Who's winning the war in Ukraine?
The media won't give me great answers to this question and I think this I trust this community more, thus I want to know from you. Also, I have heard reports that Russia was winning the war, if that's true, did the west miscalculate the situation by allowing diplomacy to take a backseat and allowing Ukraine to a large plethora of military resources?
PS: I realize there are many casualties on both sides and I am not trying to downplay the suffering, but I am curious as to how it is going for Ukraine. Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning, those have existed forever, but they seem to have grown louder now, so I was wondering what you thought about it. Also, I am somewhat concerned of allowing a dictatorship to just erase at it's convenience a free and democratic country.
Arms dealers.
Reminds me of the starting scene in Lord of War
"Warlord."
"I prefer it my way."
Came here to say "Raytheon".
The Military Industrial complex .... which has no allegiance to any nation and controls more money than most nations in the planet.
Even the US is beholden to it's power ... one of the best descriptions of America is that I've ever read was ...
The US isn't a nation ... it's a corporation with a military.
arms manufacturers
Came here to say this.
winners: arms manufacturers and dealers, "defense" industry, military-industrial complex
losers: soldiers, civilians
Add people like Putin, oligarchs, etc. To losers, add just about everyone else, the climate, any actually important social or economic program as billions of money are burned on an unnecessary pyre for someone's ego, etc etc etc.
Is Putin really a winner tho? They almost had a coup. I mean if the war was going amazingly well, but their economy is shit, they're isolated, and they are in stale mate with an enemy they should dominate...
The goal posts for both sides are very, very different.
The invading Russian forces have basically failed their first goal; to fully take over Ukraine. They can now claim a minor victory by stealing more territory from Ukraine than just Crimea.
Ukraine's goal was to stop Russia from wiping them off of the map. Things appear to have changed. Their new goal is to retake all land that Russia has stolen (including Crimea).
The war has largely been at a standstill for a while, and the only times that Ukraine has been able to make progress is when the word has given its attention and resources. Since "Israel vs Hamas" is the guerre-du-jour, Ukraine seems to be getting less of both.
So I may sound like a doomer, but it's not looking good for the good guys. They have a much harder victory condition, and the resources that they have relied so far may be drying up.
Has Russia ever stated that this was their goal?
Yes.
Can you provide proof for this?
Oh my god, we get it, you’re exhausting.
No, I’m not providing proof of this exhaustion. Do your own research.
I did try. I just didn't find anything that remotely comes close to supporting what you claimed.
Keep looking. You’ll get it eventually.
Considering Russia denied their intent to invade as they were conducting it, I don't know that their statements should be considered truth regarding their plans and goals. But here's Westpoint's take on the matter:
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/what-is-russias-theory-of-victory-in-ukraine.
You are unironically sharing a quote riddled with "may"s and "seem"s from United States Military Academy
And you are making a statement that seems to suggest absolute knowledge of a country's intentions are possible with a leader with a lack of credibility and long history of lying on the world stage.
Gee, this is fun. Or were you making some point? Were you expecting some report about their magic mind-reading device?
But this is what you have been doing all along. Nothing in reality suggests that total annexation of Ukraine was the goal. Not the words of anyone nor the manner in which Russia has executed the invasion yet here you are somehow reading minds to conjure grand motives and subjecting me to smug Reddittor-speak for the crime of asking you to back your frivolous claims. "Gee, this is fun." Jesus Christ.
Wait, I'm confused, were you looking for "is" or "suggests?" Because I sent you an article all about "suggests." And, follow-up question, did you think 'You are unironically sharing a quote riddled with "may"s and "seem"s from United States Military Academy' is not smug and was a genuinely civil question?
Since it seems you might not be great at this whole "communicating" thing, I'll be explicit: Yes, those questions were rhetorical. No, you've given me nothing to suggest I should care what your response is.
Gee, this is fun. Reality is not wishy washy statements from literal America military institutions. It just exposes you as someone who gobbles American state department nonsense wholesale uncritically. If you watched your Rick and Morty properly you would have known that it is not a smart thing to do. Reality in this case refers to what's happening on the ground in the war. Like Russia holding it's annexed territories rather trying to expand indiscriminately.
You are an idiot.
There has been some good answers, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the details, so I will add my own response.
Culturally Russia sees itself as outside the rest of the world. At the very minimum, an equal to historical empires of Europe or Asia, but part of neither. It sees the USA as an ethnic mongrel with no culture or history, and hates the US power it projects globally.
Russia sees the former Soviet Union countries as property of the Rus people, and NATO involvement as outsider influence in affairs that do not concern them.
Globally, the world values stability more than they value justice or peace. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, it came after several other invasions of other former Soviet countries. There was little global response on any occasion.
Putin did expect the invasion to be fast and achieve their goals quickly. It was a mistake on his behalf.
This invasion was taken differently than any previous invasion because it upset global stability. Gas, oil and grain were traded openly with Russia and Ukraine and a war upset the market right when the world was trying to stabilise markets rocked by inflation, pandemic recovery and suppy chain problems.
The result was many countries around the world pledging military support. This was always older generation materiel which essentially costs those countries to maintain. It was the global equivalent of giving a homeless man the doggy bag you didn't want anyway.
Why did they do this? They wanted Russia to pull back, return to its 2014 lines and go back to stability so that global markets could resume. So they gave Ukraine just enough to defend itself, but not enough to win.
Why did they do this? Because the world wants stability more than peace. Of the pledges of materiel, almost none has actually come to fruition. About 1/4 of the armor promised has arrived that was promised. Ukraine continues to beg for alms (or in this case arms), and they do amazing things with the little they are given.
Western powers could arm Ukraine and it would win. They have had no problem spending trillions of dollars over decades to protect their influence. It does not in this case as the World is only just coming to terms that Russia will not stop just for stability.
Putin will cease to be leader if he pulls back. The Russian leader would be seen as weak, and the Russian culture loves a Tsar. Putin believes in luck and will continue the sunk cost in the hope that some outside factor or random event will go in his favor.
The West is already getting bored and tired of a war they aren't even fighting. There is a possibility that pro-Russian Republicans could regain office or power in the US. All Putin has to do is hold and eventually the West will even start telling Ukraine to capitulate to them.
Putin does not care how many troops he loses. Russia doesn't really care how many people it loses unless those people are from the cities. Russian culture dehumanises the poor and mixed ethnicities.
This current grinding stalemate is a direct result of world policy. The world supplies Ukraine with just enough so they don't lose, but not enough that they can win. In the meantime, the arms dealers are circling like sharks. India and China are cashing in on filling global supply gaps and taking advantage of Russias need for materiel frozen by sanctions. The hope would be that world leaders realise before it's too late that the only way Ukraine can win, is that if Russia loses.
I think the fact that Kyiv didn't fall within hours like everybody thought it would, and the morale/inspiration/call to action effect of "I need ammunition, not a ride," shouldn't be taken lightly either.
I agree. Ukraine did a great job in preparing for an inevitable invasion. Zelensky is the reason the preparations succeeded.
This seems mostly right, but I want to add a few points.
The first is that the Ukrainians won't stop fighting if the west stops supporting them. They may suffer some severe defeats and the nature of the war may shift to being more of a guerrilla insurgency, but they won't stop fighting.
