Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Machiavellian]

Dulfite said:

JRPGfan said:

I watched a video of some ukraine soldiers makeing use of what others commented on as a "shoot and scoot" (hit and run), or "kiteing" in gamer terms.
They would lay low, make use of drones to get a birds eye view, get coordinates (lazers? gps?), run in a small team of 4-5 people, carrying parts of a "reuseable laucher", deploy it (its like a little stand, that then gets 4-5 parts added ontop, and loaded with a rocket), and basically as soon as it was fired, they where pulling it apart, carrying their parts (each guy takes care of their part) and then running off, even before the missle even lands (and usually hits).

Apparently, these guys just keep doing things like this, you can hear frustrated russian soldiers fireing at them (their out of range usually) and theres like bush/vegitation in the way (sight issue).

I thought, damn... now I know why the russians are makeing such heavy losses.
These small hit and run teams (with drones, and smart weaponry), and the Guerrilla warfare they make use of, are apparently hard to deal with.... if your soldiers are basically just cannon fodder, just drafted, that are clumped up together in a caravan or such.

As long as Russia keeps trying to absorb Ukraine, their people, their assets, and their economy, they will never have the advantage over Ukranian guerilla warfare. But if Putin just throws his hands up and wants the land, not caring about how many people and structures he destroys, then that advantage goes away and he just starts bombing cities like Hitler.

The problem with that line is the optics.  Russia still want international support even if they cannot get it from the US and EU.  Going scorched earth make it harder for any of the other international groups to support such actions and definitely China does not want that blood to represent them standing by Russia.  This is the reason why this war stretching out was bad for Putin.  If you really think about it, nothing has really gone right in this whole enterprise and its making Putin look bad on the world stage.