Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Actually there was significant opposition at the time to the wholesale massacre of civilians entailed in Bomber Command's area offensive. MPS raised the matter in Parliament. Many churchmen condemned it. They were all denounced by the top brass as lily livered traitors who dared to demean the reputations of the brave men who were carrying the fight to the enemy with great gallantry and at appalling risk etc etc. And anyway the true nature of the area offensive was always denied at the time. "Yes of course there is some risk to civilians in war time but the idea that we are deliberately targeting women and children is outrageous. We good chaps simply don't do that sort of thing!" (Don't take my word for any of this, just read Bomber Command by Max Hastings, hardly a pinko liberal himself. A former editor of the Daily Telegraph)

So if/when this counter offensive is successful and the Russians get beat back across their border, what then? Can Ukraine then invite in international partners to help secure their borders, or do they just wait for the Russians to regroup and try again in a few years? Will NATO membership be fast tracked for Ukraine?

Hard to see Russia being able to make many advances back into Ukrainian territory in this hypothetical scenario, when you consider how much of a failure their forecasted Winter offensive came to be. You say the Russians could regroup, and I wouldn't doubt that a Russia still being led by Putin would want to rebuild and attack, but the necessary timeframe for this would also be the timeframe for Ukraine to join NATO and whatever else could be done by international partners to ensure the country's territorial integrity.

If Russia hold an inch more than what they had in 2014 then it will be an encouragement to it to try again later.

It will also show the big Communist brother in China that military action pays off.

Ukraine will probably suffer ten's of thousands of casualties in the next 6 months. That is the reality of war but it can also be the price of victory.

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Even if they do hang on to some territory,

The Russian military is severely degraded. So It will take years to make it an effective fight force again where by it can launch an invasion. This is assuming they weed out all the corruption too, which given the regime that is in place is highly unlikely. Let's assume that all this does happen, by that time Ukraine is likely to be a NATO member and it will have the military infrastructure needed to ensure it can't be invaded again. Putin had a dim view of Gorbachev because he thought he sold Russia out and humilated mother Russisa on the world stage, well by the time this is over i think many Russians may feel the same about Putin.

One difference being that the Russian crews abandon their tanks the first chance they get, they don't want them back and have to drive them again?. In general Russian' s do not care for their vehicles, and why should they??

Say what

Yes. if they step inside Russia they can now be arrested because they have committed a crime when they did not present themselves for registration within 20 days after the 2nd email was sent to them. Immaterial if they received it or not, they are deemed to have got it, and therefore they are now effectively draft dodgers. And black listed for any transactions in Russia.

First updates on the Deep State maps since the offensive began in Zaporozhye.

Lobkove has moved into the gray zone.

Neskuchne and Blahodatne also in the grey zone.

The situation here and now will have changed dramatically ( Ukraine in NATO ? but even without_) in the next few years, especially if/when Ukraine wins. Its unlikely that the same political set up will exist in Russia for one thing, and its economic ability to rearm and build up a new military force capable of taking on any of the Baltic states, especially Ukraine and Poland will be miniscule. Each and every Country bordering Russia will be armed to the teeth, and with a changed EU and definitely more aggressive, less forgiving EU. Russia will never again get away with what it was allowed to do in the past, nuclear weapons or no nuclear weapons. There's still lots of death and destruction left in Putins Russia ( unfortunately ) but the boil has to be lanced and lanced now, regardless of the hard price it will take. There's no way to avoid it, and postponing it will not make it go away. Having said that, there are signs of success starting to emerge,

I suspect we’ll start to see things kicking off in some of the frozen conflicts Moscow engineered.

• Transnistria might not be a thing anymore if the Russian «peace keeping» mission there collapses. Moldova and/or Ukraine might go in and end Russian military control there.
• Armenia is already seen to try to distance themselves from Russia and try to normalise relations with Azerbaijan. Without the Russians to back them up the Armenian population in Nagorno Karabakh will likely be unable to prevent the Azeris from imposing thier control on them.
• The 2 Russian-backed break-away Republics in Georgia might no longer have the means to prevent Tiblisi from trying to get those areas back. Georgia has been flurting with the idea of EU & NATO membership and might actually get some help with this if Ukraine goes well in the end.

That’s not even mentioning the various «Russian» Republics who might take a shot at getting free from Moscow in the coming years.

Yeah the Russians back then also blew a dam in retreat.

I don't think the Irish army had much to give anyway. I think there was some report of some training they gave to Ukrainians in mine clearing but open to correction on that. I think this war showing so much development of drone technology for military use there should be some move to bring the Irish armed forces up to date on this. Government here claims to be in favour of Ireland being a leader in technology worldwide but seems to have done nothing to learn from the technology being used on the front lines in Ukraine. Tried to start a discussion on that here but did not get much positive response.