I’ve outlined, several times, why the US militarily would fare badly in Ukraine. And I’ll thank you for not calling me a Canadian.
Unlike Iraq, we don’t have “unachievable goals” in this conflict, it is the Ruskies going for regime change over a sovereign nation. Always remember that. The Russians had corrupt influence, their puppet was ousted in 2014, and Putin has since set out to regain it with force. Our only apparant goal has been to make it so the Ukrainians weren’t steamrolled by the invaders. It seems even our govt didn’t really expect Ukraine to put up a fight (even offering to evacuate Zelensky in the early days of the war), perhaps lowered expectations after the Afghani govt folded like a cheap lawn chair vs. the Taliban. I think we were more supplying them to sustain guerrilla warfare type resistance. As it turns out the Ukrainians are fighting like hell to stay free of Russian influence. Maybe they remember what it’s like to live under the thumb of communist authoritarianism? I think we are engaging in the correct strategy here, it’s up to the Ukrainians to fight - if Russia escalates that is on them, but it’s hardly in their national interests to do so considering how difficult taking Ukraine turned out to be for them.
^ Were you spitting nails when the US invaded a sovereign nation - and on false pretenses - in 2003 ?
Russian civil war coming into focus. There seems to be an obvious succession battle going on between the establishment and the Wagner group head Prigozhin. This would only seem to happen if both groups knew that Putin's time was short Well-funded and equipped Wagner troops are faring better than poorly funded and equipped Russian troops. Defense minister fired a deputy defense minister who was routing lucrative contracts to Wagner Group. Wagner Group is allied with Chechen leader against Defense minister. Are these the two groups that were killing off the oligarchs or other key figures? Russia's Civil War Among Military Leadership is Fueling Battlefield Woes (msn.com) In recent weeks, Putin's longtime allies including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, dubbed "Putin's Chef," have publicly criticized Russia's defense ministry and its head, Sergei Shoigu. ............................................... "He sees it as an opportunity to undermine Shoigu further and show the Kremlin the combat value of the Wagner Group while regular Russian military units continue to lose ground in other combat zones," Barbieri said. She added that Shoigu recently fired a deputy defense minister who had reportedly facilitated lucrative contracts for the Wagner Group. "So this is in part a personal vendetta, too," she said. Prigozhin and Kadyrov have vilified Shoigu for a series of disastrous defeats that have left Russian forces in retreat, Barbieri added, referring to counteroffensives by Ukraine that have seen troops recapture swathes of territory in the south and northeast. .................. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S. defense and foreign affairs think tank, Prigozhin is sponsoring the formation of a volunteer battalion recruited by Russian war criminal Igor Girkin, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer. The ISW assessed this week that the military group could "pose a threat to Putin's rule." "Prigozhin continues to accrue power and is setting up a military structure parallel to the Russian Armed Forces, which may come to pose a threat to Putin's rule—at least within the information space," ISW analysts wrote.
China will have no more luck in Afghanistan than any other outside country has. They can't bring in their own people and control the labor force, or the security, there like they can most anywhere else
it is going to take massive foreign investment of capital, machinery, and expertise to try and rebuild their spigot. The collapse in revenue, investment, spare parts, etc has russian oil production in a death spiral. See Venezuela for a good example.
Mainstream punditry just shilling for WW3 these days. I can remember when there was at least a little pushback ...
Russia is weak and impotent. The one thing stopping total defeat by Ukraine! T is the threat of a nuclear weapon and it’s an empty one. Russia is grinding itself to prices and it’s too weak to stop. The west china and to much lesser extent India will pick it clean. Sucks to be a Putin fan boy but those are the facts. Deal with it
No, because "Russia". As in Russia's military sucks. That's why they weren't able to capture Kiev, that's why they haven't been able to take Bakhmut, and that's why they are in a general retreat across Ukraine. And obviously, because we have some technology that is clearly superior to Russia's, from the F-35 & F-22, to the M1A1 Abrams tanks, and much more. Russia has been reduced to fighting with 1980's equipment. It won't be long before they are reduced to 1970's equipment. Their soldiers are not especially well-trained or focused, either. That's why the country with 3X the number of soldiers as Ukraine has been reduced to drafting people off the street, and putting untrained convicts on the front lines, and using barrier troops to keep them there. When was the last time that the U.S. used barrier troops? Sorry, comrade, but that's the truth.
I’m a Putin fan boy because I hate US foreign policy more than I hate Putin. And the only edge the US has over Russia, militarily, is internet bravado.
I think that might be an exaggeration. I would put it differently. The one thing standing between Russia and complete conquest of Ukraine is Western support. Ukraine has fought valiantly, never doubt it. But its military cannot feed, power, and arm itself. I wish it were otherwise, but without us Russia easily overruns Ukraine. Really, if Russia were a fraction as tactically and logistically competent as they have pretended to be for all of these years, then even our material aid would only have delayed the inevitable.
You must still be responding to that clown Russophile. Don’t you have his talking points down yet? Russia didn’t take Kyiv because it was an elaborate deception operation. Russia has gotten pushed back in the north and south because it wanted to. Russia has lost massive numbers of tanks and aircraft because it wanted to clear out its surplus and make even better stuff. Russia has lost tens of thousands of personnel because it was deliberately getting rid of useless mouths. Are you still trying to wrestle with a pig?
The fact that Russia didn’t overrun the largest army in Europe, with an expeditionary force, signals its incompetence.
Was the flying column that Russia sent to Kyiv merely a feint ? Possibly. I’m open to the possibility that it was an intimidatory tactic to encourage negotiation, which was occurring, until scuttled by the West, in the guise of Boris Johnson. That said, the 30k or so troops there did effectively fix the bulk of Ukrainian troops, allowing other Russian troops to mobilize unmolested in the south. Putin Derangement Syndrome allows for no nuance.
Strange coincidence that 100 years ago the people who supported America First had no problem with Hitler conquering neighboring counties and now 100 years later the people who support America First have no problem with Putin attempting to conquer neighboring countries.
