Ukraine--Winning? Losing? Stalemate?
It has been a while since we have had a thread on Ukraine.
It seems like it is still hanging in there, but from here it seems like a stalemate. The Russians do not seem to be gaining ground, but neither are the Ukrainians. Russians seem to like to use missiles to cause civilian terror. Ukrainians seem to hit mostly military targets. Ukrainians have developed some very sophisticated drones and missiles. Russians are still relying on imports.
In the US we are being told Russians are getting tired of the war. Ukrainians are seemingly just as weary.
Some Russian drones seem to have wondered into Poland and Romania who shoot them down.
Now there are reports Putin wants to commit 500,000 more men. Where is he going to get them?
I would like to hear what other people are thinking about this war.
It seems like it is still hanging in there, but from here it seems like a stalemate. The Russians do not seem to be gaining ground, but neither are the Ukrainians. Russians seem to like to use missiles to cause civilian terror. Ukrainians seem to hit mostly military targets. Ukrainians have developed some very sophisticated drones and missiles. Russians are still relying on imports.
In the US we are being told Russians are getting tired of the war. Ukrainians are seemingly just as weary.
Some Russian drones seem to have wondered into Poland and Romania who shoot them down.
Now there are reports Putin wants to commit 500,000 more men. Where is he going to get them?
I would like to hear what other people are thinking about this war.
Comments
I suppose Zelenskyy may lose power to some settle at any cost group.
But either way, without leadership change, this seems destined to drag on.
I don’t want Zelenskyy to lose power but it depends on the quality and reliability of military support he continues to receive.
They haven't ceded Crimea, as far as I'm aware.
I suspect we're in a certain amount of fog-of-war. I think it's likely that the apparent stalemate will continue until one side rapidly collapses. I don't think we have enough verifiable information to say which side that will be.
What this means as regards what happens next, I am not qualified to judge.
All this info comes from reading 'Arrse' - a UK military site once mentioned by the late lamented (as far as the Ship goes) @betjemaniac .
The desperate sadness is the continuous loss of lives in pursuit of old men's vainglory. But 'twas ever thus.
Add the nature of proxy war by the West in support of Ukraine; ditto China\ N Korea for Russia.
And the respective cultural tolerance levels. Russia has long and deep visceral coping mechanisms for suffering - both it's own and others'. The West, not so much.
Me - I can only mourn and pray for the lost on both (all) sides... Whilst hoping the cities of Europe that have burned before may yet not burn again (pace Billy Bragg).
Some of the diesel sold in the UK may even have originated in Russia?
And Wimbledon allows Russian tennis players to compete -I think because if they didn't allow them then the players' points wouldn't count towards world ranking.
Russia has powerful friends.
But, of course, as I've frequently repeated in war no one wins - the best you can hope for is to not lose as badly as the other side.
Sadly, that the West has an interest in a global economic order where countries don't invade other countries is not something understood by the current US government (hawks or isolationists).
It's hard to see how that's true for Ukraine, unless you're arguing that annexation by Russia is better than the ongoing war?
There have been people who from the beginning have promoted support for
Ukraine as a cheap way of destroying Russian military capability and getting Russia involved in a Iraq/Afghanistan style quagmire. Whether they actually believe these arguments themselves or are making what they feel to be a pragmatic appeal is somewhat besides the point.
Europe on the other hand desperately wants to uphold the post-1945 political settlement and is terrified of legitimizing border changes by force and returning to something like the 1938-39 period. They want Russia defeated and the pre-2014 borders preserved to deter anyone else from pursuing such ideas ever again.
Russia, specially the Russian government is a prisoner of dreams of empire, the sunk cost fallacy and a chronic inability to separate Russia's history and identity from that of the Soviet Union, Russia was not the Soviet Union,
In a very real sense it was. The Russian Federation is the internationally recognised successor state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was itself (eventually) the internationally recognised successor state of the Russian Empire. The Okhrana became the Cheka became the NKVD became the KGB became the FSB.