They went from Ukraine being a Russian vassal state to a prospective NATO/EU member with 80% of their territory intact. What’s their next move, invade Belarus and end up half of that become an EU member too?
That said, Putin has not walked away with 20% of anything just yet.
Not just that. For that supposed 20% he reinvigorated NATO (prior to the full scale invasion countries started questioning if we still need NATO), got EU to increase defense spending and got Finland and Sweden to join NATO. They also proved they’re a paper tiger and their arms manufacturing is crap. Oh and of course sanctions and the war completely wrecking the economy.
Even if they somehow get 20% it’s a Pyrrhic victory.
For that supposed 20% he reinvigorated NATO (prior to the full scale invasion countries started questioning if we still need NATO), got EU to increase defense spending and got Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
Don’t you see how this works both ways?
He measured NATO’s response, he found a way to fight wars and not break (in the sense of popular outrage at loss of life and economic effect) for Russia, and which categories of population can be recruited for money and which shouldn’t, he confirmed that the resource exports money source can be reoriented to other countries than the West, and he made unofficially NATO-aligned countries officially that.
EU’s defense spending increasing is at the expense of other things.
They also proved they’re a paper tiger and their arms manufacturing is crap. Oh and of course sanctions and the war completely wrecking the economy.
They proved that to themselves too and reacted. Changed the military doctrine, evolved new tactics and strategy, built new MIC production chains. Russian army was inexperienced and thoroughly rotten, now it’s not. Russian weapons were expensive and untested, now there are cheap drones of various kinds produced on scale and used, well-tested and constantly improved.
The economy is not completely wrecked. It really seemed to be going there many times over these years. Some of the people who told me it’s going to crumble are professors. It’s not even approaching that anymore. I live in Russia.
People working in the Russian Central Bank are very competent. One can talk and talk about good and evil, but their work has been perfect basically since 1999 till now. And people making actual decisions too understand a lot.
It seems intuitively (incorrectly) that the way Russian society is built, with its inequality and injustice, it can’t bear a big war. But if slaveholder agrarian societies and feudal societies could fight wars with their plutocratic contemporaries, then Russia’s mafia feudalism can fight Western societies. Which are honestly too slowly changing to mafia feudalism ; perhaps some will flip to fascism.
Considering what all those western nations have shown themselves, I’m honestly not sure there are good guys here, and if there are none, then I’m kinda almost feeling patriotic. But I don’t understand why Putin had to invade Ukraine, Zelensky was fucking elected because of his promises to make peace and restore ties, and for the national interest it made much bigger sense to just do that, Ukraine would still be naturally dependent.
To attacking a non-NATO country. NATO’s purpose is not to defend random places and support random revolutions and occupations around the world - despite what the US thinks, and despite how much we sympathise with Ukraine - but to defend each other. Poland just bought hundreds of tanks, and we got to see where we are missing things. And as shitty the rift is with the US, Russia now has a rearming EU to worry about.
he found a way to fight wars and not break
He put the country on a war economy which is going to cause an insane recession if not an outright collapse if the war ends. They won’t even be able to go back to their pre-war military strength. This was always an option, coming back from it is not.
he confirmed that the resource exports money source can be reoriented to other countries than the West
At insanely low prices, and by creating even more dependencies on untrustworthy partners. Who’s to say China won’t use the new dependency to invade Russia? Can Russia depend on that?
They proved that to themselves too and reacted. Changed the military doctrine, evolved new tactics and strategy, built new MIC production chains.
It went from an army that could threaten Europe to one that could threaten Ukraine. I know, drones are the new thing, but all of Russia’s adversaries have much greater manufacturing capabilities than Russia, Russia is not going to outproduce the West or China in drones. Just to mention, Ukraine and Russia are largely peers in drone warfare, except all those drones are being blown up in Ukraine. Europe is stockpiling. In the meantime, they lost their whole Soviet stockpile of armor, and a sizeable chunk of their airforce.
EU’s defense spending increasing is at the expense of other things.
This is the new big lie of Russia. No, defense spending is coming from loans, basically a credit line we didn’t use because the Germans were jacking off to austerity. How that works is that if we overdo it, we’ll see more inflation, so you can check when we overdid it. Social spending is not being cut, there are maybe some programs somewhere, but that neolib shit has been going on forever, we’ve been fighting it forever, it’s just now Russia saying “you’ll all be poor”. Inflation is back to normal levels, and if anything, increased public spending will increase wages across the EU.
