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Russia aims for people, Ukraine aims for infrastructure. That should tell you all you need to know about who’s on the wrong side of this fight
Slava Ukraini
Russia after one million of theirs died in a pointless war: yawn
Russia after they have to wait ten hours in line at the gas station: REVOLUTION
I am glad Ukraine has found a strategic target that harms the enemy economy without committing war crimes. Oil refineries are obvious, valid war targets.
I continue being amazed at how much Ukraine can achieve with restraint, and how little Russia accomplishes by committing serial war crimes.
It's almost like war crimes aren't actually very effective at winning the war, and only serve to satisfy the pointless cruelty of people giving the orders.
It's already known since WWII and the Battle Of Britain that bombing civilian populations doesn't decrease their resolve, quite the contrary.
Whilst some of Russia bombing (such as that of power generation) does make military sense, for the last year or so it looks like strategically Ukraine is way more effective at damaging Russian war efforts with long range attacks than the other way around.
Further, it also looks like Ukraine, with it's proportionally much smaller territory, is much more effective at AA defense.
It's funny that since Ukraine started making their own weaponry for in-depth attacks (as, shamelessly, Western powers did not provide them from the start with cruise missiles), Russia's "Big Country" advantage is being turned into a disadvantage.
I'd like to correct that it's one million of their soldiers lost in a pointless war, not died. About 2/3 of those losses are severe permanent injuries that render the soldier useless for military use.
The goal of Ukraine is not to kill the maximum amount of orcs, but to neutralize the maximum amount of orcs.
You can see it this way: There are, in any case, about two serious injuries per one death. In human armies it tends to be about five injuries per one death, but in the Russian army a lot of people who would end up counting as "injured" end up counting as "dead", as there is no healthcare available for them. If there really were 1,1 million dead, the total losses would be in the ballpark of 3½ million soldiers. And the Russian military has not lost 3½ million soldiers yet. Therefore, it must be that the number includes also the seriously permanently wounded.
Very very true and my mistake. At the same time, the severely wounded come back with horror stories and are likely to need help, straining resources ever further.
Would love to see 50% or more knocked out for Christmas
There's still plenty of time
This is how all modern wars have been and will be won.
You can send as many troops with 90 rounds of ammo and a rifle (I don't fucking know how much ammo they carry) tanks, artillery, jets, etc.
But if you cut off the enemies ability to utilize oil, them you nueter their war machine.
Everything in modern warfare requires refined oil. And every war in last few centuries has been won by halting supplies to the front lines.
In the US Army, a standard load for a soldier carrying an M4A1 rifle is 210 rounds of ammunition, divided into seven 30 round magazines. One magazine is in the rifle, and six are in magazine pouches, typically on the front of the soldier.
Sorry. I don't know why I felt the need to type that, it just kind of happened automatically.
That's way more than I was expecting.
But now you have me thinking all sorts of other questions.
But it really can be summed up with: goddamn what don't soldiers carry? Like you got a have less cartilage in those knees after a deployment to an active battlefield than anyone older than 70?
Weapons, food, bedroll, comms gear, mission specific items, spare parts for everything to try and thwart Murphy, etc…yeah it’s a lot and that’s just a regular grunt, not someone like a machine gunner with an even heavier weapon/ammo or carrying rockets.
Knees and ankles are an issue for pretty much every infantry soldier, the ones jumping out of planes with all that shit bundled to you even more so.
Man, I don't get it. Infantry has pretty much been a "hold this heavy ass shit, walk long distances, kill enemies before they kill you."
And somehow militaries for thousands of years have been able to convince huge groups of young men to either sign up for this or because they were told "or else."
And I guess "or else" is usually starvation, conscription, or execution. At any point a group being trained could say "yo guys this is stupid" everyone else would probably agree, and then the entire army thing would ... Stop. wouldn't it?
Soldiers carry a TON of stuff. Physical fitness and strength are a big part of the job.
The main reason soldiers carry so much ammo is that suppressing fire is so critical to modern infantry tactics. Without suppressing fire of your own you’re going to get pinned down by enemy suppressing fire. An immobilized unit is a dead unit.
And every war in history has been won by halting supplies to the front lines.
Is that accurate? When your manpower is low enough your supply needs are met by looting any random villages you come across. For a long time wars were generally won by convincing your troops not to rout in a handful of battles.
I think by time your manpower gets that low, you've more or less lost the war. At that point it's guerilla warfare more than anything.
I don't know how far back I'm going then I guess.
Maybe modern history. Like 1700s- present
Keep going! Slava Ukraini!!
