After the fiasco in Afghanistan, I can see how intelligence agencies could become cynical about the commitment of local populations to fight for their own freedom.
However, we discovered that the people of Ukraine were not cowards like the people of Afghanistan
holy shit holy shit someone should drop this fucker in a warzone
These are the people who call themselves the adults in the room and say you’re only left-wing because you don’t have enough life experience.
Neither were cowards, both corrupt war machines started to break down when the flow of US money dried up. It has nothing to do with individual bravery, everything to do with a puppet state being cut off after it proved insufficient for our needs
These motherfuckers need materialism
the taliban offensive lasted 3 months and the result was the complete control of afghanistan and the seizing of billions of dollars worth of american equipment by the taliban
we’re over 6 months into the hyped ukrainian counteroffensive and all they have to show for it is some miniscule dots on a map and huge casualties on their side
I’m bad a geopolitics, someone help me out with which side had popular support in these conflicts??
Do they still hold any of the dots that were Russian controlled 6 months ago? They wont in another 6 months.
fight for their own freedom.
“Freedom” once again just means “Western rule”.
Pretty sure it makes very little difference for the average Ukrainian whether wholesome100 Cpt Zelenskyy or evil Putler is in charge of their government. Russians are not any less “free” than Ukrainians, if anything, their freedoms are limited by Western sanctions and being banned from participating in international competitions.
Freedom
Freedom for Donetsk and Luhansk, right?
…right?
They’d probably die after their nearest Supermarket closed down and they could no longer use their phone or computer.
Cowardice is when you don’t get down and grovel for your American masters
Wow this rivals “an outbreak of gratitude among the Iraqi people” as one of the things someone can say to get themselves Disney fastpassed instantly to the front of the wall line
Jesus christ
or just like a big hole in the ground
not cowards like the people of Afghanistan
I don’t know how you could look at the modern history of Afghanistan and not think that Afghan people are brave to the point of insanity.
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It comes down to blood. Which side can bleed more. And the answer is Russia. Someone can correct me on this story, but it goes like this… A country goes to war agains China. Every day the Chinese lose one million fighters. After 100 days the enemy surrenders to China. Suffering and dying is part of the Russian psyche. They will bleed their own country dry and consider it a patriotic gesture.
They actually still believe they are dying in droves, just naruto running into the bullets in human wave attacks.
“The slavic brainpan is predisposed towards human wave attacks and death” is…certainly a take to have
I hear chuds parrot that line, inserting Russia instead of Slavic brainpan, and people including libs nod along because they saw Jude Law in Enemy at the Gates in the early oughts.
They used to say it about China during the Korean War. Boomers will swear up and down that the PLA sent waves of guys to die until the Americans ran out of bullets as a deliberate tactic.
It stems from the racism lobe of the crackkker brainpan
Half that, half an inability to comprehend that the other side is trying, too.
Those [SLURS] didn’t stop assaulting our position when they began taking losses! Why would anyone fight to the death for a cause?!?!?!!
That said, I’ve heard that one of the real reasons for the brutal assault waves was bad field communications - The PLA sends 100 guys forward. There aren’t enough radios to go around, so the officer has orders to retreat if they can’t advance, and if they don’t hear from him they’ll send another assault wave to back him up and push the assault in 10 minutes.
Well, the officer and his company get wrecked by American defenses, everyone’s either dead or fighting, no one goes back to say “it’s no good here, we can’t advance”, so the next wave gets to go ahead ten minutes later to advance. And all these PLA troops get stuck in and aren’t able to convey information back to their assembly area to stop the assault bc of all the chaos. Doubly so for night assaults or in shitty weather or shitty terrain.
Which is located right beside the anterior jingoist cortex!
“We got owned because the enemy used the oldest and shittiest military tactic in human history. Here’s how that’s unfair to us…”
This dude’s definition of Slavic is anywhere east of Prague. Chinese Slavs, amazing.
