As I've said elsewhere: Russia has chosen a path to becoming a Chinese vassal state. They're going to be China's Saudi Arabia more or less.
Russia is more than just a petrostate to become vassalized. They have the largest nuclear arsenal and an advanced Military-Industrial Complex. Its true that they will be more dependent on Chinese financing but its unlikely that they will be beholden to China the same way Saudis are with the US.
Unless they start selling weapons to China in larger numbers than any sane country would to their neighbors, I don't see the value.
They also have money, Europe is still paying for natural gas.
They also have arms, they're the world's second largest arms dealer, only behind the US.
Bread, soon that will be the only thing they will be able to eat. And as we speak they are destroying bread factories of Ukranian people.
There goes a joke, the Russian finds Aladdin's Magic Lamp. The Genie comes out and says: you have only one wish, I'll grant anything and the Ukrainian gets double of the same wish. The Russian thinks, then says: poke my eye out.
No, it is pretty much just that
> They have the largest nuclear arsenal
Given the state of their military, I wouldn't doubt that the majority of those are a bigger risk to Russia than to anyone else
> and an advanced Military-Industrial Complex
Kinda. Still dependent on some western technologies. But yes they could help China in some aspects. (just don't get surprised when China doesn't respect IP exchange contracts)
> Given the state of their military, I wouldn't doubt that the majority of those are a bigger risk to Russia than to anyone else
Yea, I kinda wonder about the state of those weapons, considering how much effort and money has to go into maintenance for nuclear weapons. Are most of them even functional at this point? Even a tiny bit of neglect can cause nuclear warheads and the components for ICBMs (and other advanced weapons) to degrade and become nearly unusable.
Citation needed.
They certainly did have one at one point - but don't let memories of the cold war taint your view. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been extremely inept and most of that lack of competence is the fact that the military-industrial funding levels established by the USSR were unsustainable by the USSR and Russia has been completely unable to match them while being robbed left and right by oligarchs.
I would also want to be careful about differentiating between Russian military performance and the effectiveness of its MIC. Russian Military failures seem to be largely tactical; their weapon systems seem to be working as expected.
But if China tries to wrap the cord too tight around Russia... tries to salami slice Siberia or something like that... it may find itself the prime target of Russia's ire.
And the ballistic missile flight times between Russia and China are a little bit of a different story than US-Russia.
I will also note for thousands of years that China except for the brief period when it was a part of the Mongol empire has never expanded beyond its basic territory, i.e. limited by the extent of rice agriculture.
These memes (Putin is in it for the money, China covets Siberia) are basically Reddit tier thinking in my opinion.
Reality is quite a bit different.
In his drive to reconstruct the USSR, Putin may have just given that mandate for a communist super-power and counterbalance to the United States to the CCP instead.
Aren't we basically watching Russia conquer Ukraine?
The longer and more devastating the war, the better. Ukraine doesn't have to win for a NATO victory, russia just has to be damaged militarily and fanatically.
I think the public barometer of success will be based more on damage to Russia, than the outcome for Ukraine. If people see Russia suffer for the invasion and know that NATO held back, they will tolerate the outcome
Except in the negotiations in Belarus whose content hasn't been disclosed, Putin has never released terms that Ukraine alone could meet; his ultimatum before the war had most of its terms directed at NATO, not Ukraine, though the gun was pointed at Ukraine.
Presumably, terms for Ukraine alone would be much steeper to make up for what he won't be getting from NATO.
Those are 2 massively populated cities, and the much much better American forces had a very hard time fighting much weaker opponents in fallujah 17 years ago. If you support the ukrainian side, you should stress how critical the situation is on the ground instead of downplaying how bad it is on the ground to make the russians look weak on the internet.
Did you not pay attention to the first weekend of fighting? Your analysis is correct but the Russians did try to take the 2 largest cities right away. There's massive wrecked convoys outside both Kyiv and Kharkiv.
And it was extremely costly. And now the Russians look extremely weak.
And now they're slowly making progress doing what you think they should to win. And they will win if the Russian oligarchs and military support them until the end. But that last point is a huge question mark.
