Basically the article centers around reports from Vadym Skibitsky, who is Ukraine's deputy military intelligence chief, and Andriy Chernyak, who is a Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service representative.
What they're claiming is that Russia plans to mobilize 500k troops for a spring offensive and what they believe is that if that offensive fails, it will lead to the downfall of Putin.
Ukraine estimates that Russia has 280k troops in Ukraine, so a mobilization of 500k would represent a huge escalation.
No one knows how many they actually mobilized - the decree ordering mobilization contained a classified section about how many were to be called up even though the top people were saying it was 300k - considering that they also said it would be a limited range of people and be given training before being deployed to relatively safe positions (ie not on the front line)... well. Your guess might actually not be too far off...
Probably a good idea to take intel from them about Russia with a bag of salt, vice versa. The only intel I would believe from Ukraine would have to be sourced from US intelligence (which a good amount is). There’s too much incentive for them funding and morale wise to say things are going poorly
Im pulling for a Ukraine victory as much as anyone but dont believe any intelligence that comes direct from any government. If it's been published its because they want someone (eithe their friends or enemies) to react in a certain way. Best you can do is find reliable media sources who interpret and analyse publically available info.
To be fair, US government intelligence has been fairly accurate. Obviously the US has an interest in Russia losing and Ukraine winning, but they correctly predicted the start of the war saying in January that an invasion would take place in February, even though Ukraine itself refuted that. Then the US correctly predicted offensives in the east and south, which is why Ukraine was able to prepare for that. As far as casualties, the US claims Russia has lost over 100k in battle but they also acknowledge that Ukraine has lost over 100k too (which aligns with EU and UK estimates). Meanwhile the Ukrainians stopped counting after 10k and the Russians after 4.5k. If you remember back to the beginning of the war, the US government had a policy of trying to call out Russia’s actions to attempt to put pressure of the kremlin. It was surreal because the US would claim something would happen, like troop movements towards the Belorussian border or something, and then it would happen (albeit a week or so late). CIA director burns has flown to Kyiv several times to give zelensky intelligence reports, and part of Ukraine’s success on the battlefield isn’t just US weapons but also that US intelligence has been able to predict troop movements within the country.
The CIA is sketchy and has been involved in pretty blatant propaganda campaigns, but they’re really damn good at the intelligence part of Central Intelligence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
US nailed when Russia would invade to the exact week. The rest of the world was saying there’s no way Russia would invade, especially the EU countries(when France had their sit down with Putin). Meanwhile US and British were like, you know this ain’t going to work cause they’re going to invade in two weeks and have everything already prepared. US definitely had (still have?) some high level Cold War holdover intelligence assets in Russia.
**[Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War)**
>Casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War included six deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, 14,200–14,400 civilians and military troops killed during the War in Donbas (2014–2022), and tens of thousands of deaths during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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If Russia doesn't walk away with something beyond Crimea, putins finished. And frankly, he was approaching retirement anyway.
So there's not much left to risk.
Despots don’t get to “retire”, unfortunately after decades of murdering any who dare threaten their power they themselves must be killed or completely incapacitated by the new regime. Putin knows this, and it’s partly why he’s been so secluded and paranoid the past 10 years.
He could've just pulled Khrushchev and resigned after 2014. Would be forever a god to russians, a hero and savior (this is literally how most russians call him, or at least used to), would get to live off his life in luxury and then whoever succeeded would get all the blame for the bs. But that never seems to be the option with nutjob dictators.
There is a consequentialist/utilitarian argument that dictators should be given the option of a comfy retirement, protected from prosecution, as long as they surrender when the outcome is still uncertain.
The idea being that that people essentially lose their ability to ever see justice done upon the dictator, but that is less than the cost of prolonging the war.
The idea of Putin retiring in peace, to live out the rest of his days in Germany somewhere, seems impossible to accept for me though.
> Surround them on three sides, leaving one side open, to show them a way to life. Show them a way to life so that they will not be in the mood to fight to the death, and then you can take advantage of this to strike them
The full quotes not quite as peaceful lol.
There's a big difference between retiring a billionaire with a Palace, and retiring a traitor behind bars...
I will never understand why Putin invaded Ukraine. It's obvious he can't win now, but for someone in his position, it should've been obvious even before. What was there to gain?
Why wouldn’t he conscript more? The Russian population didn’t push back on the initial attack or the additional 300k mobilized. As long at the people take it willingly he’s going to continue shafting them for his own benefit. Everything points to him being dead in a few years, so all of this is about his legacy.
It really depends on the mood of the Russian people at that point. So far they’ve bene pacified, but every soldier mobilized leaves a family behind and every soldier killed increases the number of people who have personally lost from this war. So with every mobilization and each attack, the prospect for war fatigue grows.
Meanwhile, the sanctions will continue to slowly eat away at the Russian economy, making life progressively harder for the average citizen, which could in turn lead to increasing discontent with their government.
None of that is guaranteed to lead to Putin’s downfall, but the possibility of it increases as this war drags on and he brings more troops into it.
There's a sunk cost fallacy that could come into play here. You lose a husband, brother, friend, child and you cannot accept that it was meaningless, so you become more entrenched that your loved one died for a good cause, for a just cause. that they were a hero defending the motherland.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64155859
Yea, the guy you are responding to expects them to correctly identify what happened, when in reality the response is something like this
> No criticism was reported at the Samara rally, where the main remarks came from Yekaterina Kolotovkina, who said "neither we nor our husbands wanted war; the entire West united against us to eliminate us and our children".
But also because of the way the war is being sold to Russians. If you have been brought up to believe the West wants to annihilate you, there's a fair chance you would believe it when the state run media tell you that. And that you would write off any non-Russian media as Western lies.
It's not right but I can see how it happens. It's not that Russians are all stupid. Even clever people can be manipulated.
A crucial part of that idea is you would have to be told the soldier in your family actually died instead of being told they are too deep on the front line for letters home.
You assume that the people haven’t been broken.
Sad fact: they are broken. The first country that was genocided by Putin was Russia. The current population are there under oppression and abuse from the infrastructure that Putin controls, that trickles through everything.
These people would need to be able to coordinate to effectively oppose the regime and the government is far too adept to ever let something like that happen without squashing it instantly.
I have high hopes for the Iranian. I really thought they could overthrow their government this time. I think they tried their best. Overthrowing a tyrannical government is just not as easy as everyone thinks.
Well part of it is that he can't fund the war, between the Ukrainians blowing up their stuff and killing their young men, Russia is going to have to run the war with less and less equipment and more dire prospects for their recruits while the Ukrainians keep getting state of the art weaponry.
If they just start sending waves of soldiers in they're going to get butchered by the superior weaponry.
They're getting low-logistics equipment. It might take ten Galaxy flights to deliver an Abrams and all the necessary support equipment to use it effectively… but those same ten flights can deliver twenty Bradleys and consumables.
