Emphasis on inches. Ukraine War Mapper [1] does a good job documenting the line of control. It's not a good look for what, until recently, looked like a dominating regional power.
Something is changing every day as Russia's annual defence budget's worth of modern arms and training are deployed by Kyiv [1][2].
[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine...
This spring will show if they can change the current calculus but if not Russia is going to change the end game.
Of course, they are going slower than that. And also, at the current rate of attrition, Russia will run out of Russians long, long before that.
I'll do the same:
> Russia has gone backwards for a year now.
This is false, Russia went backwards, and then went forwards. Maybe you meant to say "has gone backwards with respect to where it was last year". That is true.
Please write precisely, write what you mean, so others don't have to realize you actually mean something else than what you wrote
In the media you are allowed to see.
It just reads like a massive cop-out, a "you are misinformed, sheeple"-style of empty platitude trying to sound somewhat smart, or deep, or "more informed".
One of the worst things I've seen happening in my lifetime is this transition to a post-modern, post-truth world. It's just exhausting that people feel it's ok to say "you are misinformed" in different ways, without ever providing a different proper source for information, a source where others could at least try to gauge if they're misinformed or not.
It's simply a thug-of-war between people living different realities, both accusing the other side of falling to some propaganda without basis.
Sorry for the rant, y'all, but this bullshit really grates, hard.
You aren't making your point clearer, you are just repeating "wake up, sheeple" with a different word salad...
Suppose Ukraine manages to push Putin's army back to original pre-2014 borders. Is this victory? With a large part of the country in ruins, a terrible GDP decrease, thousands of men with PTSD, not to mention those dead. There is simply no victory here, just enormous pain because of someone's sick ambitions.
Putin seems to have painted himself into a corner where now his continued rule over Russia depends on being able to paint this as either a victory or a loss that's in no way his fault (because NATO started it and he was just defending himself). But also it seems that at the very least, he needs Crimea.
For Russians in general, they don't really need anything here. The real loss for them is that Putin is willing to sacrifice their entire country to bail him out of his fiasco. A win for them would be getting rid of Putin and not replacing him with someone even worse.
For Zelensky, the bare minimum is of course independence from Russia, and he seems to have won that at least. But millions of Ukrainians have been captured and often deported/abducted by Russia, and that's a loss too. He wants those people free, and he's absolutely right to. And he wants to keep Ukraine whole; accepting any loss of Ukrainian territory is a loss to him. Not to mention that it sets a precedent; Putin has a history of making small land grabs, and without hard security guarantees, it's likely that Putin will try another land grab in the future. And indeed Putin is still trying to grab more land right now. Putin wants that corridor to Moldova, and then Moldova itself. Leaving Putin in a position where he can try this again and again, is also a loss for many countries in the future.
So even if on the short term it would be good for Ukraine if the fighting stopped; if it's really just a temporary cease fire during which Putin can regroup in order to try again, that may be worse for Ukraine than trying to completely block Putin right now.
Still, it's much easier to protect oneself against Hamas' handcrafted rockets than Russian Kinzhals...
Ukraine may win... after 5+ years of brutal war and heavy destruction. Is that better than a life back under Moscow's rule?
> Ukraine may win... after 5+ years of brutal war and heavy destruction. Is that better than a life back under Moscow's rule?
Hey that's a good example!
Considering the treatment they experienced in occupied cities - yes, it might be. Being under Moscow's rule won't be an occupation like Eastern Europe had under USSR, but a brutal regime made the extinguish the concept of "Ukrainians". Putin is clearly signaling that.
But now? They don't have any regard for human life. Not just the lives of Ukrainians, but their own. Putin is knowingly sacrificing tens of thousands for his sick ambition. There is nothing Russia gained from this war. Utter tragedy for everyone.
The real comparison is probably closer to Iraq-Iran in the 1980's. Iraq launches a huge mechanized offensive, gets into Iran, runs out of steam, and slowly gets pushed back, at high cost for both sides. It gets ugly, fast, and kills a whole bunch of people. It goes in for ~8 years before it eventually just peters out, and lasts that long because of international support for each side: Iraq had the US and similar 1st worlders; Iran had the USSR and COMBLOC.
How a small country is planning to win against it I don't understand.
At the same time, the assumption is that there will be no backlash inside the country if 'infinite' amount of soldiers die ?
