Comments by "Black Cat Dungeon Master\x27s Familiar" (@blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311) on "Task & Purpose" channel.

  1. Moltke the Younger was also an extremely good general. The Race to the Sea didn't work out for Germany but the reasons for that are complex. One of his subordinates deserves more blame than Moltke.
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  2. LOL 500k casualties, numbers straight from the Ukrainian ministry of propaganda
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  3. ​ @listrahtes  Of course casualties doesn't mean deaths. But 500k is still way, way too high. Less than 50k dead Russians are identified by name using all kinds of methods, obituaries, parent support groups etc.. There will be some dead who have fallen through the cracks but even so, even Meduza estimates no more than 80k dead and that's a pro NATO organisation so consider that an upper estimate. If you triple that for total casualties, you're still nowhere near 500k. To get to 500k you have to start believing propaganda sources like US government or Ukrainian government estimates. Would you believe Russian government estimates of Ukrainian casualties? No. So why would you believe Ukrainian government sources. In any war, both sides lie shamelessly.
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  4.  @geekobgaming5647  A lot of the problem was poor communications. Nobody knew WTF was happening until it was too late. And that goes for the Allied side too. The British won Le Cateau but it was almost a disaster because of information couldn't be transferred quickly enough. But it was worse for the Germans because they were advancing so their communication lines were more stretched. I don't think a better commander could have fixed that.
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  5.  @junioraltamontent.7582  Yep marines aren't known for their intellect.
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  6.  @TmackSD184  Crimea was Russia before it was gifted by Khrushchev to Ukraine.
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  7. He's not really that truthful the real reason the Russians care so much about Avdivka is that the Ukrainian army has been shelling Donetsk City from there with artillery and butterfly mines. It's a huge embarrassment to Russia that they've never solved this because there have been hundreds of civilian casualties.
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  8. And how is this any different for the Ukrainians? Most of the current Ukrainian army were civilians at the start of this year.
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  9. Peter Zeihan is no better :)
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  10.  @geekobgaming5647  Yeah that's an interesting take. I just think that there was so much unknowable that you couldn't really expect some genius commander would be able to exactly calculate everything accurately and come up with a perfect plan. Possibly Moltke wasn't ruthless enough. Possibly if he had more political power he could have got different subordinates but you have to work with what you've got.
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  11.  @DStead2239  There's tons of footage of the Ukrainians shelling Donetsk city. Like literally hundreds of videos, geolocated shell hits showing the direction of Avdivka, thousands of butterfly mines. There's no question at all that Ukraine has shelled Donetsk City. Hundreds of civilian casualties from this.
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  12.  @philipbutler6608  America's Vietnam war is not the correct analogy for what's happening now. WWI is the better analogy. If it's actually true that Russia has lost 80,000 men (and even if it is true, a large chunk of these are from DPR, LPR rather than the pre-war Russian federation) then in WWI terms, that's what countries were losing in a single battle.
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  13. All the Ukrainian trains are electric, correct? And the Ukrainian military replies almost exclusively on trains for its logistics, correct? So losing any ability to redeploy or supply forces across the whole front for several hours is something the Ukrainian military would not notice? I don't think so.
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  14.  @mitchbaker6300  In Ukraine, the Russians are winning decisively despite Ukraine being a big country backed by NATO military aid exceeding the Russian defence budget. Underestimating Russia is a rookie's mistake :)
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  15.  @adambussert3383  Yeah actually corruption is a massive problem in Ukraine. It's the most corrupt country in Europe, even worse than Moldova. Why do you think the economy has barely grown since Soviet times while Russians are many times richer? Ukraine is very rich in natural resources but the people are poor, the wealth is controlled by oligarchs. Yes Russia has an enormous corruption problem too but Ukraine is even worse. Donated equipment of all kinds up to including Stingers and Javelins are sold on the black market. Even the C in C Zaluzhny was recently caught giving military vehicles to his mistresses - google it.
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  16. The USA invades countries all over the world because "they're evil" - the rest of the world finds this childishness embarrassing.
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  17. The real reason the Russians care so much about Avdivka is that the Ukrainian army has been shelling Donetsk City from there with artillery and butterfly mines. It's a huge embarrassment to Russia that they've never solved this because there have been hundreds of civilian casualties.
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  18.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  Zelensky himself admitted it would be disaster if the Russians captured Bakhmut a couple of months before ... Russians captured Bakhmut.
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  19.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  And then did what happen? Did the Russians take Bakhmut? Sorry to break this to you but yeah. Did they take Avdivka? They definitely will. They've got the supply roads under at least some level of fire control now and they've broken into the town from the south.
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  20. Most of the Ukrainian army were civilians at the start of the year. Some of them are now skilled veterans. A lot of the mobilised Russians will be expert soldiers who just needed a few weeks to integrate with a new unit and modernise their skills.