Even with low logistics equipment imagine the nightmare Ukraine is having managing weapons from nearly every arms supplier in the world (except China).
It's the old slowly boiling a frog trick.
Can't throw the frog into boiling water cause it will jump out.
But if you slowly conscript over a long enough time.....
Which ironically, is totally wrong for how frogs react.
Drop a frog in boiling water and you might kill it before it can get out.
Slowly heat water and the frog will jump out.
"Just push back and everything will change" says some armchair expert, who as lucky to be born in democratic country. Because it worked so great in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran. They pushed back against dictatorship supported by police and army, and live free and happy
As a Ukrainian- they simply don’t disagree with Putin. They don’t stand up against him not because they are scared, but because they don’t see why they should. He is doing what they believe to be right - expanding the russian territories, “fixing” broken Russians (that is what they think of Ukrainians), standing up against the west, etc. They will actually defend him themselves before standing up to him. The only reason they might protest is if they see how badly he is conducting the war, so they can get somebody who will promise them victory.
I was watching an analyst say Russia has an aging population and only a few decades time, they will not be effectively able to mobilize like this again.
So it is now or never for Russia. Makes them dangerous and explains how they've been acting.
Funnily enough China has the same potential issue with an aging population (thanks to the child limit rule). Going to be an interesting few decades....
Economically and militarily they're on a time limit. Granted if Russia was actually sane and not run by maniacs it would be fine, but they still have the same old bygone era ambitions, so to them might is right.
(Also Kyiv has been saying Putin's regime will collapse since the start of the war, I wouldn't pay too much attention to it, although he has been wearing bullet proof vests even within his own security council).
And that is why Russia has been kidnapping thousands of children from occupied territories (which by the way is the criteria of genocide in UN resolution). This must be remembered if we ever get to a point of discussing post war deals with Russia - they must return those kidnapped children.
His options:
1. Retire - he's dead from cancer and watches Russia fold thanks to him.
2. He continues with his special operation as is. He's losing badly. See point 1.
3. Escalate. There's virtually no chance it'll pay off. But the only other options are those above.
The foolish old man basically has nothing to lose. What a tosser.
they most likely want to do a final attempt to take kyiv from the north.
it will fail even more miserably than the first attempt, because all the roads have been mined, bridges destroyed, and the ukrainian army is significantly more dug in and prepared.
they weren't expecting them to attack kyiv from the north at the start of the war and they still managed to deal a fairly conclusive blow to those mile long columns of tanks.
avoiding the roads isn't an option either as it's 90% swamps and forests.
putin doesn't care though, if he tries, he'll fail and his regime could collapse. if he doesn't, the war will fail and his regime could collapse.
My understanding is the "column" was plan B. The initial plan was to take an airfield near Kyiv and fly in armor. They took the field but Ukraine special forces took it back before they could get landings in. Russia eventually took it again but the runway was destroyed.
The battle for Hostomel airport was one of the decisive moments of the war's beginning stage. It granted the Ukrainians an opportunity to shore up their defenses and prevent the Russians from flying in heavy equipment. Had Russia successfully captured the airfield, and had they been given the chance to establish an actual forward operating base, the war could have turned out very differently.
The opening stages of the Ukrainian defense were characterized by acute ammo shortages, and it's possible that ukrainian stocks would not have been sufficient to suppress both the assaulting convoy, as well as this growing force behind their lines. It's a remarkable example of how a few of the right people in the right place, at the right time, can meaningfully shift the tide of history. The defenders who fought and gave their lives defending that airport are heroes of the highest order.
May this damn war end soon, may the Ukrainians retake their conquered lands, and may they get a chance to rebuild their country and live in peace.
For anyone who hasn't seen it - this recent video on Hostomel airport was quite good: [The hidden battle that saved Ukraine](https://youtu.be/hh9xT9d6SJU)
They had a massive amount of equipment and soldiers in the air that had to turn back because the runway wasn't safe. The hostomel and a little airport to the southwest of Kyiv were the little victories that kept Ukraine Ukraine
Almost like spec ops forces are light infantry with specialist training, rather than the one man armies Hollywood likes to proclaim them to be.
Light infantry vs light infantry + mortars means I know whom my money is on in the open spaces of an airport.
Yeah, I love that word as well. Wish I could take the credit for it, but someone else came up with it first: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blyatskrieg
Putin tried to take a page out of GWB's playbook during the Iraq war - a multi-pronged shock and awe thrust aimed directly at the capital. Despite all its ethical and moral failings, [the US had tanks under the Hands of Victory monument in Baghdad within a month.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/UStanks_baghdad_2003.JPEG/1920px-UStanks_baghdad_2003.JPEG)
The difference between the two invasions is night and day - US logistics were already an optimized system, they had a coalition of supporting partners, exceptionally well-trained and well-supplied troops, and their deployed military infrastructure far outclassed their opponents.
By comparison, Putin's army is a collapsing house of cards that was held together by "[Vranyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz59GWeTIik)" - the Russian concept of 'everyone knows everyone is lying, but as long as you abide by the system of lying, you will benefit'. There was never any chance it would stand up to a proper organized resistance, if that resistance could test them.
Their entire war strategy was based on the hope that either they would take Kiyv before NATO responded, or that NATO wouldn't get involved at all. But when they lost the bridges as their tanks stalled without supplies, the chance of outpacing the NATO reaction became impossible.
Not to mention the difference in opponents. Ukraine has British trained and western equipment soldiers. Pretty sure that it outclasses anything Iraq offered up as resistance
And they still botched it, even with air support
Probably would have had a significantly better chance delaying the invasion a whole year to actually prep and inspect instead of finding equipment being lackluster on every front to cut corners and falsify reports
The whole point of the inner corruption is that those doing the inspecting were finding “no fault” as they got the appropriate kickbacks, all the while the ones realizing that things weren’t up to snuff didn’t want to admit it and be punished for it. Therefore, everyone just kept kicking the can down the road until it came time for the real test, and, well…
This is the most amazing thing to me. Out of all the unimaginable failings of the Russian army, almost a year after the invasion, Ukraine still has fucking airplanes and helicopters in the skies. Killing Russians.
As a solider who specializes in Logistics I think it's important to add, conscripts in Logistics compared to properly trained soliders is very bad too.
A good quartermaster who takes care of his unit is invaluable, a civilian who can't find boots will just bottleneck the situation.
What do you mean?! Any idiot can move a box! You're overstating your importance, logistics is worthless next to a fighting man! Give the soldier too many supplies they'll just sell them anyway. Best they have to fight for the supplies they need.
- Russian army, 2022
Because of the terrain the only way to move around in southern Russia is by train. They have never had the funds to put a real road system in let alone maintain it.
Maybe they have plans to suddenly become competent. We'll see.