The second is that even if the US withdraws support, it's not likely that European nations will necessarily follow, and between Germany and the UK and France, the Europeans can easily continue to support Ukraine at or above current levels.
My final point is that Ukraine actually is making slow progress in pushing back the Russians, it's just not going anywhere near as fast as anyone would like.
I also really dislike the term "stalemate" because it implies a static state of affairs as in a chess game where there are only so many pieces and moves, when in fact war is much different in the sense that additional pieces and moves can and probably will be added to the equation.
But the EU countries also dont want Ukraine to decisively push the Russians out. The longer the war goes, the more Russia will weaken itself, being less of a threat in the long run.
Also Germany is a puppet of the US, when it comes to military decisions. They will do what the US tells them to do and if Trump tells them to kiss Putins ass they will do that. They already did that before without the US telling them.
This post is pure and unadulterated bullshit.
Germany didn't go to Iraq with the US.
Germany will never stop supporting Ukraine.
You are full of shit.
Then why did Germany hesitate to promise equipment and unserselivered on its promises?
Also Germany did nit put boots on the ground in Iraq, which would be unconstitutional anyways, but it did provide extensive support to the US. US army bases in Germany were integral to the logistics and control of the US invasion. Germany did everything it could to support the Iraq invasion within its own legal limits.
Before swinging big accusations, maybe consider judging politics by actions instead of words
examples of Russia weakening itself
perhaps you were thinking of the US?
I was wondering if you could provide something to back this up since these are rather sweeping claims.
The only thing I can think of that comes close is Dugin's writings but I have never seen anything that could suggest that his ideas are widely accepted or adopted as the state's doctrines.
Timothy Snyder makes a pretty convincing case for it in "The Road to Unfreedom." It was published in 2018 so probably written in 2016 and 2017 at the latest, and it looks ridiculously prescient now.
Can you help me towards some starting points in the book where he explains this? Here are some digital copies of the book in case you don't have one at hand: http://libgen.is/search.php?req=the+road+to+unfreedom&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def
I agree with what you said and appreciate the insight. Thanks for writing it.
I think part of it from Russia's side is definitely an attempt to rebuild Stalin's buffer to the west, but there are echoes of the appeasement that took place before WW2. Crimea was quick and done.
Then, it's a repeat years later in an attempt to grab more. Thing is, since then there was a lot of election tampering in the form of misinformation and it continues as an attempt to turn Americans against each other. Russia is waging war via the Internet and it's working.
I think the US government is unable to control it because there is no direct control of social media companies, and social media companies are ineffective. Their interests are purely financial and to truly be effective, it would require significant investment.
The US is instead providing just enough support, but I think it's purposely done. What happens if they were to provide double? Ukraine pushes Russia back to the border and then what? They continue forward? That's WW3. Even if they stop at the border, Putin may be forced to stop and may lose power. Then you're dealing with a potentially worse successor who wants to destroy at all costs...again a dangerous unknown.
They're doing it this way on purpose to bleed Russia slowly over time. Russia expected to drive a 40 mile column into the capital and finish fast. A long war is not sustainable for Russia economically and the population isn't interested either (as shown by the huge expatriation that took place when conscription was announced).
If enough western countries continue to provide arms, it will damage Russia for a long time to come.
Except that now we have Ukrainian chief negotiator having come out and openly admitted that Russia and Ukraine were on a verge of making a deal back in last March before Boris Johnson sabotaged it. The only reason this was is still going on is because the west couldn't accept peace and decided to cynically push Ukraine into further conflict.
What actually happened was that NATO countries wanted to break and balkanize Russia, which was openly said by lots of western officials. The west made a mistake thinking that they could easily break Russian economy using sanctions while using Ukraine as a proxy without having to put NATO boots on the ground. Now we're seeing this massively backfire with western economies going into a recession while Russian economy is now growing.
They literally can't, and even NATO officials now admit that the west lacks industrial capacity to keep up with Russia even in basic things such as shell production.
This is not a problem that can be fixed by throwing money at it. This requires building factories, training workers, creating supply chains and so on. These things simply can't be done overnight. All throwing money at the problem does is raise prices as anybody with even a modicum of economic knowledge could've predicted
How to say you're a racist without saying you're a racist.
There was never any scenario in which Ukraine could win and it's absolutely incredible that western propaganda machine managed to convince so many people of this insane fantasy. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians lost their lives in a NATO proxy war with Russia, and Ukraine will likely cease to exist as a functioning state at the end of all this. All for the insatiable need for NATO expansion. Stoltenberg finally let the cat out of the bag and told us that this was the real reason for the war:
Source? Because the only "deal" I can find is basically a surrender of Crimea and the Donbas in 2022.
Again, source? Sure, this is true if you look at single numbers, but there are huge difference between Europe shifting away from over a decade of quantitative easing and into repair mode, and Russia who is nationalizing businesses left and right and forcing companies to sell them foreign currencies at a discount to prop up the ruble. The need for foreign capital is so massive, due to capital flight, you can land 15% interest in Russia right now.
The three things propping up the Russian economy are the high oil price, China and massive government intervention.
Because lobbing shells at eachother is Soviet doctrine, not NATO. NATO doctrine is to bomb the everloving shit out of someone with massive air superiority. If NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, there would be no need to more 155mm shells.
And because it's not doctrine, nobody really wants to build more artillery factories that will sell great now, and get mothballed in 5 years. If Russia steps into NATO territory, those factories will sprout like mushrooms, but it's simply a bad business decision to do so now.
And tell me, when a dictator known for annexing other countries demands appeasement, how effective has that been historically? I don't even need Czechoslovakia for this example, although it's a classic. Did Russia stop after, say, two Chechen wars, Georgia, Abkhazia?
"There wouldn't have been a war if putin got what he wanted without one" is a shit take
https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms
Europe is in deep shit because it got cut off from cheap pipeline gas. Plain and simple. Now, Europe is forced to buy LNG on the spot market at an order of magnitude higher price, and a large chunk of this LNG still comes from Russia. The only difference is that now it's sold through middlemen at even higher markup. German industry is no longer competitive with China, and it's now shutting down
Russian factory activity grew at fastest pace in over six years in September. This should not be a surprise to anyone because western companies left a void that's now being filled domestically
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-factory-activity-grows-fastest-pace-over-six-years-sept-pmi-2023-10-02/
On the other hand, US manufacturing output actually shrank to lowest in three years
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-03/us-manufacturing-activity-shrinks-by-most-in-three-years
Because lobbing shells is what actually works. Vast majority of casualties in the war come from artillery fire. That's the reality. All the magic NATO wunderwaffe failed to make any visible impact in the conflict. IF NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, they would just be shot down by Russian air defence. Also, the fact that you think F35s would make any difference in this kind of war shows your profound lack of understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate here.
NATO isn't building artillery factories because NATO shipped all its industry overseas and isn't capable for producing the basics that any army needs.
Once again you show deep and profound ignorance of the subject you're opining on. To help you get a bit of an understanding, let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:
here's how the election in 2004 went:
this is the 2010 election:
As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:
Ukraine is clearly not some homogeneous blob, but a large country with complex cultural and ethnic situations.