The Sino-turkick-slavic indo-asiatic horde
dividing up Europe and Asia based on use of human wave tactics
dividing up Europe and Asia based on whether shoes are allowed in the house
Libs sure do love their literal Nazi propaganda.
Just waiting for them to call us candle-eaters at this point.
what story goes like that? what the fuck are they talking about?
The racist story of “those hoards in the east don’t value human lives as much as we do”.
“those hoards in the east don’t value human lives as much as we do”
Coming from the part of the world that brought us:
CW: Genocide
- The Holocaust
- The Congo Free State
- The Bengal Famine
- The Korean Genocide
- The Native American genocides
- I could keep going but I think I would actually exceed the character limit
There was a line in a German newspaper recently that said “Israel is a democracy, where every life matters”
its true if you don’t believe anyone else is a real person
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But that’s how the Russians fight according to the nazis the Russians beat!! Nazis wouldn’t LIEEEEE?!?!
You mean that’s not how it works? Why would Nazis lie…
Every war is literally a sacrifice lol. Whether the war is cynical or for defense or for revolution, your purpose as a soldier is to sacrifice yourself if necessary, and your purpose as a commander is to efficiently sacrifice your soldiers.
These deeply unserious people managed to find an old bottle of vintage N*zi Germany era anti-Slavic racism and have been gulping it down heavily. It’s literally the “superior Western Europeans cannot be defeated by the inferior and stupid
Slavic hordesRUZZIAN ORCZ. Operation Barbarossa will be a success!” all over again.When you kick in the door but the whole rotted structure doesn’t collapse
Well the rotten structure collapsed, but it wasn’t the one the Nazis believed.
Russia won’t pull out, Putin has to appear powerful. It doesn’t matter if it ruins Russia economically, he won’t ever stop.
Russia is the fastest growing economy in Europe.
They have a birth rate well below replacement and are bordering on demographic collapse. They can’t afford to lose millions of men like they could in WW2.
Once about 32 million Russians die (probably early 2025) then the door will be locked in and the whole rotten edifice will fall down.
What I hate is most people don’t seem to realise it’s not only about Ukraine. Letting Russia win opens a whole other can of worms. Do we really want authoritarian powers with imperialistic ambitions around the world to think they can just invade what they want and wait until the West gets tired?
The west is the vanguard of anti-imperialism.
Meanwhile, Russia has had to sell oil at loses, has had assets frozen, has suffered heavy sanctions meaning lack of materials and equipment/technology, and has had to switch to a war time economy. Meanwhile, it has barely made a dent in the wests finances.
Russia the fastest growing economy in Europe.
Meanwhile, it has barely made a dent in the wests finances.
How long do you think it’ll take liberals to figure out that derivatives and oil futures don’t translate into ammunition and rations if you outsourced all your factories?
They never will, the signs are already bad for the Ukrainian side.
In March 2023, the EU made the historic decision to deliver a million artillery shells to Ukraine within 12 months. But the number that has actually been sent is closer to 300,000.
According to the armed forces of Ukraine, over the summer of 2023, Ukraine was firing up to 7,000 artillery shells a day and managed to degrade Russia’s logistics and artillery to the point where Russia was firing about 5,000 rounds a day. Today, the Ukrainians are struggling to fire 2,000 rounds daily, while Russian artillery is reaching about 10,000.
Russia is likely to be able to fire about 5m rounds at Ukraine in 2024, based on its mobilised defence production, supply from Iran and North Korea, and remaining stocks. Despite the flippant observation – often made by European officials – that Russia’s economy is the same size as that of Italy, the Kremlin is producing more shells than all of Nato.
This is not to say “Russia stronk, victory imminent”, but that there’s a rising tide on the Russian side which has, amusingly, more stable allies, that can actually ship war supplies on time. Even this lib commentator is not shying away from noting the Ukrainian counter-offensive floundered. The closer you get to the actual details, the less gung-ho you are about the war, funny that.
One of the worst and best things to happen to the world was the rise of the private defense contractors.
