Figures Putin would wait until the World Cup to pull off this little stunt.

More confident than last time ?

Amiright? (sarcasm)

Oh wait....

And Welcome to DU.

that makes it okay then.

oh wait...

whats that saying about two wrongs not making a right..

an independent action (if they did really come from across the border, the same tanks are in Ukraine).

Certainly there may be an argument that Russia may need to do more to firm up the border (if they can, the border is extremely porous and they basically did not have a border structure before, but come on folks. Use your intellect not emotions here.....

to whatever country we want to destabilize.

Oh, wait....we're exceptional. Yeah, that's it. Makes me want to

Jen Pasaki made that perfectly clear a while back.

The T-64 was better than the T-62, but mist observers view the T-64 as another fail attempt to replace the T-54 series of tanks. The T-64 was better than the T-62, but it was clearly inferior to the T-72. In fact Russia was keeping T-54s when it was getting rid of T-62s AND T-64s. The reason for that the T-54 is the easiest tank to repair and maintain.

I always liked the observation that the M1 could take out six T-54s, but you could buy and maintain ten T-54 for the price of one M1. Thus which is better one M1 or ten T-54s? The answer is closer then one would think on first thought.

My comment is the T-64 is NOT that significant a Tank.

Second comment. THREE TANKS???? That is a Russian Tank Company. Western Tank companies tend to have five tanks, but the Russians prefer three tanks per company. Thus this could be a tank company. The problem is you fight tanks in Battalions, of three tank companies, plus a headquarters and maintenance.

Three tanks are almost meaningless, along with the large rocket launchers. The rocket launchers are useless in the type of warfare going on in the Ukraine. The T-64 would have some use, but the rocket launchers completely useless unless someone wants to kill a lot of civilians, and you do not do that in the defensive, which is what the Russian speakers are doing in the eastern Ukraine.

unless you want the nervous Ukranians to shoot first, then you can feign innocence, and send in more tanks as "self defense".

A US tank company has 14 tanks, if the XO gets a tank.

Russian tank company has 10-11 tanks. 3 might be a platoon.

A T-64 is not some piece of shit. It's a good tank. No shit it's not as good as a T-72.

As to the 17, that was the M60 tank company. I did read at the time that had five tanks per platoon. They was talk when the M1 was replaced that five tanks per platoon was to many. Thus it looks like the Army did reduce the number to four tanks per platoon. I am sorry but I have not kept up with the exact number per platoon since the 1990s.

An M-60 tank platoon had four tanks at that time.

Continue your reading.

Last edited Mon Jun 16, 2014, 02:36 AM - Edit history (1)

But my sources were from the 1960s, thus changes could have happened.

I plan on turning mine into an ice cream truck to earn a few extra bucks.

It's at the level of technology that the Ukr has. The claim that they're captured is plausible. (It's rather unlike the case with some of the grenade launchers and assault rifles. They're Russian made; perhaps some parts are from the Donbass, but they're mostly from Russia and assembled in Russia.)

The Grads were used near Dobrovillya. They attacked what I guess must be a packing house and agricultural storage facility. Some dead, more wounded. No soldiers to be seen. Just civilians. Both sides billed it as a provocation by the other side. The Ukr side doesn't need any more--they hear reports about Demon putting POWs on rooftops to protect them from bombardment or the DNR folk charging big bucks to let women and children leave Slov'yansk.

Remember there are two forces against the pro-Russian side. One is the army. They have tanks. The other is the national guard. They have no tanks. Even three tanks makes a difference. Sort of a mobile blokpost.

...which is less accurate than the M16, but easier to maintain.

The real difference is the M16 is the LIGHTEST rifle, almost two pounds lighter then the AK. On the other hand the AK is the more reliable and capable of true effective automatic fire.

The M16 can fire in the automatic mode, but do to its light weight is NOT considered good in the automatic mode. Thus the Russians use a variation of their AK as their squad automatic rifle while the US had to adopt a variation of the Browning Automatic Rifle as its Squad Automatic Weapon.

Both are good rifle, each have good points and bad points.

I'm not a professional, but I served in the US army for 4 years. And if there's one thing I know is that tanks are complicated shit! I'm not sure that Russia just handed over tanks to untrained people and they all of the sudden knew all the systems in it. Someone had to be trained by the Russians or there are Russian soldiers who have been trained controlling the tanks.

