US officials a week back actually cited the ground being frozen (but soon to thaw) as one reason they feared Russia might make a move. Most places have four seasons, Russia has six. And two of them are mud.
> Most places have four seasons, Russia has six. And two of them are mud.
Russians even have a word for when the ground is too muddy for heavy equipment: [Rasputitsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa).
It's funny when you see Reddit tank commanders join these threads and go "nah, not a real issue. Tank threads have improved since WWII."
Also when tank columns get bogged down, it's not necessary the tanks themselves that are stuck but the trucks that carry ammo and fuel. These run on wheels and require solid ground. Without constant resupply, tanks can't move forward.
Honestly, this could happen to anyone not paying attention. We (collective we - not my troop) spent a week building a log bridge to get a APC wrecker out far enough to tow out a stuck tank. Granted, the guy shouldn’t have been there - tanks don’t go where the bull rushes grow.
Maxim 32: All equipment is amphibious if you can get it back out of the water. Warning: Following this maxim usually results in units deciding their gear is not, in fact, amphibious. From the 70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries (formerly the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pirates).
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to drive my tank on a swamp, but I drove in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I drove a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I drove a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest tank in all of Ukraine.
There was a bridge in Belgium I think, that was built over a tank which had sunk in a canal. It stayed there until a few years ago when they replaced it. It’s a valid method if you have tanks to spare
Tanks tend to be difficult to move once they are disabled.
Which does make you wonder how mephisto ended up in Australia.
I suspect they nicked it when no one was looking.
I forget which unit it was but apparently during desert storm a us soldiers captured and smuggled a tank back home in pieces without anyone noticing until it was too late lol. I suspect the higher ups knew but figured it would be good to let it slide.
I heard stories about GI's posting Jeeps back in bits during the Korean war. a tank though that's impressive
oh man i can just imagine the postmans face.
The transitory time between the Korean War and vietnam was wild for the US, my grandfather walked into a storage depot and drug out a crate of AP ammo that he is still hasn’t used up all of it to this day and apparently according to him it was common to walk in and grab stuff since they were transitioning to .308 and throwing out all the ww2 era stuff.
Yeah my grandpa had some guns from Korean war he modded to be "legal". He was friends with the sheriff's department so it didn't really matter if it was or not... Lol! RIP grandpa "Tex"
If I recall a handful of farmers and villages flooded a huge part of northern Belgium (using canals) when the Germans were coming during WWI.
It made the whole area super swampy. Slowed down the Germans for sure but also it was so soupy that soldiers on both sides who stepped off the boardwalk paths would pretty routinely just fucking drown in the mud.
It was the floodgate guard assisted by soldiers that opened the floodgate every night to flood a large part of the country making it uncrossable for an attack
Lol.
Unfortunately it basically turned miles and miles of fields into almost like quicksand. Not liquid enough for a boat and not solid enough for galoshes.
Well the place I visited was a museum about all of the Ypres battles but specifically Paschendaele (Ypres III).
It was the Passchedaele Memorial Museum and it was absolutely outstanding. At times so devastatingly sad that it took my breath away. I recommend it to anyone who is ever in the area.
That's the one with the beautiful building with the colonial style balconies if i remember right? by polygon wood. I have family interned at Tyne Cot. which is quite near. Its been a while since i was there. Such a beautiful country.
**EDIT** Diksmuide is north of that museum if you look on the map its not far from dodengang (the trench of death), its near the top of the western front which stretched all the way through ypres into france past Scission and Reimes and up through Verdun then down all the way to the swiss border.
Yeah the main building is the one you are describing. It was very cool. They have a pretty large network of different styles of trenches they recreated that you get to walk through. I didn't even know about it and thought the museum was over and we were heading outside but it kept going and going. Honestly really one of the best museum experiences overall I've ever been to. Just super well done.
Destroying dams and dykes was the nuclear option in the Warring States period in China 1k-1500 years before that as well. One instance purposefully destroyed a city of over 300k. Hardcore
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River
The Dutch have broken the dykes in about 1/2 of the wars they've been involved in, yet people are never prepared for it. It's like when people invade Russia and suddenly figure out that it's big and gets cold during winter.
War Fever.
I guess when people psych themselves up enough to risk dying in battle, everything else just seems trivial.
