While Ukrainian supporters are celebrating the recapture of some long-contested villages along the Line of Contact, these were pyrrhic victories considering the costs. Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive is off to a rough start after losing around 15% of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in a week according to
"...after losing around 15% of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles..."
That's disappointing, I must admit; I would have liked to have discovered at least twice as many, and perhaps as much as half the total had been eliminated by now. Ho-hum, patience is a virtue...
"...included a German Leopard..."
Yeah, they only killed one, but got a damn good shot at another. I suspect it's fairly badly damaged. If salvageable, it will cost NATO a lot of time and resources to repair it, which is good: they know where it is now; watching how it's repaired and where the people and supplies need to come from to get it back into action is probably more valuable than taking it out altogether in the first place. Peek-a-boo! It all goes into the informed mix to make targeting decisions.
Also, don't forget, ultimately there will be a day of reckoning. All the footage and evidence accrued to demonstrate who did what, how and when will be of value for assigning responsibility. If you were a well-paid NATO engineer, you might think twice about getting your face on video. These are the sort of problems which cause genuine logistics difficulties: if the guy with enough brain cells to bang together reckons it might not be a very good idea to go there, you've got to resort to the next man down the line. It won't be long before every idiot works out why no-one wants to go there.
"...these same Western outlets whose journalists’ work..."
Please don't take this the wrong way, Andrew, it's certainly not meant to be insulting; in fact, it's rather complimentary: I'm afraid you project too much of your own perception onto other journalists. The difference is, they genuinely don't understand what they're talking about. Let me give you an example: I was watching the news on 'Sky' (I think it was.) late last week with someone else. They were showing a girl, the reporter, being ferried around nine-story blocks of flats in an outboard motorboat with two or three 'rescue workers'. She obviously thought it was great fun — better than Disneyland. They were looking for people to evacuate, having shown us how kind the rescue workers are because they dedicate so much time to helping people feel safe, even saving and catching their cats for them. Ahhhh, how sweet! So, they're motor-boat riding around this maze of flats at the level of the second or third floor, shouting, «Люди, эвакуация!» But you can hear nothing but deadly silence, not even the shelling in the background. Everyone knew there were people there, and most likely lots and lots of them with all the people who live in the first (ground) and second (first) floors, having already evacuated themselves to the third floors. The reporter pondered it and then told us people weren't coming forward for evacuation because they were such tough Ukrainians that they were determined to tough it out where they were. I had to think about it for a minute, and then the person I was with said, 'Why aren't they coming forward. Shouldn't the boat be swamped with people desperate to get out?' And I understood just before I turned to say, 'If you'd seen the same people who are offering to rescue you now shoot people in the back, and spit in your face, when people tried to get away to the Russian side during the withdrawal in October-November, would you be running to jump into their boats now?' They were hiding and keeping damn shtum, for fear of being caught. And there were lots of them, lots and lots, entire blocks of flats. No-one said a word, nor moved a muscle. «Люди, эвакуация!» You could hear a pin drop. And here's the point: the reporter had no idea. When she said how weird and wonderful it was — a veritable wonder-world of adventure — she genuinely had absolutely no idea what the fuck she was talking about. She was just having fun, zooming around the third floor of all these enormous blocks of flats in a motor-boat, with no idea why none of the people there wanted to talk to her. Now, I don't know you personally, Andrew, but I've got a pretty good idea what you perceive and how you think by reading your work. I would be very, very surprised to see you in the same position as I witnessed this reporter in last week, i.e. blissfully ignorant. The editorial team, obviously, didn't know much more about what they were doing than their boots on the ground did. I don't want to patronise you, but I'd like to point out you could be a bit more careful about how you perceive other journalists. They don't think like you, not necessarily because they wouldn't like to, but they just don't. For whatever reason. It's not worth thinking about, nor worth wasting time on — certainly not as much as I just have in this last paragraph — but you are, so take it as you will.
The other point I wanted to make is about "...taking false comfort in the recapture of some long-contested villages.": remember how desperately Stoltenberg wanted to convince himself NATO could win and would win, if only they could make more and more and enough weapons? That's because he's an ex-Prime Minister; has, and has had, far too much money. A life of luxury is hardly likely to teach anyone how wars are won. Just think what an important part partisans played in winning the Second World War. We don't really think about or acknowledge this in the West, particularly not in Britain nor America, perhaps because we've had so little personal exposure to real-life (and death) war. But the Russians know about it. ALL about it. The words «партизан и партизaнка» (masculine and feminine for 'partisan') are not infrequently used in colloquial speech, as I'm sure you're aware. There's a good reason for that: they win wars. Great, if you can avoid going to war, but even better if you can't. Now, about these villages between the lines, with all those great little hand-held tank-killer rockets NATO so generously handed out... Most of them got sold off to make money for rich NATO-buddies in Kiev, of course, but not all of them. They're just the sort of thing партизанки could make most excellent use of. I wouldn't want to be a NATO-supported tank commander, or gunner, or just about anything else stuck in recently captured ex-Russian-controlled territory. Sometimes, little pyrrhic victories can grow from headaches into nightmares in the blink of an eye, no matter what 'journalists' in Kiev or London have to say about them. Not that I'd like to presume on strategy, but I think the wisest thing the Russians could do now along the front lines in Zaporozhia, would be to keep everything just exactly as it is. There's a good chance there might be quite a few more than 15% of the Bradleys lost before hostilities resume again in earnest.
