Putin Faces Humiliation as Russian Commanders Flee

[applegrove]

Putin Faces Humiliation as Russian Commanders Flee

November 4, 2022 at 10:05 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 173 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2022/11/04/putin-faces-humiliation-as-russian-commanders-flee/

"SNIP.......

“President Putin is facing another humiliating defeat as Russian forces abandon their positions in the southern city of Kherson,” the Times of London reports.

“Russian commanders have fled the city, captured during the early days of the invasion, leaving “demoralized and leaderless” conscripts to face a Ukrainian advance.”

A British intelligence report said that due to low morale and reluctance to fight, Russian forces have probably started deploying “barrier troops” or “blocking units.”

It adds: “These units threaten to shoot their own retreating soldiers in order to compel offensives and have been used in previous conflicts by Russian forces.”

........SNIP"

[Irish_Dem]

1. Russia is shooting its own soldiers if they attempt to retreat.

Should improve morale.

[Major Nikon]

11. Evidently they also face threats to their family for surrendering

[Irish_Dem]

25. Russia is known for the brutal treatment of its military.

Including punishing military family members.

[aggiesal]

15. Have you seen the movie 'Enemy At The Gates'? ...

Base on a true story about the WWII battle over Stalingrad.

In that movie Russia didn't have enough guns for each soldier so
every other soldier got a rifle with a clip and the second person got just a clip.
So when one soldier finishes with their clip, the second soldier
would take the gun and fire their clip.

Thrown into battle with Germans firing at them from one direction
with the Russian soldiers firing at them from behind, if you turned to retreat.

So this is a technique well used by the Russians.

[Irish_Dem]

23. I've seen it advertised.

But it always seems to be on a channel I don't subscribe too.
I may have to break down and subscribe to some other channels!

Supposed to be about military snipers, which I find quite interesting.

Oh I didn't know that about the alternating use of weapons when soldiers
did not have enough weapons.

I read an article that said the Russians particularly used the blockades on ethnic minorities.

[aggiesal]

26. Watch the attached video from the movie. n/t

[Irish_Dem]

29. Wonderful cast.

The trailer tells the whole story except the ending.

[dalton99a]

27. +1.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Smartest thing a RuZZian can do is arrange to get captured by Ukrainians. . . . nt

[bluestarone]

19. YEP!

I agree!

[soldierant]

28. Well, unless that brings retaliation on their family

which is evidently also a thing.

[Submariner]

3. Racist bigot Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov

proudly sent his sons into the Ukraine fight last week showing them all body armored with guns in a send off photo with dad.

No reports of their deaths yet, so I suppose dad got them stationed in the rear with the gear, much like chickenshits like Lindsey Graham did when he served.

Maybe Zelenskyy can lob a mortar into the rear latrine area and kill Rammy’s kids soon.

[Kaleva]

5. The Chechens are called the Tic Toc Army

Famed for posting on social media and giving away their positions.

[Oneironaut]

41. Their "firefights" are also blatantly staged.

You can tell they aren’t actually shooting at anything. It’s really cringe.

[sarge43]

22. Graham was in the JAG Corps. He couldn't be assigned combat duty.

He's a political chickenshit with clusters, but probably not a military one.

[TomSlick]

40. Graham is certainly a chickenshit but JAG officers are assigned to combat units.

Graham was a judge advocate in the Air Force and I know little about assignments of judge advocates in the Air Force. In the Army, there are judge advocates assigned to units from the brigade level and larger. I served in an Armored brigade and various combat support units.

Graham is an embarrassment to this retired judge advocate. Please do not smear all judge advocates with Graham's chicken shit.

TomSlick
Colonel (Retired)
U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps

[LudwigPastorius]

4. Go back to your kleptocratic shithole and...

leave the freedom-loving patriots of Ukraine in peace, you barbaric fucks.

[SergeStorms]

6. The executions will continue...

until the morale improves.

Yeah, that'll work. 🙄

[multigraincracker]

7. I hear white hankies are is short supply

on the front. Make sure you have a long pole to wave it.

[gordianot]

8. During WWII Russia motivated soldiers at the front with KGB machine guns in the rear.

This is what Russian Armies do for motivation by now it is in their DNA

[MarineCombatEngineer]

34. You are absolutely correct except for one tiny detail,

it was the NKVD, not the KGB, the KGB didn't exist until 1954.

