Quote from: Veleor on July 29, 2022, 10:35:45 PM

Quote from: DaRude on July 29, 2022, 10:04:49 PM

Considering the value of Azov being alive to UA and RU sides, both claims sound ridiculous to the point of being laughable. So most likely this was an accidental attack. As these things go, like with MH17, one side will try to do everything to investigate and drum up as much attention as possible, and the other side has no option but to just blatantly deny everything and try to make it go away ASAP.

It's even more ridiculous to say it was accidental attack.
The captured Azovites are still highly valued for exchange, because at large in Ukraine they are apparently still considered the elite and there are many more of their fighters and supporters at large who are pressing the Zelensky government to exchange them in the very first place.
For the Zelensky government, for which victories on the information front are much more important than real ones, it would be better if the Azov people did not surrender, but died the death of the brave as martyrs. Therefore, on the one hand, Kyiv exchanges part of the soldiers, and on the other hand, instead of Russia, it may well seek to complete its plan to glorify the prisoners from Azovstal by completely destroying it. Moreover, as mentioned above, such attacks may be designed not only to intimidate witnesses, but to reduce the desire of Ukrainian soldiers to surrender into Russian captivity.

Quote from: paxmao on July 29, 2022, 10:23:03 AM

... Happy you can keep you sense of humour despite "one of the best armies" being proven to be a fossil from the last century, unable to mount anything but localised, slow pace offensives.
I would certainly would not consider Kherson "liberated" if I were you.

This means that either Ukrainian soldiers, with the help of Western weapons and foreign mercenaries, do not know how to fight at all against the antediluvian Russian army, or you are not able to impartially process information. To understand this topic, it is still better to read what correspondents from the fronts transmit.

Code:

"An American fighting for Ukraine who served in the U.S. Army with combat tours in the Middle East
described the constant Russian bombardment of the city of Severodonetsk in Ukraine’s Donbas region as
“the closest thing I’ve ever seen to hell.” Ukraine Armed Forces estimate that Russia is using eight times
as many artillery munitions each day, firing thousands more shells than the Ukrainians and stymying their efforts."

According to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine in June 2022, the Ukrainian army would have enough strength to confront such armies as France or the UK (which are among the five strongest armies in the world), but at the same time Ukraine *for some reason* is not able to cope with the "backward", "unorganized", "demoralized" army of the Russian Federation in the amount of 150 thousand soldiers, which is only 15% of the entire army of the Russian Federation.

The Russian army for five months taken about 126.610 thousand square kilometers of territories that previously belonged to Ukraine. The Russian government is already ready to accept these lands into the Russian Federation after referendums.

In general, if the Russian army is so backward, as you say, then it turns out that NATO troops are not capable of anything at all. It turns out that they can only fight against civilians in Yugoslavia and Afghan nomads armed with machine guns, but they lack the courage to fight against the Russian army, otherwise the "brave" NATO military would not hide behind the backs of Ukrainian soldiers and would have started a third world war long ago, which in the blink of an eye, it would turn into a nuclear one and destroy all life. After all, this is precisely what all those who escalate this conflict between NATO and the largest nuclear power are striving for.

PS. At first, I thought that it was beneficial for Russia when the West significantly underestimated its military potential. But this is wrong, because Ukrainians, deceived by local and European propaganda, are sent to the front, and then tens of thousands die there.

Did you miss the part where the Russia tried to take Kiev and remove the government and ended up having to retreat?