Comments by "UzuMaki NaRuto" (@UzumakiNaruto_) on "Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 17.09.2022" video.

Well if you look at the troop movements of both sides I'm pretty sure we know which direction the war is going at least right now. At the start of the invasion the Russians were moving on 3 fronts using plenty of armor, making heli born air assaults on airports and they were making gains at a decent pace. Then we had the whole Kiev front retreat and all the pro-Russian folks tried to explain that those forces would be redeployed for the great Donbas assault that's was coming soon that would encircle and smash most of the eastern Ukrainian forces. That never happened and what we saw was a slow WWI style offensive with slow gains being made taking months to do so. On the other side the Ukrainians were on the defensive the whole time trying to survive the early onslaught and begging for western support to help them fight. Throughout the months they were trying to slow down the Russian advance and to give up as little ground as they could while launching only relatively small offensives here and there. Now in the past couple of weeks they launch offensives on two major fronts and for the Kharkiv region they make large gains in a short period of time and in the south its much slower, but still ongoing. Going by these indicators its clear that the Russians lost a ton of forces and heavy equipment in the early part of the war and its come back to haunt them ever since. The Ukrainians are slowly gaining more western equipment and their troops being trained by NATO are now growing in number. Long term unless Russia decides to throw much more troops and equipment into the fight, they're going to soon be lucky to hold onto what they've taken to date let alone losing some if not alot of it back to the Ukrainians who are committed to the fight.
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@waynzignordics The Russians are now fighting a Nato army staffed by Ukrainian troops, and a volunteer army staffed by Nato troops. So are you saying there are active duty soldiers from NATO countries fighting in Ukraine and not just former western soldiers who are volunteering to fight there? That's the first I've heard of that. Do you have proof of this? Why is it a Nato army? The AFU is financed by Nato, has strategic planning led by Nato, has intel gathering by Nato, and an information warfare unit led by Nato. But its soldiers are Ukrainian. Funny thing is Ukrainian soldiers have proven to be superior fighters than European Nato soldiers. Well that's what the Russians were risking when they invaded Ukraine that there was a possibility for western involvement. They did it anyways and not even a limited assault, but an all out invasion with the goal of taking the entire country and toppling governments rather than simply taking all of Donbas region as people expected they would if they were actually invading. Maybe if they had stuck to that more limited objective, they might've gotten away with it. Namely with more Russian forces concentrated to take less ground, the Ukrainians would probably be pushed back and Donbas might've been in their hands long ago with much fewer losses. Instead they chose to push all their chips in and now they're paying for it with their massive miscalculations. And give credit where credit is due. All this happened because the Ukrainians chose to fight and resist and having Zelensky and their government staying in the country. If none of that happens then NATO support doesn't happen and Putin would be celebrating a victory and perhaps be fighting an insurgency fight at most by now.
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@Mr_MikeB The thing is if the Russians still had enough men, tanks and armored vehicles left along with an airforce worth a damn they wouldn't need to be stopped by strongpoints in the enemy defenses. The whole idea of blitzkrieg is to bypass such defenses and leave them for the follow on forces to take care of. Unfortunately the Russians threw away much of their mobile combat power in the first few weeks of the war and now they have little choice but to slog it out WWI style.
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@Backpacker8381 The ONLY REASON that the Russians are being 'methodical' is because they have been largely reckless in the early parts of the war which cost them vast amounts of unnecessary casualties and equipment loss that has been coming back to haunt them ever since. If they could launch another major armored offensive they would've done so long ago, but the fact is they haven't launched a major mobile operation ever since their retreat from Kiev because they're not capable of doing so.