Obviously I don’t need to explain why it is one of the worst things. But as for the best? Man, if all of the worst excesses of capitalism and neoliberalism aren’t captured in a microcosm that is defence contractors…
The sheer amount of graft and inefficiency and boondoggles and everything else that comes from putting profits first in a captive capital environment. That’s not to say that truly free-range capital is somehow a force for good but when defence contractors know that they’re going to get handed billions upon billions of dollars every year and that they’re competing against maybe a couple of other contractors, and sometimes none at all, then they’re largely insulated from the forces of the market that tend to drive capitalist innovation.
The fact that the US had basically emptied its stocks of certain munitions really early in the Ukraine war speaks volumes about how fragile of a paper tiger the military-industrial complex really is. Obviously the US would have strategic stockpiles tucked away for when the shit hits the fan but last I checked it was going to take years for stocks of certain munitions to be replenished.
And the US isn’t even in close to being in a full-blown war right now.
If it was like the old model the US would be able to take direct intervention into production, command-economy style, to produce weapons in order to fill the current shortfall in production but it would probably require an all out war with the US at the centre before they’d even consider abandoning their precious and fundamentally hamstrung neoliberal model.
Shit’s rotten to the core and it is glorious thing to behold.
more stable allies
An important thing that westerners forget. Aside from rampant privatization in western counties, they frequently alienate the global south by demeaning them, their cultures, and refusing to provide any aid to substitute China’s and Russia’s aid. They expect Africans, Latin Americans, and Asians to just shut up and sanction everyone to the detriment of their people and economies.
What I hate is most people don’t seem to realise it’s not only about Ukraine. Letting Russia win opens a whole other can of worms. Do we really want authoritarian powers with imperialistic ambitions around the world to think they can just invade what they want and wait until the West gets tired?
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THE LAST THIRTY GODDAMN YEARS OF MILITARY CAMPAIGNS BOMBING AND OCCUPATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST WERE – IF THERE IS A STANDARD
WESET ITimperialistic ambitions
Libs always say this about Russia but Putin has been at the helm for a long time, like 25 years. In that time the war in Ukraine is really the only major conflict Russia has been involved in - the rest has been operations in places like Dagestan or Chechnya which may or may not have been justified, idk. Russia has displayed zero “imperialistic ambitions”.
Now compare that to totally not imperialist USA, who had started unprovoked, major wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in that same time frame.
Russia has mercenaries in Africa and the Middle East, but even then it has very limited success compared to the WOT led by the US.
Russia is the fastest growing economy in Europe.
Source? I couldn’t find anything that backs this up
Do we really want authoritarian powers with imperialistic ambitions around the world to think they can just invade what they want and wait until the West gets tired?
Biden said the same thing during a UN speech. I cannot and will not take these people seriously, even if i truly wanted to.
Meanwhile, it has barely made a dent in the wests finances.
… what? This entire comment has to be a joke right.
You can’t keep people down like the Russians are trying after what Ukraine has experienced of even fledgling democracy and freedom.
Pure vibes, stated wrongly and with supreme confidence
Well, Putin…
Exactly. Also…
I completely agree. Then there’s…
Exactly. The USSR…
THIS. He doesn’t…
Exactly. The sheer number…
Exactly.
You know when the thread has this structure that meaningful discussion is ongoing
One of the worst aspects of places like R*ddit is their use of political analogy in the place of political analysis.
Obviously some of the most egregious offences are when people do like Harry Potter fanfic or whatever (e.g. Joe Biden is Harry Potter, Kamala Harris is Hermione, and Trump is Voldemort… that kind of bullshit) but the second worst is when they do pop-history political analogy.
No, Napoleon doesn’t have any direct bearing on the current war in the Ukraine and no matter how closely you retcon major political or military figures into a superficial match with major figures today it won’t make your analysis any more sound, let alone any more true.
This isn’t the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan. This isn’t one of the wars in Iraq. This isn’t the same as a box office smash hit movie which you love and have seen half a dozen times.
