Russia - threadbanned users in OP

With Lend lease the US will be supporting Ukraine until the end of the Biden presidencies term at a minimum. I don't see Russia lasting until 2024. I suspect their complete defeat in Ukraine will happen in mid 2023.

As pointed out by many already Russias military is dimishing and degrading whilst the Ukrainians are being strengthen with even more modern equipment all the time. Russia's only hope is to withdraw from Ukraine and accept reparations for their crimes with criminal proceedings for their political and military leaders.

The war is winnable.

Ukraine are winning it now. They are resting and recovering and resupplying and training and planning the next steps of their liberation campaign with the finest military minds the West can offer.

First Kherson, then Crimea and then consolidation when the snows come.

Russia is weak and depleted and demoralised and rudderless. They have no reinforcements except the criminal and the crippled. They are down to less than 30% of weapons inventory and their losses of armour and logistics vehicles is no less than catastrophic. They also lack the materials to replace most of it, especially the computer components.

Slowly slowly, catchy Russkie....

What a stupid statement. It's a war of the worlds second biggest army versus a second world army with a small military that's been backed by limited western military aid in the grand schemes of things.

If the Russian army wasn't such a corrupt, rotten force it should have rolled over Ukraine in a few weeks.

Here we are 8 months later, Russia has barely made in-roads, and is sacrificing the cream of what it actually has in good order to make minimal gains. Then you add into the mix their collapsing economy, international isolation, and humiliation on the world stage.

Saying Ukraine would have won by now if they could is absurd. They've spectacularly defied even the most optimistic outlooks pre-invasion, outlooks that would have been laughed at and ridiculed back then.

The fact Russia is very clearly not-winning is resoundingly profound. It would be like watching an amateur boxer taking prime Mike Tyson into the later rounds and then unleashing a battering and having him on the ropes, only for people like yourself to say "The amateur boxer should just throw in the towel, he's not going to win".

Amazing how the propaganda narrative has shifted. Russian's can't even claim that Ukraine is being militarily defeated so it's switched now to "they can't win long-term so they should just surrender". How embarrassing is that. A small second world army with limited western military aid giving an absolute drubbing to what was supposed to be the world's second best army.

The Kremlin supporters desperately trying to waffle their way out of it, it is pathetic to see, almost comical if the stakes and consequences were not so severe. We had someone on this thread claim that Russia's only faltering because they're holding back. Ten of thousands of dead, half their serviceable tank fleet gone, significant air force losses, their missile stock heavily depleted, rushing barely trained conscripts to the front.

But they are holding back, OK. Curious how their performance in Ukraine echoes their performance against Georgia in 2008, a foe even more minuscule than Ukraine. They won that one via brute force but yet couldn't establish air dominance for exactly the same reason as they can't in Ukraine. Crap training, crap combined arms, crap leadership.

Russia has humiliated itself. The humiliation wouldn't go away if they won tomorrow. Like a schoolyard bully they picked a fight with a ridiculously weaker opponent that on-paper shouldn't have been able to fight back.

I don't want to take away from Ukraine's will to fight, but the realistic take on the situation is that Russia is to blame for Russia's misfortune. Crap training, crap equipment, crap leadership, crap morale, crap intelligence, the list is endless.

Ukraine has a much smaller military but it's far better trained and equipped, better led too.

Ukraine could surrender tomorrow and none of those statements about Russia will become untrue and the world knows it. Hiding behind the veil of "we're really fighting NATO" is another bum-comment. A) If NATO got involved Russia would be pulverised on day one. B) If the US/NATO supplied Ukraine with actual high-level military aid, Russia would also be destroyed. The only reason they haven't is to avoid escalation.

In fairness to GWB's Joint Chiefs, within 8 months of being there the country was easily under US occupation.

That was on day 22. (March 19 to April 9, 2003)

In fairness to the Russians, we didn't have to fight a competent military force.

I think by Day 22 Putin was still yelling at farmers stealing his slagged tanks.

I wonder if the Russian ships have been damaged by other means while the drone attack was ongoing.

Didn't Ukraine use a decoy technique to hit the Moscow or whatever it was called ?

Why do you think they weren't?

You weren't advocating for peace in February or March but now that Russia are having their ass handed to them, you're all about it.

Not one of these peaceniks that recently crawled out of the woodwork had a word to say when mariupol was being levelled. Or when the disgusting acts in Bucha came to light. So they can stick it up their hole now. My sincere hope is that we see the implosion of Russia as a result of this war. A stain on humanity for going on two centuries.

For all its faults, the US has a military that's unmatched. Not only do they have good gear and well-trained soldiers, they can apply those forces thousands of kilometers away at short notice thanks to a massive navy and presences in bases around the world. With that out of the way, spare a thought for the Russians. They are nowhere near that. In fact, I'm not even sure that they're close to parity with the Chinese at this point.

What I'm getting at here is that beyond all the huffing and puffing, Putin has really pushed Russia down in the rankings. The Ukrainians helped of course by killing a huge amount of Russia's military and taking their equipment but the other powers must surely be realising that Russia can't be the number two anymore. Whatever about the propaganda and all that, world leaders know the score, regardless of what they say publicly. Xi knows that Russia is now the junior partner. Even Modi is probably thinking the same.

Between the sanctions and the military defeat, Russia is going to be at best, some kind of North Korea. It's a country with huge potential but the kleptocracy that governs it has turned it into an utterly incompetent shithole of a country that can't even invade a much smaller neighbour.

Even now, well before things have settled, Russia has shown itself to be fairly useless. Unlike situations where they could bomb civilians from the air and look tough, now they've been forced to show their hand and it's a bunch of pokemon cards and a loyalty card for a defunct supermarket.

Russia has nothing except gas. Their people don't want to fight. Those that do don't have proper equipment because their system encourages theft and lies so the 500,000 bulletproof vests mostly existed on paper and the rest was sold on ebayski.

Their whole system is rotten from top to bottom. The only thing that they seem to be doing well is propaganda but now they're even believing it themselves. Don't get me wrong, it's still working well in the US and outside of the English speaking world but the are falling for it themselves.

Anyway, in summary, there is no way that Russia can be seen to be number two anymore and they shouldn't be treated as such. And you can be sure that Xi and Modi are well aware of this by now. They're not even on par with Ukraine.