(April 22, 2024 at 3:48 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(April 22, 2024 at 1:18 pm)ShinyCrystals Wrote: Speaking of Russia, may I ask how they are doing in this war?

In a nutshell, badly. After taking Avdiivka over the winter at enormous cost, they are now fought to a standstill while still suffering several hundred casualties per day. They're combing out prisons, tricking foreigners, and denuding other borders in order to maintain sufficient manpower in Ukraine. They have numerous logistical issues ranging from being mostly tied to railroads to having Crimea close to being cut off, supply-wise.

Meanwhile, they have to stay on the offensive  because they're in a race against time with the arrival of the aid recently approved in Congress and about to be approved by the EU.

I would suggest they're already in the middle of a "loud and humiliating fiasco".

Tired of people bitching about the cost of supporting Ukraine in this war. They can’t seem to grasp that not supporting Ukraine would be vastly more expensive.

Boru

Forget the military reality. For better and for worse the russian regimes real project these last few years has been to make their own people ignore it, and it's been largely successful.

They are a country much like the us was at the height of our misadventure in the middle east. Even the criticism against the war, in russia, is misinformed and largely self serving to the regime. They're a petrostate that has destroyed their overall ability to produce fossil fuels, and spends what's left on vain personal projects for the oligarchy. Their domestic infrastructure crumbles as we speak, while they pour more money, and ever more money, into a losing foreign war with no upside even in peace.

They're losing a thousand men a day...and sure...maybe theyre criminals and outcasts, but criminals and outcasts could still build houses and dig sanitation back home. They spent decades worth of production of a country they are not and which they cant replace trying to make good on a three day war which...obviously...has not gone as planned. The ruble is worthless. Let me rephrase, the ruble is even more worthless than it was before. The whole russian domestic economy works on microloans and the debtors have been sent off to die.. their survivors aren't getting paid for that trouble... and largely because they cant recover bodies. At least officially. Unofficialy, they wouldn't pay even if they could, and they cant.

Thus, "not well". In the end, much of this isn't even their fault, for a novel sense of things not being their fault...because a failure to monetize ukraine (the step 2 missing) isn't a failure of planning per se, but a failure of reality as it is. It was one of the only places that had less than russia before the war..... If you're going to invade someplace, and tell your folks that you need to invade said place to still have stuff, it had better be a real land of milk and honey but as we see, bringing the military reality back into the picture fully, russia is incapable of invading such places - and they know it. Every russian who dies in ukraine is a russian who will not get the chance to die in poland, or germany.

They are a literal mass of sunk cost - and that's the whole enchilada right now.

(April 22, 2024 at 12:12 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

Quote:The Kremlin warned that American support for Ukraine could turn into a decade-long folly, urging the U.S. to not oppose its invasion of the country as Congress appears set to pass a $60 billion aid package.

The aid deal comes after months of negotiations, with support for Ukraine wavering among American conservatives as the Russian military gains ground after two years of fighting.

“Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, Reuters reported.

The House passed a broad foreign aid spending bill on Saturday that includes funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan for a total of $95 billion. The Senate is expected to easily pass the measure, which President Biden supports.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/46100...ghanistan/

That is breathtaking irony, given that their own defeat in Afghanistan presaged the dissolution of the USSR, and given that they are ignoring their own struggles in Ukraine. Even if they win out militarily in Ukraine, they will face the same sort of insurrection that destroyed their nation 35 years ago.

Russia doesn't have a decade to win. If they're very careful and extremely miserly with their equipment they have about a year before full depletion.

-and they'll be both things. Not because they're good at this, but because different gang leaders have competing claims to all of that equipment. They all want to find themselves the last man standing.

Exhibit A - lukashenko continues to be busy washing his hair...no matter how many times the batphone to the kremlin rings.
Exhibit B - the oligarchs didn't join up or fight back when prigo launched his mutiny.
Exhibit C - Rosguard continues to build strength even as the frontline forces are degraded.

(April 22, 2024 at 3:48 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(April 22, 2024 at 1:18 pm)ShinyCrystals Wrote: Speaking of Russia, may I ask how they are doing in this war?

In a nutshell, badly. After taking Avdiivka over the winter at enormous cost, they are now fought to a standstill while still suffering several hundred casualties per day. They're combing out prisons, tricking foreigners, and denuding other borders in order to maintain sufficient manpower in Ukraine. They have numerous logistical issues ranging from being mostly tied to railroads to having Crimea close to being cut off, supply-wise.

Meanwhile, they have to stay on the offensive because they're in a race against time with the arrival of the aid recently approved in Congress and about to be approved by the EU.

I would suggest they're already in the middle of a "loud and humiliating fiasco".

There is a lot you said, but overall, they are doing badly?

In the words of Darth Sidious from Star Wars…

Good. Good.

Their goal was the swift annihilation of a country and a culture. It not only still exists, it's making a laughingstock of them and costing them billions in weapon trades.

The s and k series was supposed to be better than patriot. Turns out it's only marginally better than a bottle rocket. They (and by extension any other purchaser) should have spent their missile money on glide bombs. The only people doing well off the war in ukraine, is us.

Demand for us weapon systems has increased beyond capacity...and we make alot of weapons.......meanwhile, at the last big despots ball, literally zero orders were placed for russian shit.

You know, if Russia loses, I do think they could be seen as incapable of learning, because even if Ukraine may have been for some different reasons, they obviously have not learned from Afghanistan and all, have they?

There's no if, they already have. There no possible future, specifically because of their actions, that they end up achieving their goals.

Russia doesn't win if they kill Zelenksy. Russia doesn't win if they nuke kiev. Russia doesnt win if they manage to install a manchurian candidate in the office of the us presidency.

How does russia win, then? IMO, the problem russia has right now is that they needed more time to build the win, strategically...but had long ago run out of time to build the win..practically. When you factor that in you realize exactly what the russian regime is talking about when they pontificate over how the fall of the soviet union was a mistake, and the worst thing that could happen. Why they've become fellow travelers with the american carnage crowd.

(April 22, 2024 at 4:47 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: There's no if, they already have.  There no possible future, specifically because of their actions, that they end up achieving their goals.

Even better.

Whatever happens in Russia, with how (if I recall correctly) the people of Russia have been lied to about the war and all, I am sure they will not take Russia losing the war well.

Its weirder. They'll take russia losing the war just fine. They'll take all the consequences of russias loss less fine, while simultaneously believing that they are not related. When I mentioned russia today being where we were twenty years ago, continue that thought, and remember how we dealt with that...for these past twenty years.

That's the russian best case scenario. Udachi!