The economy is not completely wrecked.
Just look at the numbers. It’s a war economy. 40% of the Russian budget is going towards the army, and if the war ends or this money runs out - that’s 2027/28 if we’re being generous - you’re going from a labour shortage to 10% unemployment. That’s “dissolution of the USSR” level economic turmoil.
To attacking a non-NATO country. NATO’s purpose is not to defend random places and support random revolutions and occupations around the world
Yeah, well, attacking a NATO country with the military Russia had in 2022 would be suicide.
And as shitty the rift is with the US, Russia now has a rearming EU to worry about.
A rearmed EU will be less dependent upon the US. If we are expecting the US to go bad in the following decades, then EU less dependent upon it might be less likely to partake in pummeling Russia when that happens.
He put the country on a war economy which is going to cause an insane recession if not an outright collapse if the war ends.
That depends on the expected outside conditions. If there’s a worldwide crisis coming, then doing this before it is even advantageous.
At insanely low prices, and by creating even more dependencies on untrustworthy partners. Who’s to say China won’t use the new dependency to invade Russia? Can Russia depend on that?
China doesn’t generally invade anyone. Peace works in their favor. They are even catching up as an innovating and not only manufacturing nation. China already controls Russia though its industries’ supply chains. Also China controls much of the world through its rare metals.
So yes, Russia can depend on the Chinese “roof”, so to say, being stable.
Insanely low prices are regrettable, but one of Russia’s biggest exports is grain. Grain demand is different from oil and gas demand, - I don’t think I have to explain why, - so that falling or stopping being profitable is highly unlikely.
It went from an army that could threaten Europe to one that could threaten Ukraine. I know, drones are the new thing, but all of Russia’s adversaries have much greater manufacturing capabilities than Russia, Russia is not going to outproduce the West or China in drones.
From one that boasted threatening Europe to one that actually threatens Ukraine. Also you are writing this as if Ukraine were weak.
It’s not about capabilities, it’s about a whole functioning well-tested system. Russia doesn’t have to outproduce China, Russia simply can’t fight China, it’s dependent upon China in everything. But the good news (for Russia) are that all its potential adversaries are western or western-aligned.
Like training an LLM on a dataset (sorry).
This is the new big lie of Russia. No, defense spending is coming from loans, basically a credit line we didn’t use because the Germans were jacking off to austerity.
You weren’t using it, now you are using it. That’s too “at the expense of everything else”.
Just look at the numbers. It’s a war economy. 40% of the Russian budget is going towards the army, and if the war ends or this money runs out - that’s 2027/28 if we’re being generous - you’re going from a labour shortage to 10% unemployment. That’s “dissolution of the USSR” level economic turmoil.
They are making rules for labor migration stricter, and the number of labor migrants in Russia is enormous, I’d say it’s more than 10% workforce. I don’t have the current numbers, but it’s a few millions of citizens of Tajikistan alone. So - they are slowly impeding labor migration, and making it less attractive. Might be a preparation for this exactly.
OK. I don’t know where the ship is going or what its captain thinks. I’m just seeing that it’s been promised things completely different from what transpired for all my life.
A rearmed EU will be less dependent upon the US. If we are expecting the US to go bad in the following decades, then EU less dependent upon it might be less likely to partake in pummeling Russia when that happens.
To be honest, if the US and Russia started a war in eg. Kazakhstan or Afghanistan, the EU would most likely not care and I also think it shouldn’t. IMO we should stop trading with Israel as well, and I’m not alone here. I doubt after Ukraine even Poland would deign to help with a new war, and even the Israel thing is more of an inertia issue in the EU rather than anything else - not like that absolves anyone.
Ukraine was a European thing because Ukraine was attacked because it was aligning with the EU. Nobody sane in the EU wants war with Russia for the sake of antagonizing Russia. In fact, even the people who don’t like Russia are mistrustful and not hateful, as in nobody wants to see Russia fall apart, it’s just that its leadership broke so many promises that people think that it is a good idea to expect it to honor any deal or stay at peace.
You weren’t using it, now you are using it. That’s too “at the expense of everything else”.
