Ukraine warns Russia massing 500,000 troops on border for offensive

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

“Now Russia is concentrating its forces. We all know that. It is preparing to try to take revenge, not only against Ukraine, but against a free Europe and the free world,” Zelensky said at a press conference alongside EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, as reported by Agence France-Presse.

Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov told French media on Wednesday that Russia had 500,000 troops ready for an attack to come in weeks. That number is far higher than the 300,000 newly enlisted soldiers Russian President Vladimir Putin called up this past autumn.

(snip)

Moscow is hoping the hundreds of thousands of reservists and new conscripts it called up in the fall will allow it to reconstitute military units depleted last year.

Driving the timeline forward is a small gap between newly pledged Western battle vehicles and tanks and when Ukraine will actually take possession of the weapons, experts predict

(snip)

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3841230-ukraine-warns-russia-massing-500000-troops-on-border-for-offensive/

[cilla4progress]

1. Fuuuuuuckkkk...

...

[Irish_Dem]

3. I followed that with some other choice words. :(

[Irish_Dem]

2. I can't send F-16s so I will just send Hail Marys instead.

Please God help Zelensky and the Ukrainian people.
It's all I got.

[onecaliberal]

4. Fuck a world that watches that murderous piece of shit

Exterminate the Ukrainian people while they negotiate what kind of weapons to send. I’m tired of this life.

[PortTack]

5. ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

[Fiendish Thingy]

6. I don't think Russia has half that many soldiers

They’ve lost over 100,000 in the first year of the war, and have had to resort to releasing prisoners to fill their ranks.

The soldiers they do have lack training and equipment. Recon teams are often sent out unarmed; if they don’t come back, the rest assume they found some Ukrainian troops.

[GregariousGroundhog]

8. Ukraine's latest estimate is that there are 320,000 Russian forces in their country

Additionally, only about half of the 300,000 people conscripted in last autumn were sent to Ukraine. The first 150,000 sent were given minimal training and were either used as cannon fodder or to sit in a frozen trench and make Russian forces look more capable than they really were. It's anyone's guess how well the remaining 150,000 people are being trained in Russia/Belarus.

So Russia can conceivably get to 470,000. Russian logistics will probably struggle to keep that many soldiers supplied though. Russia is effective at moving stuff by rail, but is terrible at moving things from the railhead to units out in the field. Ukraine has done a great job at using GMLRS rockets to force Russia railheads back away from the front, and Ukraine will almost certainly further exasperate Russia's achilles heel once they start fielding the GLSDB being developed by Boeing and Saab.

[Chainfire]

7. Russia could not provide the logistics for half that number of troops.

You think that they tooled up to more than double their ability to send troops and material to the front now? Doubling the number of disaffected, hungry, troops with insufficient weapons will not help the cause unless the Russians plan to choke out Ukraine with the stink of dead Russian troops.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

Winston Churchill

[Aristus]

9. If thus far, Russia has had to resort to recruiting soldiers out of its prisons,

and digging ancient obsolete T-62 tanks out of storage to send to the front, I can only wonder at the quality and training of the 500,000 (if it truly is that many) troops on the border.

[Beck2]

10. NUKES

Sadly it is about the Nukes.