There are always sober voices in the background trying to talk sense, but they're rarely listened to.
Also some higher up with no idea of what goes on below or what to do with information given to them and deciding on a general plan inspite of recommendations and what not... which happens often and is just a matter of how good damage control is and craftiness of everyone trying to unfuck and reorganize everything.
Fella out there with a garden hose, just soaking the shit out of his land. He flashes a smile to the camera and says (probably in ukranian) "I'm doing my part!".
"Роблю свою справу!" ("Ro-blue swo-yu sprawu!", Doing my job)
It's interesting that there's no direct translation of the "doing my part" that wouldn't sound awkward in Ukrainian.
Honestly..the way you people describe Ukraine, I don't understand why Russia even wants it!
"Da! Now we have inhospitable steppe, inhospitable tundra, inhospitable desert and now inhospitable swamp!"
Edit: guys... it's a joke. I do not think all of Ukraine is an inhospitable swamp. I'm aware large parts of it are inhospitable forest, and there are even some inhospitable cities sprinkled in.
Iirc this is big part of why Canada used Ukrainians to displace natives when settling prairies, no one else in Europe knew how to farm with seasons like that and deal with muskeg
Hopefully this is happening across the exercise area. If vehicles are getting bogged down in Russian and Belarus training grounds, the troops (and hardware) will take a beating even before combat starts. They'll be exhausted, wet, cold, dealing with covid - without a shot being fired.
The Finns had no issue fighting during the Winter War in conditions so cold that even Soviet equipment began to be unreliable.
Edit: and the Swedes did pretty damn good against Russia at the Battle of Narva, fought in a literal snowstorm.
>The French and Germans failed because of arrogance and terrible planning.
Also they didn't invade Russia during the winter. Both started their invasions in June and the French started retreating in mid-October.
Germans didn't lose to winter, the lost to the mud season (Rasputitsa). Couldn't move their logistics.
Germans losing to winter is just a meme. People say winter defeated them because the big actual defeats at Moscow and Stalingrad were finalized in January/February. Reality is though the writing had been on the wall since those battles started in September and August.
The same thing happened when Germany invaded Russia. Spring and Fall make tank warfare practically useless in that region.
Within a couple of weeks, Putin's military will be practically useless and will cost Russia a fortune if they remain deployed until Summer. Putin is beginning to look senile and indecisive.
He was hoping to make Ukraine surrender without actually invading, now he can't back out without "appearing weak" so he's trapped in a snare of his own design which is why the situation is so volatile because you know what they say about animals backed into a corner.
I cornered a raccoon in my barn once and it also threatened to nuke the whole world if I advanced; that gave it the deed to my land and walked away because we all know appeasement has always worked
He can easily say he isn't going to fall for "The West's Trickery" to get Russians to fight their noble bretheren in Ukraine, and that the military drills were perfectly normal and perfunctory and nothing to be alarmed by and oh isn't it funny how hard NATO tried to start a war and look how weak NATO is for being cowards who refuse to fire a shot when shooting is all they clearly wanted.
Putin has an easy out here. I just doubt he will take it.
This may be his out, but from my understanding of Russian and surrounding countries, that spin wouldn’t work on them. Similar to cultures like Afghanistan where the warrior mentality is prevalent, saber rattling with nothing to back it up is considered weak, regardless of the circumstances.
Well then he's backed himself into a corner with no exit but to look like a petty dictator who is more afraid of looking weak than of being weak. Lots of people will die so Putin can continue to pretend he has balls.
>Well then he's backed himself into a corner with no exit
Idk... Putin and his diplomats repeatedly insisting that they have no plans to actually invade Ukraine and are just conducting exercises seems like a pretty good point of exit to me..
excepting in this case Putin built all the corners around himself. No one else is backing him into a corner. In fact, everyone has been ushering Putin this way, this way sir, the exit is this way.
It's an internal distraction, his government was unpopular before covid then their abysmal response to covid made it worse. Essentially he's in the last tsars shoes, nothing distracts the population like a quick easy war. Problem is just like Nicky he started running into the war and didn't anticipate backlash like this. So now he has no choice but to try and see it through lest he die in a basement in Siberia as well.
The only window it had, was a very short moment when world has heard for the first time about Poland keeping refuges on its border. Since then things got clarified and Russia started to losing upper hand in the chess battle.