The war in Afganistan lasted for 12 years and there were no protests against it. In Winter war in 1939 [1] USSR lost over 100 000 soldiers (according to Western propaganda in Wikipedia) and there were no complaints.
Also Russian people are not going to know how many soldiers have died if you simply don't tell them.
> according to Western propaganda in Wikipedia
Yeah, OK, I see.
Nonetheless, Russia is definitely not winning after 1 year.
Maybe Russia will end up controlling the majority of the land. Just rubbles and ashes.
This is not winning IMHO.
I believe this is wrong. Russia doesn't have 10 times more soldiers now, and regular army isn't deployed in Ukraine; only volunteers (including prisoners), mobilized soldiers and contract army is.
May you elaborate on what your understanding of "regular army" is?
Army of conscripts is around 1-1.5 million soldiers; professional army was about 300 000 soldiers before invasion. It was not enough to win so there was a mobilization of about 400 000 (official numbers) and recruiting volunteers from prisoners.
Not true. They are still flying.
I'm curious why they have chosen not to deploy them, then.
How exactly is the massive deployment of mobile artillery supposed to result in less deaths?
In any case, the end of the war would obviously not be the end of the world. Isn't the whole point of the aid for Ukraine that it is supposed to contain Russia and deplete its military and economic capabilities?
So yeah, my point to parent asking why Russia might not be throwing everything at once.
In most cases they're there to get shot at enough while drones watch and tag enemy positions for artillery strikes.
In peer- or near-peer conflicts arty accounts for a high, often monumentally high, number of casualties -- easily 75% or more. The prisoners aren't expected to win, that would require lots of training, trust, gear, and planning; they're expected to draw fire, and the VDV or main-line regulars will clean up the rest.
Have you seen that smoking aircraft carrier? Russian military equipment is often in a terrible state.
Of course they also have this brand new super tank, the T-14 Armata. No idea why they're not fielding that one, but I suspect it doesn't work.
Corruption and mixed priorities meant that most of the storage depots didn't see regular maintenance done, so vehicles that should have been "mostly workable" were basically rust-buckets. However estimates put the stockpiles at like 8000 T-72s, 10000 BMPs, etc., and even if only 1/3 of them are viable that still represents thousands of vehicles.
Logistics are another problem though. Even if only 1/3 are viable you have to ship repairs, replacement parts, and the entire vehicle across huge distances and that takes a lot of time. If there is a T-55 in a depo that's closer and it doesn't need parts -- great, get that to the front now; it'll do rear-line duty or something.
"High Quality" is also relative -- virtually all of NATO's, and Russia's, tanks are upgraded late-Cold-War models, but there is a non-trivial difference in the late-Soviet vs. post-Soviet era developments. Getting an old T-72 working might be easy enough, but getting that upgraded to the T-72B3M edition is a different story.
I've got a high quality 486 processor here but it still gets slaughtered by a cheap, ropey CPU I bought last year. A high-quality Soviet tank is a high-quality outdated tank that's very vulnerable to modern weaponry.
T-72s and such are also kept updated with modern gizmos like reactive defense, etc.
Soviet tanks also have reactive armour. You can easily see those boxes on a photo of a tank. Or did you mean some other kind of armour?
I don’t think anyone’s particularly hopeful about any breakthrough from either side, and the Russians do not seem to be the comically inept force they’re sometimes portrayed as. But it’s no secret that they’re poorly resourced and were ill-prepared for the conflict Putin started.
Congratulations now you've traded a soldier with better reflexes than most professional baseball players for a $500 drone.
You men the ones that go extra-boom whenever something hits them?
(just to be clear I mean having the auto-loader under the turret make things extra-spicy when hit even by a grenade or something)
The T-72's jack-in-the-box design flaw is being productively exploited on the battlefield. That's not a "can explode" problem.
What precipitates from these issues isn't always clear at the outset.
Which is, go figure, why Poland, the Baltics, the Czechs, etc. are so eager to support Ukraine...
https://apnews.com/article/czech-ukraine-russia-government-p...
And Putin wants all of that back.
> western europe managed fine then
But eastern Europe didn't manage fine, and they're the ones now pushing western Europe into putting more effort into stopping Putin.