In fact, what we see in Ukraine is directly modelled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where NATO recognized breakaway regions and then had them invite NATO to help break up Yugoslavia. Russia recognized LPR and DPR and then had them invite Russia to help. So, if you want to know how that works out then you can look at modern Serbia and the breakway regions.
There wouldn't be a war if NATO just got to do what it wanted is the only shit take here.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
this lecture
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is quite the work of fiction you've written here. I wouldn't even know where to start with all of your lies.
Literally provided sources, but you keep on living in your fantasy wonderland buddy.
Winning was taking over the county at first. Then it was kherson, and donbass, crimea, and a few others. Now it's just like 3 areas. If you're hearing anything about winning it's because the goal posts are moving.
Youtuber Perun had some good high level takes on the war. It all boils down to Western support will win. As long as support keeps coming from the rest of the world, eventually Russia will run out of material. WW2 was won (not wholly, but in large part) due to the larger economy being on the allies side.
During ww2 the involved parties and their allies were in wartime economy. This is the support that ukraine needs. I feel like today, the west is sending the military version of happy meal aid packages, once in a while, when it's politically convenient. Should we scale up manufacturing for wartime? Let's procrastinate.
Nah, the amount of aid and material they're sending is substantial, including modern tanks and artillery, as well as more mundane things like shells, bullets etc.
And they will keep doing it for as long as it takes.
The amount of people fighting back on supporting a sovereign democracy getting attacked by a oligarchical dictatorship is nuts.
Like we did appeasement in the 40s already, it was a bad strategy.
The West would like Ukraine to win, but it's more important to the West that the war drag on and be a drain on Russia's resources.
No it's not. The west has nothing to gain from it dragging on. Nobody wants it to drag on.
They have quite a lot to gain by it. Getting the other side stuck in a quagmire has been the preferred strategy for both sides in US vs. Russia for decades.
They would gain more by cooperation or ignoring.
It's just that you can't do that when the other party is actively destructive.
Doesn't make it a gain in my eyes. Labeling it a gain at least requires a contextualized qualification. So saying the EU is interested in prolonging the conflict is very disingenuous.
EU would have far more to gain ffrom Russia leaving Ukraine. Saying the EU wants to prolong the conflict for gains is disingenuous, at least misleading or ambiguous.
What the West gains is a diminished Russia less inclined to adventure. That's a big gain.
The most important goal in this situation for the West is to avoid war with Russia. Since Russia has the resources to wage the war for a long time as long as the West doesn't join it, then whether Ukraine wins is purely a Russian decision.
It sucks for Ukraine but a Russia tied down in Ukraine has less funds to meddle with the rest of the World.
It drains their military and their economy while Putin must be extra careful against coups. There has been one very famous coup attempt directly related to the war (Wagner Group) and who knows how many other smaller attempts have been stopped preemptively?
Very expensive way to drain Russia. Tbh following trends the best way to drain Russia was the status quo of letting Putin dictate it into obscurity through corruption.
But during the status quo, Putin had his hands free to finance destabilizing extremists, Internet troll armies and wage cyberwarfare on the West.
All while reflecting an image of strength.
Do provide us with sources where Russians stated these were the goals. Seems like it's western propagandists who've been making up goals for Russia and then moving the goal posts.
We were here two years ago. Stop gaslighting.
You were lying two years ago just the same as you are now. Where are the sources?
gIvE mE sOuRCeS
Yeah, give me sources for the wild shit you keep making up here. The fact that this is your reaction when being confronted about your lies says all we need to know about you.
gIvE mE sOuRCeS
don't have any do you troll
gIvE mE sOuRCeS
gIvE mE sOuRCeS
keep screeching
Do I need sources for the failed invasion of Kyiv?
Everyone knows about it.
Yeah, I need sources for the fantastical claim that Russia was trying to take Kyiv with 100k troops. It's a particularly interesting claim given that they allocated 40k troops to take Mariupol which is an order of magnitude smaller city. A far more plausible scenario is that Russia used 100k troops to fix a chunk of Ukrainian army around Kyiv while Russians took large parts of Ukrainian territory in the east which they still hold today.
The paratroopers in Kyiv's airport were just taking in the scenery. Really unfortunate that they were shot. And that 50 km tank column headed for Kyiv really was just lost on its way to Mariupol. Yep, exactly, that's what happened.
Lmao what a lame-ass trolling attempt, you have mush for brains if you think this is either effective propaganda or... funny?
The only one with mush for brains is the guy who thinks Russia would be trying to take Kyiv with 100k troops. The fact that you don't even understand why that's absurd makes it all the more hilarious.
The US Military Industrial Complex of course.
100%! I think most people would agree with you there.
Truly the only trustworthy source
It's mostly a stalemate for now. The dam destruction helped Russia funnel Ukraine counterattack on its biggest fortifications, so not much progress for Ukraine in the south. Russia resumed its offensive in the Dombass and Aavdiivka is starting to look like the new Bhakmut.
It's an attrition war and Russia is losing like 2 or 3 times as much as Ukraine in men or material. But Russia has much more men than Ukraine. Russian morale is very low, but Ukraine support from the west is under big pressure, both from Russian propaganda and conservative/fascist political parties. This last one is the real war happening now.
Next year will be important because of the elections in the US. What happen on the battlefield is still to be seen.
Economically, Russia has also been hit hard. NATO has also expanded, which is a blow to Russia.
Yes, but Russia is also supported by Iran and China. And there's no sign of political collapse in Russia.
I'm not saying Russia is winning. It would take them a millenia to conquer Ukraine at this pace. But I think currently they are only buying time to wait for US election. After that, and depending on whether a breakthrough happen or not before that, peace talk may happen, or not. Time will tell.
It's a stalemate, largely. While Russia was massively on the backfoot earlier in the year, they mined massive swaths of eastern Ukraine before partially retreating.
Which makes it unlikely for Russia to actually have any future forward progress, but it also stymies Ukraine from doing the same except extremely slowly. There's still been several victories for Ukraine over the past few months, but they haven't changed the fighting area much.
It's largely a war of attrition to wear down Russia now, who has been having more and more internal issues as time goes on.
Define "winning".
Ukraine is, slowly and painfully, gaining ground, so by that measure, they are winning.
That doesn't seem right. In 2023 they actually lost more ground than they gained. At least that was the situation until this september, but i don't think there where significant developments in the last 2 months.
The numbers are so small, it's not an argument worth having. What is certainly true is that Russia is sending wave upon wave of men to their death against Ukrainian defences. All for very little gain. Russia lost more people in November than any month so far in this conflict, and any month during Afghanistan. The numbers are horrific. Putin has just ordered another round of drafting, and they were scraping the barrel last time.
Really? I was hearing the opposite all this while. PS: Slowly and very painfully, fuck, I wish there was an end to this war and we could return to status quo!
From where? There are multiple, reasonably reputable maps available that show the lines, and regardless of who the map makers support, they have to be accurate because of how easily they can be proven wrong if they make false claims.
Besides, much like Vietnam, or the many wars in Afghanistan, victory won't happen on the battlefield, it will happen when the invader finally gets tired of paying the price of war.
