Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Newbornbairn]

Had an interesting chat with a guy last night. His company makes plastic products using injection moulding - mainly for cars. Things like the windscreen washer filling tubes, that kind of thing. Anyway, they were approached by someone from the government a couple of months ago and asked if they could make a thing that looks like a plastic tampon applicator tube at short notice. It took them a few days to design and make the tooling but they managed it so they got an initial order for half a million of the things.

 

Turns out they're for battlefield wounds. The plastic tube is ready-filled with coagulants so all the medic has to do is push it into a bullet hole and push the coagulants right into the wound, sealing it and stopping the bleeding. They were immediately shipped to Ukraine.

 

From what he said I gather this is one of Matt Hancock's mates that's circumvented the usual government purchasing procedures to do something quickly - bypassing the usual pharmaceutical companies

[highlandcowden]

6 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

Had an interesting chat with a guy last night. His company makes plastic products using injection moulding - mainly for cars. Things like the windscreen washer filling tubes, that kind of thing. Anyway, they were approached by someone from the government a couple of months ago and asked if they could make a thing that looks like a plastic tampon applicator tube at short notice. It took them a few days to design and make the tooling but they managed it so they got an initial order for half a million of the things.

 

Turns out they're for battlefield wounds. The plastic tube is ready-filled with coagulants so all the medic has to do is push it into a bullet hole and push the coagulants right into the wound, sealing it and stopping the bleeding. They were immediately shipped to Ukraine.

 

From what he said I gather this is one of Matt Hancock's mates that's circumvented the usual government purchasing procedures to do something quickly - bypassing the usual pharmaceutical companies

Someone always profits from war.in this case it might save a lot of lives so I'll lose no sleep over it

[dirty dingus]

59 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

Had an interesting chat with a guy last night. His company makes plastic products using injection moulding - mainly for cars. Things like the windscreen washer filling tubes, that kind of thing. Anyway, they were approached by someone from the government a couple of months ago and asked if they could make a thing that looks like a plastic tampon applicator tube at short notice. It took them a few days to design and make the tooling but they managed it so they got an initial order for half a million of the things.

 

Turns out they're for battlefield wounds. The plastic tube is ready-filled with coagulants so all the medic has to do is push it into a bullet hole and push the coagulants right into the wound, sealing it and stopping the bleeding. They were immediately shipped to Ukraine.

 

From what he said I gather this is one of Matt Hancock's mates that's circumvented the usual government purchasing procedures to do something quickly - bypassing the usual pharmaceutical companies

Sounds like a job for this guy. 

[LongTimeLurker]

7 hours ago, deegee said:

Do the more informed folks in this thread think the rearming of the Ukrainian army with fresh supply of tanks etc is for the Ukrainians to mount a counter attack on their lost territory or is it to defend from the Russians expanding out?  ...

From what Zelensky has said they won't try to retake Crimea or anything over the 2014 ceasefire line in the Donbas by force. Think everything else is very much in their sights at this point if doable though but who knows what would happen if they got on a roll militarily.

It's no sure thing that a majority of the people in the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that Ukraine still controlled until this year would actually vote to be in a pro-NATO Ukraine in a free and fair referendum from what I understand, which is a big part of why Russian public opinion is the way it is.

Edited April 24, 2022 by LongTimeLurker

[Bairnardo]

3 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

From what Zelensky has said they won't try to retake Crimea or anything over the 2014 ceasefire line in the Donbas by force. Think everything else is very much in their sights at this point if doable though but who knows what would happen if they got a roll militarily.

It's no sure thing that a majority of the people in the rest of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts would actually vote to be in a pro-NATO Ukraine in a referendum from what I understand, which is a big part of why Russian public opinion is the way it is.

My lazy and ill informed assumption is that Ukraines military goals will be to sufficiently stifle Russias advances to the point where talks can actually be productive. Anything more than that might result in slow Ukranian advances, but at the cost of their cities being slowly razed to the ground surely. 

(Without wishing the open back up to the social media "Russia must be crushed, why should the goodies talk or make concessions" chat)

[Ewan8472]

On 18/02/2022 at 11:19, Snafu said:

Before and during WW2 the Nazis found willing allies from the now independent countries that broke away after the collapse of the Soviet Union , Ukraine was one.

