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[RD] Russia Invades Ukraine: The 7th Thread Itch; scratch it here!

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It is difficult for me to see what the current Ukrainian offensive will achieve that is really key.

Ukraine capturing a few square kilometers of ground at high human costs seems scarcely worthwhile bearing in mind
the immensity of EurAsia. Unless it can lead to a breakthrough and from that encirclement and destruction of a
russian army or pose such a threat that Russia accordingly undertakes a wider withdrawal to prevent just that.

Ukrainian forces are attempting to drive a wedge in and divide the Russian occupying forces in two.

If succesful combined with the train link on the Kerch bridge disabled, all Russian troops in Crimea, South of Kherson and in the Zaporizhzia Oblast are deprived of supply lines, which will likely give them around a couple of weeks at most.

If Crimea is liberated, Putin is politically a dead man walking back home in Moscow. Russians do not tolerate what they perceive as weaklings or losers in charge.
 
Turkey will never allow that, lol.
Well... I get why you say that. Obviously, Turkey is essentially in a multi-generational blood feud with Armenia and would bitterly oppose their membership in NATO.

However, Turkey bitterly opposed Finland and Sweden joining NATO, but here we are. Turkey gave up their veto and Finland has joined NATO and Sweden is on track to join as well.

So while I agree that Turkey will obviously oppose Armenia joining, and I get that Armenia is a very different set of circumstances from Finland and Sweden vis-a-vis Turkey... never say never, I guess?
 
Armenia shares no border with Russia though. If Putin wants a chunk of Armenia, he would have to start a larger Euro-Asian war and I reckon China would not side with him this time.
 
Armenia shares no border with Russia though. If Putin wants a chunk of Armenia, he would have to start a larger Euro-Asian war and I reckon China would not side with him this time.
The nations buffering Armenia from Russia are Georgia and Azerbaijan. Neither of which is in NATO. Russia already attacked Georgia in 2008 and Azerbaijan has had tense relations with both Armenia and Russia. I don't think Russia making a play for either, or both of those countries is an insignificant possibility. My point is that I don't see Armenia as particularly safe from Russia, just because they currently don't share a border. That could change relatively quickly.
 
What do you think NATO can bribe Erdogan with to let Armenia join NATO? More apache helicopters he can use to kill Kurdish children in their own villages?
 
But then Ukraine is significantly worse.

Judging by the only relevant metric, which is battlefield performance, Russia is significantly worse. If both military structures were equally incompetent we'd expect Russia to have won the war probably more than a year ago.
 
Here's just one of that.

The CSS is hardly what I would think of Russian propaganda. They're just an average US outlet.


Time Mag:


The CSS article states (correctly) that Ukraine has a corruption problem. Ik does not, however, support your claim that Ukraine's corruption problem is 'significantly worse' than Russia's, as you put it. It is also from 2014, before the anti-corruption drive of the last several years. The Time article didn't talk about corruption at all, at least according to my trusty Ctrl+F keys.

Let's look instead at the Global Corruption Perceptions Index 2022 (https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022), which ranks Ukraine as #116 out of 180 countries assessed (bad but improving since the last measurement) and Russia as #137 (worse than Ukraine and getting worse since the last measurement). I'm not arguing that Ukraine has no problem with corruption, but your claim that it's significantly worse than Russia is very far from the truth based on what I've been able to find.

EDIT: Sorry leif, didn't see your post.
 
Judging by the only relevant metric, which is battlefield performance, Russia is significantly worse. If both military structures were equally incompetent we'd expect Russia to have won the war probably more than a year ago.

Show me empirical and relevant proof Russia's performance is that bad in the first place. For a limited, undeclared war, including the fighting around Bakhmut, it hasn't performed that poorly. There were still many glaring mistakes and defeats, but nothing really decisive.

Ukraine, strategically speaking, has no way to defeat Russia. Only to contain them. But like I said, nobody here expects the Russian army to be top notch or is a Russia fanboy in the first place. Objectively speaking, we're speaking about facts, despite the pro-NATO and pro-Western bias of much the media, the Russians are still advancing and keeping their own without the sort of decisive defeat that the Ukrainians need to remove them. And that's because, even if it's corrupt, rigid and obsolete in terms of equipment, tactics and doctrine, the Russian army is decent enough to keep order on its former Soviet backyard. At least.

But going against a real NATO army, or China, or the US, that's another matter...
 
But like I said, nobody here expects the Russian army to be top notch or is a Russia fanboy in the first place.

There are absolutely Russia fanboys around here.

the Russians are still advancing

Are they? I was under the impression they were currently hiding behind a lot of land mines and field fortifications to try to contain the supposedly inferior military's counterattack.
 
"Are they? I was under the impression they were currently hiding behind a lot of land mines and field fortifications to try to contain the supposedly inferior military's counterattack."

No it's not. All Zelensky is got to brag about is that he retook 4 square kilometers of Bakhmut after a crushing Russian advance took 85% of that city and everything around. It's kinda like the French bragging they took just a bit of Verdun back, when the whole thing still looks and smells like... Verdun, you know.

Like I said, if we keep partisanship aside, and see things as they are, we won't nurture false expectations. That's just as much true for Russian fanboys as it is for Zelensky or NATO fanboys. I know the war gets a lot of bad vibe, but hey, Ukraine is pretty much a failed state. I hardly have any sympathy for it or its corrupt, decrepit leadership, as much as I have for any third world failed banana republic.

Getting back under Russia, being partitioned by its neighbours, or even redrawing itself radically... whatever. That might be better than just sticking with the status quo, politically, economically and militarily, for a country like Ukraine. And despite the Russian failures, there's yet to be a single decisive Russian defeat militarily speaking.
 