It will be difficult, if not impossible for Russia to keep all of it's citizens from going to the fight. The two countries are so entwined, with so many relatives on both sides, that it would be virtually impossible to distinguish who would be visiting direct relatives, who actually lives in Ukraine (Ukraine/Russian marriages are common). Not to mention that a very large number of Ukrainians had Russian passports (Russia is tolerant of dual citizenship and people, especially in the east and south, liked to keep their options open.

Folks that are involved with immigrants in this country know as well that there are many dual immigrant citizens here as well. Nobody want to potentially get cut off from family that are in the old country, so a lot keep second passports.

I suspect that most, if not all of the "Russians" that Kiev has claimed were actually Ukrainians that also carry Russian passports, or Russians that have been living in Ukraine, married into Ukraine, etc.

First, a lot of the DNR's folk aren't untrained. Military service was compulsory and universal, and service in the Russian armed forces for Ukrainians ended 23 years ago.

Second, if you're 42 from the Donbas you were in the Russian military. They'd have been trained on the T-64 and would claim to remember how to use them.

Third, provocations aren't always immediately useful. There's been a lot of shenanigans with tanks and such in the Donbas. Lots of fake equipment has been taken from museums. Tanks on display--gutted of anything useful or dangerous--have been towed off. One that was "disabled" by the Ukr forces, it turned out, was one such display to Soviet prowess. It couldn't move on its own, it was towed. But while they thought it was the real thing a functioning tank could move without anybody looking for it. (In the days of social media such things quickly pop up.)

However these tanks pose a problem. If the West does nothing, a clear message is sent to Kiev: You have no supporters, you're on your own against a group that has all kinds of Russian backing. If the West does anything, then it has to commit to doing something, which is a PR win for Putin and will be done in a fairly non-deniable manner.

At the same time there's all the sabre-rattling over "provocations" by the Ukrainians against the Russians. Of course, they're good camo--the Russians will ignore the West's allegations, and we'll be okay with that. We'll jump and fret over their allegations, form a circular firing squad and argue about what it means and what could happen. By the time we've stopped pondering that, something bad and irreversible will have happened on the ground.

Published time: June 13, 2014 15:30
Edited time: June 13, 2014 17:50

At least one Ukrainian armored vehicle crossed the Russian border with Ukraine Friday overnight and stopped in the Rostov Region, according to Russia’s Security Service. The military abandoned the vehicle and returned to Ukraine.

For more on the Ukrainian crisis read RT’s live updates

The Ukrainian armored vehicle stopped in near the village of Millerovo, said the head of the press department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Rostov Region, Vasily Malaev.

In response to the incident, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the “illegal act” will not promote a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The ministry has also demanded an end to “provocations” on the border, which are making dialogue between the two countries much more difficult. The ministry directed a note of protest to Kiev on Friday.

There are also reports that there was not one, but two armored vehicles. A source from the FSB told LifeNews Channel that two armored vehicles crossed the Russian border.

Initially just one APC entered Russian territory, however it broke down, LifeNews was told. It was discovered by the Border Service, however, Russia’s troops failed to take the Ukrainian military personnel captive as another armored vehicle came to the rescue from Ukraine’s Lugansk Region.

more...

http://rt.com/news/165780-ukraine-russia-apc-border/

Of course Obama and the evil empire must be to blame.

He reported that all known Ukr tanks had been returned from Crimea or accounted for. They're all numbered and registered. Sort of makes sense, that.

The "new" tanks are also unmarked, which means that along the way they'd have had to be repainted or had their camo markings removed, along with any Ukr symbols and letters/numbers. This is also a problem for claims that they're captured Ukr tanks--why capture them, let them sit around for a while while you strip off the camo or repaint them? APCs that were captured and redeployed by the DNR typically just had their Ukr markings crossed out or painted over quickly. Choice of decor seems a small point.

On the other hand, the equipment used in Crimea that was *Russian* was unmarked and not painted in camo. Part of deniability--let's not flatter it by calling it "plausible"--for those desperate for deniability.

I have seen WP burn in training thus this is not WP. That looks like smoke trails. Almost like rockets firing from the ground to a central target.

It could be a time exposure from a helicopter firing various rocket downward. My comment it is NOT White Phosphorus (WP).

Putin is as nuts as any of the Russian dictators or Czars. Can't believe we are living to see this happening again. He's threatening to start WW3 in Europe