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@Mr_MikeB Your point is clear but you are still missing one point - Russia has huge reserves in manpower and equipment but for some reason they are limiting themselves just to 150k man. Well ask yourself why hasn't Putin called for full mobilization unless he knows its going to be bad for him to do so? That would be a clear admission that his so called 'special operation' has failed and that casualties and equipment loss has been so high that he needs to take major measures to save face and gain something out of all the losses they've taken and will continue to take fighting in Ukraine. Also this doesn't even take into account that a good portion of the Russian forces is needed to simply defend its own massive country and keep his own people under control. Land that can be retaken or well trained military men Well its questionable that Russia can retake what it has lost in the last couple of weeks unless they bring much more reinforcements and equipment into the fight and if Russian forces were so well trained they wouldn't be doing so poorly and getting pushed back right now would they? Especially for the DNR militia, why would you throw them into this war without training them better unless you don't care what happens to them which I guess is the norm for the Russian forces. On the other hand as the war is going on increasingly more and more Ukrainians are being trained by NATO advisors and their quality will continue to rise. So it will be interesting to see where Russia will get more well trained men from and equip them properly compared to Ukrainian troops who are getting trained and equipped by NATO at a faster rate now.
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@bhangrafan4480 I think that under the surface Russia has refocused its primary goal as annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk and is holding a lot of territory it does not care much about at the moment. The Ukrainians are attacking these areas and the Russians are carrying out, perhaps not an 'elastic defence', but a fighting retreat. Do you really believe that the Russians want to give up all the territory that they've fought so hard to gain? I seriously doubt it. They gave up the ground because they couldn't hold it and most of their forces were in full retreat. Especially places like Izyum and Kupyansk which are vital to military operations because of their road and rail connections, you'd be stupid to give that up without a fight unless you couldn't defend them. Well with Kupyansk the Russians seemed to put up a fight and only perhaps yesterday did the Ukrainians finally take it. Also ask yourself if everything was exactly the same the past couple of weeks except it was the Russians rapidly moving forward and the Ukrainians retreating and leaving equipment and supplies behind, do you really believe all the pro-Russian folks would be saying the same things that they're saying now? Namely something like 'Yes the Russians gained alot of ground which is nice, but much of it isn't very valuable and its only a minor setback for the Ukrainians and also we have to see if they can hold it too against a pending UA counterattack.' Do you really think they'd be saying that? Or do you think they'd be saying something vastly different? As long as the Ukrainians are focusing on expendable territory, where the Russians are trading space for time, the Russians are able to focus on capturing Bakhmut and securing more of Donetsk. Yes Bakhmut. The new place that if the Russians are able to capture will be seen as a super decisive victory by the likes of the Duran who will be orgasming all over themselves for any good news for the Russians. Well from what we've seen the past couple of weeks I'm pretty sure that the Ukrainians would be more than happy to trade a Bakhmut for all the territory gained in the Kharkiv region assuming they can even take it.
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Can you show any proof that there's an actual NATO force fighting in Ukraine right now rather than just western troops volunteering to fight there?
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@waynzignordics Nato soldiers, active or inactive, comprise the entirety of the IL army responsible for the territorial recovery in Kharkiv. Their command structure is comprised of active Nato commanders. Does that fact make you uncomfortable? I never disagreed that in terms of intelligence and assistance in command and planning etc. that NATO has greatly helped the UA forces. I just dispute that actual NATO soldiers who are actively serving within their own forces are fighting on the ground in Ukraine. As far as I've read pretty much all western volunteers fighting right now are not currently serving in their own country's armies. Nato didn't "become involved" after Russia invaded, it's been involved since before 2014. Nato has been equipping, training, or financing AFU for nearly a decade. Unfortunately for Ukraine it wasn't at the pace needed otherwise they should have a much larger NATO trained and equipped force ready at the beginning of the invasion to push back the Russians. Still there was enough that it made a significant enough difference that the Russian invasion was eventually slowed down and now mostly stopped. Russia invaded Ukraine after the AFU began amassing troops on the Donbas border in preparation of an invasion into the region. The Donbas republics asked Russia for help, and she did so under the UN Charter rules. Donbas is still apart of Ukraine and this was an internal matter that Russia didn't have to interfere with, but they did anyways. There wouldn't be fighting if some people in Donbas didn't form militias and try to gain independence by force and then when they started losing Russia intervened to help. Also while many people in the Donbas did want independence or least more autonomy, from what I've read I don't think most residence living there wanted to do it by force and having their people dying and infrastructure destroyed. The initial move on Kiev had the goal of fixing AFU troops in the north-west and preventing them from reinforcing the Donbas region. It worked so well Russia took more land than they could hold with their limited troop numbers, namely Kharkiv. The hope was Ukraine's government would capitulate like in 2014 in Crimea, and ALMOST DID, until Boris Johnson told Zelenskyy no, Biden backed up Boris, and Zelenskyy became the face of the greatest