Russia - threadbanned users in OP

But as you are fond of pointing out Wibbs, it all comes back to economics too. That is a significant factor, more than one way of bleeding a military offensive dry.

Apart from that, who's lining up with the Russians now in Europe? Hungary, Serbia and Croatia?

Its like June/July 2022 again. Russia was the only one making progress before HIMARS arrived and then BAM Kharkiv, BAM Kherson.

Wow, I naively thought a 155mm shell would cost around €200. I mean it's just a dumb shell, the same kind that's been manufactured for a 100 years. The internet tell me they currently retail for over €3,000 a pop.

Wasn't the US navy famously paying $435 for a hammer - back in 1982? Set against that kind of bloat, 3k for a shell seems like a positive bargain!

Yes but NATO aren’t supplying near enough if this equipment.

Thats why Russia are making advances and Ukraine are being pushed back.

The Ukrainans aren't being pushed back the way it's being made out ,the Russians destroyed several towns leaving very little to fight over,the gains are minimal at best , but several posters seem to have completely wrote off the Ukrainans,it's bs

6 months of bakhmut is going to fall ,the situation is dire ,the situation is critical,the situation is untenable,

But

The Ukrainans are broken, their morale is gone ,the Russians are smashing through everywhere,it's all over as we predicted...

Silly stuff.

Maybe a new thread is required for the pro Russians to tell everyone how well they are doing in parts of Ukraine

just to put that in some kind of context that we can all understand, when you speak of Russia 'making advances' and Ukraine 'being pushed back' - can you quantify that in terms of square kilometres won\lost please?

A ha ! I figured out that word puzzle

Why is the Croat president then out batting for a Ukraine climb down. There must be a sympathetic audience for his rhetoric. He's not a nobody.

From the Guardian:

"A former commander of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group who is seeking asylum in Norway has apologised to Ukrainians living in the country who object to his presence there.

Andrey Medvedev fled his unit and crossed the border into Norway near the Pasvikdalen valley, where he was arrested and detained by border guards. He is the first known soldier from the Wagner Group who fought in Ukraine to flee abroad.

Speaking to Norwegian broadcaster NRK and reported by AP, Medvedev said:

I’m a scoundrel to you, but I only ask you to take into account that I have come to realise that, albeit belatedly, and I spoke against all that.

He added:

I ask you not to condemn me, and in any case I apologise.

In an interview conducted in December with the Guardian, Medvedev spoke of how he feared for his life and said he had witnessed the summary killing of Wagner fighters accused by their own commanders of disobeying orders, sometimes in pairs.

He is currently living in a centre for asylum seekers in Oslo."

That's from Bloomberg. This idea that they can keep this going for years is a fantasy. The west can and will outspend them and if they try to compete, their economy will collapse as it did before when they tried competing against just the US and Starwars.

The US spent 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting in combat daily and lost around 7000 men and women,

11 months in Ukraine and Russia has Lost north of 110,000 men ,a high percentage of it's tank force 60% + and a sizeable portion of it's overall armor and it's aircraft jets and helicopters ,

But somehow Ukrainian losses are unsustainable according to some ,

You could say the same about Mick Wallace and Clare Daly.

The deluded (to infer a polite reason) are everywhere. The bought off too.