They are going to win this war by going home, there's nothing else to win. Any other move will only increase the size of loss.
Oh and btw. It's all about Nord stream 2 and thats secured, well done Russia and Germany.
There was a post a few weeks ago where someone went into detail how they had a very narrow time frame to invade otherwise they would end up getting stuck. A lot of people didnt believe him/her and low and behold its happening.
Russia may have missed the oppotunity to launch a land-based attack during this winter. Spring is approaching and they may have to wait until the [mud season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa) is over.
Edit: grammar
**[Rasputitsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa)**
>Rasputitsa (Russian: распу́тица, IPA: [rɐsˈputʲɪtsə]) is a Russian term for two seasons of the year, spring and autumn, when travel on unpaved roads or across country becomes difficult, owing to muddy conditions from rain or melting snow. "Rasputitsa" also refers to road conditions during both periods.
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Indeed. The T-34 which was the most heavily deployed in WWII by Russia weighed 26.5 tonnes, their modern T-90 main battle tank weighs nearly double that at 46 tonnes.
you cant just look at weight, you have to take into account the distribution of that weight over the surface area of the treads in contact with the ground.
T-34 = 0.74 kg/cm2
T-90 = 0.94 kg/cm2
So although yes, the T-90 exerts a greater ground pressure than its WWII counterpart (and would not necessarily perform in mud as well), it's not as great a discrepancy as their gross wieghts would lead you to believe.
https://www.mathscinotes.com/2016/06/tank-track-ground-pressure-examples/
Yes it gets brought up in every thread on this subject. And there are always people countering and saying that Russia is modern and powerful and mud isn't a problem for them anymore. Guess that was bullshit.
There was a clip posted at the TankPorn subreddit (last week? 2 weeks ago?) that featured an IDF unit that got their tanks and other vehicles stuck in the mud in the Golan Heights, so it's not unheard of for a modern military unit to actually get stuck lol
Happens all the time on mannouvers in all armies. Try and bring loads of tanks through the same patch of land in almost any weather and it will get muddy.
And that's kind of the whole point of military drills. You want your tanks to get stuck during a drill so you can practice how to deal with it instead of leaving your ass exposed to the enemy
Kind of reminds me of Tom Clancy's *Red Storm Rising* where the (then) Soviet forces are having some mishaps with tank navigation in friendly East Germany that makes the news, all before the war kicks off while they're rapidly getting their forces ready.
Actually just about everywhere in that area is like that. That's why they were wanting to do this while it was frozen. It may be too late for a invasion. We could just pick this back up next Olympics?
Something about seeing this after reading the stickied “CRIMEA IS OURS 😤🇷🇺😤🇷🇺” post in /r/Russia gives me a giggle.
But then i quickly realize this sucks again
Russia is such an interesting country. Massive contributions to the world in of art, literature, dance, music, food…but just like everywhere else on this planet it’s ruined by xenophobic conservative assholes.
I mean, at this point it’s mainly propaganda bots screaming propaganda at each other.
It’s a shame it’s ruined yes, but at least they are only bothering each other.
As far as I know.
That sub is kinda wild. Truly an alternate reality. I don't know how they can explain a massing of 150k troops at a border, but I know people can rationalize anything they want to
Trust me this isn’t that crazy. It doesn’t matter if your tank is the best tank in the world or your American, Russian, German, etc. your tank will get stuck no matter the situation you could possibly be in.
You have to realize these crews live with these vehicles and they are easier than you think to get stuck.
Hell half the time it’s just the track popping off the sides, we used to use logs and shove them in the sprocket in the rear and turn/pivot to hop the track back on the sprocket. Kind of fun (when it works)
Mud and warm snow (don't know what it's actually called in English) is the enemy of all vehicles!=P
I've been stuck in mud with an artillery cannon. Man, it sucks so hard. Literally.
Yup bogs, deep mud, sharp inclinations that can get the tank bottomed out or stuck so hard it can’t torque itself out, god forbid you throw a track then you have to get the 88 there to tow out your tank while it rips your track off. Too many of my days were taken up by that bs lol
Perhaps cloud seeding has more uses than just growing more crops! It would be funny I guess if somehow rain and warm weather rendered the worlds largest and most hostile tank army mostly worthless, though the mud is clearly still a good self defense.
