The greatest scam

Russia has made a catastrophic mistake. Most military analysts believe it is slowly running out of capacity to sustain the war effort in the Donbas and south of Ukraine, and its main hope now is that Western allies will grow tired of supporting Ukraine before Russian forces collapse. The West has made it clear it will commit no troops but will provide weaponry. That weaponry is turning the tide in the war.

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Interested in the sources for this, which isn't western legacy media. I'm trying to find an objective piece as possible on this war (which is a very difficult task).

However it seems to me that Russia after some initial mistakes have been building steady from the East and taking Luhansk last week (though it actually fell weeks before really) shows this. If/when Russia takes Odesa (which would be the equivilent of taking Liverpool to those who don't know much about Ukraine cities) then Russia basically owns Ukraine's most important industries. The rest is on par with a third world country.

I do actually believe Putin when he says "Russia is just getting started". As it stands these 'unsustainable losses' and such seem quite sustained.

Again would have no problems in being proven wrong, but that's the way it seems to me.

comment by BraveheartTyke (U6173)
posted 16 minutes ago
Russia has made a catastrophic mistake. Most military analysts believe it is slowly running out of capacity to sustain the war effort in the Donbas and south of Ukraine, and its main hope now is that Western allies will grow tired of supporting Ukraine before Russian forces collapse. The West has made it clear it will commit no troops but will provide weaponry. That weaponry is turning the tide in the war.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Interested in the sources for this, which isn't western legacy media. I'm trying to find an objective piece as possible on this war (which is a very difficult task).

However it seems to me that Russia after some initial mistakes have been building steady from the East and taking Luhansk last week (though it actually fell weeks before really) shows this. If/when Russia takes Odesa (which would be the equivilent of taking Liverpool to those who don't know much about Ukraine cities) then Russia basically owns Ukraine's most important industries. The rest is on par with a third world country.

I do actually believe Putin when he says "Russia is just getting started". As it stands these 'unsustainable losses' and such seem quite sustained.

Again would have no problems in being proven wrong, but that's the way it seems to me.
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Good questions. I'm going by the sober voices I'm following (who weren't gung-hu after the early Russian defeats). Russian creeping progress in the east has been based on blasting the crap out of civilian and military targets. Its stockpiles of artillery are the one area where they have a clear advantage. However, Russia has challenges with ability to deploy well trained and motivated troops. It is still unwilling to go for full mobilisation back home, because of the political blowback if kids from Moscow and St Petersburg start coming back in bodybags. So far they are only sending hicks from dirt-poor provinces. It's also hard to equip and train new recruits, because (as we've seen) quantity and quality of supplies have been seriously eroded by decades of endemic corruption, and military culture is broken. Ukraine has better trained and motivated troops, large reserves to call up, and now increasingly powerful and sophisticated weaponry finally coming on tap. Russian supply lines and weapons dumps are increasingly vulnerable.

I've seen the prognoses ebb and flow over the last few months. At the moment more people are talking about Ukraine retaking land, who were speaking more guardedly or even pessimistically a month ago. Not even the most pessimistic consider Odessa to be at risk.

Of course, the tide might turn again and experts have been proved very wrong about plenty of things, and I certainly am no expert. But that's how it looks to me at the moment.

I've heard estimates of 30,000 russian troops killed in Ukraine compared to 10,000 for the 10 years they occupied Afghanistan. Military equipment and ammunition is depleted and Putin is likely to halt operations and regroup once they've gained total control of the Donbass region.

comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by manusince52 (U9692)
posted 51 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 33 minutes ago
Super-rich Brits are famously very humble and considerate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't mean to offend you RR. Given your background I'm sure I would feel the same.
It isn't 'right or wrong' to dislike an enemy, as per the Germans in WW2. Were they all bad? of course not, but the enemy was Germany, you can't just seoarate the bad ones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

52, you didn't offend me at all! I was responding to another comment (which also didn't offend me) when I wrote the above.

My personal experience is that people from all over the world are basically wired the same way, and then to varying degrees conditioned by the cultures they live in. The prevailing discourse in Russia at present is a very troubling - promoting narrow-minded, mean-spirited bigotry and xenophobia - which of course underpins atrocities committed by some Russians in Ukraine, as well as ugly attitudes and moral blind spots across a wide swathe of the general population. My close friends in Russia resist this kind of thinking.

