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2022-05-27 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Russia deploys Cold War-era T-62 tanks to Ukraine
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Posted by 3dc 2022-05-27 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11133 views ]  Top
 File under: Commies 

#1 ...It gets better - the -62 is, more or less, a direct descendant of the legendary T-34 that steamrollered the Wehrmacht all the way back to Berlin. But after the -62, Soviet designers started with a clean sheet of paper to create their next generation of tanks, the -64 and its successors.

Which means that the -62 has a lot in common, in terms of equipment and parts, with its predecessors the -55 and -54 while it has none whatsoever with the tanks that came after it.

Which in turn means that the already logistically challenged Russians are going to have to set up a separate parts and maintenance system for the -62s.

At least for the ones that work, that is.

This won't end well.

Mike
Posted by MikeKozlowski 2022-05-27 06:40||   2022-05-27 06:40|| Front Page Top

#2 I remember reading an intel summary in the 70s that a Guards Armor Regiment in Kaliningrad was getting new T-72s....replacing their JS-IIs (that's IIs not IIIs). Russians throw nothing away.
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-05-27 07:14||   2022-05-27 07:14|| Front Page Top

#3 Spoken by the defense expert of the west. I reserve my opinion as this is the work of a US" defense journalist and commentator". I trust very little of anything presented by various medias. Next we will hear and see our media proclaim the godlike pronouncements of Fauci Monkeypox.
Posted by Dale 2022-05-27 07:51||   2022-05-27 07:51|| Front Page Top

#4 It all depends on how they are used. As the ground grows firmer there is a use for massed armor -- even if it is not the best. Remember that Soviet Russian Armor doctrine is based on mass attacks not solo tank usage.
Posted by magpie 2022-05-27 10:44||   2022-05-27 10:44|| Front Page Top

#5 It depends on what you are doing with them. Against modern NATO tanks, T-62s would not fare well. I understand they are being used as assault guns. Given all the positional fighting, this makes sense. As long as you have infantry support.
Posted by SteveS 2022-05-27 10:45||   2022-05-27 10:45|| Front Page Top

#6 I think the story line of 1000 tanks streaming through the Fulda Gap is dead now...
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-05-27 10:46||   2022-05-27 10:46|| Front Page Top

#7 1000 tanks streaming through the Fulda Gap

Once upon a time, that was a real fear. But the Soviet Union and its army are gone and there is no way Russia could do this now. A bit ironic to note that Ukraine is the opposite end of the route to the Fulda Gap.
Posted by SteveS 2022-05-27 11:08||   2022-05-27 11:08|| Front Page Top

#8 But they're still plotting with Trump right? So there is that.
Posted by Besoeker 2022-05-27 11:12||   2022-05-27 11:12|| Front Page Top

#9 In the early days of the conflict I thought both sides would eventually fall back on the T-55 because of its wider tracks.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-05-27 13:29||   2022-05-27 13:29|| Front Page Top

#10  the work of a US" defense journalist and commentator"

The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense reported Friday that Russia has recently begun deploying the 50-year-old tanks from deep storage.
Posted by Skidmark 2022-05-27 15:01||   2022-05-27 15:01|| Front Page Top

#11 Russia has recently begun deploying the 50-year-old tanks from deep storage.

Oh, they're definitely winning.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-05-27 15:04||   2022-05-27 15:04|| Front Page Top

#12 ...the big question is how much "50 year old ammunition" that you can still safely use, right?
Posted by magpie 2022-05-27 15:09||   2022-05-27 15:09|| Front Page Top

#13 how much "50 year old ammunition" that you can still safely use

Show time
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-05-27 15:11||   2022-05-27 15:11|| Front Page Top

#14 Actually, that's another advantage this tank has over the T-72; it should be safer to use because it doesn't have an autoloader.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-05-27 19:14||   2022-05-27 19:14|| Front Page Top

#15 And if it has no ammo storage in the turret, that would be even better.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-05-27 19:15||   2022-05-27 19:15|| Front Page Top

#16 Oh, the Russians are definitely winning

^ That's what the Ukrainians on the front lines in the Donbas think. It's really shitty that their leaders insist on getting them slaughtered in Severodonetsk -- for nothing.

Now even the Washington Post and the New York Times are changing the narrative, from "Stupid Russians! / Russians are sure to lose" to "Oh cruel war / Ukrainians prepare to be slaughtered" in the Donbas.

Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned
By Sudarsan Raghavan
THE WASHINGTON POST
Updated May 26, 2022 at 5:38 p.m. EDTI

DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine — Stuck in their trenches, the Ukrainian volunteers lived off a potato per day as Russian forces pounded them with artillery and Grad rockets on a key eastern front line. Outnumbered, untrained and clutching only light weapons, the men prayed for the barrage to end — and for their own tanks to stop targeting the Russians.

“They [Russians] already know where we are, and when the Ukrainian tank shoots from our side it gives away our position,” said Serhi Lapko, their company commander, recalling the recent battle. “And they start firing back with everything — Grads, mortars...."

But Lapko and Khrus’s concerns were echoed recently by a platoon of the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion, based nearby in the besieged city of Severodonetsk. In a video uploaded to Telegram on May 24, and confirmed as authentic by an aide to Haidai, volunteers said they will no longer fight because they lacked proper weapons, rear support and military leadership.

“We are being sent to certain death,” said a volunteer, reading from a prepared script, adding that a similar video was filmed by members of the 115th Brigade 1st Battalion. “We are not alone like this, we are many.”
Posted by Oye Como Va 2022-05-27 20:10||   2022-05-27 20:10|| Front Page Top

#17 ^ That's gut-wrenching. Let's hope that Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, uses the new authority just granted him by Zelensky this week and orders these poor souls' commanders to surrender.
🤞🏻
Posted by Billy Budd 2022-05-27 20:16||   2022-05-27 20:16|| Front Page Top

#18 ^ surrender. Ah yes, affirming "Oye Come Va's" (clever nym) point? do you use one computer? Or just one boiler room?
Posted by Frank G 2022-05-27 20:22||   2022-05-27 20:22|| Front Page Top

#19 Yes, that mutiny is getting lots of attention in Europe. Mariupol has definitely changed the course of the war.

Here is a link to the formal video announcement of mutiny by Ukraine's 115th Brigade, 3rd Battalion (the Washigton Post journalist got the Battalion # wrong). They uploaded it to Telegram. It's also been uploaded by the American network MSN to their YouTube channel. (The MSN upload screwed up the subtitles; the other upload, linked to here, mistakenly places them as Azov, but that one gets the translation right.)

"We refuse to carry out combat missions..."
Posted by Jean-Paul 2022-05-27 20:33||   2022-05-27 20:33|| Front Page Top

#20 Mutinies are to be expected now. The image we receive from the propaganda press is full of lies; it's very different on the front lines.

During the First World War, mutinies erupted among combat units in every one of the nations that had fought from the beginning. The French and Russian mutinies are well known, but the British suffered multiple mutinies as well, and the German navy suffered a mutiny in October 1918. Both the Italian and the Turkish armies experienced mutinies after crushing defeats (Caporetto and Jerusalem respectively).

We can expect more mutinies in coming weeks from the hastily-assembled and poorly-led Ukrainian battalions.
Posted by Jean-Paul 2022-05-27 20:48||   2022-05-27 20:48|| Front Page Top

#21 Thank you, Jean-Paul.
Have you seen the Stanley Kubrick film, Paths of Glory?
Posted by Oye Como Va 2022-05-27 20:53||   2022-05-27 20:53|| Front Page Top

#22 Yes, it's excellent. Very popular in France.

It seems to me that Kubrick was criticizing not so much war as the absurdity of military decision-making -- in the film we are never shown the enemy, only the anguish and struggles of the cadres themselves. To me this subject is much more interesting and subtle than the generic anti-war message film.
Posted by Jean-Paul 2022-05-27 21:03||   2022-05-27 21:03|| Front Page Top

#23 much more interesting and subtle than the generic anti-war message film.

I agree... people who've never seen combat make it out to be much simpler, morally, than it is. Mutineers aren't cowards. "Rambo" types aren't necessarily heroic.
Posted by Billy Budd 2022-05-27 21:19||   2022-05-27 21:19|| Front Page Top

#24 Looks like retreat, according to the BBC:

Ukrainian troops could withdraw from the big eastern city of Severodonetsk, which Russian forces are close to surrounding, an official there says.

Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk, said Russians were in part of the city. "It is possible that in order not to be surrounded, they will have to leave."
Posted by Palmerston 2022-05-27 22:28||   2022-05-27 22:28|| Front Page Top

#25 ^ Their only escape route is west along the road to Siversk. That's right into the jaws of the Russian battalions situated just northof the highway (thanks to the Russian capture of Lyman) and the Russian battalions just south of the highway (thanks to the Russian capture of Popasna).