(I'd have also expected the russians the be doing way way worse, since the ukrainian army has still been pretty throughouly trained by western advisors in the past 7 years. And after the mess that was the 2008 georgian war, I thought the russian army to be far less capable than the relatively professional army we have seen since they invaded.)
I have not see any effort to actually push through kiev or Kharkov. If anything the push for Kharkov only happened mid last week, and most of the actually important events have been on the crimean/southern front .
Are we watching the same war?
https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/09...
That's a huge amount of territory gained, especially when you keep in mind that the russians invaded with roughly the same amount of men that Ukraine is defending it's territory with.
This would've been completely impossible back in 2008
Not only because there will be an insurgency but also because the invasion was imo such a foolish, pointless and borderline suicidal move for Russia. the best hope for them and ukraine will be to pull out after "winning" and hopefully negotiate a truce where they don't occupy Ukraine but get the sanctions on them pulled off in exchange.
Europe has clearly stated they'll continue to pay for Russia'a natgas even at €120/MWh, which will fund Russia's war for quite some time.
Also we'd have to make significant revisions to history.
This is a war of attrition where Ukraine gets enormous supplies from rich Western countries for free, but Russia cannot replenish any equipment loss. No one will sell them new Soviet-style helicopters and fighter jets that their pilots are qualified to fly.
Every piece of heavy equipment that is destroyed with Javelins, NLAWs and Stingers is an irreplaceable loss for the attacking army. Unlike defense, you cannot sustain your attack if your offensive equipment gets blown into pieces or runs out of fuel.
This will end in a collapse of massive proportions.
B) Their factories were the original source for a lot of this equipment. Russia is still the second largest arms dealer in the world, only behind the US. I'm sure Putin has no problem delaying export shipments if it comes to that in a "pray I don't alter the deal further" kind of way. And buying back some of his past customers' arms for a deal on future sales is probably something that could be made to happen.
Also, there are videos going around on twitter of Russian trains loaded with civilian cars and trucks supposedly headed to the front line. Assuming those videos are true, that means Russia is running out of military equipment. It is certainly possible that they are doing this for strategic reasons (maybe civilian vehicles use less gas, so easier to support logistically, etc..). But either way, this doesn't look good for them.
And I'm a little more afraid for Ukraine having seen those civilian cars. It feels like Russia is going to start playing very dirty during the upcoming siege of Kiev. It sort of evens the playing field if the defenders also have to watch their backs everytime an unmarked civilian car drives by. It's a dirty move right out of Russia's playbook.
The former Soviet Union was excellent in production of impressive statistics, but the reality on the ground didn't quite match. And the Soviet way of thinking is very much alive in Putin's power circles. It is cheaper to produce impressive numbers than to actually take good care of equipment, and some people will swallow those numbers without thinking twice.
Westerners from well-run countries tend to trust government figures. This may work in Sweden or even in the USA, but in case of Russia, consider every published statistics as suspect.
One other possible advantage is that Ukraine soldiers might be reluctant to fire anti-tank missiles at civilian vehicles from long range (I assume that the markings would be hard to see from that distance). And the missiles might cost more than the vehicles themselves, so might be a waste regardless. Small arms fire would probably be sufficient to stop the vehicles, but that would have to happen at closer range. So maybe the idea is that they can get in closer to the engagement point before receiving fire. Also, they can probably move faster and use less fuel, which considering their logistic challenges might actually be the main motivation.
So yeah, I could see this being strategic and not a desperation move. But either way, not the best look for their military. Hard to justify all of that spending on advanced hardware if at the end of the day they end up using civilian vehicles.
We have way more than two Russian air losses proven.
This OSINT page maps them fairly well.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...
The AN transport plane loss is also contested from what ive seen elsewhere. They also don't seem to be listing most confirmed ukrainian losses but that does not necessarily discredit their russian list
But yes it seems my own figure was wrong and outdated by a few days, yet even in the best case scenario we are a very very far cry from the ukrainian figures. It's really not even close, considering they claimed 25 aircraft kills a week ago and most of those pictures are from the past 3 days
Russia hasn't been a super power in 30 years IMO.
Yes, they could have. For a long time, they absolutely were. In the sense that their arsenal is still operational and capable of mass death, it still is. But that is the only way that they remain a super-power.
But many things could happen..