The media won’t give me great answers to this question and I think this I trust this community more, thus I want to know from you. Also, I have heard reports that Russia was winning the war, if that’s true, did the west miscalculate the situation by allowing diplomacy to take a backseat and allowing Ukraine to a large plethora of military resources?
PS: I realize there are many casualties on both sides and I am not trying to downplay the suffering, but I am curious as to how it is going for Ukraine. Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning, those have existed forever, but they seem to have grown louder now, so I was wondering what you thought about it. Also, I am somewhat concerned of allowing a dictatorship to just erase at it’s convenience a free and democratic country.
Arms dealers.
Reminds me of the starting scene in Lord of War
Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning, those have existed forever, but they seem to have grown louder now, so I was wondering what you thought about it.
Where are you hearing that? I have not heard that Russia is taking a pounding and so is Ukraine.
Right now, it’s a stalemate.
It is a war of attrition at this point and if it drags out long enough, Russia wins because they have more people to throw at the war.
I do not think the F-16 is going to make a large difference in the war. People who never served are the ones thinking it’ll change the war.
The question is how long can the Russian soldiers hold out? I do believe once Ukraine breaks through the lines will collapse quickly but they’ve yet to break through.
I do think NATO has done a disservice in training the Ukrainian military to fight a combined arms fight but then not supplying them with the weapons to fight a combined arms fight.
I personally think Ukraine will win but it is going to be a long fight.
This is exhibit “A” of how the U.S. fights it’s proxy wars.
They could provide enough support to kick the shit out of Russia.
But, the World politics doesn’t fit that twisted & ridiculous narrative.
I’m not a conspiracy type. However, it makes ZERO sense to me that the U.S. hasn’t provided everything possible to push Russia out.
IMO: actual full U.S. support pushing the limits of “war”, would end this insanity in short order.
Didn’t see you reply but typed something very similar. We train the Ukraine army for combined arm warfare then we don’t supply them the combined arms. It’s like we want it to drag out.
Considering this is a war of attrition, “winning” such as it is doesn’t look like conscripting every man, woman and child that can hold a gun to get blown up in trenches. They should have just negotiated a year ago.
And they were very close to doing just that until the west stepped in and told Ukraine to stop negotiating https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms
Britain has the geopolitical relevance of the North Sentinel island and Boris can’t even control his hair not to mention a foreign nation. Even if he told Ukraine to not negotiate why would they listen?
Because Boris is just the messenger boy for the empire.
But why? The US has plenty of people to deliver a message like that that would actually be believable, like if Boris told another country that the US wants this or that it just would sound like he’s lying. This whole thing sounds too convoluted and ridiculous to be true.
I mean that’s what Ukrainian chief negotiator told us himself now, and this is what western media admits. UK has always acted as a running dog for the US, and I’m not sure why anybody would find the idea of Boris being the one to deliver the terms to Ukraine as a representative of NATO convoluted or ridiculous. Boris represents the country that’s most closely aligned in US in Europe, this makes him the natural person to go and tell Ukraine what NATO and US want from them. You seem to be making this more complicated than it is.
I wish it wasn’t paywalled, I remember being hopeful something might happen but then Boris showed up- people still talk about it, just not always in english.
Bojo sabotaging the negotiations was a heinous crime against humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result and millions more had their lives ruined.
It’s a stalemate, largely. While Russia was massively on the backfoot earlier in the year, they mined massive swaths of eastern Ukraine before partially retreating.
Which makes it unlikely for Russia to actually have any future forward progress, but it also stymies Ukraine from doing the same except extremely slowly. There’s still been several victories for Ukraine over the past few months, but they haven’t changed the fighting area much.
It’s largely a war of attrition to wear down Russia now, who has been having more and more internal issues as time goes on.
Well Russia holds a good amount of Ukrainian land. The fighting is essentially a stalemate. Russia may have “won” that land.
No one may win any more sizable land moves. For future fighting we’ll have to see. Ukraine relies on Western support because Russia is a bigger economy and bigger population. We’ll have to see how Western support continues and how the Russian economy proceeds with sanctions.
The whole stalemate narrative is pure nonsense. Russia has a much bigger army at this point and its military production is outpacing what the west is able to provide by a wide margin. Ukraine is now conscripting children, women, and the elderly because they lost most of their existing army over the past six months trying to break through Russian defences. Russia is now on the offensive all across the front and rapidly taking territory already. Now that the mud season is over, it’s almost certain that we’ll see a big offensive against a depleted and demoralized army. Hence why Stoltenberg is now saying to expect bad news from Ukraine https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-boss-jens-stoltenberg-warns-of-bad-news-from-ukraine/
Wars develop in phases," Stoltenberg said in an interview Saturday with German broadcaster ARD. “We have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times,” he said.