The Russian artillery is just a few miles away from the highway, on either side -- easy shelling distance. That's one hell of a gauntlet to run. Ouch. Poor Ukrainians.
Posted by Billy Budd 2022-05-27 22:58||   2022-05-27 22:58|| Front Page Top

#26 “We shot 30 bullets and then they said, ‘You can’t get more; too expensive,’ ” Lapko said.

Sounds like the definition of cannon fodder. And this appeared in the Washington Post (!).

Smells like desperation. How will they spin this going forward? What's going to be WaPo and NYT's New Narrative?
Posted by Oye Como Va 2022-05-27 23:14||   2022-05-27 23:14|| Front Page Top

#27  The image we receive from the propaganda press is full of lies; it's very different on the front lines.

Of course. That is why we have multiple sources from multiple perspectives, and then pool our knowledge to tease out the truth that lays underneath. Your comments here are included in that calculation, my dears, received with the same skepticism as all other information sources — though I fear the BBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and similar traditional travesties of journalism have earnt several extra doses of skepticism each.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-05-27 23:16||   2022-05-27 23:16|| Front Page Top

#28 The New Narrative is of course to blame Trump.

Why the Once-Hawkish Heritage Foundation Opposed Aid to Ukraine
NY Times
May 27, 2002

Heritage has embraced the anti-interventionist fervor that defined President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy and has swept the Republican Party.

On Thursday, Mr. Roberts published a podcast interview with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of only 11 Senate Republicans to oppose the Ukraine aid package and the author of a recent op-ed entitled “No to Neoconservatism.”

“Neither you, nor we, intend any opposition to an aid package to be dismissive of the heroism that we’ve seen in Ukraine,” Mr. Roberts told Mr. Hawley. “But I can at least speak for Heritage and say, ‘We’ve had enough of business as usual.’”
Posted by Billy Budd 2022-05-27 23:24||   2022-05-27 23:24|| Front Page Top

#29 right into the jaws of the Russian battalions situated just northof the highway (thanks to the Russian capture of Lyman) and the Russian battalions just south of the highway (thanks to the Russian capture of Popasna).

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
Posted by Palmerston 2022-05-27 23:32||   2022-05-27 23:32|| Front Page Top

#30 Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre victoire!
:-)

Posted by Jean-Paul 2022-05-27 23:36||   2022-05-27 23:36|| Front Page Top

#31 blame Trump

Heritage has embraced the anti-interventionist fervor that defined President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy and has swept the Republican Party.

Another reason to be thankful for the Orange One. He's got my vote
Posted by Oye Como Va 2022-05-27 23:40||   2022-05-27 23:40|| Front Page Top

#32  Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Lions led by idiots. But the poetry is sublime.

Oye Como Va, I will be every, very interested to see how the November election turns out.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-05-27 23:50||   2022-05-27 23:50|| Front Page Top

#33 "I'm afraid that Putin, at great cost to himself and to the Russian military, is continuing to chew through ground in Donbas," Boris Johnson told Bloomberg.
"He's continuing to make gradual, slow, but I'm afraid palpable, progress and therefore it is absolutely vital that we continue to support the Ukrainians militarily."

Spoken like a true moron with no military or strategic sense.

The right conclusion is not to drag out the losing side's inevitable defeat and cause thousands more deaths but to call for an immediate cease-fire and SAVE LIVES.

Johnson and Biden's foolish, reckless impulses will only cause more slaughter. Foolish goddamned cowards
Posted by Billy Budd 2022-05-27 23:53||   2022-05-27 23:53|| Front Page Top

#34 They are foolish and reckless because neither Johnson nor Biden has ever seen war. Neither even has a son in the war.
Posted by Jean-Paul 2022-05-27 23:56||   2022-05-27 23:56|| Front Page Top

#35 A timely cease fire in World War One would've prevented the rise of Hitler and World War II
Posted by Billy Budd 2022-05-27 23:59||   2022-05-27 23:59|| Front Page Top

23:59 Billy Budd
23:56 Jean-Paul
23:53 Billy Budd
23:50 trailing wife
23:40 Oye Como Va
23:36 Jean-Paul
23:32 Palmerston
23:24 Billy Budd
23:16 trailing wife
23:14 Oye Como Va
22:58 Billy Budd
22:49 trailing wife
22:35 Guillibaldo Lumumba5603
22:28 Palmerston
22:10 DooDahMan
21:22 Seeking Cure For Ignorance
21:19 Billy Budd
21:03 Jean-Paul
20:53 Oye Como Va
20:48 Jean-Paul
20:45 Thing From Snowy Mountain
20:33 Jean-Paul
20:22 Frank G
20:16 Billy Budd









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