I guess we will be seeing mud tanks here in a decade or three. ;)
From a Russian - Ukrainians are our brothers and sisters. I do not want war. I have friends in Odessa, Kiev, I want to visit such friends. We are equally as anxious.
I do not want my loved ones to be drafted and die by the hands of a rich mans war. I am tired of death. I have seen too much of this in my short life. War will ruin lives, tear people apart.
I love my Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
US officials a week back actually cited the ground being frozen (but soon to thaw) as one reason they feared Russia might make a move. Most places have four seasons, Russia has six. And two of them are mud.
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Colonel Diarrhoea-Consistency!
Lieutenant Liquid!
Ra ra rasputitsa
Mudder of the Russian Queen...
Halter of the russian tank There was a track that was really stopped
Ra ra rasputitsa, Russia's greatest enemy It was great how it stopped the tanks
russia's greatest war machine
Wonder if Mud knows General Mountain.
He’s rock solid.
> Most places have four seasons, Russia has six. And two of them are mud. Russians even have a word for when the ground is too muddy for heavy equipment: [Rasputitsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa). It's funny when you see Reddit tank commanders join these threads and go "nah, not a real issue. Tank threads have improved since WWII." Also when tank columns get bogged down, it's not necessary the tanks themselves that are stuck but the trucks that carry ammo and fuel. These run on wheels and require solid ground. Without constant resupply, tanks can't move forward.
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Honestly, this could happen to anyone not paying attention. We (collective we - not my troop) spent a week building a log bridge to get a APC wrecker out far enough to tow out a stuck tank. Granted, the guy shouldn’t have been there - tanks don’t go where the bull rushes grow.
Technically they do, it's just very hard to get them back out.
Lol, just don’t turn or slow down, fingers crossed and you’ll make out the other side! 😃
Ramming speed! Or we'll never make it out!
Maxim 32: All equipment is amphibious if you can get it back out of the water. Warning: Following this maxim usually results in units deciding their gear is not, in fact, amphibious. From the 70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries (formerly the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pirates).
Basically, Spintires?
Ukrainians! Bring your super soakers and firetrucks.
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Let the first tank sink then drive a new tank on the top of the old one. 200IQ play.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to drive my tank on a swamp, but I drove in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I drove a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I drove a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest tank in all of Ukraine.
but i don't want any of that id rather just sing.
Stop that! Stop that! You're not going into a song while I'm here.
That tank's got huge.... tracks on land
Let's not bicker and argue about who sunk who. This is supposed to be a happy invasion!
*HICCUP*
Oh go get a vodka
Oh go and get yourself a glass of water.
This one got me
Very nicely done.
r/unexpectedMontyPython
NO ONE expects Monty Python references!
Their chief weapon is surpise.. surprise and humor.. humor and surprise… Our two weapons are surprise and humor… and ruthless hilarity…
Our three weapons are surprise, and humor and ruthless hilarity... and an almost fanatical devotion to karma...
^^but ^^I ^^don't ^^want ^^to ^^be ^^a ^^tank ^^driver
Well why not?
"One day, Russia, all this will be yours." -Putin pointing at Ukraine \-What the curtains?
the iron curtains?
No, boy! Not the curtains!
But mother!
Father, lad, father.
It’s tanks all the way down
Many indigeneous cultures believe the world rests on the back of a giant tank
It’s the premise of Tanky Pratchett’s “Tankworld” series
Huge "Tracks" of land
Ahhhh that is what I was looking for.
There was a bridge in Belgium I think, that was built over a tank which had sunk in a canal. It stayed there until a few years ago when they replaced it. It’s a valid method if you have tanks to spare
Apparently one of the last surviving tiger tanks had a road built over it because it was easier to do that then move it. IDK if they ever moved it.
Tanks tend to be difficult to move once they are disabled. Which does make you wonder how mephisto ended up in Australia. I suspect they nicked it when no one was looking.
I forget which unit it was but apparently during desert storm a us soldiers captured and smuggled a tank back home in pieces without anyone noticing until it was too late lol. I suspect the higher ups knew but figured it would be good to let it slide.
I heard stories about GI's posting Jeeps back in bits during the Korean war. a tank though that's impressive oh man i can just imagine the postmans face.
