Russia - threadbanned users in OP

This would be one of my concerns too.

What happens if they simply can't sustain the loss of AFU personnel?

Will russia simply win just by throwing by sheer numbers,as they've done in the past?

Or will Ukraine allies step in to make up the numbers?

It is worrying.

You'd have to wonder are these fatalities caused by their own side, the so called cannon fodder, shot dead by their own side for not progressing forwards.

Right, so complete bollocks as expected. The only real intervention to stop a country acquiring nuclear weapons was the Israeli air raid on Iraq's nuclear reactor 40 years ago. No one stopped India or North Korea or Pakistan. It's a fantasy.

That claim came from a Russian source .

Of course Ukraine are taking casualties nobody said they weren't but when the claims come from the Kremlin you know it's all lies

That is the key. Russia has lost most of its modern tanks and armoured vehicles. It has used up a large amount of it munitions. During the last mobilisation it struggle to provide uniform's and weapons to the recruits

Simple cheap old technology line like the LAWS anti tank rockets are proving very versatile in this war.

Mobilisation will just mean more Russian deaths. Several NATO countries are training Ukrainian recruits since last June. Supposedly 15k every three months. These are highly skilled soldiers when trained. There will be 50k of these in place by late spring. Many of these are probably being trained in specialist NATO equipment and weapon systems.

What Russia has left is mostly older T62 tanks. The tanks being given to the UA now will slice through these like butter the only worry would be if Russia has much in the way of handheld or there two man anti tank weapons and how effective these are.

By the end of the winter the Russian army will be in a terrible place IMO. It will only be a case of mopping them up

Remember too that Poland and other Baltic states inc Finland are all looking on too. From their POV, prevention would be better than cure - so if Ukraine is seriously threatened, they could well either unilaterally or together enter the war. Not as NATO but as individual or group of states.

Very simple really, apply the same basic principle most western democracies use to select juries. In other words, you periodically select a couple hundred people to run the country for a few years.

If the are able to mobilise another 500k like the rumor suggests,that is still a hell of a lot of personnel to have deal with.

As for the invasion aspect,most russians are brainwashed into thinking they are defending their homeland.

I just hope all those new toys the AFU get make a difference.

While any of these countries entering the war would probably help end the conflict sooner, creating a bigger headache for Russia than it already has, they're already in NATO, and that's their prevention. They would have little to fear from even pre-2022 Russian army under this arrangement, never mind the currently depleted one, so none of these countries will be unilaterally entering the fray under the basis of prevention.

The most I see the likes of the Poles getting involved is maybe as some kind of peacekeeping force along the Ukraine-Belarus border, and that's still pretty unlikely.

This is how they are going to try and create enthusiasm for the next mobilization campaign of 500K lucky Orcs.

Yay, WW2 weapons and a couple of ladies, who by the look of their appeciation for each other, won't have the slightest interest in a walking fertiliser bag.

That's not an accurate breakdown of costs though is it? To do that, you need to add in the value of every bit of destroyed Russian hardware, tanks, aircraft, ships, ammunition dumps etc. If all these values are added up and subtracted from the 50 billion, you will find that the individual Russian lives were the smallest cost.

The Soledar situation still doesn't looks great.

This is the most concise illustration I have seen to describe what has happened and how Russia managed to bypass a fortress so quickly.

Soledar is essentially a barbell of a town. There's a northern part, and southern part with a narrow strip in-between.

The southern part was a fortress that has held for months until now.

It looks like the Russians made an assault across country that bypassed the most fortified areas in the southern part. Ukrainian troops who feared being cut off withdrew from the southern part to the northern part which is still contested.

In the grand scheme of things, the advance is minor, but when you compare it to other Russian advances, it looks more significant.

We will just have to wait and see how this all plays out. My guess is that Ukraine will heavily reinforce the northern part of Soledar that they control. It's too early to say who wins.

The one thing that is abundantly clear is that Putin's talk of an Orthodox Christmas ceasefire was all a lie.

The significant Russian advance we've seen over the last two days was planned and coordinated with the hope that they might have caught the Ukrainians off guard.