"We should also be prepared for bad news,” Stoltenberg added, without being more specific.
The front lines have moved little in recent months despite Kyiv’s counteroffensive during the summer. But the Ukrainians have used cruise missiles to push back the Russian fleet in the Black Sea and have caused damage deep in Russian territory
Your link does not carry the tone you had.
If you still don’t understand why Stoltenberg says to prepare for bad news you will soon.
“also” and “prepare” in the context of the article sounds very much like prepare for anything, good or bad. Not the tone you had, It may come to pass, it may not, it may go back and forth (you know, phases). The absolute certainty with which you speak is not presented in your link. (Is this where you spam links? Well, cheers.)
I mean if you just expect Stoltenberg to just come out and say Ukraine lost after him prancing for a year and a half telling us how Ukraine is wining, don’t know what else to tell you. Seems that some people aren’t capable of critical thought and can’t accept reality until it hits them in the face. cheers.
arms manufacturers
Define “winning”.
Ukraine is, slowly and painfully, gaining ground, so by that measure, they are winning.
Could you point to where Ukraine is actually gaining ground. Last I checked, Russia gained more ground than Ukraine in the past six months.
South of Orikhiv: https://deepstatemap.live/en#9/47.5023/35.8704
South of the Dneipro River https://deepstatemap.live/en#9/46.6589/32.7036
South of Bakhmut https://deepstatemap.live/en#10/48.4939/37.9399
There’s not a lot of recent movement from either side. The Russians are dug in, and the conditions are awful. Still, Russia are losing men at horrific rates, higher than at any point upto now.
If you look at liveuamap which is a pro western source, it’s pretty clearly that Russia is on the offensive all across the front https://liveuamap.com/
Meanwhile, NYT has a helpful chart showing territorial changes over the summer https://archive.ph/U3BzJ
Russian army is currently routing Ukrainians in Avdiivka as we speak, and this a large city that had population over 30 thousand before the war. This also happens to be the part of Ukraine’s only fortified line.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/whats-stake-russias-assault-avdiivka-2023-12-01/
The Russians are dug in, and the conditions are awful. Still, Russia are losing men at horrific rates, higher than at any point upto now.
That’s weird, because the only actual western source that shows any methodology puts total Russian casualties at 38 thousand, meanwhile even western sources now admit that Ukrainian casualties are now at well over a 100 thousand
https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng
Oh and here’s how things are going south of Dnieper https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67565508
"The entire river crossing is under constant fire. I’ve seen boats with my comrades on board just disappear into the water after being hit, lost forever to the Dnipro river.
"We must carry everything with us - generators, fuel and food. When you’re setting up a bridgehead you need a lot of everything, but supplies weren’t planned for this area.
"We thought after we made it there the enemy would flee and then we could calmly transport everything we needed, but it didn’t turn out that way.
“When we arrived on the [eastern] bank, the enemy were waiting. Russians we managed to capture said their forces were tipped off about our landing so when we got there, they knew exactly where to find us. They threw everything at us - artillery, mortars and flame thrower systems. I thought I’d never get out.”
Seems like things along the other parts of the front are going about the same https://archive.ph/2023.12.04-165309/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-stalled-russia-war-defenses/
- Seventy percent of troops in one of the brigades leading the counteroffensive, and equipped with the newest Western weapons, entered battle with no combat experience.
- Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield led to rifts with the United States over how best to cut through deep Russian defenses.
- The commander of U.S. forces in Europe couldn’t get in touch with Ukraine’s top commander for weeks in the early part of the campaign amid tension over the American’s second-guessing of battlefield decisions.
- Each side blamed the other for mistakes or miscalculations. U.S. military officials concluded that Ukraine had fallen short in basic military tactics, including the use of ground reconnaissance to understand the density of minefields. Ukrainian officials said the Americans didn’t seem to comprehend how attack drones and other technology had transformed the battlefield.
- In all, Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western military aid in 2023 alone.
Sounds like Ukraine is doing pretty great there.
Russian army is currently routing Ukrainians in Avdiivka as we speak
Not hardly. Russian sources keep misreporting this battle. The coke plant is a great example: How many times has it been “taken”? Was capturing it once not enough? That kind of location doesn’t switch hands on a whim, btw.
The troop movements by Russia into that city are horrendous. The sheer numbers of soldiers that get turned into paste while charging into useless locations already zeroed by artillery is just weird.