If you want to draw upon history for some analysis of the war in the Ukraine, I would point you to the Syrian civil war because there you will see Russia’s modern military tactics on display and this would be a sound basis for developing an understanding of Russia’s military tactics in the Ukraine. It’s not a surefire 1:1 match and it’s never going to be but it’s where I think any credible person would start (aside from any fairly recent Russian war game tactics.)
But that’s nowhere near as compelling and it doesn’t have the aura of gripping narratives and silver screen treats in the way that this cheap political analogy has. Discussing troop movements and artillery positions and the names of contemporary Russian generals is dry af and almost nobody is actually going to listen if you’re talking about that stuff.
I know the whole “Reddit hivemind” trope is completely played out by now but there’s a grain of truth to it. Mainstream Reddit subs are particularly bad at this alt-present narrative scripting as a stand in for reality that gets elevated into something widely celebrated across that site (and all those sycophantic comments that come to bask in the upvotes are a part of this phenomenon.)
There’d also be slightly more explanatory potential if they weren’t dogmatically ignoring United States history. Like, we’re funding and arming a group of people with the idea of locking Russia into a costly conflict – now why does that sound so familiar? This is the preamble to consequences that are going to define the next few decades, if not the rest of the 21st century, for both the United States and the European Union. And yet we’re still talking about it in a –“Home in time for Christmas, by Jingo!” – sorta way. It’s already been two years!
we’re funding and arming a group of people with the idea of locking Russia into a costly conflict – now why does that sound so familiar?
What are we up to now… is it Gladio-C?
I worry that we’re going to run out of letters in the alphabet and we’ll have to start resorting to COVID naming protocols if this shit keeps up. This is a matter of national security!!
Gladio-Æ-X-S3XY will sure turn the tide against the asio-slavs
This one really got me. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.
(Poor kid though. Imagine being Elon Musk’s child and being named like you’re a robot who does a bit-part role in a Star Wars movie. Either is bad enough but both?
I can’t wait until they grow up to be yet-another nepo billionaire shilling crypto and dick pills so that I can feel vindicated for participating in their online bullying back when they were still an infant.)
Doesn’t muskrat have a kid who’s Trans and hates his fucking guts? There’s always hope for children as they can develop into their own people separate from their environment they were nurtured in
This isn’t the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan. This isn’t one of the wars in Iraq. This isn’t the same as a box office smash hit movie which you love and have seen half a dozen times.
They can’t even point to the Chechen War or the Russo-Georgian War, which is much more recent and has Putin playing a role in those conflicts. I suspect they don’t want to point to those conflicts because Russia more or less accomplished all of their strategic objectives lol
you’re assuming they even know about those wars, let alone the outcomes and the details of them - this is reddit we’re talking about
To admit that would be to admit that Putin succeeded in pacifying the Chechens.
Remember when everyone was saying that Russia is doomed to face endless insurrections from the Chechens after the end of the Second Chechen War, how Putin has now tied himself in a blood feud with the Chechens who will want their revenge sooner or later.
You can criticize how reactionary Chechnya is but you cannot deny that there has been peace in the highly volatile region over the past 20 years. They will never admit that Putin has any ability to bring peace to a conflict.
What’s that old pre-wojak meme, Like a Sir? Whenever redditors talk about a Designated Bad Country, I always imagine like 6 or 7 of those guys sitting around a table
Is this like glimpsing into an alternate universe?
This is what your brain looks like on worms
Gundam but it’s just worms piloting around
Turn A Wormdam
The concept to read up on is “hyper-reality”.
In short, signals and signs become confused with the reality they signify.
I really need to find a copy of Silmarillion and Simulation or whatever it’s called. : |
Never been a fan of Lord of the Rings
Getting the sinking feeling that they’re straight up never going to acknowledge any kind of Ukrainian defeat
I’m thinking about the “Government in Exile” industry and I’m thinking you’re right.
I came to terms with this a year ago tbh
The real Vietnam Syndrome
“We killed [made up number of Russians] but lost the land and any strategic goal, you call that a loss???”
