, Turkish officials believed the drones could be effective against the Russian military. They pointed to the TB2s' record of destroying various Russian-made weapons in Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Libya - in particular, the Pantsir air defence system, which has become a subject of mockery due to its failure to take down the Turkish drones.

Ukraine and Turkey have close defence industry cooperation, a relationship that has flourished in recent years. The TB2's producer Baykar, which has close ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s family, was building a plant in Ukraine before the war.

Ukrainian companies also produce the TB2's engines, and Turkey has sold more than 20 Bayraktars to Kyiv over the course of two years. Some experts believe the number of TB2s in the Ukrainian arsenal could be even higher.

Many observers believe that Russia's offensive is not going as planned, and it was foolish of Moscow to send in the troops without first wiping out Ukraine's air force, including its drones.

Yet Russia's failure to take out the TB2s could be down to several reasons. First off, it doesn't have air supremacy over all of Ukraine's airspace.

“Russian Aero-Space Forces have local air superiority over certain theatres, but not true air supremacy over the entire Ukrainian airspace,” Can Kasapoglu, director of defence at Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, told Middle East Eye.

“Besides, the Russian military struck a large number of Ukrainian air bases, but some still have operational runways and facilities. Manned and unmanned operations of Ukraine are attacked, but not totally disrupted."

Robert Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says Russia had the capability to destroy TB2s on the ground and at airfields at the beginning of the war, but failed to do so for some reason.

“In addition, it doesn't appear their air defences that escort ground forces into battle were prepared to face the TB2. Not fully clear why that is,” he told MEE.

The footage released by the Ukrainian military indicates TB2s haven't really been threatened by any air defence systems. Evidence so far shows most sorties being carried out easily and without retaliation.

So far there is only open source confirmation of one downed TB2, although the Russian defence ministry claimed that it shot down three of them over the weekend.

Kasapoglu says one of the videos being circulated online shows a TB2 destroying a Buk, a Russian mobile air defence system.

“Lessons learned from Syria, Libya and Karabakh already suggested the combat effectiveness of the Turkish drones against mobile Soviet-Russian air defence weaponry time and again, especially when they lack networked sensor capacity,” he told MEE.

“It remains to be seen, however, whether other successful kills will follow and the Buk strike will turn into a pattern in the course of the war.”

Kasapoglu says another incident involving the destruction of a convoy belonging to Russia-allied Chechen fighters near Kyiv was more significant, as these troops are highly experienced units known for their brutality, “which could have tipped the tactical situation there”.

One Turkish source told MEE that the Ukrainians have been using what he calls “hit and run” tactics to overwhelm the Russian troops. The source said TB-2’s low visibility and detectabilty due to their low radar cross section values help them considerably against the Russian defence systems.

“Also open source information suggests the Russians didn’t bring any electronic warfare capabilities with its convoys driving deep into Ukrainian territory," the source said.

Kasapoglu agreed that the Bayraktars appear to be escaping Russian systems.

“It seems that Turkish drones' datalink complexes are staying below the electromagnetic jamming envelopes of principal Russian electronic warfare systems like Krasukha-4, which is optimised to jam onboard systems of manned aircraft,” he said.

“In the Karabakh war, drones were decisive weapons. In Ukraine, they act as tactical force-multipliers and interestingly psychological warfare assets in the digital infosphere."

Others had questioned the effectiveness of Russian electronic warfare systems against the TB2 before the Ukraine war even broke out.

Analysts Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans, who run a popular defence blog called Oryxspioenkop, wrote in December that Russia’s most modern electronic warfare systems failed to combat TB2 in Nagorno-Karabakh. They added that surface-to-air-missile systems such as Pantsir, Tor and Buk, which have been deployed in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, also proved to have little ability against the Turkish drones.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/russia-ukraine-war-turkey-drones-effective-deadly

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Antidote Man said:

i don't know how its going misunderstood. my implication is that he will back off at Ukraine once its under his control, and not go to war with the rest of the world, trying to convince the west that his infiltration mission is complete, pulling his forces out and saying that he wont do anything like this again..

just my guess..

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