A proven fact of war is that attackers are always at a disadvantage. Troop losses will be generally be much higher for any side that goes on the offense. The number 38k is just mind boggling low for the length of time it takes for Russia to take a city, especially against western weapons.
If 38k losses for Russia were actually a thing, there would be no need to increase their army size. Medvedev stated that Russia was able to recruit an additional 420k soldiers. That number is probably only about 100k, because Russia has their own numbering system for a lot of things.
Wagner alone lost ~10k prisoner conscripts in Bakhmut. Depending on the weather, or whatever, Wagner existed, or they never existed. Those numbers don’t count as Russians, I guess.
If you want a much better source of evil western fake data and propaganda, use the ISW. They also confirmed a NATO statement about Russia being at the 300k loss mark. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
Normally, I would say that 300k is likely over-inflated as well. However, just looking at how attacks are conducted by Russia makes that number believable.
Not hardly. Russian sources keep misreporting this battle. The coke plant is a great example: How many times has it been “taken”? Was capturing it once not enough? That kind of location doesn’t switch hands on a whim, btw.
Even Ukrainian sources admit this now. Given that Ukraine spent six month trying to take a place called Piatykhatky which literally translates into five huts, the fact that Russia is now close to taking a city that used to have 30k people before the war, and has been heavily fortified shows which side is making actual progress.
The troop movements by Russia into that city are horrendous. The sheer numbers of soldiers that get turned into paste while charging into useless locations already zeroed by artillery is just weird.
Ah yes, bazillion Russians killed, asiatic hordes, and orc meat wave tactics. We’ve heard all that. By this point Russia must’ve lost like a 100 million people already.
A proven fact of war is that attackers are always at a disadvantage.
People keep regurgitating this, but that only applies to equal armies where the defender actually has weapons and troops to match. Russia massively outguns Ukraine, and vast majority of losses in this war are to artillery fire. If you actually wanted to understand what’s going on, you could read this explanation from Mearsheimer that’s well sourced.
The reality is that Russia enjoys roughly 10x artillery advantage over Ukraine, and that results in far greater casualties on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine has gone through three whole armies already, and they’re now literally mobilizing children, women, and the elderly. Meanwhile, Russia has only done a single mobilization in this whole time.
The number 38k is just mind boggling low for the length of time it takes for Russia to take a city, especially against western weapons.
38k number is total Russian losses since the start of the war.
If you want a much better source of evil western fake data and propaganda, use the ISW.
ISW is not a reliable source by any stretch of imagination. It’s Nuland’s personal propaganda outlet. There is literally zero evidence for Russian losses being anywhere near 300k. BBC and Mediazona are the only western outlets that have a methodology they can show.
Assuming that everything we both are saying is false, the fact remains that Russia hasn’t hardly been able to move the lines at all. You can flash that chart you want with land gains from 2023, but it doesn’t really apply.
Russia is still an attacking force, they are still the invaders and they are locked in a slow stalemate with a much smaller force. Russia does have many more resources, so it must be their choice to have stretched this conflict out for as long as it has been going, for whatever reason. (Without a doubt, you have a long list of counter arguments and media links to the contrary. Even your boy Rybar doesn’t align with what you are saying.)
I respect the work of Mediazona to a degree, but they are open about their inaccuracies. They appear to define “casualties” as only deaths. Of those deaths, they are only counting verified ones from social media, local news and from government sources that aren’t named. If they aren’t counting a casualty in the true definition of a “war casualty”, the numbers are going to be different. (Their own estimates put true numbers of deaths around 55k in July which would put allow for a wider casualty estimate of around 165k casualties. You use the napkin math of 1:3, killed:removed from battle permanently)
“The figures we provide are sourced from publicly available information, including social media posts from family members, local media coverage, and official statements from local authorities. However, these figures represent only a partial account and do not reflect the full extent of the casualties.”
And yeah, it’s the Russian M.O. to use mass instead of quality. It’s their thing. Little value is placed on a single soldier or even an artillery shell. That concept is baked into all of their military hardware designs and strategy.
Russia’s goal hasn’t been to move the lines. Their goal is to grind down Ukrainian army until it collapses. You don’t have to take my word for it, this was the assessment of U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin retired after 20 years of service, including eight years as an armor officer with four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and 12 years working as a modeling and simulations officer in NATO and U.S. Army concept development and experimentation. This assessment is shared by vast majority of military experts:
https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine
Russia is still an attacking force, they are still the invaders and they are locked in a slow stalemate with a much smaller force.