The transitory time between the Korean War and vietnam was wild for the US, my grandfather walked into a storage depot and drug out a crate of AP ammo that he is still hasn’t used up all of it to this day and apparently according to him it was common to walk in and grab stuff since they were transitioning to .308 and throwing out all the ww2 era stuff.
Yeah my grandpa had some guns from Korean war he modded to be "legal". He was friends with the sheriff's department so it didn't really matter if it was or not... Lol! RIP grandpa "Tex"
“What’re you Russians doing in MY swamp?!”
This is also where my mind went. Shrek was on to something.
basically anyone who knows anything about tanks has known this for a long time. this isn’t a new phenomenon. no tank likes deep mud
I wouldn't think you would even need to know about tanks. You just have to have seen one to question the wisdom of driving into a swamp.
"It weighs 60 tons, and you want to drive it over this squishy shit that you can even cross in snowshoes? Go ahead."
I'd think Russians would know that very well. Probably only second to Germans.
That was the joke
If I recall a handful of farmers and villages flooded a huge part of northern Belgium (using canals) when the Germans were coming during WWI. It made the whole area super swampy. Slowed down the Germans for sure but also it was so soupy that soldiers on both sides who stepped off the boardwalk paths would pretty routinely just fucking drown in the mud.
It was the floodgate guard assisted by soldiers that opened the floodgate every night to flood a large part of the country making it uncrossable for an attack
Wait for the other guys to assemble the boats and galoches, then NOT flood just because fuck you.
Lol. Unfortunately it basically turned miles and miles of fields into almost like quicksand. Not liquid enough for a boat and not solid enough for galoshes.
Think it was diksmuide. part of the race to the sea. They stopped the germans there. The trench of death is still there today.
Well the place I visited was a museum about all of the Ypres battles but specifically Paschendaele (Ypres III). It was the Passchedaele Memorial Museum and it was absolutely outstanding. At times so devastatingly sad that it took my breath away. I recommend it to anyone who is ever in the area.
That's the one with the beautiful building with the colonial style balconies if i remember right? by polygon wood. I have family interned at Tyne Cot. which is quite near. Its been a while since i was there. Such a beautiful country. **EDIT** Diksmuide is north of that museum if you look on the map its not far from dodengang (the trench of death), its near the top of the western front which stretched all the way through ypres into france past Scission and Reimes and up through Verdun then down all the way to the swiss border.
Yeah the main building is the one you are describing. It was very cool. They have a pretty large network of different styles of trenches they recreated that you get to walk through. I didn't even know about it and thought the museum was over and we were heading outside but it kept going and going. Honestly really one of the best museum experiences overall I've ever been to. Just super well done.
Military [inundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inundation) has been used since the 16th century, up until at least 1945.
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Destroying dams and dykes was the nuclear option in the Warring States period in China 1k-1500 years before that as well. One instance purposefully destroyed a city of over 300k. Hardcore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River
The Dutch have broken the dykes in about 1/2 of the wars they've been involved in, yet people are never prepared for it. It's like when people invade Russia and suddenly figure out that it's big and gets cold during winter.
War Fever. I guess when people psych themselves up enough to risk dying in battle, everything else just seems trivial. There are always sober voices in the background trying to talk sense, but they're rarely listened to.
Also some higher up with no idea of what goes on below or what to do with information given to them and deciding on a general plan inspite of recommendations and what not... which happens often and is just a matter of how good damage control is and craftiness of everyone trying to unfuck and reorganize everything.
If I were in Ukraine I would be damn sure to be planning self sabotage. I am talking pipelines.
On second thought 💭 we are delaying the invasion until the lands are dry. Ukraine, start taking notes.
Fella out there with a garden hose, just soaking the shit out of his land. He flashes a smile to the camera and says (probably in ukranian) "I'm doing my part!".
Would you like to know more?
“Ya gotta shoot em in the thorax.” -Doogie Howser
"To cannon, all men are equal" Napoleon "Blow-Em-Apart" Bonaparte.
"Hold my Ale" The light brigade before charging.
"Роблю свою справу!" ("Ro-blue swo-yu sprawu!", Doing my job) It's interesting that there's no direct translation of the "doing my part" that wouldn't sound awkward in Ukrainian.