Western Europe mostly just wants to trade with Putin. This is most visible in Germany of course (technically central Europe, but the old east-west divide is suddenly relevant again), but also France. They've been slow to accept that Putin is not really a trade partner but an aggressor. They ignored it when Putin destroyed Chechnya. They ignored it when he took chunks out of Georgie. They ignored it when Putin took Crimea. Only when he tried to take Donbass did they finally start to see there might be a problem. Meanwhile Poland and the Baltics have been pointing out that Putin is a threat for two decades now. They were undeniably right to join NATO.
If Putin thought the US profited too much from this while his own country suffered, maybe he'd stop his war. But his narrative is that the US and the entire West is suffering just as much as Russia and they'll soon give up, so victory is within sight. It's not of course; it's just bullshit to let him prolong his war for just a bit longer.
the us arms industry profits
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-21/us-arms-industry-mili...
the us gas industry profits
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-war-europe-uk...
all i did is google "us profits from war in ukraine"
also by "us profits" i dont mean the us people profit. the war is costing the us people a lot
in the end if ukraine wins they will be so indebted to us and nato that their independence wont be worth the paper its written on. if they lose, well its definitely gonna be shit for them. talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place, and all for nothing. whats absolute worst for them is if they win on the battle field and putin decides to wipe them off the face of the earth out of spite. somehow the us is managing to convince ukraine that this isnt a possobilty, just like they convinced them that they will join the eu and nato. apparently putin is a very predictable monster with nuclear morals
i mean honnestly, this is a question for you, what do you see as a realistic outcome for ukraine?
You're trying to spin this as something the US wants, but it's not. It's something Putin wanted. Zelensky and the people of Ukraine are (obviously) far more determined to defend their country than anyone else. And many European countries are mostly supporting Ukraine because their own citizens are demanding that they do so.
There's tons of popular support for Ukraine, because most people recognise the terrible injustice of the Russian invasion and the atrocities committed by Russia.
How things will look after the war is impossible to predict, but US support has helped western Europe quite a lot after WW2. And even the defeated enemies of that war, Germany and Japan, are doing extremely well because of the way they've been rebuilt after the war. In the long run, the best outcome for Russia would probably be to be utterly defeated and rebuilt the same way. But of course that can never happen because Russia has nukes.
Yes, this is what Putin's propagandists are repeating all the time, threatening to use nukes not just on Ukraine but also on Great Britain and other countries. Apart from the obvious absurdity of contaminating their own land, the big question is, should we agree to all Putins says just because he can use nukes? Is there any limit on what we will do to please him?
The only reason NATO says that some day Ukraine can become a member, is because Ukraine keeps asking about it. Constantly. They desperately want to join NATO, and while they don't and didn't meet NATO's criteria, it's not impossible that some day they will, and then they can join.
And considering the consequences of not being in NATO, I think it's clear that Ukraine is absolutely justified in wanting to join NATO. Things would look very different if they had indeed joined in 2008.
NATO extended its mutual defense to these countries. The only reason why that should piss off Russia is if Russia had plans to conquer those countries. Turns out they do. But that's not NATO's fault. Don't try to shift the blame to NATO here; this war is entirely, for the full 100%, Putin's fault.
1990. nato makes the not one inch eastward promise
1999. nato bombs russia ally yugoslavia and takes over its southern teritory
1999. nato expands into poland and several other ex warsaw countries
2004. nato expands into ex-ussr, taking baltic states as members
2008. april. nato said it will take in georgia and ukraine
2008. may. us and majorotynof nato countries recognize the unilateral declaration of kosovo, in complete diregard of previous un agreements
2008. august. georgia tries to retake control over autonomous ethnic-minority regions. russia stops this. georgia looses any chance of becoming part of nato
2010. ukraine government abandons plans to join nato
2014. people from west ukraine are driven by busses into kiev to overthrow an elected government. us publically supports the coup. elected president flees to russia. the goverent is overthrown. east ukraine opposes the overthrow and begins to rebel against the new government.
2014. crimea seceeds from ukraine becoming part of russia
2014. civil war accross eastern ukraine, centering around donbas
2014. minsk agreements signed
2016-2019 nato suffers from being perceived as irrelevant.
2018. nato requests substantial funding to improve its information campaign. huge effort to rewrite the history of 'not an inch eastward' promise
2022. january. ukranian government publically states it has no intension of fulfilling minsk agreements
2022. february. russia invades ukraine
Never happened. In fact, Russia and NATO have explicitly in writing (1997 treaty) that they respect the right of third parties to seek security as they see fit. Nor did Russia ever bring it up until Putin needed a justification for invading Georgia.