That’s a simplistic characterization. The reality is that both sides do their share of attacks. For example, if Russia takes a bit of territory then Ukraine is forced to try and take it back. Ukraine has also conducted a huge offensive over the past six months on a far bigger scale than anything Russia’s done so far, and if attacking is what nets you a lot of losses then this would be the biggest source of casualties over the course of the war.
I don’t really follow Rybar, I haven’t found them to be all that reliable. People like Vershinin, Macgregor, Berletic, and Mearsheimer have been consistently decent at explaining what’s happening, and what they’ve been predicting would happen actually aligns with what we’re seeing. Telegram channels are simply not comparable to actual experts.
55k deaths with 165k wounded is certainly a plausible number in my opinion. However, even with these numbers, Russia clearly has no problems growing the size of the army. Meanwhile, Ukraine has a much smaller population to draw on, and many people fled the country at the start of the war making the situation worse. The fact that Ukraine keeps expanding the mobilization efforts is a strong indicator of serious losses.
Ukraine has three major problems. First is that it’s entirely reliant on the west economically, and support is now dwindling. Second is that Ukraine is also reliant on the west for weapons and ammunition which are running out. Especially problematic given that the west is refocusing it’s support to backing Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Finally, Ukraine is running out of a trained and motivated soldiers needed to hold the army together. Once the professional core is gone, it can’t simply be replaced by people kidnapped off the street and given a few weeks of training.
And yeah, it’s the Russian M.O. to use mass instead of quality.
It’s absolutely not their thing, and it’s just another piece of western mythology. You should read a bit of actual history of WW2 to see this has no basis in reality.
Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning
Winning was taking over the county at first. Then it was kherson, and donbass, crimea, and a few others. Now it’s just like 3 areas. If you’re hearing anything about winning it’s because the goal posts are moving.
Youtuber Perun had some good high level takes on the war. It all boils down to Western support will win. As long as support keeps coming from the rest of the world, eventually Russia will run out of material. WW2 was won (not wholly, but in large part) due to the larger economy being on the allies side.
Do provide us with sources where Russians stated these were the goals. Seems like it’s western propagandists who’ve been making up goals for Russia and then moving the goal posts.
Do I need sources for the failed invasion of Kyiv?
Everyone knows about it.
Yeah, I need sources for the fantastical claim that Russia was trying to take Kyiv with 100k troops. It’s a particularly interesting claim given that they allocated 40k troops to take Mariupol which is an order of magnitude smaller city. A far more plausible scenario is that Russia used 100k troops to fix a chunk of Ukrainian army around Kyiv while Russians took large parts of Ukrainian territory in the east which they still hold today.
The paratroopers in Kyiv’s airport were just taking in the scenery. Really unfortunate that they were shot. And that 50 km tank column headed for Kyiv really was just lost on its way to Mariupol. Yep, exactly, that’s what happened.
Lmao what a lame-ass trolling attempt, you have mush for brains if you think this is either effective propaganda or… funny?
The only one with mush for brains is the guy who thinks Russia would be trying to take Kyiv with 100k troops. The fact that you don’t even understand why that’s absurd makes it all the more hilarious.
The absurd claims of Russia’s goals are all from western propaganda. This is from the day of the invasion: https://www.rt.com/russia/550466-putin-ukraine-opeartion-goals/ What are their goals?
- Demilitarise Ukraine – This is a huge task, but they’re making fast progress.
- Denazify Ukraine – They’re failing this task, but it’s something that can’t be done until after the war anyway.
- Create a buffer between a NATO-member-Ukraine and Russia – Incorporating Donbas might satisfy this goal.
- Stop the sieges on Donetsk and Lugansk – This goal has been met.
And then they clarify, denazification is optional. A general occupation of Ukraine is not their plan.
If there is more land they want to occupy, then occupying and holding it now doesn’t actually further that goal. The only thing holding it now is good for is protecting the civilians or using it strategically, either industrially or for staging. Because if the country is successfully demilitarised, Ukraine won’t be able to resist occupation, so that land can be taken later for cheaper. But they haven’t outlined a goal of taking additional land. Crimea was already incorporated at the time, so that’s an extra implied goal – Don’t lose Russian land.
At the moment Ukraine is winning.
When Trump is crowned GEOTUS, after the Repubs win 2024 ( the economic rug-pull in 2024 will remove the Dems, through backlash-vote ) then the tide will turn, as the gutted remains of NATO/OTAN try to understand how to endure as the TOTAL global geopolitcs table got thrown, violently, on its side, scattering all the playing-pieces, all the indicators, EVERYthing gets flipped, then.