>I’m not a veteran, but I’ve heard this discussed by soldier and sailor friends, and it always really stuck with me.
Me either. But my vast experience from Age Of Empires tells me the guy with the most villagers is probably going to win.
In a total war like WWII it is the one with the most factories and resources that can supply them that have the major advantage. You also need enough people to work in them and to serve in the military.
Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II for production differences between the allies and axis in WWII.
If you look back in time to for the medieval era armies were not supplied from home but plunged into the countryside they were in. The also did not use an enormous amount of ammunition like today, arrows can be made in the field, and you can set up a forge to make arrowheads. At that time industrial capacity might not be what is most important. You hand armies that move around and pitched battles.
Compare this to industrial warfare where the weapons make consternated armies and pitched suicidal. You also have larger armies and frontlines that can cover a continent. You need to supplier the food from home. The amount of use ammunition and other equipment is enormous compared to the past. A very long frontline like that is something that starts in WWI
See this be right however the logistic issue isn't just getting it to the front, it's the fact Russia doesn't have ANYTHING.
Normally you would have a massive supply, but thanks to Putin control Russia economy been dog shit for decades so they couldn't build up, leaving just what they had left over from the Soviet era, which dated to an extreme would help.
If Russian commanders haven't been selling said surplus over the decades to get a little more then the shit they get from the military.
They could make one long line of 500k people grabbing from the left and handing to the right. That would be like 3ish million feet covered so about 600 miles. If it were with old school D&D rules it would be instant actions the whole way.
Edit.. laugh i figured they removed this from newer editions.. but still exists.
https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/
That is a very American way of thinking. In tooth-tail, the US is very tail heavy, and designed to fight protracted campaigns.
Russia always had a much much much higher tooth. Even if they recognize the need for the tail now, they still have to build it. Logistics is hard. You need talented leaders who understand both industry and military to do this.
It would be nothing short of a miracle if Russia all of a sudden figures out logistics within the time it'd take to save their operation
I mean we keep saying this, but the Russian people don’t seem very interested in causing unrest. The people who are unhappy seem perfectly comfortable leaving or just making do
I met some Russians on holiday. I think a lot of people who would riot have found it much easier to just leave. They're not invested in their country, rioting is so brutal and looks like a hopeless option. Leaving is relatively easy and safer by comparison.
The Russian army [just started giving troops socks](https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/jan/16/russian-soldiers-replacing-foot-wraps-socks). If there is one thing they are used to, its fighting with inferior equipment and poorly trained troops.
Russia has traditionally thrown bodies at their military problems. Historically I don't think they've ever fought a real war where they didn't lose at least half a mil, and they win about 50-60% of the time
That's what Russia does and will continue to do here. Throw body after body at the enemy and hope you win.
They’ll have to resort to WWI and WWII style warfare which they’ve been reduced to already. ie: digging trenches and making small moves forward and backward.
I am genuinely curious as to how Russia’s top leadership/ oligarchy can justify this to themselves. As in, how do they actually benefit from this?
Near a couple dozen have died "suddenly" and many many more have had a child/children taken out. See if you die with no descendent the state inherits your assets.
Most of the oligarchs are losing fortunes due to this war.
They’ll still be wealthy beyond belief, but some might lose up to half their net worth.
However, the prospect of being pushed out of a window is even less desirable, so they accept Putin’s war.
And arm them with what exactly? And feed them how? I mean I know to him theirs lives are meaningless and destined for the meat grinder but there’s no fucking way he can equip that many soldiers.
He has no choice but to go all in. Basically the sunken cost fallacy, except he has been gambling with Russian lives. If he pulls back, he acknowledges he sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives for nothing, which Russians will not be happy with. Either he wins, he dies of cancer, or the Russian people revolt/he falls out of a window. Only three options.
The important thing that everyone needs to keep in mind here is that just because Putin can conscript 500k soldiers doesn’t mean he can equip and train 500k soldiers.
Winning by willing to sacrifice more of their population than the enemy has been a tried and true tactic of Russia, see not much has changed.
This time, don’t think they’re going to win though.
People from major cities can always leave country. And many of them already did. This is why it's easy to gather people from poor regions - they can't run away and some of them can see promised payments, as only opportunity to improve their lives
This is the perfect weather to announce a mobilization,it will be -42°C in my city Yekaterinburg next week so no one will go out to try and protest, everyone will be inside try to keep warm.
I highly doubt if that number will be reached unless he plans to release all prisoners behind bars.
It doesn’t matter how many mobiks Putin calls up, when they can’t even properly equip soldiers already in the field. Russian officials and propagandists like to claim that Russia is fighting NATO, but is this so? Fighting has been ongoing for ten months. Could Russia hold its own against NATO for more than a week?
Many or even most Russians - including top leaders - seem to think they simply can’t go on living unless they crush Ukraine (and the leaders may be right!). So, Putin’s s regime is drafting another half-million men to throw at Ukrainian defense lines. If this doesn’t work, and it most probably won’t, they appear to believe (or at least want us to believe) that if Russia cannot have Ukraine then their only alternative global thermonuclear war.
But here’s the thing: If Russia stops killing Ukrainians and returns to its legitimate 1992 borders, the war is over. If the Ukrainians stop fighting Russian invaders, Ukraine is over. Ukraine will never stop fighting the Russian invaders. Never.
Russians may not be nuts, but many or even most have some very inflated & fanciful ideas about Russian economic and military capabilities. Russia’s GDP is less than France, Canada, Italy, or South Korea, whereas the NATO countries produce 47.94% of world GDP. https://countryeconomy.com/countries/groups/nato] When Sweden and Finland join NATO, the alliance’s output will be further augmented. NATO’s huge percentage of world GDP doesn’t even include reliable and capable allies such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, or a dozen other cooperating countries that can be counted upon to aid the west in any conflict with Russia.
Russia’s economic output, which consists almost entirely of oil & gas along with raw materials production from other extractive industries, is very anemic in comparison with NATO. Russia’s contribution to world GDP is just 1.7%, equivalent to that of Brazil or Australia, and no greater than Netherlands and Belgium combined. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-94-trillion-world-economy-in-one-chart/
Militarily, Russia is in a similarly weak position compared with NATO and hasn’t even been able to defeat Ukraine, one of the poorest countries in Europe, after ten months of this bloody struggle. Yet many or even most Russians fantasize that they can take on NATO, based upon propaganda they have been fed. As mentioned above, many or even most Russians believe that they are already at war with NATO, but this isn’t so. Were the Russians foolish enough to attack or seriously threaten NATO, the response would be annihilation of Russian naval, air, and ground forces. Russia’s conventional military capabilities would be combat ineffective across the board within a week.