[Ray Bruns]

9. This is all insane. All this death and destructive for the vanity of one man.

[OMGWTF]

18. Agreed, and ditto Bush II with his fake wars for fun and profit and

Traitor Tot with his >1M dead Americans due to his denial of Covid, i.e., stop the testing and the cases go down.

[Igel]

30. He's a true believer in a cause.

Such are dangerous.

Such often have absolute faith in the goodness and righteousness of their cause, and others tend to fall in line with it--if the person is powerful, if the person is charismatic, if the person appeals to what they've always wanted to believe. Mob bosses, cartel bosses, are venal; true evil requires a leader that believes himself good and just, and a coterie of fellow-believers who also believe in the justice and goodness of their cause.

A truly evil person believes himself good and pure, not corrupt and selfish. Once you have a just cause, all kinds of horrendous things can be justified in the achievement of that cause.

[Joinfortmill]

10. They need to use their blocking units against Putin.

[Skittles]

12. this is when Putin will be at his most dangerous

he'd be willing to use nukes before admitting his failures

[2naSalit]

16. +1

[ffr]

13. Strongman Putin??? Is this the same Putin the QOP & TFG idolize, that humiliated Putin?

[Emrys]

14. There's caution in Ukraine that this apparent abandonment of Kherson could be a trap,

luring their forces in to face what I don't even want to imagine.

I'm sure the Ukrainian forces will figure it out.

The "barrier troops" are nothing new, though they may have become more prevalent. The Russian forces have done this for over a century.

[Igel]

31. Deceptions deceive.

Nobody's infallible.

Option 1:
The Ukr forces know it's disinformation, move in.

Option 2:
The Ukr forces are wrong, move in, are screwed. Hello, Ilovaisk!

Option 3:
The Ukr forces are wrong, hang back. Granted, not as bad, but it allows for the Russians to really, *really* dig into new defensive positions. Ukr citizens die in assaulting those positions that otherwise wouldn't need to have died. *This* is non-quantifiable.

[Warpy]

17. Retreating is going to be problematic

since the river is a mile wide and both the pontoon bridge and the ferry have been blown up.

[cilla4progress]

20. Paper

Tiger

[FakeNoose]

21. If the Russian commanders are already gone, what's to stop the troops from surrendering?

Just in time before it gets really, really cold.

[Igel]

32. The automatic fire from the blocking troops that'll be the last to cross the Dnipro River.

If Putin's as Soviet in orientation as I think, there'll be enforcers in units by this point. Old Soviet units had political officers that were #2 in command, and happy as true believers in the cause to kill those who departed from the party line.

These were often hard to ID from afar. I wonder if Putin/Shoigu/Surovikin have opted for this. Yet.

[Igel]

33. Not all Russian commanders.

Conscripts have commanders, and if those commanders flee and manage to have blood pressure > 0 as a result they will be found.

In Putin's Russia, you don't want to be found.

[Cha]

24. Way to keep morale up, Putin.. you

stupid murderous Fuck UP.

Meanwhile those Ukrainians are RELENTLESS!! :

[MarineCombatEngineer]

35. The Ukrainian's are relentless,

and their military is western trained, which shows the huge difference between Russian trained troops compared to Western trained troops.

[Cha]

36. I didn't know that, MCE...

about being Western Trained.. TY!

[MarineCombatEngineer]

37. Yes, they've been trained by US and UK advisors,

which shows the huge differences in tactics, whereas the Russian command and control structure is very rigid, orders come from the top and the on scene commanders have no leeway, they have to follow the orders as written, no deviation even if the plan clearly falls apart, Western militaries command and control structures are far more flexible, the orders come down from the top, but the battlefield commanders are expected to adapt to changing conditions on the battlefield.

Case in point, during the Gulf War, I was the ranking NCO of my Engineer unit, I was ordered to clear a path through the minefield along the Highway 80 land corridor to Kuwait but I was given wide latitude on the implementation of the battle plan.

Weird thing was the I found out one of our resident DUer's was one of the Marines doing overwatch to protect us and a company of Navy Seabees while we did our thing, talk about a small world.

[Cha]

39. Wow.. Mahalo for all this

information on the Difference between how the Russians conduct themselves on the battlefield and how Americans do it.. and the Westen World.

It's only logical to adapt to changes that are happening in the here and now and Not orders that have no way of predicting the future.. This Explains a Lot!

Amazing you ran into a Marine here on DU who was doing Overwatch to protect you and your mission! That's really nice!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

38. Russians should be fighting Putin for their country.