Ukraine Can't Win the War

[-TSS-]

It seems to me that it tells something about the effect of the sanctions that Russians seem to be extremely pissed off for not being able play international hockey or they are banned from other international sports.

I mean if the sanctions had their desired effect of ruining the economy of Russia and bringing down their society absolutely nobody would care about hockey or sports.

[Moonbox]

1 hour ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

I think Russia is even more powerful now than it was before the war. And even more dangerous, as it has less economic ties with the West.

What's more powerful about them now?  The fact that they've lost most of their professionally trained army and most of their modern armor and vehicles?  Are they stronger now rolling around in tanks from the 1960's, and selling their oil at a discount to a limited list of buyers?  Their quickly dwindling currency reserves?  Is their need for garbage-tech from Iran and North Korea a sign of strength? 

I don't get that take.  

[QuebecOverCanada]

4 minutes ago, Moonbox said:

1. What's more powerful about them now?  2. The fact that they've lost most of their professionally trained army and most of their modern armor and vehicles? 3. Are they stronger now rolling around in tanks from the 1960's, and selling their oil at a discount to a limited list of buyers?  4. Their quickly dwindling currency reserves?  5. Is their need for garbage-tech from Iran and North Korea a sign of strength? 

I don't get that take.  

1. Their military budget is higher, the number of active soldiers is higher, the number of reservists is higher, their war production is higher, they manage to mass produce artillery shells, tanks, weapons, ammunition, drones, missiles. They also have more power in Africa, have better relations with India and China.

2. They lost battles in 2022, including the infamous convoy. But they made it up for it and in 2023 they lost fewer jets than they were able to build for example. The intel in the West said that Russia would run out of missiles very soon, it never was the case.

3. They are now winning battles, complex town battles in entrenched positions with a lot of preparation. They are maybe selling their oil at a discount compared to what it was before, but the IMF says that Russia will have more of an economic growth in 2024 than almost any Western nation. The oil that was directly sold to the Europeans is now sold to India, which then up sells it afterwards.

4. It still didn't kill their economy. Their currency is now used for bilateral trade between multiple partners, which wasn't the case before the sanctions.

5. Garbage? How is it garbage?

The iranian drones explode well, have a good reach, and have been copied by the Russians. The Kimskanders work just fine as we saw, and penetrates the Western AA. The 152mm shells, they might be coming from whatever part of the world, they still work. It's me who doesn't understand your take.

How is Russia penetrating the multiple lines of defense in Ukraine, if the equipment didn't work?

[Moonbox]

8 minutes ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

1. Their military budget is higher, the number of active soldiers is higher, the number of reservists is higher, their war production is higher, they manage to mass produce artillery shells, tanks, weapons, ammunition, drones, missiles.

Spending more money doesn't automatically make you stronger.  It will be a decade or more before Russia can replace what they've already lost.  Their economy is smaller than Canada's, and everything they're doing (and mostly struggling at) is being done at the expense of their civilian and consumer industries, and by piling up debt.  The Soviet Union tried a decades-long experiment with this sort of economy.  It didn't work out.  

8 minutes ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

They also have more power in Africa, have better relations with India and China.

They may have more influence in certain parts of Africa, but they definitely don't have "better" relations with China.  They're just dependent on them.  India, for example, is quietly pivoting away from Russian arms manufacturing, given how poorly their equipment has performed and how they can't even sustain and maintain their own domestic needs, let alone those of export partners.  

14 minutes ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

3. They are now winning battles, complex town battles in entrenched positions with a lot of preparation. They are maybe selling their oil at a discount compared to what it was before, but the IMF says that Russia will have more of an economic growth in 2024 than almost any Western nation. The oil that was directly sold to the Europeans is now sold to India, which then up sells it afterwards.

They are grinding down Ukrainian defenses in battles of attrition.  Russia has a 4:1 manpower advantage.  In the last yar and a half Russia has nothing but two small towns to show for how many dead peasant-soldiers?   

As for their economic growth, that's all based on government spending (mostly on the military).  That's not economic expansion.  That's just going into debt to buy things that explode somewhere else.  The shell or missile that blows up in Ukraine does not improve the productivity or living standards of the average Russian.  