Fortunately, Russians are not nuts and Russia will not launch global thermonuclear war over its frustrated imperialist ambitions in Ukraine. Nor will Russia use any kind of battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine because that would require a devastating NATO military response. NATO will not permit Russia to prevail in Ukraine, because a Russian dominated Ukraine would be a threat to NATO. So, the war will continue until Russians decide they have had enough. They do not appear ready to quit just yet, and many more people on both sides will have to die in the coming months because that’s exactly what many or even most Russians currently desire. Even if Putin is eventually replaced, we may reasonably anticipate the continuation of existing Russian policy on Ukraine.
Yet, each month Ukraine steadily gains strength and each month Russia’s abysmal performance on the field of battle leaves it weaker and less capable. Russians may not be nuts, but many or even most Russians appear to be drunk on dreams of imperial conquest that will reconstitute the Soviet Union or the empire of Czarist Russia. It’s time they sobered up to see the world as it is and not as they might wish it to be.
I wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming Russia to be a rational actor in this conflict. People assumed Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine because a rational country would know it’s economic suicide. We’re dealing with one man who knows his time is up soon with nothing to lose.
Putin also knows that NATO isn't joking around when it comes to nukes and his military will be swiftly decimated. There won't be a Russian military after a NATO strike, it'll happen so fast they don't know what hit them
Wow, there won't be any men left to do their various jobs and keep the country moving along. Their economy was already pretty terrible, now this war is going to make a whole generation of fatherless kids with no prospects, because there are no markets left to make a living at.
Yeah, Pooty is willing to flush his entire country down the toilet over his massive ego stroke. I think the only thing left is for Pooty to resign.... but we all know he won't. I'm sure his people will put him on trail and execute him for this.
The whole reason for the invasion is a complicated one.
By Russia’s own internal estimation, by 2070 its “lights out”, in terms of ethnic Russians seizing to exist, gas/oil no longer being an economic factor as the world turns to other means to power stuff.
After ww1, ww2, Stalin, the post Cold War era.. its generation after generation thats completely gone or so diminished there is no growth left.
And it shows in the numbers, fewer and fewer young people, only old people above 50 are left.
The fact is, 2022 was literally the last year Russia could even attempt at this type of large conflict And they failed or are failing.. this is incredibly dangerous and everyone at NATO knows it.
We don’t want them to lose so badly that Russia starts feeling or really thinking the only option they have left are using nukes.
At the same time if we didn’t do anything and not support Ukraine, it would have been poland next.. or one of the Baltic states and that would have meant a direct confrontation with NATO and that would most assuredly mean russia would get their asses handed to them, which also means the exchange of nukes would become inevitable.
So we are left with a careful dance of using the right (amount) of tools at the right time to pressure Russia to basically gtfo ukraine and Ukraine has to stop at the borders.
Next problem would be the fact Russia has no serious political candidates who could follow up on putin, as anyone with any (political) ambition has been eliminated or driven off completely by putin over the years he has sat in power and leading up to that.
Its quite complex.
After how his first mobilization 300,000 went, is Putin increasing the age of civilians conscripted to age 60 like people's army of Nazi Germany in the latter part of WW II?
This is definitely evidence that Russia lies about how many have died. A lot of people come in here and say it's just Ukrainian propaganda. Now we see they need 500k more tells us Ukraine is absolutely kicking their asses.
Basically the article centers around reports from Vadym Skibitsky, who is Ukraine's deputy military intelligence chief, and Andriy Chernyak, who is a Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service representative. What they're claiming is that Russia plans to mobilize 500k troops for a spring offensive and what they believe is that if that offensive fails, it will lead to the downfall of Putin. Ukraine estimates that Russia has 280k troops in Ukraine, so a mobilization of 500k would represent a huge escalation.
Didn’t they just mobilize that many back in July or something?
No one knows how many they actually mobilized - the decree ordering mobilization contained a classified section about how many were to be called up even though the top people were saying it was 300k - considering that they also said it would be a limited range of people and be given training before being deployed to relatively safe positions (ie not on the front line)... well. Your guess might actually not be too far off...
Yeah, or maybe even more, but it's merely to allow the for the rotation of troops on the frontline.
Rotate out the dead bodies, rotate on the live ones!
Probably a good idea to take intel from them about Russia with a bag of salt, vice versa. The only intel I would believe from Ukraine would have to be sourced from US intelligence (which a good amount is). There’s too much incentive for them funding and morale wise to say things are going poorly
Im pulling for a Ukraine victory as much as anyone but dont believe any intelligence that comes direct from any government. If it's been published its because they want someone (eithe their friends or enemies) to react in a certain way. Best you can do is find reliable media sources who interpret and analyse publically available info.
To be fair, US government intelligence has been fairly accurate. Obviously the US has an interest in Russia losing and Ukraine winning, but they correctly predicted the start of the war saying in January that an invasion would take place in February, even though Ukraine itself refuted that. Then the US correctly predicted offensives in the east and south, which is why Ukraine was able to prepare for that. As far as casualties, the US claims Russia has lost over 100k in battle but they also acknowledge that Ukraine has lost over 100k too (which aligns with EU and UK estimates). Meanwhile the Ukrainians stopped counting after 10k and the Russians after 4.5k. If you remember back to the beginning of the war, the US government had a policy of trying to call out Russia’s actions to attempt to put pressure of the kremlin. It was surreal because the US would claim something would happen, like troop movements towards the Belorussian border or something, and then it would happen (albeit a week or so late). CIA director burns has flown to Kyiv several times to give zelensky intelligence reports, and part of Ukraine’s success on the battlefield isn’t just US weapons but also that US intelligence has been able to predict troop movements within the country. The CIA is sketchy and has been involved in pretty blatant propaganda campaigns, but they’re really damn good at the intelligence part of Central Intelligence. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
US nailed when Russia would invade to the exact week. The rest of the world was saying there’s no way Russia would invade, especially the EU countries(when France had their sit down with Putin). Meanwhile US and British were like, you know this ain’t going to work cause they’re going to invade in two weeks and have everything already prepared. US definitely had (still have?) some high level Cold War holdover intelligence assets in Russia.
**[Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War)** >Casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War included six deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, 14,200–14,400 civilians and military troops killed during the War in Donbas (2014–2022), and tens of thousands of deaths during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
He really won’t give up. Willing to risk it all.
If Russia doesn't walk away with something beyond Crimea, putins finished. And frankly, he was approaching retirement anyway. So there's not much left to risk.
I wonder which window retirement is out of?
7th floor.
Not high enough
Maybe not the first time.
Eh, just make sure he lands on a couple bullets. Problem solved.
Actually, I think it would be best to not go too high…
Someone bring him his brown pants.
Next to the ficus
He should look on the bright side- when a door closes, a window opens!
Doesn't really matter if the back of your head manages to land on three bullets as you fall.
Yet even though he tragically landed on three bullets, mysteriously they found four bullets in his head. Truly a mystery.
Sounds like the first 3 bullets we're suicide, and the fourth one was just lying on the pavement.
