Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Whether you take a town or bypass it depends on who holds it & what threat they pose. Pockets will soon get isolated & surrounded. It's easier to let them starve than try to take them. You don't hold up a rapid advance & get bogged down especially when you are in your own country.

Wagner convicts(aka fodder) aren't present on all fronts. It could well be 5-1 in Bakhmut/Soledar but not across the front.

Ukraine has been on the attack in Kherson and around Svatove and Kreminna for months. As you pointed out the defenders have the advantage so the UA are probably taking pretty heavy loses there.

Your ability to misconstrue a post is truly incredible.

Up to 10-1 now? How is the front line stable with 10:1 kill ratio? The Ukrainians should be in Moscow at this stage. Ye are just taking random stats and jumping to all sorts of conclusions.

One thing that probably is probably affecting the stats is the low value that Russians seems to place on lives. Far more Russians that are injured are likely die. This is probably pushing up the kill ratio and skews the casualties ratio.

The tactics required massive mistakes from Russia. Could that happen again? Of course, but you shouldn't base your strategy on it.

Because it would be incredibly stupid to do it unless they have no other choice? If Germany had agreed to send the Leopard to Ukraine the only thing that would happening right now is the training of Ukrainians on Leopards. What is happening right now? The training of Ukrainians on Leopards. So German's indecision might have no effect(or at least a limited effect if Poland is training more than 14 crews) on the deployment of the tanks - assuming that they do agree in he coming weeks.

If Germany decides against it, which I don't think they will, then I am sure Poland will push ahead.

Rapidly followed by random experts on here telling us ,oh they didn't achieve much really,

,Donegal is clearly obsessive about Churchill. Leave him to it, just ignore and move on.

Months? I love the optimism Bitcoin, and I’ve love to see it pan out this way, but months isn’t realistic. Couple of years, maybe, but not months. That said, I would be delighted to be wrong there.

The Russians certainly seem to be aware, given their frequent visits.

I've been following this thread for a while and would question there being a "pro-orc" camp at all. A large large majority here are clearly in favour of a Ukrainian victory. You then have the odd person actually leaning the other way (rare), but most who are labelled "putinbots" etc. are usually just disagreeing with someone when they are labelled such, and I would bet are really disagreeing to be contrary.

There definitely isn't a battle for minds, this thread is pro-ukrainian with a handful of regular gatekeepers ready to "putinbot" their next opposing view.

I remember that. Even did some kind of Simpsons joke about at the time :P

Suppose we should give a shout-out to the lads at Orwell Rd. at this stage. At least they try…very poorly

The orc horde are only capable of launching human wave attacks at this stage. Even the Ukrainian commanders are shocked at just how much meat the orcs were willing to throw at them.

Do you really think they are in a position of strength by doing this?

The orcs are well past the stage of catastrophic losses and nothing can save them. China are not going to step in. There are not 200k experienced and trained soldiers who can readily be mobilized. There are no tank factories in the Urals producing hundreds of tanks a week (they are lucky to produce 200 a year).

Sooner rather than later a Ukraine counter offensive is coming. Just like in Kherson and Kharkiv there will be a sudden and dramatic orc collapse. It'll be sped up by the fact that Ukraine have a lot of new toys that they never had before.

I would certainly agree that this thread is very much pro-Ukraine. I’m clearly pro-Ukraine myself in my own posts and it’s clear there are many others here of a similar mind. But this isn’t surprising given the nature of this conflict. A larger nation is trying to forcefully subdue a smaller neighbour essentially because they feel they have a right to do it, while ignoring all of the rules of War. The smaller nation’s right to choose is being ignored and and sense of their own democracy is at stake, not to mention their very existence.

Unless you have a very corrupted moral compass it shouldn’t be difficult to see which side of this conflict should prevail and which should fail. When a poster comes on here supporting the Russian position they have set themselves up with the titanic task of having to defend that position. Based on everything we know now about the conflict so far, defending Russia requires the same burden of proof as claiming that “Nazi Germany weren’t really the bad guys in WWII”. Any given poster can have a shot of that, but their argument would need to be truly amazing. I’ve yet to see that, and the flimsy counter arguments in defence of Russia feel to be little more than apologist talking points.

Combine this with the newly registered users who seen to tag in / tag out every other week, you get the feeling that is very often a managed attempt to defend Russia’s position. And when that inevitably fails they just stir the pot until thread-banned.

I will agree that labelling someone as a Putin-bot for just offering a count-position does happen a little too readily, but I feel that’s down to the frequency of actual Putin-bots turning up. If they would just cut that out it would be easier to debate without that card being played.

I do view the AFU as a superior fighting force, don’t get me wrong. But my opinion is based on the history of conflicts for control of Crimea. The “little green men” invasion of 2014 was possibly one of the few historical examples of a swift and mostly bloodless conquest of the peninsula, and that was due to the poor state of the AFU at the time, the element of surprise and the fact that Russia already had a large military base there.

Even with the Soviet army in shambles in WWII, it took many months for the Nazi forces to fully invade Crimea and that took some of the heaviest arms they had to make a dent in their defences. Crimea is a difficult object to win historically.

This is not to say the AFU can’t do it eventually, but unless there is a total and dramatic collapse of Russian command & control it won’t happen quickly. The loss of Crimea would spell the end for Putin, and he’d probably order a defense that would make Bakmut look like a schoolyard scrap.

Re the Korean Panther. The gun is German, produced under license, so does this limit who they can sell to ?

I am not worried about retaking Crimea. Once the land bridge is closed, the Kerch bridge can be blown and that makes the orc supply situation impossible. Say hello to another "goodwill gesture".

Anyone i've come across trying to justify the invasion itself usually do so to be against the grain, it's in their nature. You hand them an orange and they'll tell you it is an apple. A lot of it seems to stem from a want to side against anything the majority, or the State sides with. They're out to argue for argument sake and arguing with that type is pointless.

The "putinbot" labelling often shuts down individuals who haven't given an inkling that they are pro-russian, they just haven't toed the line laid out by a few here. "whataboutery" has lost all true meaning as well as it's often now just another tool now to shut down discussion. If someone's argument is rubbish, they'll unravel themselves which is far more fun to read over page after page of buzzwords.