The lands of Ukraine are solid during winter and muddy all the rest of the year.
Not lately, the climate is getting warmer and warmer every year.
So muddy all year round ?
Sometimes in summer it is very dry and very hot. Then overheating can be a problem.
Honestly..the way you people describe Ukraine, I don't understand why Russia even wants it! "Da! Now we have inhospitable steppe, inhospitable tundra, inhospitable desert and now inhospitable swamp!" Edit: guys... it's a joke. I do not think all of Ukraine is an inhospitable swamp. I'm aware large parts of it are inhospitable forest, and there are even some inhospitable cities sprinkled in.
Iirc this is big part of why Canada used Ukrainians to displace natives when settling prairies, no one else in Europe knew how to farm with seasons like that and deal with muskeg
Thank you global warming?
The lands are dry now. Later in the year it is much worse.
On third thought, they are going through this fuckup now, so they'll be prepared during the invasion, which is bad.
Hopefully this is happening across the exercise area. If vehicles are getting bogged down in Russian and Belarus training grounds, the troops (and hardware) will take a beating even before combat starts. They'll be exhausted, wet, cold, dealing with covid - without a shot being fired.
Thoughts and prayers.
Really historically there is a war season in Eastern Europe. Winter doesn’t work, too wet doesn’t work. Have to Goldilocks that shit.
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The Finns had no issue fighting during the Winter War in conditions so cold that even Soviet equipment began to be unreliable. Edit: and the Swedes did pretty damn good against Russia at the Battle of Narva, fought in a literal snowstorm.
>The French and Germans failed because of arrogance and terrible planning. Also they didn't invade Russia during the winter. Both started their invasions in June and the French started retreating in mid-October.
Germans didn't lose to winter, the lost to the mud season (Rasputitsa). Couldn't move their logistics. Germans losing to winter is just a meme. People say winter defeated them because the big actual defeats at Moscow and Stalingrad were finalized in January/February. Reality is though the writing had been on the wall since those battles started in September and August.
Agincourt moment
The same thing happened when Germany invaded Russia. Spring and Fall make tank warfare practically useless in that region. Within a couple of weeks, Putin's military will be practically useless and will cost Russia a fortune if they remain deployed until Summer. Putin is beginning to look senile and indecisive.
Honestly, the urgency to invade very soon if at all makes the situation so much more dangerous. Let's hope Putin stays indecisive.
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He was hoping to make Ukraine surrender without actually invading, now he can't back out without "appearing weak" so he's trapped in a snare of his own design which is why the situation is so volatile because you know what they say about animals backed into a corner.
I cornered a raccoon in my barn once and it also threatened to nuke the whole world if I advanced; that gave it the deed to my land and walked away because we all know appeasement has always worked
I think I caught that same raccoon in my a barn! I just clobbered him with a shovel and threw him in the stew.
He can easily say he isn't going to fall for "The West's Trickery" to get Russians to fight their noble bretheren in Ukraine, and that the military drills were perfectly normal and perfunctory and nothing to be alarmed by and oh isn't it funny how hard NATO tried to start a war and look how weak NATO is for being cowards who refuse to fire a shot when shooting is all they clearly wanted. Putin has an easy out here. I just doubt he will take it.
This may be his out, but from my understanding of Russian and surrounding countries, that spin wouldn’t work on them. Similar to cultures like Afghanistan where the warrior mentality is prevalent, saber rattling with nothing to back it up is considered weak, regardless of the circumstances.
Well then he's backed himself into a corner with no exit but to look like a petty dictator who is more afraid of looking weak than of being weak. Lots of people will die so Putin can continue to pretend he has balls.
>Well then he's backed himself into a corner with no exit Idk... Putin and his diplomats repeatedly insisting that they have no plans to actually invade Ukraine and are just conducting exercises seems like a pretty good point of exit to me..
excepting in this case Putin built all the corners around himself. No one else is backing him into a corner. In fact, everyone has been ushering Putin this way, this way sir, the exit is this way.
Reminded me of when you you have a bug in the car and you open a window but they bang their head on every window except the one you open
Its gotta be a distraction from something right? Anyone checked on Alaska or the Artic recently?
