Nature v. Nurture, Military-style
Cranking out columns for TAH isn’t onerous duty – the columns are relatively short, it’s a (mostly) friendly audience, the chain of command is forgiving – unless you do something really, really stupid, it’s a pretty soft gig. And it has a bonus of watching all the movie references aimed at AW1Ed, right? But there is one small issue….what the heck to write about? Going through the news feeds trying to find something falling within the rather generous guidelines can be, in all honesty, a problem. Sometimes a run through the news aggregators looking for reasonably relevant topics will yield a week’s worth of columns in a short time. Sometimes, it seems like alla y’all are gonna get a badly needed break. And then there’s the one that almost writes itself and says “oh, no, bucko…you HAVE to do this!” And so with that, we come to today’s prelude to the upcoming WOT.
Seems Ukraine set up a combat brigade known as Anne of Kyiv, the 155th Combat Brigade. And they got some of the best toys, too – Leopard II tanks, and French Caesar 155mm howitzers. And French training.
At least 50 members of the new 155th mechanised brigade, one of the few to operate the Leopard 2 battle tank, disappeared while elements of the unit were being drilled in France.
By the time it entered battle for the first time, at least 1,700 of its troops went absent without leave at numerous points. Some 500 soldiers were still missing, it was reported as recently as November.
Trained by the French… how ironic given how many took what was often called (still may be?) “French Leave”. How many military French jokes do YOU know…thousands?
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart, announced the $900 billion (£747 billion) project to much fanfare at an event to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing in June last year.
The brigade had spent nine months training in western Ukraine, Poland and France as part of an effort by Mr Zelensky to establish 14 new brigades equipped and prepared by the West.
There has been criticism of setting up new units filled with recruits rather than using newbies to augment existing combat-blooded units.
Recruitment for the brigade began in June last year but was hampered by some 2,500 recruits being plucked to replenish other units before training could begin.
The 1,924 volunteers that remained were sent to France, but it emerged that only 51 of them had military experience of more than a year.
The majority (1,414) had only enrolled in the Ukrainian military in the two months before they were sent for their overseas training.
I won’t quibble over the term overseas (perhaps the original author knows of an ocean between Franc and Ukraine that I missed) – more importantly, it does seem the lads were seriously short-changed by their command.
As the brigade trained in France, it continued to recruit, with more than 700 of those troops fleeing while remaining on Ukrainian territory between October and November.
When the 155th was eventually deployed to Pokrovsk, it was not given any drones – the main method of battlefield reconnaissance – and electronic warfare jammers by the state.
Colonel Dmytro Ryumshin was sacked as the brigade’s commander within days of it being sent to the front line.
Mr Butusov added: “The brigade’s servicemen became hostages of Zelensky’s PR project, which the authorities made no effort to actually implement competently.”
The brigade has since been effectively disbanded, with its elements spread assigned to battle-hardened brigades already defending Pokrovsk. The Telegraph
Is there a French proclivity to avoid battle that rubbed off on the Ukes? Given the solid reputation of la legion etrangeres, it’s doubtful…but losing that many deserters is not a great look for ANYONE.
Category: Ukraine
The conscripts were inspired by the pep talk that President Macron delivered to them during training. “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?”
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/10/09/macron-inspects-ukraine-troops-training-at-a-french-military-camp_6728805_7.html#
Have the Ukrainian Military Police checked out the local Driftwood for their missing troops?
Have they got a Brown Bagger over there too ?
Expansion teams always struggle their first few seasons.
Is the Uke’s battle flag white?
Before the French revolution the French Infantry wore white uniforms.
Z Man running out of bodies to throw into the meat grinder? The kranians not wanting to be the fresh meat shoved into the grinder? Saw a blurb where the Norks that were involved took a big hit the other day, since then gone “poof”. One thing that seems to be obvious, with the lack of true info coming out of there, is the age old lesson (never remembered by higher) is one cannot fight today’s war with yesterday’s tactics and technology.
I want a refund!!
At first glance I thought that medal was a RVNGC w/p.
Choices, choices lets see no fighting here in France, wine to drink and party with the locales or get in a tank and see what happens. No pressure… how are the recruits being supported in France after they desert…French asylum. Something’s fishy here.
Well, we always knew the war in Ukraine was a retard fight. None of them know how to fire and maneuver, they just try to hold ground and snipe at each other with drones and missiles. Occasionally they manage to concentrate and breach through a point, but fail to have the logistical support to exploit the breakthrough, and offensives only end up moving the lines a little that way or this way.
Ukraine, despite the untold billions of international and American support, are a bunch of retards playing into the Russians hands by fighting the type of attrition war that Russia is most successful at.
On the flip side, Russia has turned a 10+ to 1 advantage into an endless bloody stalemate. That took some Real Genius.
Snatching a clusterf*ck from the jaws of victory.