Sorry, but this is a pet issue of mine, and not even because of the Russian war or even rearmament. Public investment is taking loans from corporations, and giving it to people as wages to do stuff. This drives inflation somewhat, but since it increases wages the people don’t feel it, but the loans given to corporations also inflate. This all drives the economy, since people having more money means they spend more, which makes companies compete more for that money, it’s all in all a good thing.
What I mean is that even if nothing like this was happening, if we paid a bunch of people to dig a hole, and another bunch of people to fill it up, it would still fuel the economy and make more money for everyone in the EU. Now if we spend that money on not pointless things, like the new military bill that includes a ton of money for infrastructure, building roads, railways, bridges, etc. that’s even better.
What I mean is that this is an investment, even if it doesn’t look like it. And we wouldn’t be doing it since German conservatives would rather we hoard money than spend it, so the same companies can keep winning in the market. Public investment actually makes corporations richer as well, just not always the same corporations, as it also increases competition, so the current winners don’t like it.
Think of the New Deal and its results on the US economy. It didn’t take money away from other public services, in fact it produced more taxes to fund them. Or look at Russia, it’s the same deal as with the war economy, except if done in moderation, inflation won’t run away so much that the EUR won’t stay convertible like the RUB, and wages, taxes and profits will go up.
OK. I don’t know where the ship is going or what its captain thinks. I’m just seeing that it’s been promised things completely different from what transpired for all my life.
Don’t we all, man. The scary part about Russia is that there does not seem to be an endgame, there doesn’t seem to be a next chapter to the plan. I wish you guys all luck and a better future.
Ukraine wasn’t a certain Russian vassal state. They had the original “orange revolution”.
About prospective NATO/EU member - honestly that’s not good enough. They’ve lost hundreds of thousands of men. Housing and infrastructure and industrial plants.
In return for that to be “considered” for being accepted into a military alliance of former empires and a union for “while civilized people”, only “considered”, some time in the future, like 20 years later, - fuck that.
And both entities have been promising mountains to Ukraine over these few years.
Of course, there’s also the issue of Ukraine’s government being corrupt and becoming the more corrupt the longer there’s no election.
From what it seems, Ukrainians too are not very keen on trying to maybe in 20 years join either. They want agreements and they want to build up their military and country. And they want to start unfucking their political system, when there’s opportunity.
I’m not saying that Ukraine doesn’t deserve better. Hell, Russia deserves better than Putin.
All I’m saying is that if let’s say the end result of this is a ceasefire on the current frontline, Russia basically lost the war. I’m not saying Ukraine totally won either, but it is arguably in a better place geopolitically than pre-revolution, even after the war.
Look, I’m from Hungary. If the peeps who did 1956 got Western help beyond thoughts and prayers, and the revolution ended up with Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén counties as “East Hungary” or bombed flat and even part of the USSR behind the fence, and the rest as basically a Western country, the memory of that revolution would be much less bittersweet.
All I’m saying is that if let’s say the end result of this is a ceasefire on the current frontline, Russia basically lost the war.
Russia lost the war the moment it started the war, because with pre-war Zelensky they could make any kind of equal alliance, that’s what his voters wanted and what he was promising.
However - in any case, 1, Russia has developed a modern armed force from the nonsense it had, it paid with plenty of lives for that, but many of those convicts and depressed\poor people who were attracted by the money offered, and, 2, with freezing of the conflict using the current line of contact Russia has gained strategically important territory on the Azov sea coast, connecting it to Crimea, and has almost approached Odessa.
Honestly, if Ukraine becomes de-facto landlocked, it’s over. Taking Odessa is hard, because there are limans to the south and east of it, they’d have to basically encircle it from the north first. In WWII when Soviet troops liberated Odessa, they too stormed the city from the north.
So there are two variants - 1) they make some peace\ceasefire\whatever with Ukraine losing what’s now controlled by Russia, and then after some time Russia commits perfidy and attacks again with the intention of taking Odessa, and 2) the same, but Russia doesn’t commit perfidy and just remains with the current situation.
Before this war Russian-controlled Crimea had a single chokepoint in its connection to Russia. After it there’s also the route through the mainland. We live in an era of developing land logistics.
I’ve already said that the Russian military has gained experience, the best possible kind at that - all other possible adversaries are either too weak or too strong (part of alliances and with their own experience). I suspect that’s even why the war was started at all - to gain experience of modern warfare with an adversary approaching equal, the hard way.