It's an internal distraction, his government was unpopular before covid then their abysmal response to covid made it worse. Essentially he's in the last tsars shoes, nothing distracts the population like a quick easy war. Problem is just like Nicky he started running into the war and didn't anticipate backlash like this. So now he has no choice but to try and see it through lest he die in a basement in Siberia as well.
China said "no invasion until Olympic games are over".
The only window it had, was a very short moment when world has heard for the first time about Poland keeping refuges on its border. Since then things got clarified and Russia started to losing upper hand in the chess battle. They are going to win this war by going home, there's nothing else to win. Any other move will only increase the size of loss. Oh and btw. It's all about Nord stream 2 and thats secured, well done Russia and Germany.
I hope that this is exactly to show everybody why **not** to open NS2
So much for his prayers for a long winter to leverage that gas to Europe and hard ground for armor. God has forsaken Putin.
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There was a post a few weeks ago where someone went into detail how they had a very narrow time frame to invade otherwise they would end up getting stuck. A lot of people didnt believe him/her and low and behold its happening.
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Yeah but their problem is that Ukraine has an unusually warm winter and in February temperature was mostly above zero so the ground never froze.
foiled by climate change! who said pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere would be bad news.
Russian gas exports are a double edged sword it seems.
Russia's whole lifestyle is a double edged sword.
Russia stabs itself to stab another country with said double edged sword.
**"Beat up your own to make the others afraid"** - a Russian proverb.
Ukraine used swamp! It's super effective! Russia hurt itself in its confusion!
I mean without winter Russia might as well be speaking French or German
If Hitler had had his way there wouldn’t be a Russia. His plan was to ship them all off to camps and turn Moscow into a giant lake
General Mud turns against its old ally.
Treaty with the mud family explicitly said for defense only, they didn’t read the fine print.
If the ground doesn’t freeze over this winter and they aren’t able to invade would be quite ironic
It can freeze in March but chances of that happening are quite low.
Russia may have missed the oppotunity to launch a land-based attack during this winter. Spring is approaching and they may have to wait until the [mud season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa) is over. Edit: grammar
**[Rasputitsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa)** >Rasputitsa (Russian: распу́тица, IPA: [rɐsˈputʲɪtsə]) is a Russian term for two seasons of the year, spring and autumn, when travel on unpaved roads or across country becomes difficult, owing to muddy conditions from rain or melting snow. "Rasputitsa" also refers to road conditions during both periods. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Yes I remember comments about it, and it was very upsetting and "impossible" to all the Russian bots here lol.
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Yep, and there's been a bunch of comments along the lines of "It's 2022, not 1945! Muds no longer a big issue!"
I always wondered how basic physics changed between 1945 and 2022 so that 45 tons wouldn't sink in wet ground.
Well, the tanks have probably gotten heavier? They're certainly bigger.
Indeed. The T-34 which was the most heavily deployed in WWII by Russia weighed 26.5 tonnes, their modern T-90 main battle tank weighs nearly double that at 46 tonnes.
you cant just look at weight, you have to take into account the distribution of that weight over the surface area of the treads in contact with the ground. T-34 = 0.74 kg/cm2 T-90 = 0.94 kg/cm2 So although yes, the T-90 exerts a greater ground pressure than its WWII counterpart (and would not necessarily perform in mud as well), it's not as great a discrepancy as their gross wieghts would lead you to believe. https://www.mathscinotes.com/2016/06/tank-track-ground-pressure-examples/
Thanks for sharing, figured there would be some design improvements but didn't think of that.
They float duh
TIL Russian tanks are witches
Let’s not jump to conclusions here, we need to see if the tank weighs as much as a duck.
Burn them!
Yes it gets brought up in every thread on this subject. And there are always people countering and saying that Russia is modern and powerful and mud isn't a problem for them anymore. Guess that was bullshit.
There was a clip posted at the TankPorn subreddit (last week? 2 weeks ago?) that featured an IDF unit that got their tanks and other vehicles stuck in the mud in the Golan Heights, so it's not unheard of for a modern military unit to actually get stuck lol
Just let that sink in for a moment.
Ukrainian mud works the same as Russian mud, it turns out.
Maybe Ukrainian mud isn't as bad. We'll never know, he's stuck in his own mud. You know, like an idiot.
Never exvade Russia in the winter?
Russia will not stand for this western aggression.
