> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).

It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could defeat Russia and it definitely seems far fetched, even if the Russian army has shown itself more inept than expected.

But that isn't what is happening either, and a Ukraine bankrolled and armed by the west. That is something else, and that combination might definitely be abel to defeat Russia. So the question is more, is the west or parts of it willing to spend enough and accept escalating tensions with nuclear armed Russia by doing that?

If you look at what Zelensky is doing at the drumbeat of asks for more weapons is obvious that Ukraine is fully aware of this.

Assuming no direct western intervention, I think the crucial next steps for a Ukraine victory will center around whether NATO can transition from providing soviet surplus to modern western arms, and get Ukrainians the training required in time. F-16s or even 35s and modern air defenses could play a huge role in making russian territory gains largely impossible, but the operational training would be measured in multiple weeks at a minimum.

Russia has 3x times as many people as Ukraine, not 10x times. It has a lot more land, but I doubt it is 10x times more.

Russia has a ton of land (with most of it being unproductive land in Siberia), but that won't help them to win the war.

It is actually more of a problem than an asset, because they must guard very long shores and borders against unfriendly neighbors. And if they decide to redeploy a unit from Khabarovsk to Ukraine, it takes at least a week to move it by rail. Probably longer than that. Not exactly a recipe for flexibility.

> It is actually more of a problem than an asset, because they must guard very long shores and borders against unfriendly neighbors.

On the flip side they can afford to give up a lot of terrain while they get their act together. And now the other side has super long supply chains that they have to deal with.

See World War 2.

Yes, for defense, it is great (on the other side of this scale would be Israel that lacks any strategic depth and thus must defend the border regions at almost any cost).

The Napoleonic wars were yet another great example of a strategic retreat and bleeding the enemy dry in the endless frozen steppe.

But for attacking someone else, the situation reverses and now it is Russia that faces serious logistical problems correlated to its sheer size.

> Russia has 3x times as many people as Ukraine, not 10x times. It has a lot more land, but I doubt it is 10x times more.

It's actually almost 30× the land area (6.6M mi² vs 233k mi²)

Ukraine is approximately 603,550 sq km, while Russia is approximately 17,098,242 sq km, making Russia 2,733% larger than Ukraine.

The best effect of Russian admirers and propaganda alike is that people think it is bigger then it is and that everything Russian is better then it is. It is also country where huge amount of population does not have flushable toilet, have huge inequality and massive amount of internal issues.

Russian main advantage is that it does not value human life and is OK with massive looses. And that it has zero ethical limits with regards to civilians. That is amount of greatness.

This comment is really weird. It's written as though it's correcting an incorrect assumption in the parent. But it's literally confirming what the parent said.

Parent: russia is almost 30x the size of ukraine

This comment: what?! you're confused by russian propaganda! it's only 2733% larger than ukraine

And then, even if you adjust to claim that you were trying to reinforce parent's point, that's not plausible either since parent was actually pointing out that people's belief that russia was 10x bigger was actually a large underestimate of its size.

I didn't introduce the 10x figure. But if you look at GDP, 10x seems about right. GDP is often used to compare countries, and that the size, and quality of the army you can field is based on GDP of the country, seems somewhat reasonable.

The GDP doesn't really matter in this conflict, since the Ukraine is essentially getting all its weapons, intelligence and training for free.

That and, a lot of the Russian military (the reserves) and their equipment (ships, subs, intercontinental bombers, nukes, etc) are not really going to help the Russians win the conflict, since they're either not useful, or politically impossible to use.

I think if Putin can sell to the Russian people that this is a war, not a special military operation, and as such, they should call up the reserves, break the law about how those reserves are allowed to be used, etc, then they could probably win. Without that, I don't think it's that realistic: they're fighting against a totally mobilized country that's being flooded with high-tech weapons. Imagine afghanistan, if the taleban were armed for free by the western military-industrial complex. The US wouldn't be able to do it. Russia almost certainly won't be able either.

It is more like 30x.

You should look at it from Putin's point of view. Escalating with the west is even less of an option. Militarily, I don't think he has any doubt about US, French and UK nuclear deterrence. Even if you take nukes off the table, if you look how poorly his troops are doing in Ukraine, imagine that against NATO, even without the US.

He might "escalate to de-escalate", i.e. make a lot of noise about escalation to intimidate Biden (so far it worked), but it can only be bluff. Whichever metric you use, the ratio of power between Russia and Europe is much greater than Ukraine to Russia.