23 minutes ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

The iranian drones explode well, have a good reach, and have been copied by the Russians. The Kimskanders work just fine as we saw, and penetrates the Western AA. The 152mm shells, they might be coming from whatever part of the world, they still work. It's me who doesn't understand your take.

Yes, that's where the Russians are at.  They needed import them from Iran of all places and copy their designs, because they couldn't do it properly themselves.  

25 minutes ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

How is Russia penetrating the multiple lines of defense in Ukraine, if the equipment didn't work?

Not caring about how many of their own servile donkey soldiers die.  

[WestCanMan]

Funding for Ukraine is collapsing and so are they. 

Alarming: https://www.foxnews.com/world/frances-macron-not-ruling-out-western-troops-ground-ukraine

Quote

France’s Macron not ruling out Western troops on the ground in Ukraine

• The French president declined to provide details about which nations were considering sending troops, saying he preferred to maintain "strategic ambiguity."

Our dipshit PM better not be throwing away Canadian lives, and putting us all at risk, just for Zelensky/Biden's stupidity. 

[Dougie93]

4 hours ago, QuebecOverCanada said:

I think Russia is even more powerful now than it was before the war. And even more dangerous, as it has less economic ties with the West.

the question therein becomes

what would NATO actually do

if the Russians launched K-329 Belgorod for seabed warfare

to sever the undersea lines of communications which carry the internet

to include the SWIFT banking system ?

is NATO really going to try to sink the Belgorod with torpedoes ?

because as soon as the first torpedo left its tube

that would be World War Three on the spot

[Aristides]

Interesting interview with the US ambassador to China. He said China is a far bigger threat than the USSR ever was. The Soviets had a strong military but a crap economy. The same goes for Russia. China has both military and economic power.

Edited February 28 by Aristides

[Boges]

14 hours ago, Aristides said:

Interesting interview with the US ambassador to China. He said China is a far bigger threat than the USSR ever was. The Soviets had a strong military but a crap economy. The same goes for Russia. China has both military and economic power.

China is in a demographics crisis right now. They could lose half their population in the next few decades. 

I think China is also quite easy to dominate in Naval theatres. 

[Perspektiv]

1 hour ago, Boges said:

I think China is also quite easy to dominate in Naval theatres.

I think that is overconfident.

Their military is prideful and happy to fight to the death for their motherland.

There is an existential crisis in the west.

If China went to war with the US, the will of China would easily overpower the technological advantages that the US has.

Both countries know its a lose lose war, however.

[Boges]

4 minutes ago, Perspektiv said:

I think that is overconfident.

Their military is prideful and happy to fight to the death for their motherland.

There is an existential crisis in the west.

If China went to war with the US, the will of China would easily overpower the technological advantages that the US has.

Both countries know its a lose lose war, however.

Just like with Russia, it's a MADD situation. 

A future war would revolve around control of Taiwan though. It's far more difficult to get into a military quagmire (like Ukraine) on a mountainous island. 

[eyeball]

On 2/26/2024 at 7:10 AM, Moonbox said:

The self-serving delusion that democracies are soft and incapable of showing resolve or defending themselves is one that has led many dictators to their doom. 

Except now the dictators are learning that resolve is crumbling and western democracies are crumbling under the perception they're already being ruled by authoritarians. 

It's almost like we're all rushing towards the same inevitable point.

Winner takes all?

[Dougie93]

On 2/26/2024 at 10:10 AM, Moonbox said:

The self-serving delusion that democracies are soft and incapable of showing resolve or defending themselves is one that has led many dictators to their doom. 

except none of those dictators ever had over 6,000 tactical & strategic thermonuclear warheads at their disposal

 

[Moonbox]

8 hours ago, Dougie93 said:

except none of those dictators ever had over 6,000 tactical & strategic thermonuclear warheads at their disposal

So what?  Putin can't use his.  

[Dougie93]

4 minutes ago, Moonbox said:

So what?  Putin can't use his.  

why not ?

it's not like NATO will retaliate against Moscow if he does

[-TSS-]

Macron is the president of the surrender-monkeys. His word is worth nothing.