I’ll attribute the situation where it makes sense to western racism and chauvinism. A conflict where two East Slavic nations fight each other won’t have really grave consequences for Russia in terms of western reaction, and at the same time the Ukrainians are too gaining an experienced military. Almost a win-win decision for a psychopath leader.
Yeah, about that - when some kind of peace\ceasefire is made, Ukraine basically becomes a better buffer state for Russia than before. With no wish for more bloodshed, thus no threat for what Russia has occupied, yet a military better not to cross. So if, suppose, EU or NATO suddenly goes fascist in 10 or 20 years after now (all that Chat Control stuff doesn’t inspire confidence in the future), they will have to pass through Ukraine unless they make it a NATO or EU member, which they won’t due to their own arrogance.
So honestly, even without taking Odessa, Russia is improving its strategic position. From a purely military, 1930s-like, point of view. I mean, improving if its intention in the large picture is self-defense, because for pulling a Hitler it’s already a clear failure since the first few months, but honestly what if Putin really believes in bad-bad NATO intending to eat Russia? And nation leaders and powerful people are usually psychopaths, so maybe a psychopath is fitted with a better brain to understand them. Maybe he’s right.
Look, I’m from Hungary. If the peeps who did 1956 got Western help beyond thoughts and prayers, and the revolution ended up with Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén counties as “East Hungary” or bombed flat and even part of the USSR behind the fence, and the rest as basically a Western country, the memory of that revolution would be much less bittersweet.
Ukraine wasn’t behind anything like the Iron Curtain.
I guess the question is, what’s Russia’s endgame from all this? Because if we say that the Russian army of today is superior to the Russian army of 2022, which is debatable because while they are more competent, they also lost insane amounts of material, both ground, sea and air war machines; the Russian economy is still worse than it was before?
So what can Russia do with its improved army? Invade the Baltics? That’s a non-starter because of the EU. Invade Georgia? The only significance of that is that it prevents Europe from having an alternative oil and gas supplier than Russia. Invade Kazakhstan or the Caucasus? Wouldn’t that just create another Afghanistan/Ukraine moment where the rest of the world can just send random shit to that country and delete Russian divisions?
Russia also lost the Middle East, meaning Syria is gone and even Iran has its own problems. I’m just not seeing any way forward from this, even if they can patch the economy together.
they also lost insane amounts of material, both ground, sea and air war machines;
Intended for obsolete paradigm of war, a lot of them. Very expensive, old and not so efficient. And not just “lost”, also “tested in real life conditions”.
So what can Russia do with its improved army?
Defend from whatever it fears in the future, that’s probably their idea. If you are expecting a war, due to paranoia or not, this might seem justified. Similar to how averting a hunger is far easier than going through it, because during a hunger people who die also consume food before it, just not enough, and work with worse efficiency. In case of such a war of defense your preserved materiel and people will be expended possibly far less efficiently than in a smaller war to get some experience.
My whole line in this thread is that such a strategy seems to be consistent with the claims of feeling threatened by NATO, officially expressed by Russian officials since 00s. It’s funny, but it’s really so.
Russia also lost the Middle East, meaning Syria is gone and even Iran has its own problems. I’m just not seeing any way forward from this, even if they can patch the economy together.
Perhaps it’s optimization. Doesn’t matter how much you are trying to hold under control if you are not succeeding. Similarly to hunger.
…Putin is about to walk away with 20% of Ukraine
They went from Ukraine being a Russian vassal state to a prospective NATO/EU member with 80% of their territory intact. What’s their next move, invade Belarus and end up half of that become an EU member too?
That said, Putin has not walked away with 20% of anything just yet.
Not just that. For that supposed 20% he reinvigorated NATO (prior to the full scale invasion countries started questioning if we still need NATO), got EU to increase defense spending and got Finland and Sweden to join NATO. They also proved they’re a paper tiger and their arms manufacturing is crap. Oh and of course sanctions and the war completely wrecking the economy.
Even if they somehow get 20% it’s a Pyrrhic victory.
Don’t you see how this works both ways?
He measured NATO’s response, he found a way to fight wars and not break (in the sense of popular outrage at loss of life and economic effect) for Russia, and which categories of population can be recruited for money and which shouldn’t, he confirmed that the resource exports money source can be reoriented to other countries than the West, and he made unofficially NATO-aligned countries officially that.