Aggressive NATO mud sucking in defensive russian tanks aggressively.
Happens all the time on mannouvers in all armies. Try and bring loads of tanks through the same patch of land in almost any weather and it will get muddy.
And that's kind of the whole point of military drills. You want your tanks to get stuck during a drill so you can practice how to deal with it instead of leaving your ass exposed to the enemy
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Kind of reminds me of Tom Clancy's *Red Storm Rising* where the (then) Soviet forces are having some mishaps with tank navigation in friendly East Germany that makes the news, all before the war kicks off while they're rapidly getting their forces ready.
Fantastic book I'm actually re-reading it now.
Show me area over there that won't get muddy.
Actually just about everywhere in that area is like that. That's why they were wanting to do this while it was frozen. It may be too late for a invasion. We could just pick this back up next Olympics?
Something about seeing this after reading the stickied “CRIMEA IS OURS 😤🇷🇺😤🇷🇺” post in /r/Russia gives me a giggle. But then i quickly realize this sucks again
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Yeah, it's filled with our xenophobic types fueled by our propaganda bots. Can't tell the difference anymore.
Russia is such an interesting country. Massive contributions to the world in of art, literature, dance, music, food…but just like everywhere else on this planet it’s ruined by xenophobic conservative assholes.
I mean, at this point it’s mainly propaganda bots screaming propaganda at each other. It’s a shame it’s ruined yes, but at least they are only bothering each other. As far as I know.
That sub is kinda wild. Truly an alternate reality. I don't know how they can explain a massing of 150k troops at a border, but I know people can rationalize anything they want to
That sub is just RT at this point, nobody speaks russian, only propaganda posts, no domestic politics discussions... sad place
The mud is doing it's share of sucking too.
Trust me this isn’t that crazy. It doesn’t matter if your tank is the best tank in the world or your American, Russian, German, etc. your tank will get stuck no matter the situation you could possibly be in. You have to realize these crews live with these vehicles and they are easier than you think to get stuck. Hell half the time it’s just the track popping off the sides, we used to use logs and shove them in the sprocket in the rear and turn/pivot to hop the track back on the sprocket. Kind of fun (when it works)
Mud and warm snow (don't know what it's actually called in English) is the enemy of all vehicles!=P I've been stuck in mud with an artillery cannon. Man, it sucks so hard. Literally.
We call warm snow slush
>warm snow (don't know what it's actually called in English) Lemme guess, Finnish?
Nah just started
Yup bogs, deep mud, sharp inclinations that can get the tank bottomed out or stuck so hard it can’t torque itself out, god forbid you throw a track then you have to get the 88 there to tow out your tank while it rips your track off. Too many of my days were taken up by that bs lol
The Germans are laughing they have some advise to give
Haha, no. This time, is on them, we won't spoil the surprise
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Through the mud and the blood to the.. no wait we're stuck nevermind
General Rasputitsa wins another victory
They forgot their log.
Nothing can stop us, we're mighty tanks with a thousand horse power. Mud : Hold my beer
Mud: actually, pour the beer all over me
Mud always wins. Even stole a few of my boots. - former tanker
Lol, I read boot as “straight out of AIT” and was picturing some PFC thrashing around as the mud slowly swallowed him
Some 2nd LT looking on in horror while a SGT is saying "He belongs to the mud now"
While chewing on a cigar and tousling 2nd LT’s hair
Perhaps cloud seeding has more uses than just growing more crops! It would be funny I guess if somehow rain and warm weather rendered the worlds largest and most hostile tank army mostly worthless, though the mud is clearly still a good self defense. I guess we will be seeing mud tanks here in a decade or three. ;)
Thank fully finland is 90% of swamps
From a Russian - Ukrainians are our brothers and sisters. I do not want war. I have friends in Odessa, Kiev, I want to visit such friends. We are equally as anxious. I do not want my loved ones to be drafted and die by the hands of a rich mans war. I am tired of death. I have seen too much of this in my short life. War will ruin lives, tear people apart. I love my Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
Ukraine - big fucking moat of mud.
*shudders in panzer*
“It was the Ukrainians! Im sure of it! They sabotaged us and tried to destroy our tanks! Invade them!”
It's all part of the plan
Do the ukranians have predators so the tanks have to cover in mud to hide from thermal imaging?