GEOTUS Trump will back Russia & Saudi Arabia, both.
Possibly China, as well ( he does have investments in China ).
The remains of the Western-cultures’ alliance are then on their own.
US Civil War Part2 will probably destroy about a quarter billion lives in North America within 14y,
and ww3 begins a mere 7y after Trump’s crowning ( +/- 1 year ).
Things are going to be VERY tough in Eastern Europe, with the US pouring its support into exterminating the former Soviet Bloc countries who oppose Putin/Russia, with the US backing Russia.
Wait & see.
It’s going to be hell, on Earth, for almost-all of this century.
The drastically quicker-than-simulated sea-level-rise isn’t going to help, particularly since Greenland’s meltwater will drown the North Atlantic coasts ( it takes 1000 years for it to redistribute to near Australia. The 1st few centuries it’ll be predominantly drowning the West ), and when you add enough water to raise the PLANET’s sea-level by 1 metre, but you put it ALL in the North Atlantic…
it may well be 3m around the North Atlantic, this century.
( there is a powerlaw underlying planetary heating, current atmospheric CO2 requires the planet to equilize at more than +5C.
When you add-in the anthrogenic methane, as CO2 equivalent, the planetary equalization temperature is more than +8C.
All the “+1.5C” and “+2C” are baseless delusions, contradicted by historical data of the last couple million years. )
Anyways, eyes-open, calibrate, prepare, & earn making oneself competent for what is guaranteed to come, right?
_ /\ _
Unlike everyone here, I have no idea.
Russia is successfully and deservedly shitting on all of NATO’s weaponry, warfare and weapon manufacturing capabilities. They won the war long ago, now it is just being dragged. I see a lot of western liberal liars in comment section.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/us/politics/russia-sanctions-missile-production.html
Also, I am somewhat concerned of allowing a dictatorship to just erase at it’s convenience a free and democratic country.
Last I checked, Russia did not erase any country. However, Blackrock, a private US firm, is acquiring and selling Ukraine’s land. You should be worried about US/NATO-backed Israel terrorist state that is genociding and erasing the country of Palestine.
You should be worried about US/NATO-backed Israel terrorist state that is genociding and erasing the country of Palestine.
I don’t think you know the meaning of the word genocide. I have my own issues with Israel’s support for the settler occupation of West Bank, but in no may is Israel committing a genocide. The population nearly multiplied multiple folds since 1948. Israeli government fortunately has no will for a genocide of any people though they have the capability to commit one, while on the other hand you have the Nazis 2.0 who want to repeat the Holocaust but are incapable of repeating it for Israel is way too stronger than all their allies and themselves put together. If the shoe was on the other foot, there would be no jews in the middle east as the supposed peace partners of Israel themselves openly say they want to push the jews to the sea.
What Israel is doing absolutely fits the definition of a genocide https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/un-official-resigns-israel-hamas-war-palestine-new-york
UN is a fucking joke, they could not bring themselves to even condemn the massacre on Oct 7th. It’s stupid to take that organization even remotely seriously.
And, if your population multiplies every few decades, it’s stupid to suggest that there is a genocide going on. Israel doesn’t want a genocide and those who want one fortunately don’t have a nuclear weapon yet (I am not sure what Pakistan thinks abt this topic, but I am leaving them out of this)
Here’s a Jewish historian with a PhD explaining what’s going on if you don’t trust the UN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkgzcRae3w
I don’t think either side will be able to decisively beat the other, but that’s not how these things usually end anyway.
Actually, I think it’s pretty funny in a sad sort of way that Americans don’t get how this is going to go. It’s really obvious that Ukraine doesn’t need to win, they just need to keep fighting until Russia goes home. Western aid isn’t even really making much of a difference in the eventual outcome of the war, it’s just reducing the damage that Russia is doing to Ukraine and bring that inevitable end closer faster. We’ve seen over, and over, and over again that once a group of people actually make up their minds to resist, there is nothing that can stop them. Even if the aggressor can bring overwhelming military superiority they will eventually give up and go home, and Russia can’t even do that.
The question isn’t who will win. The question is how many war crimes will Putin commit before admitting he lost this war in the second week.
It’s not a stalemate, but it’s close. Ukraine keeps gaining ground, but it’s essentially ww1 style trench warfare.
Russia has reportedly been losing as much as 900 soldiers per day which is staggering.
The Russians mined everything like crazy when retreating so and forward progress is going to be quite measured.
Russia has gained more ground during Ukraine’s offensive than Ukraine did. Even western media admits this.