propaganda project the world has ever seen. Congrats for buying into it. This makes no sense. You don't waste a significant portion of your troops and equipment in a 'feint' when its completely unnecessary to do so. As I've said elsewhere the Russians could've accomplished the same objective of forcing the Ukrainians to keep forces near Kiev and surrounding areas by simply having their 40k or so troops stay on the Belarus border and do nothing else. Just sit that Russian force on the border and keep it there and do nothing else and they don't lose equipment and men that's badly needed now. And this doesn't even include all the logistical resources that were wasted supporting that attack that could've been transferred to support the eastern and southern fronts that lost alot of heavy equipment because many Russian vehicles ran out of fuel or broke down and were then abandoned. Russia hasn't "pushed all their chips in." They haven't fully mobilized. They're fighting a SMO (by legal definition), and appear intent on keeping it that way. What I'm saying is that the Russians have nearly used up as much of their forces and equipment as they can short of fully mobilizing which is why the talk of mobilization has ramped up so much in recent weeks. If the Russians were winning comfortably there wouldn't be any talk about mobilization at all and the reason why they haven't done it is because it would be open admission that they're failing badly in Ukraine and that short of throwing much more into the fight they're now not only not going to accomplish their goals, but they might lose much of what they've gained. The Russians believed that what forces they gathered at the beginning of the invasion would be enough and they grossly miscalculated and now they're paying the price. Russia doesn't want all of Ukraine, it wants everything east of the Dniper river, and the entire southern border through Odessa. Kiev can keep the rest (although Poland is gonna take back Lvov, watch). If this was the case then they shouldn't have attacked towards Kiev which was a complete waste of forces and supplies. I think the Russians believed that even with NATO help since 2014 that having seen the Ukrainians fight previously in the Donbas and Crimea, they didn't think that UA forces would be a match for them or that they would even have the will to fight. With those assumptions the Russians invaded thinking that the UA forces wouldn't put up much of a fight and those units that did resist would quickly be overwhelmed. After the UA forces collapse, Zelensky would have no choice but to flee the country or be captured. This is why the Kiev attack happened otherwise it wouldn't ever have happened. Do yourself a favor a listen to at least ONE source of news that isn't funded by Nato's propaganda money. It'll keep you from being so naive about current events. I look at numerous sources from both sides because unlike the pro-Russian hacks of the Duran and others like them, I care more about facts and knowing what's actually happening in the ground in real life than I care about blindly supporting one side and completely discounting all information that doesn't say my side is winning.
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@peter5149 Pro-Russian supporters increasingly have to find new ways to explain away all the setbacks of the Russian forces and this is one of the last ones where even if they're losing ground at least its supposedly at a high cost to the Ukrainians. Never been able to get these folks to provide proof of their numbers.
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@Backpacker8381 Kiev was a fixing operation. The Russian forces there were not tasked to take the city but to prevent Ukrainian forces there from reinforcing the Donbas while Russia moved in. That's the lame excuse that the pro-Russian hacks like the Duran has been pushing for ages now and it doesn't make sense. As I've said many times the Russians could've accomplished the same objective with occupying Ukrainian forces by simply sitting in Belarus and NOT ATTACKING. If the 40k or so Russians are sitting on the border and not attacking, do you really think the Ukrainians still wouldn't be forced to have a large force to oppose them anyways? Do you think they would say to themselves 'well this large mass of Russian troops aren't moving towards Kiev, so we don't have to have keep major forces in the area in case they do attack'. Of course not. They're still keeping a large force there in case the Russians do attack. Imagine if that was what actually happened? That the Kiev invasion force didn't actually attack? You'd have a completely fresh force of 40k troops with all their equipment intact ready for operations in the Donbas or elsewhere right now. Instead they took major casualties and lost alot of equipment and they had to be pulled out of the line and refitted. Where is your confirmation of "vast amounts of casualties" other than exaggerated reports and rumors that have not been confirmed or fact checked? The BBC did an extensive fact checking investigation into the number of confirmed Russian dead using many teams of fact checkers. At the end of June, the number of confirmed Russian dead was a little over 4000. The proof is the Russians started with having the ability to launch 3 major armored assaults into Ukraine simultaneously and then after the Kiev retreat they were reduced to being able to launch only one offense in the Donbas region with little offensive operations happening anywhere else. And even then they haven't launched any major mobile operations since the Kiev retreat because they lost so many armored vehicles and other equipment. Look at the Lysychansk salient from a few months back when the UA forces had several hundred or maybe even a few thousand men surrounded on 3 sides by the Russians and at one point only had a 10km gap from which they could escape from. That would've been the perfect time to launch a mobile attack from both flanks and encircle them and either force a Ukrainian counterattack or have another Mariupol like victory as they slowly starve out and grind down the trapped UA forces and yet they couldn't even do that because they had so few armored forces. The point is you can believe whatever casualty reports that you want to believe, but what's actually happening on the ground and especially in the past couple of weeks, it doesn't support the Russians taking only light casualties and not having lost a ton of equipment.
