(December 23, 2022 at 12:39 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: As many observers have noted, up to and including Zelenskyy..with respect to some fever dream of ww3, Putin is a not a man that seems eager to end this world. To some extent, he continues his war in ukraine because he isn't certain that (or hasn't quite figured out how) he would survive losing it (politically and/or physically - we all know how dangerous windows in russia can be). Apparently, they had no real plan for what happened, as opposed to the three day weekend fantasy they went in with. As for nukes, specifically, as another poster on these boards once opined...they're most useful when you're holding them, not when you're using them.
The trouble for russia, was that their armed forces were simply not designed for this fight. Their tactics were not suited to this fight. Their organizational structure was not adequate for this fight. Their equipment is not capable of winning these engagements. None of it was ever even intended to be. They imagined themselves fighting a war against a technologically superior invading force that leaned overwhelmingly on air power...fighting off the rail lines. Ukraine knew this, because they were once an integral part of the russian war plan. So, they knew exactly how to exploit it - before..and even without, any western assistance. The combination of the ukranian will, insider info, and select western tech, is something that russian planners must be furiosly looking for a workaround to - their initial thought being that the workaround could be global isolation through nuclear brinksmanship...and that failed. Plan b, insomuch as it existed, appears to be terror attacks....and that's not working - worse, it's making their situation even more dire by the day.
In short, their army is from the 80’s. But still I was surprised to see the current result. This shows us how corrupt the Russian state is especially in the army. I think they would have taken Ukraine if the Russian army was half what it pretended to be before the war. Within a month’s time the whole world saw the “second army of the world” being an army that was only strong against really weak enemies like the Syrian resistance.
Still they lost 100,000 men in about 6 months. In their 10 year old campaign in Afghanistan Russians had lost only 15,000 men. The total number of deaths in the Kurdish insurgency since 1978 (both sides + civilian causalities) does not exceed 50,000 people. So it’s enormous. Perhaps the greatest butchery in the world since the Vietnam War.
Everyone is hoping for some sort of palace revolution in Russia. I still cannot fully understand how such a big nation managed to get in this path of complete madness. I’m starting to think that this is truly a state in which “The mafia has its own state”. There is no other explanation.