I thought the source was Ukrainian


Seems they've advanced in that direction, and that they've been used differently than the Leopards/Bradleys from the first days of the offensive, as that first loss is much later after the time the brigade was engaged on the front (or the context is different, like they've actually passed the first lines of minefields/fortifications)
I read it in Russian news, several major outlets reported about Challenger disaster.
Video came from Ukrainians, admittedly.


Edit:
View from the Russian drone, there are also several APCs destroyed, but nobody counts those anymore.

4015338_900.jpg
 
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Show me empirical and relevant proof Russia's performance is that bad in the first place.
You mean how they are on the defensive after losing half their initial gains in a war where they started with overwhelming advantage in numbers, material and resources, against a foe that has one third of the population, one tenth of the military budget and which has its own territory ravaged by war ?

Let's see... I can't help but notice some sort of rotation of pro-Russian posters, who pop up, repeat the same dance of the usual BS, then after a time disappear and another clone pop again to do the same.
Guess it's your turn ?
 
You mean how they are on the defensive after losing half their initial gains in a war where they started with overwhelming advantage in numbers, material and resources, against a foe that has one third of the population, one tenth of the military budget and which has its own territory ravaged by war ?

Let's see... I can't help but notice some sort of rotation of pro-Russian posters, who pop up, repeat the same dance of the usual BS, then after a time disappear and another clone pop again to do the same.
Guess it's your turn ?

Lol

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So that's from the FT, a pro-Nato media.

So that's how the big picture looks like? A crushing defeat? The reverse?

No it looks like a stalemate in a limited war, between a bigger power and a smaller one. Exactly what the expected outcome was supposed to be, given a limited undeclared war rising from an undeclared, limited intervention.

There's nothing overwhelming, suprise, or decisive here. There's about the same energy in here as there's in WW1, it's a stalemate and hiding behind fortifications works for both sides in the same way it worked back then.

But as for actually ending this sort of limited war, it's up to the arbitrary whims of both countries and their leadership. Putin could have done it much before on favorable terms, but he wants to stick out, so what, the grinding will continue with no victor in sight and the Russians still yet have to suffer any decisive defeat. Nuff said.
 
Thanks for proving every single points I made in my previous post.
 
Thanks for proving every single points I made in my previous post.

LOL

So I can sleep thinking that Verdun, Passchendaele, Ypres, Somme were great allied victories and they really took down Germany. No wait. No, it's sorta like I can't connect the dots. lol
 
I was under the impression they were currently hiding behind a lot of land mines and field fortifications
I'd add that the scale of the mine field is so far unseen in human history.
 
"Are they? I was under the impression they were currently hiding behind a lot of land mines and field fortifications to try to contain the supposedly inferior military's counterattack."

No it's not. All Zelensky is got to brag about is that he retook 4 square kilometers of Bakhmut after a crushing Russian advance took 85% of that city and everything around. It's kinda like the French bragging they took just a bit of Verdun back, when the whole thing still looks and smells like... Verdun, you know.

Like I said, if we keep partisanship aside, and see things as they are, we won't nurture false expectations. That's just as much true for Russian fanboys as it is for Zelensky or NATO fanboys. I know the war gets a lot of bad vibe, but hey, Ukraine is pretty much a failed state. I hardly have any sympathy for it or its corrupt, decrepit leadership, as much as I have for any third world failed banana republic.

Getting back under Russia, being partitioned by its neighbours, or even redrawing itself radically... whatever. That might be better than just sticking with the status quo, politically, economically and militarily, for a country like Ukraine. And despite the Russian failures, there's yet to be a single decisive Russian defeat militarily speaking.

Given the balance of material resources here, the fact that you have to limit expectations (repeating "limited, undeclared war" over and over - all signs are that Russia's military resources are being stripped to feed the war, including along NATO and soon-to-be NATO frontier) and that the only positive spin you can come up with is "Russia hasn't (yet) been decisively defeated" is telling.

With a smaller one declaring general mobilization and receiving hundreds of billions worth of military assistance from the West.

Isn't the total of all military and nonmilitary aid somewhere around $150 billion? Not really hundreds of billions' worth. The amount being provided to Ukraine per year seems roughly equivalent to Russia's military budget. I can't speak to other countries but the US commitment so far has amounted to around 4% of the annual military budget.

So I can sleep thinking that Verdun, Passchendaele, Ypres, Somme were great allied victories and they really took down Germany. No wait. No, it's sorta like I can't connect the dots. lol

Yeah, newsflash, Germany lost World War I
 
"Yeah, newsflash, Germany lost World War I"

LOL, but hey analysing the history of that war, was it because Butcher Haig could brag abour his "victory" on the Somme, because the Frenchies advanced a couple of sq miles in Verdun, or only because the Germans overextended themselves badly 1-2 years after and were only really stopped after a second Marne and overwhelming amounts of fresh American troops poured in?

So that's the fine details, lol.

"Given the balance of material resources here, the fact that you have to limit expectations (repeating "limited, undeclared war" over and over - all signs are that Russia's military resources are being stripped to feed the war, including along NATO and soon-to-be NATO frontier) and that the only positive spin you can come up with is "Russia hasn't (yet) been decisively defeated" is telling."

Russia has retreated voluntarily from the Kiev region. So what, there is massive Western aid coming, and 280k Russians deployed, but this isn't the scale of total war or decisive conflict yet.

It's like the US in Vietnam. And surely, the Russians can still be humiliated like the US in Vietnam, but that was nowhere near the US against Japan or Nazi Germany. Nuff said.
 
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