Onion articles are writing itself: Western Military Observers shocked that Russians are not commiting war crimes like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. - When we were in Middle East, we started to wreck shit up, shelling with depleted uranium, bombing villages. I'm suprised that Russian are such weak bitches - retired col. said. - My men have PTSD and are homeless but at least we protected special interests of Oil Companies and the ruling class.
Wasn't there some post/comment earlier this week mentioning that the Russian military forces going in first were going in with greener troops and older gear? I mean, the stuff I was driving around in Iraq during the 2003 invasion was ancient.
Reading between the lines, Russian forces aren't yet doing a mass causality event to take those cities.
Nothing in the article explains why they have come to this opinion.
Yeah, that's just propaganda. You don't show the bad things until after the war is over. Don't tell the soldiers on the front lines that they are about to get rolled up because they are expected to stand their ground to slow enemy troops, have them use up supplies and reduce their numbers through causalities/fatalities.
Another way to read this article.... this means that all of the NATO/USA anti-Russian propaganda about how the Russian military is some big scary thing waiting to gobble up Europe... was a lie to justify NATO expansion, military buildups, etc. The Russian military might be little different then any other large modern military, a few units and their victories are doing the heavy lifting for the reputation of the military as a whole.
I'm seeing mostly T-72s and light vehicles in the "Ukraine destroys armoured column" vids, only one or two T80s, all older, no T90s so far.
Apparently, there are mostly Su27s and older bombers in the air, though I have no idea how you could tell a 27 from a 35 from grainy phone footage. It's hard enough to differentiate T72s from T90s.
There is a mix of old and new equipment. From what we see most of their tanks seem to be T-72B3s alongside older models such as the T-72A and T-72AV (which seem to be used for rear echelon troops). I've seen pictures of a single T-90 and a video of a T-80BVM (apparently, hard to confirm) which suffered an internal detonation which separated the turret from the hull.
Their IFVs and APCs are also mixed equipment, MT-LBs from the 60s as well as BMP-1s, a couple of BMP-2 which is still reliable in today's battlefield but very few modern armored transports so far.
They've also held their strategic bomber fleet back, so no Tu-160s. As for their rocket and missile artillery, they're using Kalibr and Iskanders.. which are pretty new.
And this is the so-called military disappointment, a regular army that is advancing on another regular army with mostly late soviet era tech.. and in two or three days it managed to reach the capital and make a series of breakthroughs in the south and east without fully deploying it's firepower and being quite soft with it's artillery.
I don't know if there is much of a practical difference between their T72s and newer tanks under the conditions they are fighting in right now. They aren't facing peer armor very much.
It was old Soviet doctrine to use the older T55s and such ahead of the newer T62s, T64s , and T72s for similar reasons. So this is to be expected.