"...after losing around 15% of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles..."
That's disappointing, I must admit; I would have liked to have discovered at least twice as many, and perhaps as much as half the total had been eliminated by now. Ho-hum, patience is a virtue...
"...included a German Leopard..."
Yeah, they only killed one, but got a damn good shot at another. I suspect it's fairly badly damaged. If salvageable, it will cost NATO a lot of time and resources to repair it, which is good: they know where it is now; watching how it's repaired and where the people and supplies need to come from to get it back into action is probably more valuable than taking it out altogether in the first place. Peek-a-boo! It all goes into the informed mix to make targeting decisions.
Also, don't forget, ultimately there will be a day of reckoning. All the footage and evidence accrued to demonstrate who did what, how and when will be of value for assigning responsibility. If you were a well-paid NATO engineer, you might think twice about getting your face on video. These are the sort of problems which cause genuine logistics difficulties: if the guy with enough brain cells to bang together reckons it might not be a very good idea to go there, you've got to resort to the next man down the line. It won't be long before every idiot works out why no-one wants to go there.
"...these same Western outlets whose journalists’ work..."
Please don't take this the wrong way, Andrew, it's certainly not meant to be insulting; in fact, it's rather complimentary: I'm afraid you project too much of your own perception onto other journalists. The difference is, they genuinely don't understand what they're talking about. Let me give you an example: I was watching the news on 'Sky' (I think it was.) late last week with someone else. They were showing a girl, the reporter, being ferried around nine-story blocks of flats in an outboard motorboat with two or three 'rescue workers'. She obviously thought it was great fun — better than Disneyland. They were looking for people to evacuate, having shown us how kind the rescue workers are because they dedicate so much time to helping people feel safe, even saving and catching their cats for them. Ahhhh, how sweet! So, they're motor-boat riding around this maze of flats at the level of the second or third floor, shouting, «Люди, эвакуация!» But you can hear nothing but deadly silence, not even the shelling in the background. Everyone knew there were people there, and most likely lots and lots of them with all the people who live in the first (ground) and second (first) floors, having already evacuated themselves to the third floors. The reporter pondered it and then told us people weren't coming forward for evacuation because they were such tough Ukrainians that they were determined to tough it out where they were. I had to think about it for a minute, and then the person I was with said, 'Why aren't they coming forward. Shouldn't the boat be swamped with people desperate to get out?' And I understood just before I turned to say, 'If you'd seen the same people who are offering to rescue you now shoot people in the back, and spit in your face, when people tried to get away to the Russian side during the withdrawal in October-November, would you be running to jump into their boats now?' They were hiding and keeping damn shtum, for fear of being caught. And there were lots of them, lots and lots, entire blocks of flats. No-one said a word, nor moved a muscle. «Люди, эвакуация!» You could hear a pin drop. And here's the point: the reporter had no idea. When she said how weird and wonderful it was — a veritable wonder-world of adventure — she genuinely had absolutely no idea what the fuck she was talking about. She was just having fun, zooming around the third floor of all these enormous blocks of flats in a motor-boat, with no idea why none of the people there wanted to talk to her. Now, I don't know you personally, Andrew, but I've got a pretty good idea what you perceive and how you think by reading your work. I would be very, very surprised to see you in the same position as I witnessed this reporter in last week, i.e. blissfully ignorant. The editorial team, obviously, didn't know much more about what they were doing than their boots on the ground did. I don't want to patronise you, but I'd like to point out you could be a bit more careful about how you perceive other journalists. They don't think like you, not necessarily because they wouldn't like to, but they just don't. For whatever reason. It's not worth thinking about, nor worth wasting time on — certainly not as much as I just have in this last paragraph — but you are, so take it as you will.
The other point I wanted to make is about "...taking false comfort in the recapture of some long-contested villages.": remember how desperately Stoltenberg wanted to convince himself NATO could win and would win, if only they could make more and more and enough weapons? That's because he's an ex-Prime Minister; has, and has had, far too much money. A life of luxury is hardly likely to teach anyone how wars are won. Just think what an important part partisans played in winning the Second World War. We don't really think about or acknowledge this in the West, particularly not in Britain nor America, perhaps because we've had so little personal exposure to real-life (and death) war. But the Russians know about it. ALL about it. The words «партизан и партизaнка» (masculine and feminine for 'partisan') are not infrequently used in colloquial speech, as I'm sure you're aware. There's a good reason for that: they win wars. Great, if you can avoid going to war, but even better if you can't. Now, about these villages between the lines, with all those great little hand-held tank-killer rockets NATO so generously handed out... Most of them got sold off to make money for rich NATO-buddies in Kiev, of course, but not all of them. They're just the sort of thing партизанки could make most excellent use of. I wouldn't want to be a NATO-supported tank commander, or gunner, or just about anything else stuck in recently captured ex-Russian-controlled territory. Sometimes, little pyrrhic victories can grow from headaches into nightmares in the blink of an eye, no matter what 'journalists' in Kiev or London have to say about them. Not that I'd like to presume on strategy, but I think the wisest thing the Russians could do now along the front lines in Zaporozhia, would be to keep everything just exactly as it is. There's a good chance there might be quite a few more than 15% of the Bradleys lost before hostilities resume again in earnest.