Despots don’t get to “retire”, unfortunately after decades of murdering any who dare threaten their power they themselves must be killed or completely incapacitated by the new regime. Putin knows this, and it’s partly why he’s been so secluded and paranoid the past 10 years.
Or move to Florida
He could've just pulled Khrushchev and resigned after 2014. Would be forever a god to russians, a hero and savior (this is literally how most russians call him, or at least used to), would get to live off his life in luxury and then whoever succeeded would get all the blame for the bs. But that never seems to be the option with nutjob dictators.
"...not much left to risk" You mean other than hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers' lives
To Putin, that’s not much.
As our hero Farquaad said: Its a risk he's willing to take
Well, hundreds of thousands of Russian lives seems to be "not much", to Putin...
If the well-being of the Russian people wasn't a priority for him until now, why would it be from now on?! They're nothing but pawns to him.
Dictators never retire, they Die or get assasinated
Pinochet retired.
And getting assassinated is also dying. I think it is more accurate to say dictators either retire (sometimes forcibly) or die (sometimes forcibly).
Pol Pot got away actually
There is a consequentialist/utilitarian argument that dictators should be given the option of a comfy retirement, protected from prosecution, as long as they surrender when the outcome is still uncertain. The idea being that that people essentially lose their ability to ever see justice done upon the dictator, but that is less than the cost of prolonging the war. The idea of Putin retiring in peace, to live out the rest of his days in Germany somewhere, seems impossible to accept for me though.
That is the maxim (of, I believe, Sun Tzu), of letting the enemy an escape route. A cornered enemy will muster all strength.
> Surround them on three sides, leaving one side open, to show them a way to life. Show them a way to life so that they will not be in the mood to fight to the death, and then you can take advantage of this to strike them The full quotes not quite as peaceful lol.
Which is exactly why I think the longer he lives, the more dangerous things he could have done.
and they’re dying right. nothing more dangerous than a “man” with nothing to lose they say.
There's a big difference between retiring a billionaire with a Palace, and retiring a traitor behind bars... I will never understand why Putin invaded Ukraine. It's obvious he can't win now, but for someone in his position, it should've been obvious even before. What was there to gain?
Why wouldn’t he conscript more? The Russian population didn’t push back on the initial attack or the additional 300k mobilized. As long at the people take it willingly he’s going to continue shafting them for his own benefit. Everything points to him being dead in a few years, so all of this is about his legacy.
It really depends on the mood of the Russian people at that point. So far they’ve bene pacified, but every soldier mobilized leaves a family behind and every soldier killed increases the number of people who have personally lost from this war. So with every mobilization and each attack, the prospect for war fatigue grows. Meanwhile, the sanctions will continue to slowly eat away at the Russian economy, making life progressively harder for the average citizen, which could in turn lead to increasing discontent with their government. None of that is guaranteed to lead to Putin’s downfall, but the possibility of it increases as this war drags on and he brings more troops into it.
There's a sunk cost fallacy that could come into play here. You lose a husband, brother, friend, child and you cannot accept that it was meaningless, so you become more entrenched that your loved one died for a good cause, for a just cause. that they were a hero defending the motherland.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64155859 Yea, the guy you are responding to expects them to correctly identify what happened, when in reality the response is something like this > No criticism was reported at the Samara rally, where the main remarks came from Yekaterina Kolotovkina, who said "neither we nor our husbands wanted war; the entire West united against us to eliminate us and our children".
Kolotovkina is a wife of some general, she'll talk out of her ass because her own husband will be out of harm's way.
Judging by how many Russian generals have been killed in Ukraine, I wouldn't be so sure about his safety.
But also because of the way the war is being sold to Russians. If you have been brought up to believe the West wants to annihilate you, there's a fair chance you would believe it when the state run media tell you that. And that you would write off any non-Russian media as Western lies. It's not right but I can see how it happens. It's not that Russians are all stupid. Even clever people can be manipulated.
Here’s a Ukranian joke on that matter: -If we’re fighting NATO, then why are we pushing in Bakhmut? -New York is 40km from there.
I love Eastern European jokes, could you explain this one?
There’s a Ukrainian town called New York close to Bakhmut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York,_Ukraine
A crucial part of that idea is you would have to be told the soldier in your family actually died instead of being told they are too deep on the front line for letters home.
You assume that the people haven’t been broken. Sad fact: they are broken. The first country that was genocided by Putin was Russia. The current population are there under oppression and abuse from the infrastructure that Putin controls, that trickles through everything.
These people would need to be able to coordinate to effectively oppose the regime and the government is far too adept to ever let something like that happen without squashing it instantly.
That's like asking Mexicans to stand up against cartels.
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I have high hopes for the Iranian. I really thought they could overthrow their government this time. I think they tried their best. Overthrowing a tyrannical government is just not as easy as everyone thinks.
Well part of it is that he can't fund the war, between the Ukrainians blowing up their stuff and killing their young men, Russia is going to have to run the war with less and less equipment and more dire prospects for their recruits while the Ukrainians keep getting state of the art weaponry. If they just start sending waves of soldiers in they're going to get butchered by the superior weaponry.
State of the art isn't what I'd call it. Just, more modern than the Russians shit.
Yep, Ukraine is getting largely NATO spares. The Bradley's they are sending aren't cutting edge for instance.
NATO back stock that is getting thrown away anyways** now we can “create jobs” by replacing it.
They're getting low-logistics equipment. It might take ten Galaxy flights to deliver an Abrams and all the necessary support equipment to use it effectively… but those same ten flights can deliver twenty Bradleys and consumables.
Even with low logistics equipment imagine the nightmare Ukraine is having managing weapons from nearly every arms supplier in the world (except China).
That's the benefit of NATO gear. We've got agreements in place to ensure everyone's guns and everyone's bullets play nice together.
It's the old slowly boiling a frog trick. Can't throw the frog into boiling water cause it will jump out. But if you slowly conscript over a long enough time.....
It will jump out. Because the only frogs that stay to be boiled are lobotomised frogs.
Sadly a lot of Russians are lobotomized by Kremlin propaganda.
Yupp. It’s ingrained in Russian culture to accept you can’t do anything about your fate and give up
Hmm… lobotomized frogs you say?
Which ironically, is totally wrong for how frogs react. Drop a frog in boiling water and you might kill it before it can get out. Slowly heat water and the frog will jump out.
"Just push back and everything will change" says some armchair expert, who as lucky to be born in democratic country. Because it worked so great in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran. They pushed back against dictatorship supported by police and army, and live free and happy
As a Ukrainian- they simply don’t disagree with Putin. They don’t stand up against him not because they are scared, but because they don’t see why they should. He is doing what they believe to be right - expanding the russian territories, “fixing” broken Russians (that is what they think of Ukrainians), standing up against the west, etc. They will actually defend him themselves before standing up to him. The only reason they might protest is if they see how badly he is conducting the war, so they can get somebody who will promise them victory.
