Russia and Ukraine

[The Architect Of Fate]

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Several Donbas draftees have been issued with a rifle called a Mosin, which was developed in the late 19th century and went out of production decades ago, according to three people who saw conscripts from the separatist region using the weapon.

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A bit of ignorance here..

The rifle they are describing is either the Mosin Nagant 91/30 or M44 carbine. While these are older rifles - with lousy finish - they are none the less a capable battlefield rifle. Additionally - it uses a more powerful cartridge 7.62x 54 than the AK47 uses, 7.62 x 39. 

Sure it is a bolt action - but it is capable of making long range shots an AK47 could not.

I have owned both - and would not be afraid of trusting one to work as needed....

As Brian has already noted, a weapon is only as good as the man using it. But let's face it, using a bolt-action in large-scale combat in 2022 is not exactly cutting-edge.

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Remember when i said that manpower was to russian leaders always just another resource, an expendable one at that?
If the "Mosin" rifle mentioned is the Mosin Nagant then....why not giving them consripts some clubs?

A modern army like Russia's needs firewood to cook its food!

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Unless this war go nuclear, no one thinks this war will take a toll on Russian demographics similar to WWII.

What it will take a toll on is Putin's domestic support. How much? That remains to be seen. But bodybags are hard to hide.

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Yeah, stretch you mind a bit,  you have nothing but naivety, idiot complacency and moronic self righteousness to lose.

Seriously, you think the upper leadership of the USSR gave two shits rubbed together about workers?

True huge causalities are not very good for a leader even an autocratic leader like Putin's popularity and indeed the Soviets stopped caring about the workers from pretty much day one . Lenin never intended to enact Marx's ideas and only wanted power for himself.

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So why aren't either of you covering them? Instead of criticizing Anomalocaris and myself for having an argument about foreign policy which I might add is central to this whole conflict.

I've been trying to provide actual news, but no one seems to answer me -- except Anom spewing more talking-points that are vapid and past shelf-life.

Yup and you do a good job. Sorry I have not engaged more with your posts

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Well, Dunbas is not exactly Russia yet, and the conflict in Dunbas is being portrayed as something of war of liberation for ethnic Russians.    So the drafting in Dunbas has more of a drafting peasants into a heroic partisan war of liberation flavor than drafting soldiers into a regular army to fight a conventional war on foreign soil flavor.

So to people that really matters, that is the Dunbasians and the Russian audience steeped in the mythology of the great patriotic war where crudely equipped partisans supposedly made German life behind the lines a living hell,  bolt action rifles probably is actually a bonus as far as stirring up popular sentiments go.    

It allows the Russian side to play the two sided melodrama of being both victim and hero at the same time.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what the Ukrainian side has been doing since shortly after the start of the war as well.

It reeks of a mixture of weaksauce and bullshit to me. If they're liberating the Donbas, why don't they have the forces to do so, such that they must draft raw recruits and throw them untrained into battle? Giving them rifles designed in 1891 only underscores the military weakness of the RF. Oh, that's right: they've had their asses handed to them, the Russians have, and can't "liberate" their "persecuted" subjects -- uh, brethren. I wonder why the Ukrainians have been fighting so long and so hard?

I say level the playing field, and have the Italians donate some Mannlicher-Carcanos to the Ukrainians.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like an advanced military plan. It sounds like something you think up at the minute when the latest causality reports and you realize just how fucked you are.