But I also know that there are people I knew (and tens of millions like them) who are infected by the propaganda while basically being decent people. I'm sure we all know people of our own nationality who hold certain views we find abhorrent but are also personally open and kind. And there have been times when pretty nasty ideas have prevailed (and driven policy, including wars) here in the UK.

So I would stop short of calling Russians (in general) our enemy, but I guess it's mainly semantics. I think we'd agree that the country is sick, and that it needs to be both defeated and healed.
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as someone of Russian background, you obviously know how important Ukraine is to Russia
Ukraine is meaningless to Western Europeans

You must also know Putin will not let the West defeat Russia over Ukraine
If pushed too far he will use nukes

I wonder then why you say Russia needs to be defeated ?

If it seems like that will happen, nuclear war will follow

Is Ukraine worth risking nuclear annihilation over ?
answer, no !!


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, what a complete load of nonsense.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 1 hour, 32 minutes ago
Peks, your comments indicate both a superficial knowledge of Putin's Russia, its ideologies and modus operandi, and a total disinterest in the rights of citizens in smaller countries to freedoms and self-determination.

Putin has explicitly spoken about Russia having a right to rule over all of the states that were once part of the Russian empire and Soviet Union. The Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia. Belarus is already effectively a client state of Russia. The citizens of Ukraine, including those of predominantly Russian speaking areas, overwhelming consider themselves Ukrainians and wish to live within their own Ukrainian state. They are pro-Western in the sense that they aspire to exercise democratic control over the way their country is run, rather than begin subject to a brutal and corrupt oligarchy. Meanwhile, Russian invaders have systematically deconstructed the elements of Ukrainian identity, showing murderous contempt for the people they have 'liberated' through destruction of monuments, Ukrainian language books, museums, in addition to the indiscriminate shelling and execution of civilians, abduction of tens of thousands of children, and deliberate destruction of grain that would feed millions. It is explicitly - in the words of Putin himself - an imperial venture, around which Russian politicians and media have been using the most extreme dehumanising and genocidal language in relation to the Ukrainian people.

Those who study Putin and his system of government most closely still describe his actions as rational, i.e. making decisions aimed at certain objectives based on an understanding of facts. The objectives are of course morally unhinged and the factual basis deeply flawed by wrong assumptions about the weakness of support for the Ukrainian state on the part of its people. But basically Putin has been doing things that he thought would work out. He hasn't been pursuing a course of action that he thought would ultimately harm him or destroy Russia. It's very questionable that he would embark on a nuclear war that would destroy everything he has, rather than manage defeat in the best way possible and use his total control of domestic power structures to describe the de-Nazification of Ukraine as a success and the mission complete.

Russia has made a catastrophic mistake. Most military analysts believe it is slowly running out of capacity to sustain the war effort in the Donbas and south of Ukraine, and its main hope now is that Western allies will grow tired of supporting Ukraine before Russian forces collapse. The West has made it clear it will commit no troops but will provide weaponry. That weaponry is turning the tide in the war.

"I wonder then why you say Russia needs to be defeated?" Russia must be defeated because its occupation of Ukraine is enslaving and murdering people over a vast area. It must be defeated because it is a fascist state waging a war of genocidal aggression. It must be defeated, because decent Russians can't hope for a better future while living under a fascist state, and while failure in Ukraine will not collapse the state, it will weaken the hold of fascist discourse.

If you're comfortable with the alternative, which is actively facilitating Russian takeover of territory home to millions of Ukrainians, then please be honest about the fact that a thousand repetitions of Bucha is a price you're ready to pay.
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I don't know whether to say Hurrah or bravo. I do not have your knowledge or background RR, but if what I read is true, then Putin has to be stopped. He does not have a smidgen of right to Ukraine.
Now, I am an old chap getting news and opinion from
The BBC, the guardian, the new york times, and le monde.
Plus more importantly RR, who has lived there.
Naturally I don't want a global confrontation, but monsieur Putin cannot be allowed to win. Or else catastrophe.

comment by Terminator1 (U1863)
posted 19 minutes ago
comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by manusince52 (U9692)
posted 51 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 33 minutes ago
Super-rich Brits are famously very humble and considerate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't mean to offend you RR. Given your background I'm sure I would feel the same.
It isn't 'right or wrong' to dislike an enemy, as per the Germans in WW2. Were they all bad? of course not, but the enemy was Germany, you can't just seoarate the bad ones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

52, you didn't offend me at all! I was responding to another comment (which also didn't offend me) when I wrote the above.