Indian media mainly, I haven't explored out of the Indian media bubble though.
Interesting. I know they've historically been close to Russia, I didn't realise they still had so much support.
India is absolutely leaning (hard) towards Russia. They probably never bought gas/oil and fertiliser so cheap.
I watch this channel for daily updates: https://youtube.com/@RFU
It obviously leans pretty heavily pro-Ukrainian, but it seems to do the daily updates accurately enough from the times I’ve double checked.
You might be stuck in an alt right algorithm.
Or possibly a tankie one
Tankie is to liberals as woke is to conservatives but y'all aren't ready for that conversation
Tankie seems more targeted then woke. Woke is everything left of Reagan sometimes.
Tankie is, at it's most general, anyone supporting authoritarian measures for "left" wing reasons.
As if. I seen someone call JT tankie in that famous Hasan clip.
It's literally just "you're to the left of me and I don't like it"
Jt does support statist solutions. I mean so do I so yeah he's not a tankie to me, but for some anarchy is the only acceptable end game.
Again it's not generally a "too left" thing, but "too authoritarian" thing.
🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦♂️🤦♀️
From euronews news bulletins I know Ukraine has crossed the dnipro and cleared a stable bridge head to get more troops to that russian occupied side. Also they said that nuklear reactor the russians occupied, near the front, is in danger again, because it has been cut off from electricity and had to run gasoline generators to cool it.
This shows ukraine is advancing slowly.
Could you point to where Ukraine is actually gaining ground. Last I checked, Russia gained more ground than Ukraine in the past six months.
South of Orikhiv: https://deepstatemap.live/en#9/47.5023/35.8704
South of the Dneipro River https://deepstatemap.live/en#9/46.6589/32.7036
South of Bakhmut https://deepstatemap.live/en#10/48.4939/37.9399
There's not a lot of recent movement from either side. The Russians are dug in, and the conditions are awful. Still, Russia are losing men at horrific rates, higher than at any point upto now.
If you look at liveuamap which is a pro western source, it's pretty clearly that Russia is on the offensive all across the front https://liveuamap.com/
Meanwhile, NYT has a helpful chart showing territorial changes over the summer https://archive.ph/U3BzJ
Russian army is currently routing Ukrainians in Avdiivka as we speak, and this a large city that had population over 30 thousand before the war. This also happens to be the part of Ukraine's only fortified line.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/whats-stake-russias-assault-avdiivka-2023-12-01/
That's weird, because the only actual western source that shows any methodology puts total Russian casualties at 38 thousand, meanwhile even western sources now admit that Ukrainian casualties are now at well over a 100 thousand
https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng
Oh and here's how things are going south of Dnieper https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67565508
Seems like things along the other parts of the front are going about the same https://archive.ph/2023.12.04-165309/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-stalled-russia-war-defenses/
Sounds like Ukraine is doing pretty great there.
Not hardly. Russian sources keep misreporting this battle. The coke plant is a great example: How many times has it been "taken"? Was capturing it once not enough? That kind of location doesn't switch hands on a whim, btw.
The troop movements by Russia into that city are horrendous. The sheer numbers of soldiers that get turned into paste while charging into useless locations already zeroed by artillery is just weird.
A proven fact of war is that attackers are always at a disadvantage. Troop losses will be generally be much higher for any side that goes on the offense. The number 38k is just mind boggling low for the length of time it takes for Russia to take a city, especially against western weapons.
If 38k losses for Russia were actually a thing, there would be no need to increase their army size. Medvedev stated that Russia was able to recruit an additional 420k soldiers. That number is probably only about 100k, because Russia has their own numbering system for a lot of things.
Wagner alone lost ~10k prisoner conscripts in Bakhmut. Depending on the weather, or whatever, Wagner existed, or they never existed. Those numbers don't count as Russians, I guess.
If you want a much better source of evil western fake data and propaganda, use the ISW. They also confirmed a NATO statement about Russia being at the 300k loss mark. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
Normally, I would say that 300k is likely over-inflated as well. However, just looking at how attacks are conducted by Russia makes that number believable.
Even Ukrainian sources admit this now. Given that Ukraine spent six month trying to take a place called Piatykhatky which literally translates into five huts, the fact that Russia is now close to taking a city that used to have 30k people before the war, and has been heavily fortified shows which side is making actual progress.
Ah yes, bazillion Russians killed, asiatic hordes, and orc meat wave tactics. We've heard all that. By this point Russia must've lost like a 100 million people already.
People keep regurgitating this, but that only applies to equal armies where the defender actually has weapons and troops to match. Russia massively outguns Ukraine, and vast majority of losses in this war are to artillery fire. If you actually wanted to understand what's going on, you could read this explanation from Mearsheimer that's well sourced.
The reality is that Russia enjoys roughly 10x artillery advantage over Ukraine, and that results in far greater casualties on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine has gone through three whole armies already, and they're now literally mobilizing children, women, and the elderly. Meanwhile, Russia has only done a single mobilization in this whole time.
38k number is total Russian losses since the start of the war.
ISW is not a reliable source by any stretch of imagination. It's Nuland's personal propaganda outlet. There is literally zero evidence for Russian losses being anywhere near 300k. BBC and Mediazona are the only western outlets that have a methodology they can show.
Assuming that everything we both are saying is false, the fact remains that Russia hasn't hardly been able to move the lines at all. You can flash that chart you want with land gains from 2023, but it doesn't really apply.
Russia is still an attacking force, they are still the invaders and they are locked in a slow stalemate with a much smaller force. Russia does have many more resources, so it must be their choice to have stretched this conflict out for as long as it has been going, for whatever reason. (Without a doubt, you have a long list of counter arguments and media links to the contrary. Even your boy Rybar doesn't align with what you are saying.)
I respect the work of Mediazona to a degree, but they are open about their inaccuracies. They appear to define "casualties" as only deaths. Of those deaths, they are only counting verified ones from social media, local news and from government sources that aren't named. If they aren't counting a casualty in the true definition of a "war casualty", the numbers are going to be different. (Their own estimates put true numbers of deaths around 55k in July which would put allow for a wider casualty estimate of around 165k casualties. You use the napkin math of 1:3, killed:removed from battle permanently)
And yeah, it's the Russian M.O. to use mass instead of quality. It's their thing. Little value is placed on a single soldier or even an artillery shell. That concept is baked into all of their military hardware designs and strategy.
Russia's goal hasn't been to move the lines. Their goal is to grind down Ukrainian army until it collapses. You don't have to take my word for it, this was the assessment of U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin retired after 20 years of service, including eight years as an armor officer with four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and 12 years working as a modeling and simulations officer in NATO and U.S. Army concept development and experimentation. This assessment is shared by vast majority of military experts:
https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine
That's a simplistic characterization. The reality is that both sides do their share of attacks. For example, if Russia takes a bit of territory then Ukraine is forced to try and take it back. Ukraine has also conducted a huge offensive over the past six months on a far bigger scale than anything Russia's done so far, and if attacking is what nets you a lot of losses then this would be the biggest source of casualties over the course of the war.