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  21.  @Rednek0117  See the guys those 250,000 Ukrainians were fighting? They're the DPR and LPR armies. And they're roughly similar in size to the Ukrainian army. And they're exactly as experienced as the Ukrainians. So the situation isn't really different. In addition the Russian regular army has combat experience from Syria and elsewhere, not as much as say the US army but not trivial either.
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  22.  @mduckernz  I've never seen that claim but there's no doubt DPR casualties are high. But this also goes for Ukraine. One Ukrainian company commander was saying he was the forth commander in a couple of months after two of the previous were killed and one injured. And this was a young guy who never even finished military academy. Even months ago a leaked Ukrainian document admitted they'd taken almost two hundred thousand casualties. That's going to be concentrated in the experienced professionals.
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  23.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  LOL sure....
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  24. A full mobilisation is for total war - world war three.
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  25. "Zapotoria" - Jesus. Please google how to say Zaparozhye.
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  26.  @MCADHD-rf5kl  LOL the complete BS you clowns believe :) Do you also believe in the ghost of Kiev? The goat of Kiev? Did you believe Zelensky when he said it was a Russian missile which landed in Poland? Did you believe him when he said Bakhmut would never be taken? The Ukrainian government has even contradicted itself from time to time.
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  27. The USA invades countries all over the world because "they're evil" - the rest of the world finds this childishness embarrassing.
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  28.  @justanaverageguy912  That's seriously dumb. How far back do you want to go? Before it was Ukrainian it was Russian. Before it was Russian, it was Tartar. Before it was Tartar, it belonged to different people like the Greeks. Maybe Greece should invade Ukraine to take it? Most people who live there now are ethnically Russian and want to be part of Russia. Even Western polling organisations found that.
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  29.  @Kirdaro  Populations have always been migrating and displacing others and assimilating others across the Eurasian landmass for thousands of years. The modern Ukrainians are different from the people who lived in Ukraine thousands of years before. The Tartars are not native to Crimea either, they conquered and were themselves conquered. If you think colonisation is unique to the Russians then you don't have a clue.
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  30.  @Chloebbg  Over short distances, road transport - sure. But if you're moving 20 armoured vehicles over 600km, do you don't try to drive them. And if you did try to drive them, you're going to need more mechanics and you're going to need fuel tankers. So yeah - railways are essential for logistics and redeployments. On both sides.
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  31.  @davidlindsey6111  You say the Germans were far below strength - maybe. Well the plan almost worked. It was touch and go. So if a highly ambitious plan almost worked that doesn't really seem to be a condemnation of the planner nor the implementer.
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  32.  @davidlindsey6111  Yes.. but did he have any option? Remember that at the time of the original Schlieffen plan, the Russian army was much less developed and the Russian rail network was much more primitive. It could be assumed that it would take Russia much longer to develop a powerful offensive into East Prussia than was the case in 1914. And this was a serious threat. It would have been pointless to have taken Paris if the Russians had taken Berlin. Nobody knew ahead of time that there would be a successful Battle of Tannenberg and without strong forces in the east, there probably wouldn't have been. What you're really criticising Moltke for is that by 1914, the balance of forces had shifted to Germany's disadvantage.
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  33.  @randomdude2832  Yeah it's surreal how people can still believe Russia isn't winning and it's outright deluded thinking Ukraine is going to take back anything. It's obvious now the Russian army is taking very few causalities and is just shelling any Ukrainian position into rubble. Also a lot of people don't get that most of the Russian side casualties are not regulars since the first month - they're DPR/LPR/Chechans/Wagner guys.
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  34.  @philliptemple9841  Russia embarrassed how? Ukraine was a very strong military power and they've received tens of billions of military aid - and they're getting pounded to dust by Russian artillery.
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  35.  @philliptemple9841  Thousands of innocent woman and children maimed - reminds me of Madeleine Albright saying yeah it's worth it when asked about the half a million Iraqis killed from the 2003 war. If the Russians were really fighting a dirty war, how come Kharkiv still has water and electricity and internet when the Russians could easily cut all of them with shelling? They're close enough to make that city unliveable for its million population if they wanted to. As for Russians taking territory - firstly, do we know they really care about taking territory? Maybe they already took most of what they want. Do they want to take huge chunks of Ukraine that they'd have to rebuild afterwards? Or do they just want the places like Mariupol where the population is pretty pro-Russian already? Because right now, the Russians are taking very low casualties and the Ukrainians are not. Secondly, how would any army advance quickly in this kind of war? The Ukrainians have plenty of infantry anti-armour weapons. The Russians tried armoured spearheads in the first month and payed a high price. Now, they're only advancing where the Ukrainians retreat or have mainly been killed by shelling. In other words the Russians are very careful about risking their own infantry. What would say the American army do in the same situation? I'd guess they'd take their time and use their firepower advantage too. What I can say is if the Russians are advancing slowly, they're still advancing relentlessly. Sooner or later the Ukrainian army will collapse. We can be sure about this because even the better units are retreating without orders or refusing to move to the front. Given the situation even if the Russians wanted to take all of Ukraine which they almost certainly don't, the best strategy seems to be keep pounding the Ukrainians so long as they stand and fight until their army disintegrates rather than push hard and pay the high casualties of assaulting intact defenders.
