NYT Putins war, how a walk in the park became a catastrophe for Russia.

[Ferryboat]

Must read 11 page article in Sunday's paper.

[underpants]

1. 👀 will check it out.

[Happy Hoosier]

2. Someplace not behind a paywall?

I’m not giving that “both sides” rag any money.

[Hekate]

3. Link? Four-paragraph quote? Anything?

[sl8]

4. Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html

[Hekate]

6. TY

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

5. I found this:

Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training.

Now, they were piled onto the tops of overcrowded armored vehicles, lumbering through fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century ago and virtually nothing to eat, they said. Russia had been at war most of the year, yet its army seemed less prepared than ever. In interviews, members of the brigade said some of them had barely fired a gun before and described having almost no bullets anyway, let alone air cover or artillery. But it didn’t frighten them too much, they said. They would never see combat, their commanders had promised.

Only when the shells began crashing around them, ripping their comrades to pieces, did they realize how badly they had been duped.

Flung to the ground, a drafted Russian soldier named Mikhail recalled opening his eyes to a shock: the shredded bodies of his comrades littering the field. Shrapnel had sliced open his belly, too. Desperate to escape, he said, he crawled to a thicket of trees and tried to dig a ditch with his hands.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html

[Hekate]

7. TY. Ye gods. The sheer war-crimes-level brutality extends into their own army.

[Ferryboat]

8. There is a corresponding article over at the Washington Post.

Mostly focusing on a elite top of the line unit based in the artic and how they are anything but.

[underpants]

11. Found it - with link. Good read. Sounds like a miserable station to start with. Yikes.

Since the Cold War, this Arctic arsenal has been protected by a combat unit considered one of Russia’s most formidable — the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade — until it sent its best fighters and weapons to Ukraine this year and was effectively destroyed.

The brigade’s collapse in part reflects the difficulty of its assignment in the war and the valiant performance of Ukraine’s military. But a closer examination of the 200th shows that its fate was also shaped by many of the same forces that derailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion plans — endemic corruption, strategic miscalculations and a Kremlin failure to grasp the true capabilities of its own military or those of its adversary.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/16/russia-200th-brigade-decimated-ukraine/

?v=8

[pandr32]

9. Putin and his oligarchs have looted their own country.

It is shocking to what degree.

They want to annex Ukraine so they can loot it, too.

[Demanchor]

10. He may have some regrets once Russia becomes

A vassal state to China. How many nukes will China be in control of?

Japan is soon to become the third largest military spender on the planet. Let’s pay attention to what Japan is preparing for.

The Russian people need to wake up.