I don't really follow Rybar, I haven't found them to be all that reliable. People like Vershinin, Macgregor, Berletic, and Mearsheimer have been consistently decent at explaining what's happening, and what they've been predicting would happen actually aligns with what we're seeing. Telegram channels are simply not comparable to actual experts.
55k deaths with 165k wounded is certainly a plausible number in my opinion. However, even with these numbers, Russia clearly has no problems growing the size of the army. Meanwhile, Ukraine has a much smaller population to draw on, and many people fled the country at the start of the war making the situation worse. The fact that Ukraine keeps expanding the mobilization efforts is a strong indicator of serious losses.
Ukraine has three major problems. First is that it's entirely reliant on the west economically, and support is now dwindling. Second is that Ukraine is also reliant on the west for weapons and ammunition which are running out. Especially problematic given that the west is refocusing it's support to backing Israel's genocide in Palestine. Finally, Ukraine is running out of a trained and motivated soldiers needed to hold the army together. Once the professional core is gone, it can't simply be replaced by people kidnapped off the street and given a few weeks of training.
It's absolutely not their thing, and it's just another piece of western mythology. You should read a bit of actual history of WW2 to see this has no basis in reality.
As others have said, it's a war of attrition. There's no end in sight. As it stands, we can only speculate on who is winning. Russia have so far failed to make any significant gains, and Ukraine have so far failed to push the Russians out.
It's a bit like the stalemates of trench warfare in WW1. Something will have to give eventually.
Or, the fighting will eventually stop and the current status quo will remain permanent. It's hard to tell.
That's probably the only outcome that will never happen. Russia will re-attack again (as seen 2008, 2014, etc etc).
It's like the trenches of WWI combined with the forever wars the US fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Congratulations Russia, you've saddled yourself with a decades long conflict potentially and lost the geopolitical purpose of invading Ukraine within months since Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership.
Sweden and Finland were part of the EU defense clause. They were already defacto NATO members. Sweden even was constantly aggressive towards russia before the Ukraine war.
Now the Americans can openly build their bases. The welfare states of these two nations will certainly decline as well. The presence of american bases, curiously leads to the same economic policies each time.
Ukraine eventually would have invaded Russian lands under a pretense that Russia had attacked first.
Western media would have covered for this. How exactly could Russia have avoided this war of Western aggression?
Death is the winner of any war
Don't forget the defense contractors. People who make and sell weaponry and other war products are always the biggest winners.
Oh, they have nothing against the void. All of them will die.
True. Death is the great equalizer. Nobody gets out of this world alive. Lol
Astronauts might
Considering this is a war of attrition, "winning" such as it is doesn't look like conscripting every man, woman and child that can hold a gun to get blown up in trenches. They should have just negotiated a year ago.
And they were very close to doing just that until the west stepped in and told Ukraine to stop negotiating https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms
I wish it wasn't paywalled, I remember being hopeful something might happen but then Boris showed up- people still talk about it, just not always in english.
Bojo sabotaging the negotiations was a heinous crime against humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result and millions more had their lives ruined.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
just not always in english
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Britain has the geopolitical relevance of the North Sentinel island and Boris can't even control his hair not to mention a foreign nation. Even if he told Ukraine to not negotiate why would they listen?
Because Boris is just the messenger boy for the empire.
But why? The US has plenty of people to deliver a message like that that would actually be believable, like if Boris told another country that the US wants this or that it just would sound like he's lying. This whole thing sounds too convoluted and ridiculous to be true.
I mean that's what Ukrainian chief negotiator told us himself now, and this is what western media admits. UK has always acted as a running dog for the US, and I'm not sure why anybody would find the idea of Boris being the one to deliver the terms to Ukraine as a representative of NATO convoluted or ridiculous. Boris represents the country that's most closely aligned in US in Europe, this makes him the natural person to go and tell Ukraine what NATO and US want from them. You seem to be making this more complicated than it is.
the Capitalism
Ohh, cmon now! Seriously? You blame this on Capitalism?
The propaganda is strong against the Western system. There is an argument to be made that the origins of this conflict are in energy finds in the Black Sea. Ukraine is uniquely positioned to take advantage of access to the European and Asian markets. Competition in these sections would threaten oligarch monopolies. These energy monopolies are granted to the oligarchs by Putin himself and this is the entire basis of power in the Russian Federation.
This is simultaneously the reason for the conflict and why the oligarchs have been lock step the entire way.
It's this capitalism? Absolutely not.
Is it economic power? Absolutely so.
You probably shouldn't be getting your news from randos on the internet. Literally anyone can post here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iHrZRJR4igQ
I mean, this isn't a very important piece of news for me, so, I am just looking at the consensus here.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=iHrZRJR4igQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The media won't give you "an answer". Is a war like a board game where everyone can see the pieces and count the score according to the rules? What is Russia objective? Idk. Are they meeting it? Sure, to some degree. At what cost? We'll we only have a small sense of the costs.
Is Ukraine "winning"? Well they have lost so much but not everything. Are they meeting their objectives? We'll their state didn't fall. That's good.
And you just want some OP ED at NYT to just sum it up like it's a football game?
The capitalist class. War profiteers gonna war profiteer. The billions of dollars in funding, arming, and training nazis has also broken the overton window. It's gotten so bad that criticism received for giving a standing ovation to an ss veteran can be dismissed as Russian propaganda.
There's like twenty Hexbear dorks in this thread saying exactly the same thing, you're not a very original bunch.
Objective shitjustworks post calling out the military industrial complex
hexbear dork spreading kremlin misinformation by attacking the pro-democracy lethal aid suppliers
Hexbear user ranting about nazis, you mean.
I'd say the only ones winning are those selling stuff to Ukraine and Russia. I also remember a panel some months ago, about how the other EU countries will help rebuild Ukraine once the war is over. To me, it looked like they were already slicing the not even dead body in order to profit off it.
Ukraine as a whole is at a bigger loss, given all the infrastructure damage and population losses, this one counting both deaths and people fleeing the country.
How is rebuilding a country equivalent to slicing it up?
Slicing it up like slicing a cake. Dividing up the profits between themselves. Rebuilding a country doesn't happen for free you know. There's no depths to the debt the west can plunge Ukraine into over this war, unless we force Russia to pay. I hear they have lots of oil.
What a terrible analogy. It implies that "rebuilding" Ukraine will actually involve destroying it just because people are paid to do the work.
Ukraine will likely lack the money to pay for the work for decades, so they'll likely have to compromise with treaties and concessions beyond the reconstruction work. The more likely result will be a very weak government that'll have to concede to several wants of the companies working there, who will use their money to put political EU pressure on Ukraine.
You can only rebuild what has been damaged or destroyed and the companies that offered help see future profits going up with every building that crumbles. None of them are doing anything out of goodwill, they just see money to be made.
Russia should have had the conventional phase all finished in a couple months, so by that measure Ukraine. Russia has also lost territory the whole way past the battle of Kiev, so by that measure also Ukraine. Neither look set to win any time soon, so by that measure (which is probably the important one) it's a stalemate. The big variables now are Western support and Russian political stability as the conflict drags on. Neither side is close to running out of men.
The claims that Russia was winning the whole time come from basically the geopolitical version of flat earthers, who believe exactly the opposite of what everyone else does. Or actual Russian agents, but as far as I can tell that's rare.