While I tend to agree, reading through the various nuclear close calls as far as I can tell, there were far more on the Russian side than the American one, and while American nuclear incidents tended to be headed off with everyone following orders and working within established systems, Russian ones usually involve one guy literally refusing an order. It's hard to know how accurate all of this is, but it does imply deterrent through incompetence. The concern is not limited to intentional nuclear strikes, every time Russian forces get put on alert the threat of an accident grows. Putin likely knows this, and NATO is also very wary of it.

> if you look how poorly his troops are doing in Ukraine

s/are doing/have done/

History is replete with completely incompetent offenses that were highly useful and motivating learning experiences.

I'm not sure that Russia is culturally in a position to be their own schoolmaster here, but they could be. And they have virtually infinite domestic capacity to churn out, man, and power last-gen war materiel, even with sanctions.

Only time will tell. Nobody knows anything yet.

Their war equipment is not "last-gen", they basically keep upgrading whatever was left of the USSR and they do sit on the huge stocks of non-modernized Soviet equipment, but eventually they will be left with a useless old and vulnerable hardware. Yes, they made some next-gen tanks and planes which are not combat ready yet but modern Russian industrial capability would be able to churn out only token numbers of those anyway, under sanctions and brain drain.

Russian equipment loss in this war won't be replaced for decades if not longer.

What will the US, UK and France do if Russia uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine? Nuking Russia because they nuked Ukraine is… very unlikely.

A ton of countries would join NATO ASAP (if allowed in, and several would be) or rush to form new collective defense coalitions that include at least one other nuclear power, which in many cases would likely come with significant concessions to that nuclear power (i.e. China gains a de facto, if smallish, empire overnight).

Everyone refuses to trade with Russia until they're reduced to one of the most miserable countries on the planet. If their nuke program falls apart, several countries take some territory from them and no-one minds. Possibly they're reduced to selling parts of the country (maybe on a lease-like arrangement, which isn't unprecedented) in exchange for re-opening limited trade with countries that are willing, but see that they really have them over a barrel (China, again, is a likely beneficiary)

Several countries start or re-prioritize nuclear programs. Turkey, Iran, South Korea, and maybe even Japan, all likely candidates. Maybe more.

That's roughly what I'd expect the world to do about it, if the result isn't a spiral into outright nuclear war, or a swift and decisive coup in Russia. No, it's not good, but it's especially not good for Russia.

That’s not what nuclear deterrence protects against. If he does that there will be other forms of escalation. A Iran/North Korean style set of economic sanctions possibly (I don’t think India and China would support Putin anymore at that point). Possibly a direct confrontation over Ukraine (no fly zone or a no fly zone by proxy, giving the Ukrainians the missile defence sufficient to clear the sky). Etc.

> You should look at it from Putin's point of view. Escalating with the west is even less of an option.

I see this differently.

My understanding of the Russian "heartland" narratives suggest Russia is dead if they cannot control Ukraine in the medium term. Their "multi polar" view suggests that they MUST be at the centre of an anti-US alliance extending across Asia, Europe and Africa.

From these perspectives they HAVE to fight this war now. Even if they lose now, they feel they have to keep trying.

You assume same value system on Putin side as you have and that is unlikely.

>It's really hard to see that Ukraine by itself could defeat Russia

There are many paths but they are all long term "replace the Taliban with the Taliban" type ones that people don't wanna talk about.

Fair enough, I was thinking more of a classic win by defeating the Russian army on the battlefield. But the kind of loss the USSR had in Afghanistan might be possible without much if any help from abroad.

The kind of victory Afghanistant had also means ending up with deeply authoritarian and violent society. It implies complete destruction of democratic civil society, unfortunately.

>The kind of victory Afghanistant had also means ending up with deeply authoritarian and violent society.

The current Taliban are way, way more liberal than the 90s Taliban. They've embraced modern communication, dropped most of their Pashtun ethnic supremacy stuff and are a little less violent across the board. That's really a big change all things considered.

Unless you're a woman.

Or a christian. Or your Jewish. Or an American. Or your gay. Or you want to educate your daughters. Or you …

> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size

Every Ukrainian defender kills 10 Russian occupiers?

Obviously some will be less fortunate, and a select few will go down in history as extremely effective removers of Russian conscripts.

