Putin is irrelevant? Just what do you think this thread is about? Bashing Ukraine? I realize that is all you post, but it is not what this thread is about.
Yeah, no. Russia has not operated a battleship since 1955 when the Novorossiysk was sunk. The Chinese similarly do not have battleships. Iran has never had battleships.
Russian Oil guy #2 at company, "suicided", aka jumped out a window or shot himself in the back several times? Details a bit unclear.
And the Glorious Electronic Warfare experts of Mother Russia have caused a Ukranian drone to crash, luckily into an oil refinery, instead of the horrible place it must have been aimed, probably a nunnery.
Fun fact about Chinese Battleships, which were all gone by WW1. Despite a larger fleet, with bigger battleships than the Japanese, the Chinese navy got trounced, in part because the Bureaucrats in China, ( Which seem the same as today, ) were so corrupt the shells used in the Battleships were full of broken pottery, or sand, instead of high explosive, and they pocketed the price difference.
I can just see a terrified Japanese crewman, sent to check on the damage where a Chinese 12 inch shell punched through the armor, and finds a big steel can dribbling busted place settings instead of a hundred pounds of high explosives...
Full CDO zig zag post! ( OCD, in alphabetical order, as it should be! )
Or is it ADD? Look! Squirrel!
See my video suggestion on the Islamist thread... "The Chieftain" on armor stuff.
I don't claim to be an Ace Mechanic. ( Machinist is a different mindset ) But I hang out with a few, & once upon a time I was very into the old car restoration scene.
Which is relevant to the huge number of broken down tanks in Russia & Ukraine.
And a book series recommendation, John Ringo's Black Tide Rising... a zombie apocalypse series with fairly realistic depiction of the genre, plus Ringo's trademark hyper competent ultra-violent characters and info dumps. ( hey, he does good research and if you had a guy explain to you in detail how to do something, it can be interesting flavor and ( snicker ) word count. )
Characters in the series have to scavenge equipment, and there's lots of discussion on how hard it is to fix stuff.
Getting a Honda Pilot running after being abandoned months ago? Most of us here would enjoy the challenge. ( if we weren't in a zombie apocalypse )
Getting an Abrams going? Or a LAV? Different level of complexity! The Home Depot auto isle? Not so helpful.
Bottom line is any tank is a hard thing to keep running, and unlike the Honda, is full of lowest bidder rubber seals that are not designed for long life, and not replacing them means your tank won't protect you, or work at all.
Thus it's easy to understand the problem Russia has with it's mechanized equipment. Especially when the maintenance wasn't done and the money for parts pocketed by the corrupt Officers.
The Soviets parked millions of tons of military gear, tanks included, and just kept stashing the old stuff just in case...
Uniforms and other consumables, pretty much all gone or stolen. And acres of rusting tanks & trucks.
It's one thing as a hobby to go rescue a car or motorcycle from the scrap yard. Buncha Youtube videos and folk here enjoy that.
It's another thing to run a military that way, and ironically, the more modern a car, tank, plane, etc. is, the more electronics and fiddly bits to break down in nature.
And don't forget the design era! The last upgrade. 1980s computers!
It's not that the Soviet stuff is that bad, in performance, it's that the Invasion of Ukraine became Junk Yard War.
The Ukrainian nazy is trying to interfere the president election in Russia right now. They executed multiple terrorist attacks on Belgorod and Kursk.
The Ukrainian nazy also attempted to cross the Russian border near Belgorod and as result they lost a lot of tanks and armored machines. Over 200 Ukrainian nazy were eliminated during this attempt. There are terrifying videos in Telegram with like 30-50 burned bodies of the Ukrainian terrorists in a big pit where they tried to take cover during this attack and were struck all together.
You definitely did not see that video and decided to play stupid. It is not mass graves, there are burned and injured people in smoking clothes barely moving after the strike with burned ground around, and the footage is from the drone.
The Ukrainian nazy lost over 1500 terrorists including over 500 dead during the suicidal attack on Belgorod within last 3 days in the attempt to interfere the president election in Russia.
That's how you have to enforce your border properly. Not like Israel allowed Hamas to freely invade the Israel territory.
Putin announced creating the dead zone in Ukraine to have necessary safety distance margin if the Ukrainian nazy will keep terrorist attacks on Belgorod.