I wonder if the CIA will kill Zelensky and liberals and Ukrainian refugees will still worship the US like they did with Ngo Diem lol
They’ve been planning for this eventuality since the beginning. Remember that “Kiev in 3 days” was made up by an American general from the start of this armed conflict. The Western media will simply say that Russia wanted to take over all of Ukraine and overrun Europe but the brave sacrifice of your tax dollars (and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians… Whatever) stopped the Russian horde with on the sacrifice of a small amount of Ukrainian territory.
It’s essentially the Finnish Winter War myth writ large.
This war isn’t great for Russia, I highly doubt they were like “Yeah! We want a 2 year long slog that has serious trade ramifications for us!!!” But the idea that are losing or lost is silly. They maintain control over the break away territories and have maintained their currency and economy in the face of western opposition. They have taken heavy casualties yes, but so has Ukraine; which has taken a higher per capita loss as well as perhaps an absolute greater loss as well. Like the goal of toppling the midan regime fell flat, and the fascist forces behind it are most likely dug in even deeper in western Ukraine, so that’s not ideal. But the idea that Russia has lost is kind of silly. What’s definitely gonna happen is a negotiated peace where Russia keeps some or all of the break away territory, while Ukraine gets some face saving measures. All in all it will have been a completely pointless tragedy that only Ultimately benefits western capital interests.
Any peace that does not guarantee Ukraine won’t join NATO and becomes a demilitarizated neutral country will not be accepted by Russia. This war started because of that, Putin would have left the russian in the donbass to die if he could have had that.
Well that goes without saying. But Ukraine will have to get something, that’s just the nature of how negotiated settlements work.
They will get the missile strikes to stop and the war which has lowered their population by 50% to end. Losers don’t get anything, they surrender and accept terms. Ukraine will get the same thing as Armenia got, nothing.
My issue is that Putin is how do I put this nicely a paranoid boomer high on his own anti western TV propaganda. as such he WILL NOT accept any guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality short of direct physical control over kiev. Any ceasefire will eventually break down because of this
It’s something I should have included in my previous comment, but the fact that previous agreements were simply broken by Ukraine and NATO really does make any peace with the Kiev regime just a truce at best.
But let’s not pretend like marching all the way to the polish border is the end goal. Occupying western Ukraine would probably be very costly for Russia, and the fascists would resist however they could.
How is Putin paranoid? If anything he was far too trusting and western friendly until the West forced him away. All of the hardliner Russians “paranoia” has been proven correct and it was the trusting comprador faction that got proven to be disconnected from reality. Putin has a more grounded and serious view of this than any Western leaders but apparently he’s “paranoid”?
Sounds like you have been reading too much NYT
I’m Russian myself and in the winter of '22 I was posting how Putin is never going to invade because it would be stupid and against his objective interests (which is still true imo lol) and that all those troops buildups and exercises were intimidation tactics for negotiations. Then he goes and does it, proving right all the American natsec ghouls and ukrainian nazis who were screaming the whole time that he’s insane/can’t be trusted in negotiations and will invade.
Putin should have invaded in 2014 and he had no choice to invade. I was saying he was going to invade the whole time and was frustrated it took him so long. You just weren’t listening to the right communists
Username checks out
perhaps an absolute greater loss as well.
There’s no perhaps. Russia has had air superiority and 10:1 shell advantage for over a year. Russian losses are around 40,000 while Ukrainian losses are around 400,000. Russia retreats and gives up territory to preserve lives, Ukraine clings to every bit of territory and lost more in their suicidal offensive than Russia has lost during the whole war
They claim in that thread that RU is losing 1k people on the front daily. I think they’ve learned statistics from the VoC foundation.
Russian losses are around 40,000 while Ukrainian losses are around 400,000
Where are you getting these numbers? I can’t find anything that seems reliable, and as I far as I know neither side is releasing their own casualty numbers. A ten to one ratio does not seem like it reflects the mostly frozen lines of the war over the last year, even if Russia is pursuing the strategy you describe.
