For serious discussion - like your thoughts beyond simple “Russians go home” platitudes. What even is a russian theory of victory at this point?
First off - this STILL seems to be a war where their only goal is conquest and capitulation of the Ukrainian government to a Russian puppet one. But - how do they intend realize that?
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Terroristic bombings against civilian targets from standoff distance has never, ever been successful at defeating an industrial society. It’s way, way way too expensive to maintain and doesn’t hold ground.
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Russia’s mechanized forces in mass have largely been wiped out and is cost-ineffective compared to Ukraine’s ability to stop them with drones.
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Russia’s infantry tactics is literally sending in small infiltration teams into forward areas, where they are eventually either droned, sniped, mined, shelled or outright counter attacked and killed.
Ukraine seems capable of increasingly automating their defense AND assualt forces to be less manpower intensive, and able to trade a little bit of land temporarily until they can kill the infiltration teams that bum rush positions in cars, motorbikes or on foot. The latter is NOT a serious or effective strategy for occupying and pacifying conquered land.
In the big picture - Russia seems to just be prolonging the slaughter and hoping to be given something in return to make it stop. But - that doesn’t seem likely to work. No serious minded thinkers expect Russia to honor any agreement, so why WOULDN’T Ukraine logically look at the stiatuion and conclude that the ONLY way to stop future russian aggression is to bleed out their army until there is fundamental change in Russian political leadership.
How does Russia ‘win’ this war? It’s hard to see. Things feel very endgame, but also stagnant since life of their soldiers means absolutely nothing to the Kremlin, when they probably know the alternative is that stopping the war leads quickly and directly to total domestic collapse.
Your thoughts please.
The only theory of Russian “victory” is to keep at it until Ukraine breaks. There are many breaking points that could give: foreign support, domestic political will, manpower, even corruption.
Russia has only one feasible path to long term stability, and it’s to keep a war economy until something better comes along, like plundering Ukrainian natural resources or some other EU country. That could be gearing up reserves to invade the next country after Ukraine, or revanschist attitudes if beaten by NATO.
Stopping now will kill Putin, tank the economy and create a huge power vacuum that will cost Russia at least a decade before recovery can get started, and possibly be felt for another decade after that. Annexing Ukraine could yield morale victory and plunder to tide them over into the next war, it’s the only way to avoid a collapse, and thus worth every life and sanction.
This, so called front line is essentially empty in a lot of places and one big loss can break unstable in many ways country. We are lucky that they are regarded and inefficient in many areas (in general their army is great at implementing doctrine, doctrine itself is flawed so far with exception of drone warfare, they aren’t cutting edge in this but implementation and standartization is the key here).
the mistake of putin was not plundering during obama years, like when the pro-russian president of ukraine was still in power, he waited too long to act, im guessing putin was getting his info 2nd or 3rd hand.
Well, they did annex a hefty bit of Ukraine under Obama, and suitably stabilised & evaluated the situation afterwards.