Chechnian battalion "Vostok"


"Blissful Russian peacekeepers... "



Georgian radar 36D6 near Gori, one of two, which Georgia got from Ukraine. It was jammed and destroyed by the Russian Su-34 bomber



Russian bombs (direct hit) Senaki (Georgian air base)





Safely returned russian Su-25 after being hit by a MANPAD missile



Russian trophies






...

Georgian president Saakashvilli vs Putin

Has it been four years already?  I guess times fly when you're having fun.

Thanks for the pictures.  I think I want an SVD even more now.

Putin should never have listened to Sarkozy.

Too bad we didn't see more combloc shit get killed in that one.


 

So something else happened on my birthday.

Intredasting.

Russia actually performed very poorly in that conflict. There were even instances of Commanders using journalists Sat phones to communicate to their troops since their own equipment, or lack thereof, was moot. Their APC's were getting blown to tits, hence why nobody rides inside of them, their Air Force for its size was poorly used as well.

Wish the Georgians would have done better.  I wonder how it would have turned out if the Georgians had been able to close the Roki tunnel before the majority of the Russian forces had pushed through.

too bad they didnt have nape+ go pros



 

Do you have more details on their performance?

That is by far the biggest fuck up of the war.  Supposedly the Georgians and Koreans have been exchanging countermobility TTP notes since then.  Not sure if it is the Koreans afraid the same fuckup could happen to them, or the Georgians turning to the Koreans for ideas on how to improve their system that failed.

Did that jet land like that?

Probably the latter.

I saw the HUGE concrete columns set with charges at the bottom for blocking hill passes and bridgeheads all over Area 1 to stall the NORK's  if they ever came south.

ETA: Fuck Russia.

Happy birthday to you! Today is you birthday as well.

08/08

But supposedly the Georgians had somethign similar - and it failed somehow.  Was it a command and control issue, dumb luck, a physical design flaw?

Here's an interesting 1st and 2nd hand account of that tunnel and what went wrong vs. the story that was given to the media.  Totten now writes for PJ Media I think, or last I heard.  I look at the Russian army as just a big gang that would be quickly rolled over if they had any sort of real numbers/training against them.

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/the-truth-about-1.php

The Georgians apparently first used artillery to try to stop infiltration of the country via the tunnel and supposeldy they bottled up Russian armour for a time but were forced to withdraw.  That engagement is one thing I see cited for the idea that Russian casualties were greater than reported.  The second effort was to use some special forces to destroy the tunnel with explosives, but by then the Russians had secured their position and the Georgians were discovered before they could carry out their mission.  The Georgians, quite simply, were not expecting to fight any sort of war, with or without Russia's involvement, which is why they were so unprepared.  The Russians obviously were preparing for war, they just happened to kind of suck at it, but they still accomplished the majority of their objectives.  It has often been reported that the Georgians had been planning this thing for days nd instigated the whole thing, but the evidence seems to say otherwise, especially when in the context of the preceding several years.

I was there at that time.

What does link you to Hinds and Hips ?

Didn't we have a treaty with them...a defense type where we would come to thier aid if they were attacked?

Trying to put your boot on the throat of your neighbors again? I thought that Soviet Union and Stalinism was over?

Only place to park a C-130 that wasn't blown up.

Pic thread!

Wasn't there a quote from somebody that said the Bushmasters were all garbage they didnt work most of the time ??

i remember when it happened i was living in Florida and i was scared i would be next.
 

Very interesting (though a bit dubious in parts).  I appreciate the connection made with the CFE treaty "Suspension" (The Russians have never officially said they withdrew, just that they have suspended participation).  I think that's a pretty clear point on the map to show when the initial movement in support of the Georgia invasion plan began.  This was clearly a deliberate Russian operation, and not the "oh no our peacekeepers ar ebeing bombarded, let's rescue them with the available forces that just happen to be in the area for training, and who just happen to have stockpiled live ammo" narrative the Russians spew.

Somewhere, I have an amateur video I pulled down off the internet of Russian peacekeepers spraying over the "MC" and blue stripe before they head out to fight.

What is the current status of CFE? Is it still jammed up over Moldova and the 14th Army?

now we're getting to the good stuff....



 

Not sure how to answer that without a 5 hour ramble.

Host nation consent (which affects troops in Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, for that matter) remains the stickly wicket that the US refuses to let drop, and the Russians refuse to concede to.  Of course, the Russians claim they have consent in the "independent" country of Abkhazia.  The Armenians claim "Mountainous Karabakh" is also an independent country (though they have never done this officially).  The Armenians play the "we can't control them, they are independent" like the Russians do Transistria - when it is convenient - but neither have moved to formally recognize them as such.