They even had their own volunteer division of SS.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3004274

Stalin might have been a " good " reason , lesser of two evils etc

[welshbairn]

I think Ukraine will make a real effort to push the Russians back from Kherson and towards the Donbas to stop them even thinking about Odessa. The Ukraine economy would be pretty well fucked without a Black Sea port.

Edited April 24, 2022 by welshbairn

[beefybake]

1 hour ago, LongTimeLurker said:

From what Zelensky has said they won't try to retake Crimea or anything over the 2014 ceasefire line in the Donbas by force. Think everything else is very much in their sights at this point if doable though but who knows what would happen if they got on a roll militarily.

It's no sure thing that a majority of the people in the parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that Ukraine still controlled until this year would actually vote to be in a pro-NATO Ukraine in a free and fair referendum from what I understand, which is a big part of why Russian public opinion is the way it is.

The figure that I recall being mentioned by an unidentified person, mayor of somewhere in Donbas I think, was that about 30% of people in that area

were in favour of alignment with/takeover by Russia.  This was just prior to the 24th February, as I recall.

[Eatmygoal]

6 minutes ago, beefybake said:

The figure that I recall being mentioned by an unidentified person, mayor of somewhere in Donbas I think, was that about 30% of people in that area

were in favour of alignment with/takeover by Russia.  This was just prior to the 24th February, as I recall.

Being generally in favour of greater alignment with a neighbouring power and wanting to see your country systematically razed to the ground, contrary to the what the Kremlin think, may not been one and the same. 

[Newbornbairn]

Thank bod the French fascist got beaten -

https://9gag.com/gag/a81w79V

 

"Putin must be popular with the Russian people as he keeps getting re-elected". 

[dorlomin]

9 hours ago, deegee said:

Do the more informed folks in this thread think the rearming of the Ukrainian army with fresh supply of tanks etc is for the Ukrainians to mount a counter attack on their lost territory or is it to defend from the Russians expanding out? 

The Russians seems to have one last offensive in them, as per Michael Kofman. Without declaring it a war and calling up the conscripts they are loosing too many men to continue offensive operations for much longer. 

The Ukrainian and western responses have been made up as they go along. They both found themselves in pretty unexpected places. Now Ukraine has defeated that attack on the capital and the attempt to cut the country in half along the Dnieper, everyone is focussed in what will happen in the Donbas and the Black Sea coast. The west has started to send lots of 155mm artillery to Ukraine. 

Ukraines army was built around 152mm Soviet era artillery, but now its getting NATO calibre equipment so that means NATOs huge stores of rounds and smart rounds will be available. For example the US promised a bunch of 155mm guns plus more rounds per gun than the barrel life. 

In modern mechanised war artillery kills the most soldiers by a long distance. The Donbas front has turned into a big artillery slugfest. People will cite "WWI" but this was also how much of North Africa, Italy, Normandy and the Eastern Front was for long periods. Infantry trying small scale local attacks and artillery doing most of the damage. 

If Ukraine does not collapse in the face of the Russian final assault in the next week or so, then its likely the Ukrainians will start to really inflict growing casualties on the Russians in the next couple of months. Russia will either have to call up its reserves (but they will take months to physically retrain to be fit enough to be soldiers) or start to collapse and fall back. 

The arrival or western artillery will give the Ukrainians access to huge stocks of air bursting rounds (basically every western round is airbursting but Russia sticks to WWII era ground bursting) and the smaller but incredibly lethal stuff like the Excalibur round (guided munition with about a 4 metre accuracy. ) 

 

[deegee]

3 minutes ago, dorlomin said:

The Russians seems to have one last offensive in them, as per Michael Kofman. Without declaring it a war and calling up the conscripts they are loosing too many men to continue offensive operations for much longer. 

The Ukrainian and western responses have been made up as they go along. They both found themselves in pretty unexpected places. Now Ukraine has defeated that attack on the capital and the attempt to cut the country in half along the Dnieper, everyone is focussed in what will happen in the Donbas and the Black Sea coast. The west has started to send lots of 155mm artillery to Ukraine. 