Depends on your definition of "fend off". Take back Crimea, I think not going to happen. Make it really hard for the Russians in Donbas, inflicting heavy losses, very achievable. Stopping the Russians from taking over the south, quite likely. The Russians taking over the whole country, that ship has sailed by now.

I don't know many western countries that would tolerate to be invaded, having some territory taken off without fighting back bitterly. I mean this is the whole story of ww1.

In the end it is up to the Ukrainians to decide how much pain they are willing to endure for their independence and freedom. But if they chose to fight, it's not our role to second guess their decision and it is our duty to help them (at least us Europeans - for US citizens, different story).

Russia is a paper bear, it makes up on quality with quantity but it's a vastly unpopulated country with an old population. Morale is low, equipment is old and in poor shape. Russia is an empire and have a large share of it's forces tied down to inner tensions and can't be employed. The gross of Russians soldiers are composed by ethnic and and poor soldiers thus some are more interested in stealing than fighting. Also Russian forces haven't been significantly employed in the last decades. It's no secret that poor equipped but combat experienced militia from Donbass/Lugansk are being more effective than better equipped and trained Russian forces.

This whole situation reminds me of the Spanish-American war. At the time Spain was thought to be a great world power, but in reality their ships were old and in disrepair, so much that a rag tag group of Americans defeated them in a few months. The whole Spanish empire collapsed afterwards.

> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender.

Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.

Maybe the Americans should have just given up on their revolution in order to save more lives. There is no way they could win against the might of the british empire.

> Isn't this up the ukranians themselves? I mean really.

Nope. The world needs Ukraine to be a buffer state. Sorry. Greatest good for the greatest number and whatnot.

No, let's escalate with the state with more nuclear missiles than the United States. Freedom first, that's what most important.

Yes, yes. Calling out the Russians for amassing 100k troops on the border of a single bordering nation was such an egregious escalation. If I was Putin and didn't plan on invading, what leaders up to half a world away were saying about my actions would absolutely make me change my mind and send them all over the border, anyway.

Do you understand the whole point of buffer states?

Not 10x. 146m vs 41m people… and a bigger percentage of Ukrainians are in the fight. Russia has only sent 200k troops to Ukraine.. ukraine has 500k active and reserve troops, not including civilians who take up arms.

I'd also bid that if Russia decided to get people from reserves, many would simply refuse to wage war against Ukraine.

I/we also assumed that Russian soldiers wouldn't warcrime around like they used to in other countries because it's Ukraine, but alas.

Well, I didn't imply all soldiers.

Lest we forget how Joseph Stalin's military treated Russians who refused to fight (poorly armed and equipped, no less).

Just like many of the sportspeople who aren't in the country, even those who have left since the invasion, the majority of people who disagree with it are too afraid of the consequences for saying too much or saying anything against the Kremlin narrative.

As an example, a Nobel-winning journalist was assaulted by pro-Putin Russians in public, when he has even abided by the new laws.

Let's also give some credit to bravery of some Russians.

Also, I doubt Putin's regime is more frightening than the risk to die in a pointless war.

And the current weird fiction of "it is a special operation, not a war" prevents them from switching to war economy / law fully.

Russia has about 150M people. Ukraine has about 50M.

If Ukraine refuse to cooperate with Russia and fight a guerrilla war, there is absolutely no way they can hold the whole country.

Russian Population: 145.20m Ukrainian Population: 41.46m

Morale: While the war is popular in Russia, that's mostly among older generation who won't be fighting in the war. On the other hand Ukraine is highly motivated to not become a part of Russia.

Logistics: The Russian military logistics are terrible, their military was built to wage a defensive war next to Russian railroads. They don't have much practice projecting power.

Kleptocracy: The Russian commanders have been systematically stealing all of the money Putin was pumping into the military.

Training: Since 2014 the Ukrainian military has undergone a revolution building a modern NATO trained military, the Russian military just isn't as good.

Command: The Russian military does a lot of top down decision making, this means they can't react to news quickly. There observe -> decide -> act cycle is so long they can't really hit moving targets.

The only advantage Russia has is a larger population, and nuclear weapons. Every other advantage is to the Ukrainian's. Right now Russia has taken losses similar or worse than the absolutely worst his armies in the civil war. There are battalions where 80% of the soldiers are dead or wounded.

A large portion of the Russian military goes home in June, and they're going to have a tough time replacing them when Ukraine is viewed as a meat grinder.

What happens in June?