EU’s defense spending increasing is at the expense of other things.
They proved that to themselves too and reacted. Changed the military doctrine, evolved new tactics and strategy, built new MIC production chains. Russian army was inexperienced and thoroughly rotten, now it’s not. Russian weapons were expensive and untested, now there are cheap drones of various kinds produced on scale and used, well-tested and constantly improved.
The economy is not completely wrecked. It really seemed to be going there many times over these years. Some of the people who told me it’s going to crumble are professors. It’s not even approaching that anymore. I live in Russia.
People working in the Russian Central Bank are very competent. One can talk and talk about good and evil, but their work has been perfect basically since 1999 till now. And people making actual decisions too understand a lot.
It seems intuitively (incorrectly) that the way Russian society is built, with its inequality and injustice, it can’t bear a big war. But if slaveholder agrarian societies and feudal societies could fight wars with their plutocratic contemporaries, then Russia’s mafia feudalism can fight Western societies. Which are honestly too slowly changing to mafia feudalism ; perhaps some will flip to fascism.
Considering what all those western nations have shown themselves, I’m honestly not sure there are good guys here, and if there are none, then I’m kinda almost feeling patriotic. But I don’t understand why Putin had to invade Ukraine, Zelensky was fucking elected because of his promises to make peace and restore ties, and for the national interest it made much bigger sense to just do that, Ukraine would still be naturally dependent.
To attacking a non-NATO country. NATO’s purpose is not to defend random places and support random revolutions and occupations around the world - despite what the US thinks, and despite how much we sympathise with Ukraine - but to defend each other. Poland just bought hundreds of tanks, and we got to see where we are missing things. And as shitty the rift is with the US, Russia now has a rearming EU to worry about.
He put the country on a war economy which is going to cause an insane recession if not an outright collapse if the war ends. They won’t even be able to go back to their pre-war military strength. This was always an option, coming back from it is not.
At insanely low prices, and by creating even more dependencies on untrustworthy partners. Who’s to say China won’t use the new dependency to invade Russia? Can Russia depend on that?
It went from an army that could threaten Europe to one that could threaten Ukraine. I know, drones are the new thing, but all of Russia’s adversaries have much greater manufacturing capabilities than Russia, Russia is not going to outproduce the West or China in drones. Just to mention, Ukraine and Russia are largely peers in drone warfare, except all those drones are being blown up in Ukraine. Europe is stockpiling. In the meantime, they lost their whole Soviet stockpile of armor, and a sizeable chunk of their airforce.
This is the new big lie of Russia. No, defense spending is coming from loans, basically a credit line we didn’t use because the Germans were jacking off to austerity. How that works is that if we overdo it, we’ll see more inflation, so you can check when we overdid it. Social spending is not being cut, there are maybe some programs somewhere, but that neolib shit has been going on forever, we’ve been fighting it forever, it’s just now Russia saying “you’ll all be poor”. Inflation is back to normal levels, and if anything, increased public spending will increase wages across the EU.
Just look at the numbers. It’s a war economy. 40% of the Russian budget is going towards the army, and if the war ends or this money runs out - that’s 2027/28 if we’re being generous - you’re going from a labour shortage to 10% unemployment. That’s “dissolution of the USSR” level economic turmoil.
Yeah, well, attacking a NATO country with the military Russia had in 2022 would be suicide.
A rearmed EU will be less dependent upon the US. If we are expecting the US to go bad in the following decades, then EU less dependent upon it might be less likely to partake in pummeling Russia when that happens.
That depends on the expected outside conditions. If there’s a worldwide crisis coming, then doing this before it is even advantageous.
China doesn’t generally invade anyone. Peace works in their favor. They are even catching up as an innovating and not only manufacturing nation. China already controls Russia though its industries’ supply chains. Also China controls much of the world through its rare metals.
So yes, Russia can depend on the Chinese “roof”, so to say, being stable.
Insanely low prices are regrettable, but one of Russia’s biggest exports is grain. Grain demand is different from oil and gas demand, - I don’t think I have to explain why, - so that falling or stopping being profitable is highly unlikely.
From one that boasted threatening Europe to one that actually threatens Ukraine. Also you are writing this as if Ukraine were weak.
It’s not about capabilities, it’s about a whole functioning well-tested system. Russia doesn’t have to outproduce China, Russia simply can’t fight China, it’s dependent upon China in everything. But the good news (for Russia) are that all its potential adversaries are western or western-aligned.
Like training an LLM on a dataset (sorry).
You weren’t using it, now you are using it. That’s too “at the expense of everything else”.
They are making rules for labor migration stricter, and the number of labor migrants in Russia is enormous, I’d say it’s more than 10% workforce. I don’t have the current numbers, but it’s a few millions of citizens of Tajikistan alone. So - they are slowly impeding labor migration, and making it less attractive. Might be a preparation for this exactly.
OK. I don’t know where the ship is going or what its captain thinks. I’m just seeing that it’s been promised things completely different from what transpired for all my life.
To be honest, if the US and Russia started a war in eg. Kazakhstan or Afghanistan, the EU would most likely not care and I also think it shouldn’t. IMO we should stop trading with Israel as well, and I’m not alone here. I doubt after Ukraine even Poland would deign to help with a new war, and even the Israel thing is more of an inertia issue in the EU rather than anything else - not like that absolves anyone.
Ukraine was a European thing because Ukraine was attacked because it was aligning with the EU. Nobody sane in the EU wants war with Russia for the sake of antagonizing Russia. In fact, even the people who don’t like Russia are mistrustful and not hateful, as in nobody wants to see Russia fall apart, it’s just that its leadership broke so many promises that people think that it is a good idea to expect it to honor any deal or stay at peace.
Sorry, but this is a pet issue of mine, and not even because of the Russian war or even rearmament. Public investment is taking loans from corporations, and giving it to people as wages to do stuff. This drives inflation somewhat, but since it increases wages the people don’t feel it, but the loans given to corporations also inflate. This all drives the economy, since people having more money means they spend more, which makes companies compete more for that money, it’s all in all a good thing.
What I mean is that even if nothing like this was happening, if we paid a bunch of people to dig a hole, and another bunch of people to fill it up, it would still fuel the economy and make more money for everyone in the EU. Now if we spend that money on not pointless things, like the new military bill that includes a ton of money for infrastructure, building roads, railways, bridges, etc. that’s even better.
What I mean is that this is an investment, even if it doesn’t look like it. And we wouldn’t be doing it since German conservatives would rather we hoard money than spend it, so the same companies can keep winning in the market. Public investment actually makes corporations richer as well, just not always the same corporations, as it also increases competition, so the current winners don’t like it.
Think of the New Deal and its results on the US economy. It didn’t take money away from other public services, in fact it produced more taxes to fund them. Or look at Russia, it’s the same deal as with the war economy, except if done in moderation, inflation won’t run away so much that the EUR won’t stay convertible like the RUB, and wages, taxes and profits will go up.
Don’t we all, man. The scary part about Russia is that there does not seem to be an endgame, there doesn’t seem to be a next chapter to the plan. I wish you guys all luck and a better future.
Ukraine wasn’t a certain Russian vassal state. They had the original “orange revolution”.
About prospective NATO/EU member - honestly that’s not good enough. They’ve lost hundreds of thousands of men. Housing and infrastructure and industrial plants.
In return for that to be “considered” for being accepted into a military alliance of former empires and a union for “while civilized people”, only “considered”, some time in the future, like 20 years later, - fuck that.
And both entities have been promising mountains to Ukraine over these few years.
Of course, there’s also the issue of Ukraine’s government being corrupt and becoming the more corrupt the longer there’s no election.
From what it seems, Ukrainians too are not very keen on trying to maybe in 20 years join either. They want agreements and they want to build up their military and country. And they want to start unfucking their political system, when there’s opportunity.
I’m not saying that Ukraine doesn’t deserve better. Hell, Russia deserves better than Putin.
All I’m saying is that if let’s say the end result of this is a ceasefire on the current frontline, Russia basically lost the war. I’m not saying Ukraine totally won either, but it is arguably in a better place geopolitically than pre-revolution, even after the war.
Look, I’m from Hungary. If the peeps who did 1956 got Western help beyond thoughts and prayers, and the revolution ended up with Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén counties as “East Hungary” or bombed flat and even part of the USSR behind the fence, and the rest as basically a Western country, the memory of that revolution would be much less bittersweet.