It's considered a positional stalemate, and that is politically advantageous for Russia. Both parties have been able to set up considerable defensive positions, making progress extremely costly. Both parties are still fighting for progress nonetheless, where Russia has the most trouble achieving it and Ukrainian forces are making small gains (field by field) on a consistent basis. But knowing that the frontlinie is many miles deep and there is intense trench warfare to make a few yards progress... There will be no swift or decisive victory on either side.
Putin has most of his followers convinced that he is fighting nato backed nazis. So even when Russian war tactics are brutally inefficient and the losses in personell and equipment are enormous, there is little internal political backlash. Internationally the conflict is seen as a regional dispute. Since Ukraine isn't a part of a large international alliance. Western sanctions on Russia aren't as impact full as they could have been.
It's looking likely that the war in Ukraine is going to last a very long time. With guerilla attacks on Russian territory becoming more likely and higher in frequency. Russia doesn't have the equipment left for large scale invasions, doesn't have the money to create meaningful reserves. And the kremlin needs defensive power in other places along its border.
European and western sentiment is that Putin will not stop until the old ussr borders are back under his control. And being securely and unquestionably positioned as world superpower.
Well Ukraine itself is definitely losing. They will probably lose territory to Poland as well if this keeps up and they have sold their country out to capitalists, mostly Americans. Loans, land, industries, etc all to pay for "their" war effort. The common Ukrainian is who suffers the most under this. They will be more exploited (paid less for the value of their labor), see more social programs dismantled, and go into a serious recession/depression that may not lift for decades.
Russia is doing okay. The US is pulling Europe more into its orbit (making them pay more for less from the US while losing a lot of their industry), which is a loss for Russia, but that was the remand endgame of the US anyways. What was surprising, at least to some, was the extent to which Russia could survive and even thrive when subjected to the most significant financial weapons the West has. Overall their economy is certainly in a better place now and a chunk of Ukraine will be theirs and the other chunk will be weak. This is a victory for the ruling class of Russia and its overall geopolitical self-interest.
The US ruling class is making out like bandits as usual, funding its weapons industry, basically a cash injection for the owner class and the only thing the US ever reliably does (threaten its chosen enemies with destruction).
Sigh
No they won't. It was a fringe position in the Polish far-right before the election and now that the libs have won it's even less likely to happen.
The Polish far-right are a dominant political force.
And it’s under the relatively lib coalition that relations have reached their lowest point.
I think if Ukraine comes out of this with borders that roughly resemble the current front lines then they’ll keep Lviv but there’s a real possibility of political collapse in Ukraine, if things get worse and if the currently cooperating power centers turn on each other, and in that collapse scenario it becomes pretty plausible.
probably still less likely to happen than not but it’s definitely plausible and there are multiple plausible-to-likely pathways where you can see the political situation in Ukraine deteriorating to the point of collapse.
I don’t think I buy the current Russian narrative that the military camp are about to coup Zelenskyy but he’s definitely under enormous pressure right now, and even if a coup likely isn’t about to happen you can nonetheless see Zelenskyy and the military camp making political defense lines between each other, and the number of high level aides, spouses, and the like opening boxes that accidentally contained a grenade or suffered an unfortunate food poisoning incident is pretty eyebrow raising.
Also Russia is totally cooking the books/cozying up to China as the lesser power in the relationship
Sorry, but we really weren't interested in hearing about the warped worldview of tankies in this thread.
I’ve been following along daily, have an army background so take from that what you will.
I think Russia is winning the war, strategically. They are losing a small amount of ground, but there’s no breakthrough and every day that goes by in the current state is a day closer to a fragile peace deal that secures Russia’s winnings. I think anything beyond Krim is just buffer zone. This is fundamentally about securing access to ocean - Russia is extremely constricted in getting its navy to sea.
With a frozen war Ukraine won’t be admitted to NATO - in that way, I think Russia is content to have a frozen conflict, because it creates a weak buffer state between Russia and NATO.
So in terms of securing its desired outcomes, Russia is winning.
Tbf the guy that said arms dealers is 100% correct.
My opinion is that Ukraine has a light-moderate advantage right now.
It mainly comes down to American and EU politics. If both aid packages pass, then Ukraine is in a good position to build up over the winter and continue slowly pushing to cut off Crimea, which is the biggest prize. Steadily growing air power is going to make a significant difference, we already saw recently how helpful Russia's re-emerging air power was in grinding down the push across the Dnieper.
As an American I'm fairly confident our aid package will eventually pass. Tying it to Israeli aid is a punch below-the-belt, the repubs can't back away from that. They're in negotiations currently, probably stalling. Israel could really use that aid though...
My understanding of the EU aid is Hungary is being a pain, but there's other tricks available in a big bureaucracy, so we'll see. Maybe a European can fill that part in better.
Militarily the Russians are slowly and steadily pushing in the east. There's nothing terribly important over there, but land is land, towns are towns. Their troop losses are high but they also have a high intake supposedly, so it's possible they can keep this up for awhile. War materiel is continuously exhausting though, people may have noticed they are not shooting nearly as much artillery as they were in the initial parts of the war. But, you don't actually need tanks and heavy equipment and shit per se, so, it's a grinder. Their war support is starting to crack, but is still strong. They might have more mines than Ukraine does Ukrainians, so that's annoying too.
The Ukrainians are digging in. Or at least that's how it seems, they can be a little tricksey sometimes. They're still ramping up though, building more forces. They have plenty of will and soldiers and grain, but need more money and materiel. The capture of the Russian side of the Dnieper was impressive though, that probably shouldn't have happened. If they get the resources, they can probably win.
Oh, and the railroad between China and Russia blew up. No idea how that might've happened... Was the only one though.
It's not a stalemate, but it's close. Ukraine keeps gaining ground, but it's essentially ww1 style trench warfare.
Russia has reportedly been losing as much as 900 soldiers per day which is staggering.
The Russians mined everything like crazy when retreating so and forward progress is going to be quite measured.
Russia has gained more ground during Ukraine's offensive than Ukraine did. Even western media admits this.
The arm industry and drone makers
From what I've heard, Ukraine is very slowly taking back strategic locations. At the moment, they're better equipped than the invaders, but that could change if Russia secures a weapons deal with China or NK. Ukraine also has a wide support (monetary, humanitarian, and military) from western nations. Ukraine has the advantage in the quality of their warfare, Russia in the quantity of meat sacks they can throw at the front.
In my opinion, even if Russia somehow occupies all of Ukraine (which I find unlikely), they will be a pariah nation for many decades. A significant part of their economy is energy export (fossil and nuclear) and the EU is already trying to separate itself from that energy dependence.
that's not what's happening at all, and even western media now openly admits that Ukraine is losing
Ukraine burnt through all the equipment that the west managed to scrounge up for the offensive, and lost most of its experienced and motivated troops in the process. Now, their front is collapsing because they lack weapons and soldiers. Even Stoltenberg is finally admitting this.
You sad sacks really are desperate for red team to win, aren't you? You've been saying this for over a year.
