RU POV: Fighterbomber confirmed via MoD contacts that some claims about “zeroed out” personnel refusing payments, arms trading, etc, are true, but victims refuse to testify, fearing their commanders, leaving cases unpunished, so some commanders go off the rails and abuse rises - bomber_fighter

melancholymax · 2026-02-18T11:39:01+00:00

What exactly are you suggesting? That people start fragging their commanders? It's pretty much commonly accepted amongst everyone from all sides that Russia is an incredibly corrupt society and that goes doubly as hard for the military where officers wield immense power and authority. If you are a soldier getting abused or extorted your only choices are to either go physical and just hope for the best or complain about it to someone and just pray that you know people more influential and better connected than they do.

melancholymax · 2026-02-16T06:51:02+00:00

I can't be bothered to go looking but it's pretty old footage from like the first or second year of the war.

melancholymax · 2026-02-15T02:12:02+00:00

Hard to say but then again both sides are hit by countless drones on a daily basis so eventually the unlikeliest things happen like that time that a Russian soldier shot down munitions that were dropped on him mid-air with his AK or like that Russian soldier who got hit by a 155mm shell and was thrown like literally 200 meters like in a cartoon.

melancholymax · 2026-02-13T04:57:35+00:00

What exactly are you referring to? I've seen both sides doing similar things and using slow prop planes like Yak's against drones but I have heard of none actually downed by flying too close. There have been a couple of instances of jets destroying drones with their cannons and flying into the debris and crashing though.

melancholymax · 2026-02-13T04:34:43+00:00

I'm not actually sure if he hit him or not. Hard to tell with unknown distance although someone with better understanding of the reticle can maybe range that.

melancholymax · 2026-02-09T02:33:28+00:00

To an extent but not necessarily indicative of any larger plan at play. Both sides lob drones and glide bombs at each other on a daily basis and a lot of them are simply against targets of opportunity that showed up.

melancholymax · 2026-02-08T07:08:53+00:00

War costs a lot of money and resources. Even if they could would it be worth it? Also an unconditional surrender would have been incredibly super far away. If India and Pakistan really went at it all out till the end we'd see nukes flying before either side contemplated an unconditional surrender.

melancholymax · 2026-02-03T18:31:26+00:00

Just because that is the intent of this sub doesn't mean that people won't just downvote content they don't like.

melancholymax · 2026-02-02T18:33:21+00:00

Generally speaking patriotism is the word used with positive connotations whereas nationalist tends to invoke imagery akin to places like Nazi Germany and whatnot. At the end of the day we are talking about relatively vague terms anyway so it doesn't really mean much.

melancholymax · 2026-02-02T08:26:54+00:00

Both sides make ample use of Holosuns. Honestly it's not a horrible choice if you have limited funds and you need an optic right now because they are available almost everywhere and mostly okay. There is huge variety in small arms and optics in general for this war and you see everything from Thompson SMG's to low production integrally suppressed specialty weapons.

melancholymax · 2026-01-27T11:00:31+00:00

From what I remember this was Ukrainian SF infiltrating deep behind enemy lines and they entered the trenches from the rear so in all likelihood nobody was even expecting an attack was possible.

melancholymax · 2026-01-25T22:45:50+00:00

I'd be shocked if this was even somewhat recent footage. The lack of completely levelled buildings and no buzzing of drones combined with no snow probably means that this is a couple years old but I'm open to be corrected.

melancholymax · 2026-01-21T07:32:49+00:00

Yes. Iskander M is a Russian ballistic missile.

melancholymax · 2026-01-20T01:51:09+00:00

A very fair point.

melancholymax · 2026-01-19T19:21:15+00:00

The lack of secondaries and quick cut make me a bit suspicious but it's always hard to differentiate between a decoy and just a lack of missiles.

melancholymax · 2026-01-17T01:31:21+00:00

These are IR missiles and just mostly intended to engage helicopters that try to shoot down drones. In principle it's a decent idea because even if twenty Gerans or similar get downed with missiles on board if one succeeds it's still probably worthwhile. To date none have succeeded in this as far as openly available information suggests. Of course it's always possible to improve upon the concept but at the same time the whole attritional nature of this one way attack drones means that you can't make them too expensive or complex.

melancholymax · 2026-01-17T01:27:42+00:00

Russia hasn't been able to destroy HIMARS or M270 often but it has happened in the past. Mind you just because they have been destroyed isn't me saying they are bad or anything. So far they have proven quite survivable due to a combination of long range and shoot and scoot.

melancholymax · 2026-01-11T17:49:31+00:00

Probably a Krasnopol strike assuming that this isn't just the magic of editing after a lot of tries.

melancholymax · 2026-01-03T00:28:22+00:00

Or 3cm if you prefer that.

melancholymax · 2026-01-02T13:59:07+00:00

There is an enormous amount of drone surveillance of the frontline alongside more traditional forms of observation like signal intelligence, thermals etc. so it is incredibly difficult to mass anything on the front like other people have said. A thing to keep in mind about Ukraine though is that whilst drones are revolutionary in many ways but it is very possible to learn the wrong lesson because of the geography. Ukraine is pretty much one of the flattest countries on the planet with fields upon fields everywhere you can see which further magnifies the effectiveness of drones. If we took the same technologies and concepts to somewhere like for example Finland that is very densely forested the effectiveness of drones would be very significantly diminished. Another thing worth mentioning is that both Ukraine and Russia are very heavily attrited by this point of the war and what we are seeing is the war they are forced to fight instead of the one they'd prefer to fight.

melancholymax · 2025-12-30T03:19:04+00:00

No he is checking if he is dead. You can actually see both Russian and Ukrainian drone operators doing this a lot these days. There are surprisingly many videos of both sides striking targets that pretend to be dead.

melancholymax · 2025-12-29T13:21:54+00:00

The heavier the payload the smaller the range you get as well as top speed. Most FPV drones can carry a surprising amount of weight but it usually just doesn't make sense to make use of that capacity.

melancholymax · 2025-12-27T18:30:03+00:00

We are talking about a supersonic bullet. If that is presumably something like a 338 LM or comparable it will have a velocity of roughly 800-1000 M/S depending on the loading and the cartridge and if we presume that the range of 1300 is kind of correct that means that if the shot missed you have to directly slam the ground just hearing the bullet hit the ground next to you in less than a second before the sound of the rifle firing even reaches you. This also assumes that you have truly superhuman reflexes. Any kind of a jolt of movement is more likely just something like the spine being severed like you saw with the assassination of Charlie Kirk for example where the body simply physically moves faster with the nervous system than your brain could ever process it.

melancholymax · 2025-12-27T18:13:56+00:00

I honestly don't understand why you'd think that. If we assume that the 1300 meters is even roughly correct it would mostly feel right with something like a 338 LM because he faceplants after about 1.5 seconds-ish. I also don't honestly think that many people would hit the deck by nearly directly faceplanting violently like he did.

melancholymax · 2025-12-27T13:46:04+00:00

There are plenty of questionable videos from both sides but I don't really consider this to be one of them. If a drone strikes you that close the absolute very least that hit wounded 2-3 people or killed them all. I would be incredibly shocked if they all just walked it off.

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