Do the Russians have troops in Azerbaijan proper or just in Nag-Karabakh?



 

In the case of N-K, the issue wouldn't be Russian troops (if there are any, they are not there openly) , but N-K/Armenian troops in Azerbaijan without Azeri consent.  The latter forces secure an area much larger than N-K proper - making the region contiguous with Armenia.

That clears it up. Does any CFE inspections or reporting actually occur?

Constantly.   Everyone still plays except the Russians.

Russians say they lost 7, Georgians claimed 25 IIRC.



The truth is somewhere in the middle, both sides were lying through their teeth in that conflict.



 

Who owns that mission/provides the inspectors for the US?

DTRA owns all Treaty Inspection / Escort / Data Exchange missions.

That's how they took the Baltics.  They invaded and told everyone they were there as "guests" to help uprisings.  I wonder how things might have been different had Georgia invested a little more in intelligence and preparation.  It seems to me that Georgia would be a fantastic place to conduct war if you're on the home team.

I, and the GA HTF, were very disappointed.



 

I believe the Russians still maintain a small element at the Gabala Radar Station, but obviously that under a contract between the Russians and GoAZ.

Thanks.

Great thread- cool to see 'modern' combloc equipment in action.

Can anyone give a cliff note version of what was the result?

Did Russia withdraw but maintain control of the breakaway province??

My recollection of the endstate is poor.

4073

MOAR pics!

McCain was going to help out Georgia, but then Obama won the election.

It was certainly an interesting few days at work. I was on shift when the whole thing kicked off. Really felt for the Georgians.

I was there just just before the war. Nice place, nice food, good wine.

From Jamestown Foundation

Interesting.  A link to a larger report?

I was in the Baltics acting as an Observer-Controller for the Erna Raid exercise in Estonia when this went down.

A friend of mine has an uncle who is with the Russian Foreign Ministry, and he was spouting his mouth off that Russia is resurgent, and has an official policy to take back all the peripheral nations on its borders.  They shut him up and ordered him to not make anymore public appearances or statements.

They're using a multi-faceted approach of varying techniques, and the Georgian War was an example of the most overtly aggressive one.

So was the way they killed the Polish Presidential delegation that they invited to come to Russia so Russia could "apologize" for the Katyn massacre. The Polish delegation's bodies are still rotting in the forest last I heard, after Russian troops "secured" the crash scene Russian style, i.e. looting all the bodies of their credit cards and valuables, removing the CDR and CPL, and letting mother Russia's nature do the rest...

Lots of the same old tactics and strategies that have been used for millennia, like ethnic Russians moved into border nations en masse, especially prisoners and career criminals who they don't want internally, but love to export, followed by MICEing the national command authority, penetrating or re-warming the cold war assets they had for paid informants, useful idiots, peace activists, animal rights groups, communist parties masquerading as social democrats, news organizations, schools, businesses, and so forth.

I'm seeing a huge influx of Russians into Finland over the past 6 years, and lots of them are fighting age males with prison ink, military experience, well-built, huffing cheap cigarettes like it's cool.  The main TV "news" in Finland, YLE, is a communist-owned apparatus that spews anti-capitalist, anti-US BS ad vomitum like gospel truth, and the Finns eat it up hook, line, and sinker.

Russians are purchasing land around every Finnish military base possible, scouting HLZ's, DZ's, getting jobs, going on welfare, building caches of weapons, smuggling narcotics, and bringing an underground illicit economy up a few notches from its relatively covert status that was in-place a few years ago.  

Meanwhile, the Finnish Parliament is talking about how much defense spending they can cut, since they're sending real cash to bail out failing Eurozone partners a thousand kilometers away, who don't know or care about Finland.

Russia is very concerned about Finland's talks of joining NATO, so they have ramped up bigtime to preempt a Finnish move in that direction, seeing as Finland would be the most ideal location for BMD platforms.  None of the Finns really see it coming, but I do.  Maybe a few reservists could start to see the writing on the wall, but everyone is under the assumption that peace in Europe is a foregone conclusion into perpetuity.  

History says otherwise...

I've been hearing people say this for some time now, i.e. that Russia is trying to bring back the former ComBloc, especially the former SSRs, back into its fold out of what it views as strategic necessity using various means up to and including the use of invading troops.  Meanwhile the U.S. sticks its head in the sand and sometimes even helps the Russians, despite it being contrary to our interests.