Russia. It's a war of attrition and Russia has the manpower and industrial capacity
the west didn't misread the situatiom because the west doesn't care about Ukraine they just wanted to kill people
No. The West failed to provide Ukraine with sufficient military resources. While the monetary value of military aid may seem substantial when compared to your bank account, the reality is that Russia possesses greater resources and capabilities.
I am kinda split on the issue. I am ok with Ukraine getting more resources as it makes sense for the west to make Ukraine fight their own battles, but at the same time, I really wish there was a ceasefire to the fighting.
A ceasefire was established after the 2014 invasion, but now we find ourselves in the midst of a full-scale invasion. This underscores the significance of ensuring Putin's military and political defeat. It is crucial to send a clear message to China (and other potential aggressors) that invading Taiwan would be bad for them. The modern world is intricately interconnected and highly complex, there are no simple solutions to its problems. Unfortunately, many people struggle to accept this reality, leading to the rise of populists.
Putin would love a ceasefire. So that he can restructure for the next attack.
It's mostly a war of attrition now, whoever can hold the stalemate longer than the other before everything unravels will win.
I don't think either side will be able to decisively beat the other, but that's not how these things usually end anyway.
Actually, I think it's pretty funny in a sad sort of way that Americans don't get how this is going to go. It's really obvious that Ukraine doesn't need to win, they just need to keep fighting until Russia goes home. Western aid isn't even really making much of a difference in the eventual outcome of the war, it's just reducing the damage that Russia is doing to Ukraine and bring that inevitable end closer faster. We've seen over, and over, and over again that once a group of people actually make up their minds to resist, there is nothing that can stop them. Even if the aggressor can bring overwhelming military superiority they will eventually give up and go home, and Russia can't even do that.
The question isn't who will win. The question is how many war crimes will Putin commit before admitting he lost this war in the second week.
It's stalemate at the moment. It's a waiting game for Western support of Ukraine to drop or for something domestically in Russia to fail.
Seems like a stalemate at the moment but it could really go either way from what I can tell. It depends upon if the west will lose interest and cut back on support or if public opinion in Russia wanes towards wanting an end to the war. At the moment it seems neither side is willing to accept the current status quo.
me
Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin shareholders. BAE and Rheinmetall investors are probably doing well, too.
I tend to think as well that the situation in Ukraine is currently a stalemate. The fact is that, while Russia is losing weapons, Ukraine is gaining them. There's also a different quality of life for Western weapons compared to the Russian ones because, well, that's something that the West actually cared for back in the Cold War days. USSR and its satellites only cared about meeting the 5-year quota, or whatever they cared for in order to show the West they were more industrialized and whatnot. Western weapons are also more accurate and tends to integrate more hi-tech inside, so that you can use them for one-strike-one-kill instead of carpet bombing large swaths of land until nothing moves there. This is why, e.g. you have Grad systems with around 42 projectiles or so, all usually being fired in chain, while on HIMARS you only have a maximum of 6 projectiles, which are usually fired individually.
All this now proves vital for Ukraine, as it has to fight a country with a larger manpower, a larger (pre-war at least) stock of vehicles and a larger stock of ammunition. Ukraine, however, did not manage to become a powerful force on the counter-offensive. It does a great job at hardening Russian attacks, causing incredible amounts of damage for every inch of land lost, but the required weaponry for a successful breakthrough has been in short supply. Besides that, what Ukraine initially planned to do was to do a combined arms attack. And you cannot do this without a good amount of air support - which Ukraine was and is currently lacking.
IMO, it remains to be seen what will happen when Ukraine will finally start to operate F-16 jets (among other equipment it started to build in-house like drones), but as of now, on the equipment and fighting side, Ukraine is currently winning. On the loss side, while Russia loses more people and equipment than Ukraine, I'm afraid the numbers are proportionally the same for both sides. This is why I see it as heading to a stalemate in the foreseeable future. But Russia can no longer win what it initially planned, it is constantly changing the objectives in order to show the world that it achieved something, and Ukraine simply cannot lose. Russia's only advantage right now is being on the offensive itself.
Where are you hearing that? I have not heard that Russia is taking a pounding and so is Ukraine.
Right now, it's a stalemate.
It is a war of attrition at this point and if it drags out long enough, Russia wins because they have more people to throw at the war.
I do not think the F-16 is going to make a large difference in the war. People who never served are the ones thinking it'll change the war.
The question is how long can the Russian soldiers hold out? I do believe once Ukraine breaks through the lines will collapse quickly but they've yet to break through.
I do think NATO has done a disservice in training the Ukrainian military to fight a combined arms fight but then not supplying them with the weapons to fight a combined arms fight.
I personally think Ukraine will win but it is going to be a long fight.
Seems Russia is slowly grinding out Ukraine and if Russia decides to give up at any point or Ukraine negotiates then russia will probably have gained territory.
I'm not qualified to speak on this. It is however my opinion that in war, nobody wins, but military suppliers make bank.
To answer "who's winning" can vary based on what "winning" is looks like, or what the goals were. As others have pointed out those goals have changed over time.
For a play by play recap I listen to Denys Davydov... He seems upfront about both Ukranian and Russian victories in his analysis based on various video, image and map reports, even if he supports the Ukraine side.
While Denys can often provide good coverage on Ukraine, I suggest avoiding him, as at the outbreak of the situation in Gaza and Israel, he shared many videos of Palestinian kids and women running from artillery under the captions like "watch how the roaches scatter".
Well you pose a fair point, but you can also ignore him for matters outside of Ukraine.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Denys Davydov
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The war is largely in a stalemate at the moment. Odds are, if this continues for years longer, Russia will eventually win just by virtue of having more people to send to die for the country, but if it comes to that, Russia will suffer far moreso than they already are, both due to increased strikes within Russia and just loosing the majority of their working population.
Well Russia holds a good amount of Ukrainian land. The fighting is essentially a stalemate. Russia may have "won" that land.
No one may win any more sizable land moves. For future fighting we'll have to see. Ukraine relies on Western support because Russia is a bigger economy and bigger population. We'll have to see how Western support continues and how the Russian economy proceeds with sanctions.
The whole stalemate narrative is pure nonsense. Russia has a much bigger army at this point and its military production is outpacing what the west is able to provide by a wide margin. Ukraine is now conscripting children, women, and the elderly because they lost most of their existing army over the past six months trying to break through Russian defences. Russia is now on the offensive all across the front and rapidly taking territory already. Now that the mud season is over, it's almost certain that we'll see a big offensive against a depleted and demoralized army. Hence why Stoltenberg is now saying to expect bad news from Ukraine https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-boss-jens-stoltenberg-warns-of-bad-news-from-ukraine/
Your link does not carry the tone you had.
If you still don't understand why Stoltenberg says to prepare for bad news you will soon.
"also" and "prepare" in the context of the article sounds very much like prepare for anything, good or bad. Not the tone you had, It may come to pass, it may not, it may go back and forth (you know, phases). The absolute certainty with which you speak is not presented in your link. (Is this where you spam links? Well, cheers.)
I mean if you just expect Stoltenberg to just come out and say Ukraine lost after him prancing for a year and a half telling us how Ukraine is wining, don't know what else to tell you. Seems that some people aren't capable of critical thought and can't accept reality until it hits them in the face. cheers.