“Even if Russia is pursuing this strategy you describe”
The fact you would say this shows me you have not been following the minutiae of this war because it’s not conjecture but extremely evident fact
The lines are frozen because Russia is not fighting for territory and isn’t making costly big offensives but instead chipping away slowly and retreating when needed. The lines not moving in fact supports my claim that Russia isn’t fighting for territory but to destroy the enemy army.
Even western media accepts that Ukraine lost 50,000+ men in their counteroffensive and took barely any land whatsoever. Russia doesn’t do shit like that
Where’d you get your numbers?
Pro-Ukraine/Western source can only confirm 40,000 Russian deaths: https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/11/casualties_eng
Western source states 500,000 Ukrainian losses back in August: https://archive.ph/QQk6w
It’s quite evident that Ukraine is losing far, FAR more soldiers by their tactics, by their inability to mobilize anyone other than down syndrome disabled people and 70 year old men & by even their own admitted figures
From the NYT link:
The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000
They break this down into Russian and Ukrainian figures like this:
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
I don’t put much stock in these numbers because they’re estimations from a source motivated to paint an optimistic picture, but they come out to be about 300,000 and 190,000 casualties for Russia and Ukraine respectively.
The Mediazona source at least provides some information as to how they arrive at their count. It also states this:
The figures we provide are sourced from publicly available information, including social media posts from family members, local media coverage, and official statements from local authorities. However, these figures represent only a partial account and do not reflect the full extent of the casualties.
And later in the page in their methods section, this:
Our standard for confirmed deaths is stringent—it requires an official publication or social media post from a relative with corresponding details, accompanying photos or dates of burials from local messaging groups, or photos from cemeteries.
We exclude casualties sustained by units of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR republics, and we do not rely on photographs of bodies (even with accompanying documents) published by Ukraine as these are difficult to verify.
So it’s probably not a complete count of casualties. It’s the best count we have of Russian casualties without being privy to Russia’s internal tracking or using estimation. Unfortunately, without a comparable attempt to count Ukraine’s casualties by similar methods, it’s very hard to extrapolate from this to give a better picture of the balance of casualties on each side. I’d be very curious to see the same thing done for Ukraine, and if you or anyone knows of such a project, please do share.
https://tass.com/politics/1709329
Russian Department of Defense puts Ukrainian irretrievable losses at 388,000. That’s what I was thinking of but got it mixed up with the NYT source when I cited it. You can chose to disbelieve the Russian figures but I actually think these numbers are quite conservative if anything. Nobody disputes Ukraine losing 50,000+ at minimum in their counter-offensive after all. Again, Russia has had a 10:1 shell advantage and air advantage for quite a while, it makes no sense to say Russian losses are higher when Ukraine does massive suicide waves and have far less equipment and ammo.
Like the goal of toppling the midan regime fell flat
I’d say this is between “jury’s still out” and “yet.” Assuming an independent Ukrainian government makes it through the war at all (likely, but not guaranteed), it’s going to see massive changes as a result of (1) losing a bunch of territory and a war, and (2) having the Zelensky government “lose” the foreign military support on which it is entirely dependent.
It also seems the primary goal was not necessarily to topple the Maidan regime, but to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Russia negotiated with the current government at the start of the war, and absent NATO intervention would have seemingly reached a peace agreement with it.
This is a fact that I think gets overlooked.
By taking the territory in the east, Russia has created a poisoned chalice for the Ukrainian government.
The choice now is to relinquish claims over those territories in order to accede to NATO, which would be an outright political disaster domestically - like coups and civil war tier political instability, or to fight on under the conditions of lukewarm and waning support from the NATO axis but in doing so making them ineligible to accede to NATO.