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@Backpacker8381 Kiev is 250 miles from the border of Belarus, and Ukraine could have only allocated a certain percentage of their forces to reinforce the Donbas while the rest remained to guard the city. That's exactly right. Whether the Russians attacked from Belarus or not with so many of their forces located there on the border, the Ukrainians would have NO CHOICE but to place a significant portion of their forces to defend the city and surrounding areas from possible Russian attack from that direction. The Russians didn't actually have to launch the attack to get Ukraine's attention and keep forces there. Also Kiev is 150km away from the Belarus border according to Google. So the Russians could've accomplished the same objective WITHOUT actually attacking towards Kiev and taking losses and now those forces would be fresh reserve from which the Russians could've drawn from all this time. You completely ignored the point that the BBC did a confirmed, fact-checked study and found that at the end of June the total confirmed Russian dead was slightly over 4,000, which refuted mainstream media exaggerations that over 20,000 had died by that time. Maybe you're right and maybe you're not, but its clear that after the early phase of the war, Russia had lost far too many armored vehicles and other weapons systems which is why ever since the Kiev retreat they've never been able to launch a major armored offensive again.
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@Mr_MikeB Huge failure for Putin in case of mobilization? Dont be ridiculous - all Putin has to say - now we are with war with NATO, so gloves off and mobilization on. Very easy. Plus thats true even now. Putin can say Russia is fighting NATO, but will the Russian people believe it? And there's no getting around that it would be an embarrassment to do so after all this time telling his people that this was going to be small operation, but now has evolved into a near full blown war. Sure they have to keep some reserves for protection, but I see no problem why they could not double manpower involved. After all there no other country like Ukraine on their borders. Plus China can help to deal with them. Also army is not the one keep civilians peaceful. You do know that mobilization is more than manpower right? Unless the Russians are going back to true WWI fighting style where they're throwing bodies into the fight until they overwhelm their enemy, then its going to take time to train and arm these new troop to be something other than cannon fodder that's only good for taking a bullet. Also China is smart to stay out of this war and they would have to be stupid to change their minds. As for retaking land back - maybe you havent noticed Russia has already destroyed all equipment Ukraine has before war. Now all Ukraine has is what NATO countries had in stockpiles - literally new army. So questiion is - after all this stuff will be destroyed will NATO have more tanks, artillery and so on to supply? Ukraine is only being given largely Russian tanks and armored vehicles and maybe a few aircraft so far and have only received western equipment when it comes to artillery and missile systems, light armored vehicles and personal gear for soldiers. If NATO gave Ukraine even a small portion of its modern tanks and aircraft it would be completely over for the Russians in no time. Also the fact that Russians keep talking about using nukes shows how desperate they are and how they know they have no hope of winning long term unless cheat. Like I said before without nukes the Russians aren't very scary at all.