My personal experience is that people from all over the world are basically wired the same way, and then to varying degrees conditioned by the cultures they live in. The prevailing discourse in Russia at present is a very troubling - promoting narrow-minded, mean-spirited bigotry and xenophobia - which of course underpins atrocities committed by some Russians in Ukraine, as well as ugly attitudes and moral blind spots across a wide swathe of the general population. My close friends in Russia resist this kind of thinking.

But I also know that there are people I knew (and tens of millions like them) who are infected by the propaganda while basically being decent people. I'm sure we all know people of our own nationality who hold certain views we find abhorrent but are also personally open and kind. And there have been times when pretty nasty ideas have prevailed (and driven policy, including wars) here in the UK.

So I would stop short of calling Russians (in general) our enemy, but I guess it's mainly semantics. I think we'd agree that the country is sick, and that it needs to be both defeated and healed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
as someone of Russian background, you obviously know how important Ukraine is to Russia
Ukraine is meaningless to Western Europeans

You must also know Putin will not let the West defeat Russia over Ukraine
If pushed too far he will use nukes

I wonder then why you say Russia needs to be defeated ?

If it seems like that will happen, nuclear war will follow

Is Ukraine worth risking nuclear annihilation over ?
answer, no !!


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, what a complete load of nonsense.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Which part?

comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 3 hours, 41 minutes ago
you anglos are the biggest, most hypocritical priicks on the face of the planet...no offence
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dazza, you may have a point

comment by Shinjury list (U1700)
posted 6 seconds ago
comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 3 hours, 41 minutes ago
you anglos are the biggest, most hypocritical priicks on the face of the planet...no offence
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dazza, you may have a point
----------------------------------------------------------------------
He sed “no offence” tbf

as someone of Russian background, you obviously know how important Ukraine is to Russia
Ukraine is meaningless to Western Europeans

You must also know Putin will not let the West defeat Russia over Ukraine
If pushed too far he will use nukes

I wonder then why you say Russia needs to be defeated ?

If it seems like that will happen, nuclear war will follow

Is Ukraine worth risking nuclear annihilation over ?
answer, no !!


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, what a complete load of nonsense.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Which part?
—————————
All of the above. Nuclear war, annihilation? Not a chance.

comment by Terminator1 (U1863)
posted 15 hours, 36 minutes ago
comment by peks - 1974 (U6618)
posted 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by manusince52 (U9692)
posted 51 minutes ago
comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 33 minutes ago
Super-rich Brits are famously very humble and considerate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't mean to offend you RR. Given your background I'm sure I would feel the same.
It isn't 'right or wrong' to dislike an enemy, as per the Germans in WW2. Were they all bad? of course not, but the enemy was Germany, you can't just seoarate the bad ones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

52, you didn't offend me at all! I was responding to another comment (which also didn't offend me) when I wrote the above.

My personal experience is that people from all over the world are basically wired the same way, and then to varying degrees conditioned by the cultures they live in. The prevailing discourse in Russia at present is a very troubling - promoting narrow-minded, mean-spirited bigotry and xenophobia - which of course underpins atrocities committed by some Russians in Ukraine, as well as ugly attitudes and moral blind spots across a wide swathe of the general population. My close friends in Russia resist this kind of thinking.

But I also know that there are people I knew (and tens of millions like them) who are infected by the propaganda while basically being decent people. I'm sure we all know people of our own nationality who hold certain views we find abhorrent but are also personally open and kind. And there have been times when pretty nasty ideas have prevailed (and driven policy, including wars) here in the UK.

So I would stop short of calling Russians (in general) our enemy, but I guess it's mainly semantics. I think we'd agree that the country is sick, and that it needs to be both defeated and healed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
as someone of Russian background, you obviously know how important Ukraine is to Russia
Ukraine is meaningless to Western Europeans

You must also know Putin will not let the West defeat Russia over Ukraine
If pushed too far he will use nukes

I wonder then why you say Russia needs to be defeated ?

If it seems like that will happen, nuclear war will follow

Is Ukraine worth risking nuclear annihilation over ?
answer, no !!


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, what a complete load of nonsense.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Term, meet peks.

This is a guy who openly and unapologetically admitted he was drawn to the idea of ethno-statehood.