Ukraines army was built around 152mm Soviet era artillery, but now its getting NATO calibre equipment so that means NATOs huge stores of rounds and smart rounds will be available. For example the US promised a bunch of 155mm guns plus more rounds per gun than the barrel life. 

In modern mechanised war artillery kills the most soldiers by a long distance. The Donbas front has turned into a big artillery slugfest. People will cite "WWI" but this was also how much of North Africa, Italy, Normandy and the Eastern Front was for long periods. Infantry trying small scale local attacks and artillery doing most of the damage. 

If Ukraine does not collapse in the face of the Russian final assault in the next week or so, then its likely the Ukrainians will start to really inflict growing casualties on the Russians in the next couple of months. Russia will either have to call up its reserves (but they will take months to physically retrain to be fit enough to be soldiers) or start to collapse and fall back. 

The arrival or western artillery will give the Ukrainians access to huge stocks of air bursting rounds (basically every western round is airbursting but Russia sticks to WWII era ground bursting) and the smaller but incredibly lethal stuff like the Excalibur round (guided munition with about a 4 metre accuracy. ) 

 

Thanks; that’s a very insightful response. I think, like most conflicts, it can be very dynamic. You have to factor in variables such as motivation, numbers of forces and armoury as well as the terrain and weather etc. I just wasn’t sure of the strategic plan for Ukraine. 
 

As @Bairnardosaid, there’s going to be some back- office negotiation going I too; whether futile or fruitful, I’d imagine there’s pressure on all sides to actually try and find some resolution. 
Ultimately I pity whoever end up ruling eastern Ukraine as it looks like a scene from Stalingrad in the 1940s and it’s heartbreaking to see the total destruction of the area and people. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

20 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

Thank bod the French fascist got beaten -

https://9gag.com/gag/a81w79V

 

"Putin must be popular with the Russian people as he keeps getting re-elected". 

 

[ICTChris]

Another attack on Russian territory, an oil refinery in Bryansk appears to have been hit by several ballistic missiles.

 

[Jacksgranda]

10 hours ago, dorlomin said:

The Russians seems to have one last offensive in them, as per Michael Kofman. Without declaring it a war and calling up the conscripts they are loosing too many men to continue offensive operations for much longer. 

The Ukrainian and western responses have been made up as they go along. They both found themselves in pretty unexpected places. Now Ukraine has defeated that attack on the capital and the attempt to cut the country in half along the Dnieper, everyone is focussed in what will happen in the Donbas and the Black Sea coast. The west has started to send lots of 155mm artillery to Ukraine. 

Ukraines army was built around 152mm Soviet era artillery, but now its getting NATO calibre equipment so that means NATOs huge stores of rounds and smart rounds will be available. For example the US promised a bunch of 155mm guns plus more rounds per gun than the barrel life. 

In modern mechanised war artillery kills the most soldiers by a long distance. The Donbas front has turned into a big artillery slugfest. People will cite "WWI" but this was also how much of North Africa, Italy, Normandy and the Eastern Front was for long periods. Infantry trying small scale local attacks and artillery doing most of the damage. 

If Ukraine does not collapse in the face of the Russian final assault in the next week or so, then its likely the Ukrainians will start to really inflict growing casualties on the Russians in the next couple of months. Russia will either have to call up its reserves (but they will take months to physically retrain to be fit enough to be soldiers) or start to collapse and fall back. 

The arrival or western artillery will give the Ukrainians access to huge stocks of air bursting rounds (basically every western round is airbursting but Russia sticks to WWII era ground bursting) and the smaller but incredibly lethal stuff like the Excalibur round (guided munition with about a 4 metre accuracy. ) 

 

Sounds horrendous to be on the receiving end of that, tbqh.

[Newbornbairn]

19 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Sounds horrendous to be on the receiving end of that, tbqh.

Especially when they use these -

 

[ICTChris]

Bryansk had a Russian army fuel depot and a Rossneft oil refinery, both seem to have been targeted.

[jagfox]

 

 

[jagfox]

 

 

[invergowrie arab]

This thread continues to be an invaluable source for people who don't know how to search a word in Twitter.