Russian invasion of Ukraine

I’d love to see a link from a Russian state endorsed media source that reports those sorts of numbers.

John McCain is no longer allowed to travel to Russia. He must be turning in his grave over that.

A Ukrainian court sentenced a 21 -year-old Russian soldier to life in
prison Monday for killing a civilian, sealing the first conviction for
war crimes since Moscow's invasion three months ago.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-23/russian-offensive-turns-to-key-donbas-city-heavy-shelling

Tough for the individual as he might've not had many options with his superior shouting in his ear, but hopefully a clear message to the Russian troops that they won't get away with war crimes.

Slightly aside from the point on this discussion, but the guy is 21. Is this a normal age for a tank commander, or is it potentially indicative of relatively young and inadequately trained people in responsible, technical frontline roles?

Read an article this morning that the bulk of the Russian army replacements are 18-year-olds with literally days or weeks of basic training. It's a gruesome thought isn't it, just meat for the russian war machine to churn through.

In a largely conscript army you only have most soldiers for 1 or 2 years so you have to promote NCOs quickly so you have the right ratios of NCOs/Privates on mobilisation.
In the Soviet army anyone with potential was put through an extra couple of months training after basic training and promoted to sergeant.

Arn't soliders always suprisingly young in real life, as opposed to films and drama where they are so often way to old ie Tom Cruise in the new Top Gun.

You join at 18 do 22 years and retire at 40 unless you become very senior. If you are infantry your knees retire before the age of 30.

When you join the army, you sign up for 4 years. You can leave at any time after this as long as you give 12 months' notice. If you want to stay you can extend your 4-year contract.

22 years is actually the maximum that a soldier is ordinarily allowed to serve and when your full pension is activated. But I appreciate I'm being a pedant here. In theory, as long as you meet fitness requirements, now days you are allowed to serve up to 60 years old or so, but that is at their discretion.

Putin obviously never played Cannon Fodder or he would have learnt the importance of keeping Jools, Jops and Stoo alive.

Comment of the year

https://playclassic.games/games/action-dos-games-online/play-cannon-fodder-online/play/

There goes my morning

or try: https://www.playdosgames.com/play/cannon-fodder/

Found this too but cant get it to work, get a "soundblaster error". Is it a mac issue?

^
https://www.oldgames.sk/en/game/cannon-fodder/download/2185/

if needed

Try again adding the correct word from that list worked for me (had the soundblaster error first too)

Aha. Gotta love the old school pirate blockers :)

Anyway, back to the real world atrocities

Oh the irony

1 Attachment

Pretty good retort to the Chomsky comments

Thanks, will read

Edit: Just read it. Its a great retort.

Its interesting that they do not address the issues that I taking exception to a few pages back...mainly because Chomsky didn't say the things that people claimed he did. I.e the stuff about "The people of Ukraine not wanting more heavy weapons".

In short, those guys seem to have understood the nuance and context of his comments and that they were an answer to a hypothetical thought experiment question rather than expression of fact. In other words, they took the time to watch the interviews and took exception to the stuff he did say rather than the stuff he didn't.

In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was twenty-six
In Vietnam he was nineteen
In inininininin Vietnam he was nineteen

General mobilisation or draft innit?
The former just expands on the available man power and so the average age goes up

Lithuanian influencer launches €5m crowdfunding to gift Bayraktar drone to Ukraine

2 Attachments

Long listen and goes all over the place but constantly comes back to Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a7CDKqWcZ0&t

Quite a spicy article about the death of the tank in the Telegraph

Hard to argue against this article.
Seldom ever thought I would read, let alone agree with anyhting in the Telegraph.