Brothers Armed Quotes

“Of the 3.4 million people who served in the Soviet Armed Forces in 1991, almost 1.2 million were storage depot personnel.”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“March 5, 2014 – Units of Russia’s 3rd, 10th, 16th, and 22nd Independent Spetsnaz Brigades, the 25th Independent Spetsnaz Regiment, the 45th Independent VDV Spetsnaz Regiment, part of the 31st Independent VDV Airborne Assault Brigade, and small but very capable Special Operations Forces (SOF) units join Russia’s 810th Marines Brigade in Crimea.”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“The Russian and pro-Russian militants fighting in the Donbas are therefore giving the Ukrainian Army a crash course in real warfare, although the price of error is of course extremely high. For all intents and purposes, these militants are light mechanized infantry. They are armed with conventional and rocket artillery, heavy armor (including tanks), and air defense systems. They wage combined-arms warfare; they launch intelligent offensives and they have a well-organized defense. In other words, they are a real army.”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“The operation in the Donbas has revealed that the level of skill of Ukrainian soldiers, police, and security officers, from the rank and file to the generals, is unacceptably low. The”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“The West could help by supplying modern chassis for new or upgraded Ukrainian SAM systems and, ideally, air defense systems that meet the aforementioned requirements for action in eastern Ukraine, especially modern man-portable SAM systems.”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“Key requirements for SAM systems to be used in eastern Ukraine include autonomy and stealth. The former means the ability to attack targets with a single operational combat vehicle; the latter means attacking targets without revealing the SAM system’s location through the use of radar. These”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“For a short period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became the owner of the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. It had more nuclear warheads than Britain, France, and China put together.”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

“Russia formally relinquished all claims to Crimea before the break-up of the Soviet Union, when the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR signed a treaty on November 19, 1990, by which time both had adopted declarations of sovereignty. Article 6 of the treaty recognized the territorial integrity of both republics within their existing Soviet borders.11”
― Colby Howard, Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine