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.
Ukraine haven't even mobilzed people under 25. It's terrible what they've suffered, but they're nowhere near societal collapse. Russia has been in a nearly net-zero state of casulaties to recruits for nearly two years. And what's not stated there is the declining quality of the average Russian Fighting Man. They started off as a fairly professional mechanized army - destroyed that. Then they went with mass of men and materiel, as they always do, but perofmance and quality declined. Then they went to irregular units driving buggies, bikes and horses into combat. And at each stage, their forward progress and the cost of recruiting new troops rose higher and higher to absurd levels.
Even globally, there is a finite amount of idiots willing to die for a paycheque that likely won't be paid anyways. Just like how ISIS found there is a finite amount of devoted islamists willing to die directly figthing an organized enemy in Iraq and Syria, until they melted away. Russia wants you to think they're bottomless, and not just in terms of their depravity. But - nothing is infinte, and just being able to replace raw numbers without any regard to training quality is obviously leading to decreased performance of your slave army. Russia is losing net territory so far this year, and that's pretty darn hard to hide, or reverse. If they COULD be doing 1% better than they are now, they would be doing eveyrthing to achieve it. This is it - this is the most they're willing to do - throwing useless mouths into pounded rubble until they are blown to bits, and hoping Ukraine gives them something to go away. You know - like a terrorist does asking for ransom.