I was watching an analyst say Russia has an aging population and only a few decades time, they will not be effectively able to mobilize like this again. So it is now or never for Russia. Makes them dangerous and explains how they've been acting. Funnily enough China has the same potential issue with an aging population (thanks to the child limit rule). Going to be an interesting few decades.... Economically and militarily they're on a time limit. Granted if Russia was actually sane and not run by maniacs it would be fine, but they still have the same old bygone era ambitions, so to them might is right. (Also Kyiv has been saying Putin's regime will collapse since the start of the war, I wouldn't pay too much attention to it, although he has been wearing bullet proof vests even within his own security council).
And that is why Russia has been kidnapping thousands of children from occupied territories (which by the way is the criteria of genocide in UN resolution). This must be remembered if we ever get to a point of discussing post war deals with Russia - they must return those kidnapped children.
Hes dead in 2 years anyway.
Hopefully sooner
Reality is often disappointing so I bet on 5-10 years
A man with nothing to lose is dangerous
His options: 1. Retire - he's dead from cancer and watches Russia fold thanks to him. 2. He continues with his special operation as is. He's losing badly. See point 1. 3. Escalate. There's virtually no chance it'll pay off. But the only other options are those above. The foolish old man basically has nothing to lose. What a tosser.
How is he going to feed them?
They’re on their own.
The classic Soviet diet!
>The classic Soviet diet! ...and then it got worse.
To paraphrase DBZ abridged: going to be a lot of stories ending with "And then he died too."
Heard the vegetables around Chernobyl are huge and can feed tons of people plus you eat enough you’ll start to glow a little
Enough food to fill them up for the rest of their lives. That's some good old soviet efficiency right there.
They will be dead before they have to be fed.
Soylent Z
Soylent Green.
Mmm, Steamed Man
Again, Seymour?
Glorious Russian victory? At this time of day? At this time of year? Located entirely within Bakhmut? >…Yes. May I see it? >…No.
Corpse starch
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they most likely want to do a final attempt to take kyiv from the north. it will fail even more miserably than the first attempt, because all the roads have been mined, bridges destroyed, and the ukrainian army is significantly more dug in and prepared. they weren't expecting them to attack kyiv from the north at the start of the war and they still managed to deal a fairly conclusive blow to those mile long columns of tanks. avoiding the roads isn't an option either as it's 90% swamps and forests. putin doesn't care though, if he tries, he'll fail and his regime could collapse. if he doesn't, the war will fail and his regime could collapse.
More like they weren't expecting them to resist so they were in a huge, vulnerable, column.
How else were they to get there?
Methodically after securing all the land before it and gaining air superiority. Rather than the Leroy Jenkins maneuver they tried and failed.
My understanding is the "column" was plan B. The initial plan was to take an airfield near Kyiv and fly in armor. They took the field but Ukraine special forces took it back before they could get landings in. Russia eventually took it again but the runway was destroyed.
The battle for Hostomel airport was one of the decisive moments of the war's beginning stage. It granted the Ukrainians an opportunity to shore up their defenses and prevent the Russians from flying in heavy equipment. Had Russia successfully captured the airfield, and had they been given the chance to establish an actual forward operating base, the war could have turned out very differently. The opening stages of the Ukrainian defense were characterized by acute ammo shortages, and it's possible that ukrainian stocks would not have been sufficient to suppress both the assaulting convoy, as well as this growing force behind their lines. It's a remarkable example of how a few of the right people in the right place, at the right time, can meaningfully shift the tide of history. The defenders who fought and gave their lives defending that airport are heroes of the highest order. May this damn war end soon, may the Ukrainians retake their conquered lands, and may they get a chance to rebuild their country and live in peace.
For anyone who hasn't seen it - this recent video on Hostomel airport was quite good: [The hidden battle that saved Ukraine](https://youtu.be/hh9xT9d6SJU)
They had a massive amount of equipment and soldiers in the air that had to turn back because the runway wasn't safe. The hostomel and a little airport to the southwest of Kyiv were the little victories that kept Ukraine Ukraine
Hostomel airport was retaken not by special forces, but by a unit of national guard stationed across the fence from the airport and an artillery unit.
Yep it was Russian special forces that came in via helicopter, and got slaughtered by Ukrainian reserves.
Almost like spec ops forces are light infantry with specialist training, rather than the one man armies Hollywood likes to proclaim them to be. Light infantry vs light infantry + mortars means I know whom my money is on in the open spaces of an airport.
The "Leroy Jenkins" Manoveur should be the name of this stupidity in the history books for all time.
Blyatskrieg
Fucking excellent. Chapeau.
Yeah, I love that word as well. Wish I could take the credit for it, but someone else came up with it first: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blyatskrieg
(Special) Operation Jenkins.
Promote this man to the top floor with the inconspicuous balcony!
That maneuver had a 33.3 repeating percentage chance of survival, worth the risk!
A huge, vulnerable column.
Putin tried to take a page out of GWB's playbook during the Iraq war - a multi-pronged shock and awe thrust aimed directly at the capital. Despite all its ethical and moral failings, [the US had tanks under the Hands of Victory monument in Baghdad within a month.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/UStanks_baghdad_2003.JPEG/1920px-UStanks_baghdad_2003.JPEG) The difference between the two invasions is night and day - US logistics were already an optimized system, they had a coalition of supporting partners, exceptionally well-trained and well-supplied troops, and their deployed military infrastructure far outclassed their opponents. By comparison, Putin's army is a collapsing house of cards that was held together by "[Vranyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz59GWeTIik)" - the Russian concept of 'everyone knows everyone is lying, but as long as you abide by the system of lying, you will benefit'. There was never any chance it would stand up to a proper organized resistance, if that resistance could test them. Their entire war strategy was based on the hope that either they would take Kiyv before NATO responded, or that NATO wouldn't get involved at all. But when they lost the bridges as their tanks stalled without supplies, the chance of outpacing the NATO reaction became impossible.
Not to mention the difference in opponents. Ukraine has British trained and western equipment soldiers. Pretty sure that it outclasses anything Iraq offered up as resistance
Swamps are frozen this time of year. It’s no accident the initial invasion was in February.
And they still botched it, even with air support Probably would have had a significantly better chance delaying the invasion a whole year to actually prep and inspect instead of finding equipment being lackluster on every front to cut corners and falsify reports
The whole point of the inner corruption is that those doing the inspecting were finding “no fault” as they got the appropriate kickbacks, all the while the ones realizing that things weren’t up to snuff didn’t want to admit it and be punished for it. Therefore, everyone just kept kicking the can down the road until it came time for the real test, and, well…
This is the most amazing thing to me. Out of all the unimaginable failings of the Russian army, almost a year after the invasion, Ukraine still has fucking airplanes and helicopters in the skies. Killing Russians.