Russian military conscript term of service is 12 months, and large chunk of the militaries conscripts will end their term of service and get to go home. They'll have to replace these conscripts with new ones but unless they declare a state of war it's going to be hard to find replacements because who wants to throw their life away walking into Ukraine which has had one of the highest casualty rates of any military in the last 200 years.

> And nowhere on reddit or in the media do I see a discussion of the pros and cons of a Ukrainian surrender. It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).

The status quo is far too advantageous for the pro-war segment of our national security establishment for that idea to get any traction. Currently we have a "moral" war for the first time since the Balkans, it's strengthening NATO, and Russia is being weakened at the expense of mere pocket change and outdated weapons. And from a PR perspective, the American public cares far less about Ukrainian casualties than dead American soldiers. Then there's the benefit of blaming Putin for inflation with "Putinflation" and advancing other goals like shutting down Nordstream 2 and selling LNG to Europe.

I'm pro-Ukraine, but I can't help but notice how average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict, while US foreign policy hawks are breaking out the champagne.

"average Ukrainians are being screwed by this conflict" because Russia decided to attack them and crush their resistance.

I feel sorry for the Ukrainians, having met a lot of refugees in Prague. But I don't believe that they would rather surrender and have "Russian peace". Some of them perhaps, but not the majority. They do not want to be yoked again.

Were "Russian peace" then means "comprehensive de-ukrainification and elimination of the intelligentsia to leave a braindead husk of a state behind", as publicly announced in Russia and partially implemented in occupied areas.

Oh, yes, it is basically the kind of peace that the Mouth of Sauron offered to Aragorn and Gandalf during their parley, if not worse.

Are they going to end up with a better deal than what Russia was demanding before the war, or a worse one? Right now it's looking like worse, with Russia demanding territorial concessions in addition to Ukraine staying out of NATO.

And that's not even considering how Ukraine has taken thousands of casualties, has it's economy wrecked, had millions of people flee the country, and much of their infrastructure is ruined.

That compares the options as if the negotiation was a one-time thing. But game theory would say that giving in to Russian demands would get you … more demands.

Yes, any sort of demilitarization would make them into a satellite state, crushable at will.

They can possibly agree to territorial losses (though after all the bloodshed and murder I consider even that unlikely - not just that, but the West does not want Putin to gain anything from this war, so it will support Ukraine until victory, however long it takes), but not to any kind of hollowing out of their army. That would be a prolonged national suicide.

> You don't see any posts about Russia gaining territory

I have seen daily posts about Russia gaining territory in news. For weeks, it was daily report of Russian progression even with maps.

And Russia is not 10x bigger.

I have also seen more articles about nazi in Ukraine then nazi in Russia. In fact, Russian fascism and Putins rehabilitation of Stalin were oddly missing. For years, but also during this conflict.

It was only when invasion started to look like genocide journalists started to look more at who Russia actually is.

> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size. (If someone has an answer as to why that might be realistic, I'm open to hear it).

Firstly, the size of a country doesn't immediately matter, it's more about the size of the army. E.g. China 50 years ago was bigger than the US, but couldn't "win" in a war with the US.

Having said that, wars are a political tool. For the most part, wars aren't about fighting until you "kill everyone" or anything like that. They are fought to achieve certain goals, and end when one side decides its goals aren't worth the price of the fight.

This is true in all situations - even in a war of conquest. Ukraine will put up a huge fight, because the goal is to stop themselves from being conquered. But there could come a point where they decide to surrender, because the death toll will be too high (or because the leadership is captured and threatened, or because the army is too fatigued to continue fighting and surrenders without the leadership, etc).

Likewise, it's possible that Russia decides to stop the fighting. This could be because they decide it's weakening the army too much (too many soldiers dying and munitions being used up). Or it could be because internal public opinion is too heavily against the war. It could even be for reasons that are only internally visible, like that Putin starts feeling that his position is threatened because of the war.

All Ukraine has to do is to keep up their resistance long enough for the war to not be worth continuing from Russia's side. Or for the rest of the world to decide to help more than they are, which is why Zelensky's main goal is to keep the front-and-center in the West's consciousness. How long that is (if it's even possible) nobody knows.

> It's really hard to see how Ukraine will successfully fend off a country 10x its size.

Do what the Taliban did in Afghanistan to defeat US.

Or perhaps an even closer match, do what the Taliban did in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War

>Zelensky censoring media outlets favorable to opposition parties.

No different than what Britain did to pro-German media and parties during WW2.