[SpankyMcFarland]

On 2/25/2024 at 1:02 PM, Perspektiv said:

With a looming US election and the realities on the battleground, one can't help but wonder why one would want to delay the inevitable any longer.

It’s not hard to see why Ukrainians ‘would want to delay the inevitable’ as long as possible. They know exactly what Russian rule will mean. 

[Dougie93]

18 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

It’s not hard to see why Ukrainians ‘would want to delay the inevitable’ as long as possible. They know exactly what Russian rule will mean. 

as you extend your logistics tail on the battlefield, you lose combat power as you go

so it seems unlikely that the Russians can actually take all of Ukraine

at best, even if the Ukrainians fled the field in the Donbass, the Russians might reach the east bank of Dnieper

but crossing the Dnieper to take west Ukraine ?

logistics makes that an unlikely scenario

[Perspektiv]

2 hours ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

It’s not hard to see why Ukrainians ‘would want to delay the inevitable’ as long as possible.

While I don't blame them, I feel negotiating an end to this would be in their best interests.

[WestCanMan]

On 2/27/2024 at 8:43 AM, QuebecOverCanada said:

Double speak example;

Russia is extremely dangerous and is extremely strong, is about to conquer Europe if we don't save Ukraine!

Russia is extremely weak, the second best army in Ukraine and rotten to the core!

So, what is it?

At the beginning of this war journalists would literally say "There are 15,000 dead Russian soldiers and only 500 dead Ukrainian soldiers and 500 dead civilians" and "The Russians are committing genocide" in the same article. Then people would say the same shit here,  without realizing how dumb it was.

I can't even imagine how both could be true. Were they committing a genocide, or was it a reverse-genocide, where they were just getting massacred while hardly killing anyone at all? 

Bottom line is that nothing leftists say has to make sense anymore: if it's emotionally charged enough, that's incontrovertible evidence that it must be true, somehow. 

[Perspektiv]

On 3/5/2024 at 8:07 PM, WestCanMan said:

"There are 15,000 dead Russian soldiers and only 500 dead Ukrainian soldiers and 500 dead civilians"

Reality would be unbearable.

You need to sell the war to people, or they will pressure you to stop funding it.

Kind of like the Iraq war. A lot easier to kill tens of thousands of insurgents, than civilians defending their country. Insurgents will have people not bat an eyelid, and feel soldiers there, are heroes.

That hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians likely have lost their lives in this conflict. 

Tens of thousands were slaughtered early enough into the conflict. Countless Ukrainian women sexually assaulted, and brutally mutilated.

You have a hard time securing funding, if your troops are being picked apart and forced to retreat at multiple stages of this war. 

New equipment, being torched as Ukraine was trying to advance but was also being picked apart, forcing further retreats.

Selling the possibility of a win, is a matter of securing billions in funding, vs being pressured to the negotiating table.

[OftenWrong]

On 2/25/2024 at 9:49 PM, Perspektiv said:

Any leader who talks Ukraine, without an end game, isn't in support of Ukraine. They're in support of trying to fight Russia via Ukraine and inflict as much loss to them as they possibly can, while aware this is a futility drill.

There is no need for a win. As long as the war between Ukraine and Russia continues, the US and EU are winning.

[Perspektiv]

6 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

the US and EU are winning.

At the expense of Ukraine.

[SpankyMcFarland]

On 3/1/2024 at 6:56 PM, Perspektiv said:

While I don't blame them, I feel negotiating an end to this would be in their best interests.

And what credibility would such a deal have? Putin would sign a deal, then press on, perhaps at first with cyber warfare and terrorism. He’s not going to stop if he thinks he can steal more. 

[SpankyMcFarland]

7 hours ago, Perspektiv said:

At the expense of Ukraine.

No, it’s Ukraine’s choice to be free and fight on for now. If they want a deal then we are in a different situation. Remember that we are more than a century from this kind of imperial thinking across Europe where everything was determined by a handful of well-dressed megalomaniacs. Disputes between states in Western Europe aren’t sorted out by wars any more. 

[Perspektiv]

13 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

And what credibility would such a deal have?

Zero. But would be about allowing NATO, or concrete security measures that would satisfy Ukraine.

Trusting Russia is a no go.