Russia lost the war the moment it started the war, because with pre-war Zelensky they could make any kind of equal alliance, that’s what his voters wanted and what he was promising.
However - in any case, 1, Russia has developed a modern armed force from the nonsense it had, it paid with plenty of lives for that, but many of those convicts and depressed\poor people who were attracted by the money offered, and, 2, with freezing of the conflict using the current line of contact Russia has gained strategically important territory on the Azov sea coast, connecting it to Crimea, and has almost approached Odessa.
Honestly, if Ukraine becomes de-facto landlocked, it’s over. Taking Odessa is hard, because there are limans to the south and east of it, they’d have to basically encircle it from the north first. In WWII when Soviet troops liberated Odessa, they too stormed the city from the north.
So there are two variants - 1) they make some peace\ceasefire\whatever with Ukraine losing what’s now controlled by Russia, and then after some time Russia commits perfidy and attacks again with the intention of taking Odessa, and 2) the same, but Russia doesn’t commit perfidy and just remains with the current situation.
Before this war Russian-controlled Crimea had a single chokepoint in its connection to Russia. After it there’s also the route through the mainland. We live in an era of developing land logistics.
I’ve already said that the Russian military has gained experience, the best possible kind at that - all other possible adversaries are either too weak or too strong (part of alliances and with their own experience). I suspect that’s even why the war was started at all - to gain experience of modern warfare with an adversary approaching equal, the hard way.
I’ll attribute the situation where it makes sense to western racism and chauvinism. A conflict where two East Slavic nations fight each other won’t have really grave consequences for Russia in terms of western reaction, and at the same time the Ukrainians are too gaining an experienced military. Almost a win-win decision for a psychopath leader.
Yeah, about that - when some kind of peace\ceasefire is made, Ukraine basically becomes a better buffer state for Russia than before. With no wish for more bloodshed, thus no threat for what Russia has occupied, yet a military better not to cross. So if, suppose, EU or NATO suddenly goes fascist in 10 or 20 years after now (all that Chat Control stuff doesn’t inspire confidence in the future), they will have to pass through Ukraine unless they make it a NATO or EU member, which they won’t due to their own arrogance.
So honestly, even without taking Odessa, Russia is improving its strategic position. From a purely military, 1930s-like, point of view. I mean, improving if its intention in the large picture is self-defense, because for pulling a Hitler it’s already a clear failure since the first few months, but honestly what if Putin really believes in bad-bad NATO intending to eat Russia? And nation leaders and powerful people are usually psychopaths, so maybe a psychopath is fitted with a better brain to understand them. Maybe he’s right.
Ukraine wasn’t behind anything like the Iron Curtain.
I guess the question is, what’s Russia’s endgame from all this? Because if we say that the Russian army of today is superior to the Russian army of 2022, which is debatable because while they are more competent, they also lost insane amounts of material, both ground, sea and air war machines; the Russian economy is still worse than it was before?
So what can Russia do with its improved army? Invade the Baltics? That’s a non-starter because of the EU. Invade Georgia? The only significance of that is that it prevents Europe from having an alternative oil and gas supplier than Russia. Invade Kazakhstan or the Caucasus? Wouldn’t that just create another Afghanistan/Ukraine moment where the rest of the world can just send random shit to that country and delete Russian divisions?
Russia also lost the Middle East, meaning Syria is gone and even Iran has its own problems. I’m just not seeing any way forward from this, even if they can patch the economy together.
Intended for obsolete paradigm of war, a lot of them. Very expensive, old and not so efficient. And not just “lost”, also “tested in real life conditions”.
Defend from whatever it fears in the future, that’s probably their idea. If you are expecting a war, due to paranoia or not, this might seem justified. Similar to how averting a hunger is far easier than going through it, because during a hunger people who die also consume food before it, just not enough, and work with worse efficiency. In case of such a war of defense your preserved materiel and people will be expended possibly far less efficiently than in a smaller war to get some experience.
My whole line in this thread is that such a strategy seems to be consistent with the claims of feeling threatened by NATO, officially expressed by Russian officials since 00s. It’s funny, but it’s really so.
Perhaps it’s optimization. Doesn’t matter how much you are trying to hold under control if you are not succeeding. Similarly to hunger.
Anyway, this is me playing devil’s advocate.
And all of Alaska of course