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There, now we have all brought the same amount of rigor to this discussion.
I’ll also point out that everyone sees Russia struggling in this war that they’re “definitely winning”. The baseless assertions may have been intimidating at the start of the war but we’re years into it now and Ukraine is still standing.
* Drone production capacity Russia has (small drones, jet powered Gerans)? -> No
* A domestic Starlink like system (Rassvet)? -> No
* Weapons in quality and quantity (e.g. Oreshnik, Kinzhal, Zirkon)? -> No
* Quantity of FAB like bombs with advanced correction systems? -> No
* Quantity and quality of nuclear weapons arsenal? -> NO
So my post is based on facts anyone can check. This is a war of attrition, by definition this is progressing slowly.
Let's not pretend a country with a economy the size of Spain can have a meaningful chance against the EU. Russia's "3 day war" has turned itself into a vassal state of China.
That may be true, but these weapons need to be transported into Ukraine, with railway, gas stations, bridges and port (Odessa) infrastructure being gradually destroyed by Russia, there is no way to go for the Collective West.
I don't understand how "France's nuclear shield" may help Ukraine militarily in any way. It's the EU that seeks war with Russia, don't pretend it's the other way around.
Why'd they initially plan to capture Kiev in 3 days then
>the goal is to minimize losses of Russian troops and maximize destruction of Ukrainian troops and infrastructure
Why do they have to recruit in prisons and offer ungodly recruitment bonuses then
>The goal is not to take land, that what the west doesn't understand.
Why does Putin maintain his maximalist goals and requests the entirety of the Donbass he failed to take as a precondition for a ceasefire then
>At some point Ukrainian lines will crumble and then everything will unfold quickly.
People been saying that for three years. Any time now, you just wait
They went in with 90k troops, that barely enough to "take" even a smaller city like Kiev. The goal was to enforce a political outcome to this acute crisis outside of a total war. Initially, this succeeded with the peace talks in Istanbul and Russian troops retreated. Finally, the West (Boris Johnson, Victoria Nuland, Biden) promised full NATO support for Ukraine and Zelensky smashed the peace treaty into the trashcan. That's when the Ukraine army started its counter-offensive and pushed the Russians far back into the eastern parts of the Donbass. That's when Russia commenced to a slow and grinding war of attrition with the goal of removing the russophobic Zelensky regime propped up by the West.
> Why do they have to recruit in prisons and offer ungodly recruitment bonuses then
The recruitment bonuses are actually quite good, that's why many Russians, especially from the poorer regions, agreed to participate. Every Russian family lost members in the Great Patriotic War, they know who they're fighting. Recruiting in prisons is actually not just a Russian thing, it also happens in Ukraine (where they're snatching people off the streets) and many other countries in conflict situations. That's really not unusual.
> Why does Putin maintain his maximalist goals and requests the entirety of the Donbass he failed to take as a precondition for a ceasefire then
The economically most important regions of the Donbass are by now already taken by Russia. There is not much between the western edges of the Donbass and Kiev. Russia has no interest in a ceasefire, as a ceasefire only provides time for the West to re-arm and prepare for the next attack on Russia. The west shits on Russia since the fall of the Soviet-Union.
> People been saying that for three years. Any time now, you just wait
That's true, but many people couldn't expect how much support in weapons and money the West was and is actually willing to provide to Ukraine. Without this support this war of attrition would be over by now.
This + the use of 'Great Patriotic War' shows you're not really worth arguing with, but still - you do know people can trivially look up and fact check the bit of fanfic you just wrote, right?
We are talking about a number of around 25 million people killed on the Soviet side. You may go and search for a memorials (for the atrocities to the Russians on the eastern front) somewhere in Germany or allied axis countries (Romania, Hungary, Austria!, Spain!), just to recognize that there aren't any.
And I'm writing this as a German. The great killing on the eastern front is a black hole in Western history books. These are filled with "Band of Brothers", "Omaha Beach", "6. of June", "Battle of the Bulge"... But no one in the West really knows anything about e.g. the Siege of Leningrad with nearly a million civilian death (including relatives of Putin by the way).
People in the West really need to understand where Russians and Chinese people actually come from historically, the 'century of humiliation' absolutely is over.
Ukraine will prevail.
People are not snatched off the streets in Russia, unlike in Ukraine. Putin is the elected president of Russia, while the Zelensky regime is a de facto and de jure dictatorship (by now).
> How many Russians have fled their oppressive regime since the invasion began?
Obviously, the Russian population has not halved as in Ukraine, so what are you even talking about?
> How much economic activity has been lost with the West?
A lot, but that's harming the West (EU) far more than Russia. The EU economies are de facto in recession, while the Russian economy is growing (on average in recent years).
> How much military equipment has been burned up?
A lot, but Russia is outproducing the West in nearly all military metrics, quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Ukraine does not have any air defense left by now, because the West can't provide any. That's why cities like Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, etc. are successfully targeted on a daily basis.
> Russia had to turn to China and North Korea for help.
Not really, North Korea takes its chance to gain experience in warfare, training soldiers and testing its weapons. It's a rational thing to do from the perspective of North Korea, both sides gain a lot by this.
> People are not snatched off the streets in Russia
But the end of the war it’s going to be very probably winned by the Russian. Let’s be honest here, and even if I am not a military strategist, Ukrainian people is less than Russian people, and even in the case of field victory of Ukraine, ultimately the Russian is going to use nuclear weapons (and Otan doesn’t going to replicate, they cannot risk a MAD retaliation)
So I don’t know how the Ukrainian win the war because honestly it’s seem to be a lost cause
The truth is that no one has any idea how the war will unfold and attrition can simmer a long time without any clear resolution or winner at all, even between seemingly unbalanced belligerents. See Iran vs Iraq, Saudi vs Yemen, USSR vs Afghanistan, etc. People who are too used to video game map painting tend to underestimate the capabilities of million-strong modern states engaged in an existential war - as the saying goes, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.
The only conceivable way this resolves in the near future is if Putin gets offed somehow but given how mortally scared he seems to be of drones and his own elites it doesn't seem likely