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.
Putin never had a strategy and he doesn't have one now. He's just trying to survive day to day. Ending the war would likely result in the overthrow of his regime so he's going to cling on for as long as he possibly can, consequences be damned.
Hard to disagree. Others have said he's a poker player who wants you to believe he's a chess player. All bluff, all the time. In a strongman state, the state of that strongman is all that really matters. And my two cents is that Putin is an overpromoted gangster ghoul, and your hypothesis is correct - it wasn't supposed to be this way. Ukraine wasn't supposed to be capable of such resistance, Putin understood his mortality and decided that there was never going to be better conditions than now to try and go for his 20th century revenge project. That's very, very dangerous for a guy who's so personally invested in victory or death - you're implying, and probably correct - that the war ONLY ends when he ends.
That is correct, but there's a degree nobody's thus-far said:
IF his only means of breaking the ones who've damaged his "importance" is nuking everybody, then he .. has no reason to not-do-so.
Same with Netanyahu, in the Middle-East.
Competitive-nihilism, aka mass-shooting, is a category-of-motivation that Trump's displaying, too.
& you may remember he tried getting the nuclear-codes, within the last week or 2..
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He may not have a reason, but he has many barriers, including the loss of support from his overlord in Beijing. And the military folks who have to execute his order have family that is going to live on this earth longer than he will. It's less about his lack of restraint and more about the likelihood that it doesn't actually achieve anything positive for Russia. They're just a big, posionous bomb. Used against territory they claim as their own. It's shitting on your own birthday cake.
The only way the war ends is with Ukraine falling or the implosion of the Russian government. Putin will not survive a loss. Ukraine just has to keep fighting until the Russian infrastructure collapses. Russia painted themselves into a corner and can't get out of it.
China is the only real winner in this war. Their economic power is surpassing that of the EU and the United States. They are manufacturing most of the technology that Russia uses in this war.
When this war ends, China will have the most advanced military equipment, followed by the Europe with Ukraine in the lead. The U.S. will be a distant third, without allies or economic power.
Also most of the technology everyone else uses. I'd be pretty surprised if there's anything on the battlefield which doesn't have something either directly made in China or at least made with machines using chinese components. Smarter Everyday on youtube had a video series while back where they built grill scrubber using only USA manufactured parts and even that was a decent challenge. And all they needed was some steel, few nuts and bolts and few plastic parts. Anything with a charging port would be much more difficult to build without chinese components.
The grill scrubber was a good one. Apparently Ukraine has massively ramped up local production though and now has drones (almost) made entirely start to finish there.
They are making a good progress and kicking EU in the right direction too at the same time. I'm not too familiar on how they actually manufacture their drones, but there's practically no options build anything only from European components. In theory you could team up with some university and get a handful of chips, but that would be extremely expensive and it's literally a handful of processors at best, so nothing at the scale any kind of production line could do anything with.
If it's enough to be 'non-chinese' then there's a few options, but it's still a long supply chain and manufacturers are in South Korea, Japan and (mostly) Taiwan. And even then there's very little to choose from without relying on chinese designs and toolchains. So practically speaking there's no way to avoid being dependent on China if you're building a computer of any kind, no matter if you shoehorn that in a drone or make a new line of laptops.
It goes further: when Trump declares dictatorship, & turns on Canada, using Greenland to sever Canada's Atlantic trade & EU-lifeline,
Putin'll be powerless, but if China simply makes him an offer he can't refuse:
China supplants Russia in gov't and industry, & then Putin gets to continue playing "tzar" and rampaging on Europe to his heart's contentment .. then China gets the West grinded-down, while fascism is highjacking the West,
& China can concentrate on enforcing its imperial-dominion throughout Asia.
Win-win-win, from China's perspective.
Later, when the Regional-Consolidation Time is done, the West grinded-down, then the Chinese Empire can step-in, & begin rampaging the remnant of the West.
Fascist-highjacking's cancer.
The West has it.
& Trump's changing-the-rules is, unless he drops, inevitable.
Everybody-else is betting he drops.
Except me.
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