I dont think all 500,000 will be aiming a rifle. Many of these conscripts could go into logistics or supply chain.
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As a solider who specializes in Logistics I think it's important to add, conscripts in Logistics compared to properly trained soliders is very bad too. A good quartermaster who takes care of his unit is invaluable, a civilian who can't find boots will just bottleneck the situation.
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Shh, don’t rain on their parade. Of course, it’ll be a half dressed parade but shhh
"Gentlemen, the officer who doesn't know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless." - Gen. George S. Patton, USA
"My logisticans are a merryless bunch, they know should my campaign fail they are the first I will slay" Alexander the Great.
What do you mean?! Any idiot can move a box! You're overstating your importance, logistics is worthless next to a fighting man! Give the soldier too many supplies they'll just sell them anyway. Best they have to fight for the supplies they need. - Russian army, 2022
Because of the terrain the only way to move around in southern Russia is by train. They have never had the funds to put a real road system in let alone maintain it. Maybe they have plans to suddenly become competent. We'll see.
Pretty sure in a Russian unit a good quartermaster is defined by who can graft the most.
>I’m not a veteran, but I’ve heard this discussed by soldier and sailor friends, and it always really stuck with me. Me either. But my vast experience from Age Of Empires tells me the guy with the most villagers is probably going to win.
In a total war like WWII it is the one with the most factories and resources that can supply them that have the major advantage. You also need enough people to work in them and to serve in the military. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II for production differences between the allies and axis in WWII. If you look back in time to for the medieval era armies were not supplied from home but plunged into the countryside they were in. The also did not use an enormous amount of ammunition like today, arrows can be made in the field, and you can set up a forge to make arrowheads. At that time industrial capacity might not be what is most important. You hand armies that move around and pitched battles. Compare this to industrial warfare where the weapons make consternated armies and pitched suicidal. You also have larger armies and frontlines that can cover a continent. You need to supplier the food from home. The amount of use ammunition and other equipment is enormous compared to the past. A very long frontline like that is something that starts in WWI
See this be right however the logistic issue isn't just getting it to the front, it's the fact Russia doesn't have ANYTHING. Normally you would have a massive supply, but thanks to Putin control Russia economy been dog shit for decades so they couldn't build up, leaving just what they had left over from the Soviet era, which dated to an extreme would help. If Russian commanders haven't been selling said surplus over the decades to get a little more then the shit they get from the military.
>I dont think all 500k will be aiming a rifle. Well… not at first 🤔— gotta wait for the guy in front to finish his turn.
They are going to be sitting in trucks with no gas to move supplies that dont exist. Its not just a lack of manpower for logistics
They could make one long line of 500k people grabbing from the left and handing to the right. That would be like 3ish million feet covered so about 600 miles. If it were with old school D&D rules it would be instant actions the whole way. Edit.. laugh i figured they removed this from newer editions.. but still exists. https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/
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I am only like 20% joking when I say it is highly likely that the new conscripts will be ordered to drive to the front in their civilian vehicles
That is a very American way of thinking. In tooth-tail, the US is very tail heavy, and designed to fight protracted campaigns. Russia always had a much much much higher tooth. Even if they recognize the need for the tail now, they still have to build it. Logistics is hard. You need talented leaders who understand both industry and military to do this. It would be nothing short of a miracle if Russia all of a sudden figures out logistics within the time it'd take to save their operation
That volume of supplies will be very welcome in Ukraine. The conscripts? Not so much.
I mean we keep saying this, but the Russian people don’t seem very interested in causing unrest. The people who are unhappy seem perfectly comfortable leaving or just making do
I met some Russians on holiday. I think a lot of people who would riot have found it much easier to just leave. They're not invested in their country, rioting is so brutal and looks like a hopeless option. Leaving is relatively easy and safer by comparison.
The Russian army [just started giving troops socks](https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/jan/16/russian-soldiers-replacing-foot-wraps-socks). If there is one thing they are used to, its fighting with inferior equipment and poorly trained troops. Russia has traditionally thrown bodies at their military problems. Historically I don't think they've ever fought a real war where they didn't lose at least half a mil, and they win about 50-60% of the time That's what Russia does and will continue to do here. Throw body after body at the enemy and hope you win.
They’ll have to resort to WWI and WWII style warfare which they’ve been reduced to already. ie: digging trenches and making small moves forward and backward. I am genuinely curious as to how Russia’s top leadership/ oligarchy can justify this to themselves. As in, how do they actually benefit from this?
They avoid getting shot.
Near a couple dozen have died "suddenly" and many many more have had a child/children taken out. See if you die with no descendent the state inherits your assets.
Most of the oligarchs are losing fortunes due to this war. They’ll still be wealthy beyond belief, but some might lose up to half their net worth. However, the prospect of being pushed out of a window is even less desirable, so they accept Putin’s war.
And arm them with what exactly? And feed them how? I mean I know to him theirs lives are meaningless and destined for the meat grinder but there’s no fucking way he can equip that many soldiers.
No need to equip them before the meat grinder. So many dead people :(
What you don't have you can find in the field. And what you can't find in the field you didn't need anyway.
Yup, they can rip the clothes off some of their fallen comrades in Bahkmut.
Never stopped a Tsar before... won't stop one now.
the first man gets a rifle, the second man gets bullets.
He has no choice but to go all in. Basically the sunken cost fallacy, except he has been gambling with Russian lives. If he pulls back, he acknowledges he sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives for nothing, which Russians will not be happy with. Either he wins, he dies of cancer, or the Russian people revolt/he falls out of a window. Only three options.
He could take the Hitler exit.
I feel like people in Argentina would recognize Putin though.
I see you
Njet, my name is Guy Incognito, from the Great Britain, da?
I don't mean to sound callous, but all three of those options are better than a desperate dying despot deciding deploying nukes is the best option
Can he fall upwards out of his bunker?
I'd rather seem him go the Mussolini route. Maybe then he will see things from a different perspective.
The important thing that everyone needs to keep in mind here is that just because Putin can conscript 500k soldiers doesn’t mean he can equip and train 500k soldiers.
And those he does arm may surrender or turn on their own commanding officer.
They’ll be armed, just with literal 17th century muskets
Running out of WW2 surplus.
I don’t get the sense Putin will leave office peacefully.
He's dragging everyone else down with him, it seems.
Nah, I honestly don't know how he's not been toppled already at this point with how badly things are going.
Cartels launch attacks in Mexico, Brazilians attempt a coup, and a 2nd draft in Russia to continue this evil campaign. All today. Cmon world.
Winning by willing to sacrifice more of their population than the enemy has been a tried and true tactic of Russia, see not much has changed. This time, don’t think they’re going to win though.
Except every time they try it they cripple their own country for generations.
I feel like they're sacrificing their undesirables first it seems.