War is never pretty, never fun not clean. Everyone involved ultimately loses and brings tragedy to the unfortunate lifes and families on both sides.
However, if we are speaking purely about "winning" as if it was a game, then the Ukraine certainly is beating Russia and winning. However a victory in a war might not mean that the people of the country won't be devastated afterwards.
Frankly, we don't really know yet because we can't predict what either side will do, or what concerns/problems are boiling away under the surface.
What's important about real world events is that they are not like a board or video game. In a video game it doesn't matter if you flawlessly KO your opponent or win by the tiniest sliver of health, a win is a win.
In the real world though the resources and lives poured into conflicts like these can very well be used for something more productive. At any moment russia could swallow their pride and pull out, but they could also fight to the last man to never admit defeat.
Additionally the methods of victory differ between Ukraine and her allies (the west).
The US and Europe want a swift victory to garner support from voters. So they push Ukraine to do risky offensives and maneuvers.
Ukraine on the other hand wants to play its cards very carefully. Right now they recognize for every Ukrainian casualty, there are multiple Russian casualties. They want to maintain that postive ratio and do not want risky or loss heavy offensives. You can see this mindset at work in Bahkmut. The west wanted Ukraine to pull out of Bahkmut immediately but Ukraine recognized the extremely favorable casualty ratios, with many Russian casualties for each Ukrainian which is why they held on so stubbornly. It wasn't to hold Bahkmut, it was to grind down the Russian force.
My thumbs are dying so I'll direct you to a very accurate and detailed source of info on the conflict. Check out William spaniel on YouTube, he is an author and has many videos on the conflict, outlining the goals and problems on each side.
At the moment Ukraine is winning.
When Trump is crowned GEOTUS, after the Repubs win 2024 ( the economic rug-pull in 2024 will remove the Dems, through backlash-vote ) then the tide will turn, as the gutted remains of NATO/OTAN try to understand how to endure as the TOTAL global geopolitcs table got thrown, violently, on its side, scattering all the playing-pieces, all the indicators, EVERYthing gets flipped, then.
GEOTUS Trump will back Russia & Saudi Arabia, both.
Possibly China, as well ( he does have investments in China ).
The remains of the Western-cultures' alliance are then on their own.
US Civil War Part2 will probably destroy about a quarter billion lives in North America within 14y,
and ww3 begins a mere 7y after Trump's crowning ( +/- 1 year ).
Things are going to be VERY tough in Eastern Europe, with the US pouring its support into exterminating the former Soviet Bloc countries who oppose Putin/Russia, with the US backing Russia.
Wait & see.
It's going to be hell, on Earth, for almost-all of this century.
The drastically quicker-than-simulated sea-level-rise isn't going to help, particularly since Greenland's meltwater will drown the North Atlantic coasts ( it takes 1000 years for it to redistribute to near Australia. The 1st few centuries it'll be predominantly drowning the West ), and when you add enough water to raise the PLANET's sea-level by 1 metre, but you put it ALL in the North Atlantic...
it may well be 3m around the North Atlantic, this century.
( there is a powerlaw underlying planetary heating, current atmospheric CO2 requires the planet to equilize at more than +5C.
When you add-in the anthrogenic methane, as CO2 equivalent, the planetary equalization temperature is more than +8C.
All the "+1.5C" and "+2C" are baseless delusions, contradicted by historical data of the last couple million years. )
Anyways, eyes-open, calibrate, prepare, & earn making oneself competent for what is guaranteed to come, right?
_ /\ _
This is exhibit "A" of how the U.S. fights it's proxy wars.
They could provide enough support to kick the shit out of Russia.
But, the World politics doesn't fit that twisted & ridiculous narrative.
I'm not a conspiracy type. However, it makes ZERO sense to me that the U.S. hasn't provided everything possible to push Russia out.
IMO: actual full U.S. support pushing the limits of "war", would end this insanity in short order.
Israel
China
Venezuela getting prepared to invade one of its neighbors.
Couple of nations in Africa are getting ready to go to war too, I forget what the name of it was, Uganda? They're wanting to get a path to the ocean.
The United States needs to be ready not only to fight in Ukraine, but also about four other places in the world right now. I'm in full support of giving them everything possible, but there's a lot of valid reason not to go full of ham.
I believe you are thinking of Ethiopia going to war with Eritrea. Eritrea recently gained independence from Ethiopia and now the Ethiopians want a sea port again. Watch that turn into an Iran vs USA proxy war too.
Of course there are global crisis at any given time.
But, seriously, Russia has been the top antagonist for more than 70 years. The U.S. should be bashing the shit out of them.
I've been following Professor Phillips Obrien for analysis on this subject, and he largely shares your opinion.
He thinks that if the US really wanted Ukraine to win the administration would have been providing much more long-range weapons, and that they still could. Ukraine can still win, but it depends on their allies actually helping them do that.
It's bizarre & frustrating. It's crystal clear that NATO countries or EU countries could provide the support to help Ukraine kick the shit out of Russia.
My brain hurts wondering why it hasn't happen. This shit really makes me believe in some type of stupid crap like Illuminati 😉
Compare with the level of support israel has got. You can be certain people in Ukraine are.
Didn't see you reply but typed something very similar. We train the Ukraine army for combined arm warfare then we don't supply them the combined arms. It's like we want it to drag out.
Lots of idiots in this thread. The barbaric eastern threat will be dealt with.
To add to what a lot of people said, it seems that Ukraine is doing better, but Russia has more people / convicts / anti-fascists to (arrest then) throw at the other side. When the support for Ukraine dries up is a key question too.
if by "doing better" you mean conscripting women and children then yeah, ukraine is kicking ass
I don't think Russia has any chance of winning. The only reason Russians are still in Ukraine is because the west is too pussy to ship the real guns.
This makes you wonder whether people benefit from this or its trully a valid strategy not to bug squash the bully cause they might go mental.
Either way, the war doesn't have to end through military or peace agreements. Russian economy seems to be ending first. As grim as that sounds but maybe that'll get Russians caring.
Given that it is essentially a proxy war between the US and Russia, its quite possible the war could end without either side actually "winning".
Obviously the US will continue to support the war for as long as possible, and if that means turning ukraine to ash and destroying the economies of western europe, well that is a price they are willing to pay.
There are still shortages in Russia and if the gas and electricty shortages continue through winter that could be devastating in Russia. It wouldn't take that much to tip the country into chaos, what the response of the Russian govt to Ukraine would be - possibly using their really large missiles that can wipe out a whole village - is completely unknown.
We don''t really understand the mentality of the Ukraine govt. The fact that many western weapons seem to go missing before they reach the front and the coincidence of the Azerbaijan getting a pile of muntions just after deliveries to Ukraine may indicate that the aims of the Ukraine govt may not totally align with those of western europe.
Or it might indicate that you‘re somewhat gullible and consume too much propaganda.
Real answer: Who cares. Since when did your life ever improve because the results of a war?
EDIT: Saying the quiet part out loud. Wars were never for your own comfort, only for your enemy's blood.
You think it's only about improving life?
If the incentive structure is such that it incentivizes nations invading other sovereign nations, there can be no peace.