Even any notion of such talks is absurd, given that you place it a year before the USSR collapsed. Collapse of the USSR and parts of it applying for NATO (and eventually becoming members) was inconceivable at the time. As participants have recollected, the context of talks at the time was German reunification and stationing NATO forces in Eastern Germany. Nobody could imagine that the USSR itself would soon cease to exist.
This directly ties to another point:
> 2004. nato expands into ex-ussr, taking baltic states as members
(1) NATO didn't "expand", but those countries were hell-bent on seeking security to protect themselves from getting occupied ever again through cooperation in international organizations. That was set as a foreign policy goal in 1993.
(2) How did Putin react to that in 2004 when he met Schröder days after the Baltics became full members of NATO? He said that it's fine, never brought up any alleged promises. http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/30678
some people just cant shake totalitarian frame of mind
https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/15801244656647905...
It's not that Russia was always bad - there was a period when people really hope we could all live together in peace, Scorpions even recorded a song about it.
And the people in these countries (almost half of Europe!) still celebrate this day, just like the day they managed to liberate themselves from Russians. No wonder it makes Putin mad.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220404-merkel-defend...
Ukraine is smaller than Russia, but by no means a small country. Ukraine has 40 million people and is far more motivated to fight than Russia is. Russians really have nothing to win here; it's just about Putin's pride. Meanwhile Ukrainians are fighting for their lives, their country, and the future of their children. These are powerful motivators, and go a long way towards explaining Ukraine's unwavering morale in the face of overwhelming odds.
Ukraine also fights much smarter. Russia uses very primitive tactics: use massive artillery to flatten entire cities, move infantry in, and if they get killed, flatten the place with artillery again. And then they ran low on artillery ammunition, not to mention that many of their barrels have been so overused they can't shoot straight anymore, so now they've resorted to human wave attacks. Ukrainian defenders of Bakhmut have described wave after wave of Russian attackers crawling over the dead bodies of their dead comrades only to get gunned down too. There's no sophistication at all, and coordination is often poor.
Meanwhile Ukraine with its more limited resources executes very smart attacks. Most of the time they target Russian supply lines to make it harder for Russia to fight. But sometimes they've undermined Russian positions so much that they can suddenly grab an enormous swath of territory, like they did east of Kharkiv and west of Kherson.
I frankly don't see how Ukraine can lose this. In some ways they have already won. Although of course it really depends on how you define victory and loss here; both sides have lost a lot, and any end result where Putin is in a position where he can try again later, means that the war for Ukraine is not really over.
What exactly is that assertion even based on?
People talk like it is some kind of a definite fact, but there is no reference to any particular source or a universal explanation of how this was deduced.
well for starters the fact that there is no record of him saying that
Just before the war, he said he was not going to invade. Then he did it anyway. His words are meaningless. His actions are what counts. And he obviously did try to take Kyiv. There were paradrops intended to take Kyiv in hours, even. There was a push by more forces to take Kyiv in days. It all failed because they encountered far more serious resistance than they expected, and it turned out they lacked the supplies for a longer operation, and couldn't get those supplies organised in the face Ukrainian defense specifically targeting Russian supply lines. Eventually they couldn't make any progress and withdrew. Though not before murdering lots of civilians in Boucha.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-o...
that started after both sides hurled molotov cocktails at each other?
The world is complicated, yes, but your comment reducing this to "one side burned the other side alive" is disingenuous at best.
Looking at current ratio of Russian and Ukrainian losses, having three times the soldiers is not going to be enough.
Still a lot, esp. you consider the primary draftable age groups (e.g. 18-30), and that not all males in that group would be military worthy, i.e. medical or mental disabilities, etc.
Also a big deal if you consider that most of them are the wealthier, smarter, more mobile parts of the population, which will exacerbate the brain-drain and impact the economy. A lot of those guys aren't gonna go back anytime soon, or at all.
This a post-Covid era. Everything that is "smart and mobile" is also remote. Which means that physical relocation doesn't exactly imply brain drain, especially given that wealthier destinations such as the US or some parts of Europe are harder to reach then ever.
The highest quality soviet tank is a rust bucket compared to even low end western tanks from 25 years ago.
/s