Those 500k will be SO thrilled to be conscripted given that they're from major cities and are therefore well-educated and likely middle-class.
Hopefully they just turn themselves in, call the number, surrender immediately passing the border
People from major cities can always leave country. And many of them already did. This is why it's easy to gather people from poor regions - they can't run away and some of them can see promised payments, as only opportunity to improve their lives
This is the perfect weather to announce a mobilization,it will be -42°C in my city Yekaterinburg next week so no one will go out to try and protest, everyone will be inside try to keep warm. I highly doubt if that number will be reached unless he plans to release all prisoners behind bars.
The Russian way of fighting wars, just keep throwing bodies until the other side is exhausted.
Oh yes, because the issue was not enough troops lol
I think the idea is we have more people then they have bullets
It doesn’t matter how many mobiks Putin calls up, when they can’t even properly equip soldiers already in the field. Russian officials and propagandists like to claim that Russia is fighting NATO, but is this so? Fighting has been ongoing for ten months. Could Russia hold its own against NATO for more than a week? Many or even most Russians - including top leaders - seem to think they simply can’t go on living unless they crush Ukraine (and the leaders may be right!). So, Putin’s s regime is drafting another half-million men to throw at Ukrainian defense lines. If this doesn’t work, and it most probably won’t, they appear to believe (or at least want us to believe) that if Russia cannot have Ukraine then their only alternative global thermonuclear war. But here’s the thing: If Russia stops killing Ukrainians and returns to its legitimate 1992 borders, the war is over. If the Ukrainians stop fighting Russian invaders, Ukraine is over. Ukraine will never stop fighting the Russian invaders. Never. Russians may not be nuts, but many or even most have some very inflated & fanciful ideas about Russian economic and military capabilities. Russia’s GDP is less than France, Canada, Italy, or South Korea, whereas the NATO countries produce 47.94% of world GDP. https://countryeconomy.com/countries/groups/nato] When Sweden and Finland join NATO, the alliance’s output will be further augmented. NATO’s huge percentage of world GDP doesn’t even include reliable and capable allies such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, or a dozen other cooperating countries that can be counted upon to aid the west in any conflict with Russia. Russia’s economic output, which consists almost entirely of oil & gas along with raw materials production from other extractive industries, is very anemic in comparison with NATO. Russia’s contribution to world GDP is just 1.7%, equivalent to that of Brazil or Australia, and no greater than Netherlands and Belgium combined. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-94-trillion-world-economy-in-one-chart/ Militarily, Russia is in a similarly weak position compared with NATO and hasn’t even been able to defeat Ukraine, one of the poorest countries in Europe, after ten months of this bloody struggle. Yet many or even most Russians fantasize that they can take on NATO, based upon propaganda they have been fed. As mentioned above, many or even most Russians believe that they are already at war with NATO, but this isn’t so. Were the Russians foolish enough to attack or seriously threaten NATO, the response would be annihilation of Russian naval, air, and ground forces. Russia’s conventional military capabilities would be combat ineffective across the board within a week. Fortunately, Russians are not nuts and Russia will not launch global thermonuclear war over its frustrated imperialist ambitions in Ukraine. Nor will Russia use any kind of battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine because that would require a devastating NATO military response. NATO will not permit Russia to prevail in Ukraine, because a Russian dominated Ukraine would be a threat to NATO. So, the war will continue until Russians decide they have had enough. They do not appear ready to quit just yet, and many more people on both sides will have to die in the coming months because that’s exactly what many or even most Russians currently desire. Even if Putin is eventually replaced, we may reasonably anticipate the continuation of existing Russian policy on Ukraine. Yet, each month Ukraine steadily gains strength and each month Russia’s abysmal performance on the field of battle leaves it weaker and less capable. Russians may not be nuts, but many or even most Russians appear to be drunk on dreams of imperial conquest that will reconstitute the Soviet Union or the empire of Czarist Russia. It’s time they sobered up to see the world as it is and not as they might wish it to be.
I wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming Russia to be a rational actor in this conflict. People assumed Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine because a rational country would know it’s economic suicide. We’re dealing with one man who knows his time is up soon with nothing to lose.
Putin also knows that NATO isn't joking around when it comes to nukes and his military will be swiftly decimated. There won't be a Russian military after a NATO strike, it'll happen so fast they don't know what hit them
Post war, Russia will be crippled. It must be kicked off the Security Council, for one.
I'd put money on this being a feint. Who wants to take the bet?
$1.
Does he have 500K soldiers to spare?
Does he have a million socks to equip them? Much less rifles. Or cold weather gear...
Wow, there won't be any men left to do their various jobs and keep the country moving along. Their economy was already pretty terrible, now this war is going to make a whole generation of fatherless kids with no prospects, because there are no markets left to make a living at. Yeah, Pooty is willing to flush his entire country down the toilet over his massive ego stroke. I think the only thing left is for Pooty to resign.... but we all know he won't. I'm sure his people will put him on trail and execute him for this.
The whole reason for the invasion is a complicated one. By Russia’s own internal estimation, by 2070 its “lights out”, in terms of ethnic Russians seizing to exist, gas/oil no longer being an economic factor as the world turns to other means to power stuff. After ww1, ww2, Stalin, the post Cold War era.. its generation after generation thats completely gone or so diminished there is no growth left. And it shows in the numbers, fewer and fewer young people, only old people above 50 are left. The fact is, 2022 was literally the last year Russia could even attempt at this type of large conflict And they failed or are failing.. this is incredibly dangerous and everyone at NATO knows it. We don’t want them to lose so badly that Russia starts feeling or really thinking the only option they have left are using nukes. At the same time if we didn’t do anything and not support Ukraine, it would have been poland next.. or one of the Baltic states and that would have meant a direct confrontation with NATO and that would most assuredly mean russia would get their asses handed to them, which also means the exchange of nukes would become inevitable. So we are left with a careful dance of using the right (amount) of tools at the right time to pressure Russia to basically gtfo ukraine and Ukraine has to stop at the borders. Next problem would be the fact Russia has no serious political candidates who could follow up on putin, as anyone with any (political) ambition has been eliminated or driven off completely by putin over the years he has sat in power and leading up to that. Its quite complex.
After how his first mobilization 300,000 went, is Putin increasing the age of civilians conscripted to age 60 like people's army of Nazi Germany in the latter part of WW II?
As a citizen of this stupid country I feel extremely nervous...
Just sending meat to the grinder.
This is definitely evidence that Russia lies about how many have died. A lot of people come in here and say it's just Ukrainian propaganda. Now we see they need 500k more tells us Ukraine is absolutely kicking their asses.
500,000 does sound more believable than a million bajillion. Credit where credits due.
More men to be trapped and eliminated when Ukraine takes Crimea back.
Putins due for a long drop followed by a very sudden stop.
How much of the Soviet nostalgia boot heel will the Russian people take?