I could imagine that NATO might consider bending the rules and allowing the Ukraine entry into NATO (anything is possible) but it would almost certainly be under strict conditions that NATO isn’t about to trigger a WWI-style disaster where suddenly everyone gets dragged into a regional conflict against Russia via treaty. (Anything less would likely mean the breakup of NATO because I cannot imagine a world where a country like Turkey is simply champing at the bit to get stuck in a forever-war against Russia.)
So either the Ukrainian government gives up and the Ukraine likely ceases to function as a viable state or the Ukraine fights on against Russia under adverse conditions as domestic and international support for the war declines, gradually making the government buckle under the strain.
The Ukraine has serious political and military hardliners and they have already shown just how much appeasement they can extract. Those factions will continue to exert their influence unless they get happen to ground up by the war machine entirely. They won’t be satisfied until there’s a complete victory and a total reclamation of lost territory (along with the cleansing of ethnic Russians.)
You’ve got the moderates and the average citizens who want to see an end to the war and a Ukrainian victory, but not at any cost.
Then you’ve got the opposition types, who have essentially been silenced and neutered.
Capitulating to the moderates when they begin to tire of the war would likely trigger an insurrection by the hardliners who are a hardened, well-armed military force by this point. But continuing to prosecute the war in the face of growing discontent amongst the moderates is going to cause major problems and ultimately destabilisation for the military and civil society in the Ukraine, which will only gain momentum over time.
They can’t win this war yet they can’t afford to lose it, they can’t back down and yet they can’t maintain the current tempo for too much longer (especially without anything to show for their efforts and the loss of life.)
The only ways that I can see an exit from this situation with the current Ukraine intact would be by somehow acceding to NATO, by direct intervention from an external country, or by Russia calling it off (which would almost certainly only occur on their preferred terms unless there’s a black swan event like a coup in Russia, but then we’re going way off into wild speculation - it’s not outside the realms of possibility but I wouldn’t pin my political objectives on the chances of something like Putin being deposed).
Either the Ukraine fights on and Russia gets what they want, namely to keep the Ukraine out of NATO (Russia wins), the Ukraine fights on and buckles due to internal pressures and lack of external support (Russia wins), or the Ukraine backs down and implodes politically (no NATO accession and Russia is likely positioned to take more territory -> Russia wins).
I’m just not seeing any other probable outcome here. I guess the big irony here is that all of the things that liberal pundits have been prophesying about Russia - military collapse, demographic collapse, economic collapse, collapse of political support - are projection and I see it being far more likely for the Ukraine than for Russia.
Fair enough, though for me it seems getting rid of the ukranian ethno nationalsts is implicit implict in keeping Ukraine out of nato long term. I suspect we are probably going to get a situation where Ukraine is permanently barred from nato but still gets some sort of security guarantees along side some awful loans from the west that massively enrich the ukrainain ruling class while impoverishing the people.
This war isn’t great for Russia, I highly doubt they were like “Yeah! We want a 2 year long slog that has serious trade ramifications for us!!!” But the idea that are losing or lost is silly.
I doubt that this is their ideal scenario but I also doubt that this isn’t inside their reasonable range of expectations. Military planners are by nature pessimists because the optimists end up planning shit like Barbarossa and then having to shoot themselves in disgrace.
Any war is sub optimal, but I suspect thus one was much less optimal than they hoped for. Based on how the conflict was launched, I really think they expected it yo be over in 6 months on the outside. I genuinely do think the Ukrainians suprised everyone by not just rolling over. I mean just look at how dysfunctional their government was before the war.
Dear god it’s worse than I imagined
Is the 3rd comment wrong tho
Yes
So you think Ukraine is losing?
Well, my 4-year-old just did the Hitler salute and said “Ukranda forever” so take that, Putler.
They also think it’s a guarantee that Trump loses, China is collapsing from its own economy, and Biden is the second coming of FDR.
These people are gonna become Qanon style cultists when Russia wins the war
They’re already straight up posting geopolitical fan fiction
I’m here for it
Ukraine dorks and anti-China dorks need to be thrown into the Lake of Fire.
Lmao bonus Vietnam cope.