Blitz
I understand headlines need to be short but I'm not comfortable with this WW2 terminology.
edit: all Ukraine subs get you downvoted into negative numbers at the slightest hint of what could be construed to be criticism against Ukraine's forces, journalists or people. I do not mean it that way. I just don't like that term because of the nazi associations I get from it, regardless of Ukraine's very justified war against Russia.
edit2: judging from your comments, for an English speaker Blitz seems to refer to any type of "lightning war", maybe even a counterattack against the Nazis, rather than something the Nazis coined if not invented. For a German speaker it's the other way round:
Mit dem für die Weltöffentlichkeit unerwartet kurzen Polenfeldzug im Jahre 1939 wurde der Begriff „Blitzkrieg“ zum Synonym für eine (vermeintlich oder tatsächlich) neue Form der Kriegführung. Der Begriff wurde erstmals 1935 in einem Artikel der Militärzeitschrift Deutsche Wehr verwendet.
Simplytranslate:
With the unexpectedly short Poland campaign in 1939 for the world public, the term “lightning war” became a synonym for a (supposedly or actually) new form of warfare. The term was first used in 1935 in an article by the Military Journal Deutsche Wehr.
The word "blitz" is in common usage across the English language.
People forget that English is just German, Spanish, and French masquerading in a trench coat pretending to be one language.
We even use some German words instead of alternative English words
It has nothing to do with criticism against Ukraine but the term "Blitz" being pretty established
Why not?
the blitz was a set of war crimes committed together to make combatting the nazis harder. it went in waves
- bombing civilian targets
- inflicting terror on fleeing civilians with raucus noises (jericho sirens)
- shooting civilians with machine gun fire
this was all meant to clog up the roads to make a response to the luftwaffe and wehrmacht slower. the next phase was:
- rapid encirclement tactics to capture enemy combatants and civilians, alike
- send the captured souls to work camps to engage in slave labor to further fuel the war machine and extend supply lines deeper into enemy territory
one particular nazi blitz was so intense, it is merely known as "the blitz". this particular action was part of the battle of brittain and lasted the entire war with the nazis developing new forms of weapons such as cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to assault women, children, and pets.
saying Ukraine is engaging in blitz tactics, as this headline does, is feeding russia's ridiculous de-nazification narrative. it also ignores the operational reality of who in this war has been employing blitz tactics and counter blitz tactics. russia is engaged in a war of imperial genocide that reflects the nazis' war aims very closely both in terms of ideological justification and tactics, where as Ukraine is engaged in a war of anti-colonial survival that doesn't look exactly like the battle of brittain due to Ukraine's lack of overseas colonies, but frankly has more in common with Ireland's Troubles, Cambodia and Laos struggles for independence, or Chinese resistance to the invading forces of imperial Japan.
The word 'blitz' nowadays is used to describe an offensive tactics when you capture as much ground as possible when the enemy is unprepared. I would use the word 'blitzkrieg' to refer to the historic tactics used by WW2 Germany.
But anyway, it's not very fitting for drones, because they are not capturing any territory.
But anyway, it's not very fitting for drones, because they are not capturing any territory.
Agreed, the entire aim of a Blitz or Blitzkrieg is territorial capture and encirclement of large portions of the enemy that can be isolated and forced to surrender rather than having to smash the enemy to bits piece by piece in a way that grinds down and degrades friendly forces.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzkrieg
This is complicated by the fact that people will often use the word "Blitz" in English in much more general contexts to imply a process done in a coordinated, surprise, overwhelming action, so this use of the word "Blitz" is kind of between a more precise and more general usage in an awkward spot for journalists.
It gets even more headache inducing when you keep reading about the history of the word lol (from the wikipedia article)
Despite being common in German and English-language journalism during World War II, the word Blitzkrieg was never used as an official military term by the Wehrmacht, except for propaganda, and it was never officially adopted as a concept or doctrine.[8][b] According to David Reynolds, "Hitler himself called the term Blitzkrieg 'a completely idiotic word' (ein ganz blödsinniges Wort)".[10] Some senior German officers, including Kurt Student, Franz Halder, and Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg, even disputed the idea that it was a military concept. Kielmansegg asserted that what many regarded as blitzkrieg was nothing more than "ad hoc solutions that simply popped out of the prevailing situation". Kurt Student described it as ideas that "naturally emerged from the existing circumstances" as a response to operational challenges.[11]
During the years preceding World War II, Opel was Germany's largest truck producer. The Blitz name, coined in a prize competition, was first applied to the new Opel truck presented in November 1930.[1] As part of the Nazi economy and the German re-armament efforts, the authorities ordered the construction of the Opelwerk Brandenburg facilities in 1935, and through 1944 more than 130,000 Blitz trucks and chassis were produced.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Blitz
an Opel Blitz
The word "Blitz" is intimately connected with the idea of using a truck to conduct rapid maneuver warfare in such a way that nullified brutally inefficient WW1 tactics and their ignorance of what the truck (and also honestly, horse) could do to the calculus of war. I agree though, "Blitz" still potentially carries Nazi and fascist undertones/context.
I am fine with using a different word than "Blitz", but what should we use? "Armored maneuver warfare" doesn't cover it because the Blitz is about the truck before even the armored vehicle even though armored vehicle rushes are what people mainly think of.
"Mechanized Warfare" is a good one? It points to tools not tactics though which misses a critical aspect.
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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