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  36. They only had trouble supplying their forces deep behind Ukrainian lines at the start of the war and more recently in Kherson because of the river. They don't have a supply problem in general. Nobody disputes that the Russians are still firing several artillery rounds for each round the Ukrainians fire and several rockets for each rocket the Ukrainians fire.
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  37.  @haroldflint521  Which side do you mean? Because they both complain about defective gear, missing gear, insufficient food, insufficient ammunition, non existent artillery cover etc. The point is this is a major war. It's easy to point at videos of guys complaining and build a narrative that the Russians are suffering a disaster if you're ignoring all the videos of exactly the same from the Ukrainians. And if anything it's worse for the Ukrainians. The Russians have a large advantage in heavy equipment for example and especially artillery.
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  38.  @haroldflint521  It's a strange assumption that Russia wants to "liberate" all of Ukraine. If that were actually true, it's inconceivable they wouldn't have mobilised hundreds of thousands of men from the start. Their stated goal is to demilitarise Ukraine. And they seem to be doing that by killing hundreds of Ukrainians every day.
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  39. You're welcome to volunteer to go and fight in Ukraine.
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  40.  @JoeyP946  The rest of the world doesn''t see it like that. The rest of the world sees America starting wars all over the world and killing millions of people. What you think is fighting fair looks to the rest of the world like launching drone strikes from the safety of overseas and air strikes against defenceless enemies
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  41.  @Nesstor01  The real reason for that is embezzlement. The US military can't account for THREE TRILLION DOLLARS of spending. Think about how big that number is then tell us Russia and China are corrupt.
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  42.  @Nesstor01  I think it was Mark Milley who came up with the three days claim. Not Putin. They did have a peace deal hammered out. Biden and Boris Johnson convinced the Ukrainians to scrap the peace deal after the Russians pulled back from Kiev. The Ukrainians will never get such a good deal again. We know this for a fact because it's corroborated by the ex Isreali PM and by the Germans including an ex leader of the German military.
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  43. That's how hundreds of millions of people around the world feel about the American soldiers who have destroyed their countries too.
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  44.  @Kretenn  Yeah are you on Telegram? Most of the footage from Ukraine on both sides is from Telegram. Tens of thousands of people in Donetsk take photos and videos with their phones, the city has been under attack for years, how many videos would you expect there to be? The vast majority of the people killed in Donetsk from butterfly mines and artillery are civilians. This is how Ukraine treats the people it claims are its own citizens. And people like you are surprised that almost everyone in Donetsk voted to join with Russia.
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  45.  @adambussert3383  Let's get real, a lot of the kit which gets sent to Ukraine gets stolen and sold on the black market. Sure some guys will have some good winter kit. But there's nowhere near enough - if you believe what the Ukrainians claim themselves. But the narrative that the Russian army isn't trained or equipped to fight in winter - jeez what are you guys smoking?
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  46.  @gotrefer6183  That makes no sense. You think it's funny the Russian government made Russians poor? Don't you know that Russians are much richer than Ukrainians? For example Russian pensions are about four times what Ukrainian pensions are. A DPR soldier is defending his homeland, a guy from Lvov? Not really. No more than a guy from Irkutsk. Both of them think they are because of their own government's propaganda. I keep hearing of low Russian morale from Western sources but on Telegram, I also see Ukrainian units retreating without orders and criticising their commanders. I'm not seeing much difference in morale between the two sides.
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  47.  @MrBendylaw  No he's using his own pronunciation.
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  48. Yet the Russians still won. The Ukrainians are doing attacks daily in which they lose hundreds of men. That's the difference - the Russian side is very casualty conscious, the Ukrainians are not.
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  49.  @philipbutler6608  I don't think Russia does want to negotiate. Neither side does. They don't perceive that they're losing. They've lost some ground but just like the Germans in 1917, they're giving up someone else's ground and they're inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Ukrainians so far as we can tell. Unlike the Germans in 1917, the Russians have the material advantage. They have three times the manpower than Ukraine and maybe something like ten times the GDP. I think you have a very unbalanced view of the situation. It's particularly implausible to claim the DPR and LPR are not fighting this war. They're the ones fighting for their own homes, more than some guy from Lvov. I'd guess you haven't seen videos from Ukrainian soldiers complaining that the locals in the Donbas are pro-Russian.
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  50. Knocking out the Ukrainian power grid was about disabling the Ukrainian railways. Supply trains and trains redeploying Ukrainian forces were immobilised for hours and targeted by Russian artillery and airstrikes.
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