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?

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.
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.
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.

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[–] Paragone@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm taking what you're saying 1-step further:

Russia's idea of victory, now, is the fascist-highjacking of as much of the West as possible,

& then the fascists/feudalists align, together, against civilrights, for the final beat-down, enforcing their oligarchic totalitarianism.

Total war against civilrights.

Both by communists ( what the CCP did to Tibet & to the Uyghurs was exactly imperialism's eradication ) & by the right: the goal's the same, exclusive factional-supremacism.

So, right now, the question pertinent is how long before Trump & Putin set-aside their differences, & both openly war against the autonomy & lives of the woke: Canada, Civil-War Part2, & the rest of the Americas, for the coming Trump dictatorship, & after China "backs"/supplants "Russia" within "Russia", then Putin, or "Putin" or some replacement/quivalent will be rampaging on Europe..

That's the "mass shooting" "win" they're wanting: to destroy that anybody else could ever be "great", so they get to be the final "important" ones.

Competitive-nihilism.

( & it'd be a win-win for China: grind-down the West, without spilling Chinese blood, & China can concentrate on the Asian war-of-consolidation for the same next-7-years,

AND since I expect both Netanyahu & the Saudi king to die soon, that'll leave the Middle-East to MBS, & he'll take Africa once he's got Iran & the rest sorted. )

Phase-change for the world, iow, same as WW1 was a phase-change.

Completely-different-footing.

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It isn't working though and the reason is that fascists suck at war.

The people you are speaking of convinced themselves that drones and AI could replace human expertise in warfare and thus a new age of feudalism determined by "might makes right" had been ushered in.

They were wrong, what Ukraine has proven is that drones are an integral part of infantry and the expertise at flying drones as a human operator is even more valuable than just being able to point and shoot a gun. Dumb mass waves of shaheds have proven to be aerial target training for adaptive air defense networks and warfare has shown once again that powerful people cannot foreclose which way the tides will turn behind closed doors, what happens in war is what happens.

To put it another way, techbros and rightwing authoritarians have succumbed to the brainworms around AI and drones doing to warfare what the industrial revolution did to individual artisan labor, and it is delusional scifi slop thinking. That future has not and will not come into fruition any time soon and believing in its imminent arrival or worse that this future has already arrived is absurdist. This isn't however to say these technologies don't radically change warfare.

Unfortunately for us, both the ruling class of russia and of countries like the US are completely convinced of this delusion to the point that it has lobotomized their empathy. This is how waves of fascism grow.

The way waves of fascism crash is again, fascists are horrifically bad at warfare. This is because fascists are obsessed with the aesthetics of violence, warfare and domination and not the actual techniques, mental adaption, practice and knowledge that warfare requires. In other words fascists really only want to roleplay being warriors, they aren't interested in all the annoying parts of learning how to actually be good at it and adjusting to new developing realities that make old tactics irrelevant.