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@Mr_MikeB Do not worry - they will. After all NATO is not even hiding its support to Ukraine. Plus - they trust Putin. But anyway I do not think there will be mobilization any time soon. But then again - who knows? Well Putin just announced it. A partial mobilization. I wonder how many men and how much equipment that will involve? Really sad to hear that this war won't be ending anytime soon. 😐😪😒🙁☹😟 Only way to stop this madness now is Ukrainian victory with the help of massive western support. Unless Russia is pushed back or there are negotiations that lead to only some Ukrainian territory given up for a ceasefire any more than that and it will be pointless and we could be doing the same thing a few years from now. Then when the war is over Ukraine needs to join NATO ASAP and that will be the only way that their nation will be safe for the long term. If Ukraine doesn't join NATO then they will never be completely safe from Russian aggression. As for mobilization reserves - Russia I believe have 2 millions people with military background. So couple weeks in training for them and go ahead! For others they could do 3-4 month courses if needed... But you correctly indicated that WW1 type fighting is very unlikely going to happen, thats why I do not believe in total mobilization. Whatever troops the Russians are calling up they better train and equip them well because otherwise what would be the point other than wasting their lives over a war that doesn't need to be fought? I mentioned China not to suggest it will join war with Ukraine, but as its possible role to keep an eye over east border of Russia so none will start big war in all those Central Asia countries I seriously doubt any nations have an interest in attacking Russian land. Everyone just wants Russia to STOP ATTACKING OTHER COUNTRIES. No one has threatened to invade Russian territory since WWII and its only Russian paranoia and stupid leaders that believed this. Rather than wasting all this time and resources in attacking other countries and causing problems for everyone, imagine how far better off Russia would be now if it had proper leadership that chose economic development and the improvement of the lives of their people over conflict? How different and so much more prosperous would their nation be now if they had the Russian version of Deng Xiaoping that helped China go from being a large but still very poor country and guiding them to become the huge economic power that they are today? This just goes to show how important it is to have good leaders to rule a country where a good leader can help guide their nation to great success in just a few decades compared to bad leaders who don't do anything for their country and decades later they're only at best marginally better than they were several decades ago. Also its nice you trust so much in superiority of Western weapons.... You really think Abrams or Leopard tanks cant be blown up? Or F16 - shoot down? Really? Anything can be destroyed, but the difference is western weapons are so far ahead of whatever Russia has that this means the loss of western weapons would be much less than the loss of Russian weapons. An Abrams tank isn't invincible, but its certainly much harder to destroy than any Russian tank that's at least a generation behind and in turn an Abrams will be far more effective on the battlefield where it can destroy anything it sees in front of it much more easily than a Russian tank can. The same goes for the F-16 or if NATO really wants to go all out they could give the Ukrainians F-15s which would pretty much wipe out anything that the Russian airforce has. As for nukes - its West who is talking all the time that Russia is going to use them in Ukraine. Russians never did that. They have doctrine which very clearly states when they will use them. ARE YOU SERIOUS?!? The Russians have been talking about nukes being on the table since nearly when the war began and they tried to threaten the west into not sending help to Ukraine. NOT ONCE have I ever heard any western country say that nukes are in play the way the Russians have said on a number of occasions. The west has no need to use nukes because they know that if they keep supplying the Ukrainians that UA forces will hold against the Russians if not outright beat them. The Russians realize this why is why they haven't ever said that they won't use nukes because that's the only thing that makes western countries nervous. If the Russians didn't have nukes to threaten the world with, NATO would've probably established at the very least a no fly zone over Ukraine from the very beginning of the invasion because there's nothing they could do about it. Nukes are the ONLY THING that has the west still taking Russia seriously as a military threat.
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The only terrorists are the ones invading Ukraine and continuing a war that they can't win. Without nukes the Russians wouldn't be scary to the west and NATO airpower probably would've destroyed the Russians long ago.
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@stayhungry1503 If you believe actual NATO soldiers are now fighting with the Ukrainians then what does it say for the Russians that they could get so completely defeated by NATO troops even without most of their best heavy equipment? That makes the Duran, Gonzalo, Ritter and all other other pro-Russian hacks look even more stupid believing that in a head on fight that the Russian army of today would have a hope in hell in beating NATO in a real war.
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@everaimless If the Russians had an 'orderly retreat' then why did they leave behind so much heavy equipment and munitions and other supplies for the Ukrainians? They couldn't even be bothered to blow them all up before leaving which wouldn't have taken very long.
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