Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It is hard to determine if it is a failure or success unless you know what the Russian strength is. There is a lot of uncertainty about what they have. But they are losing battles so they can't have a huge amount left.

There was a Washington post article released either today or yesterday where US Intelligence officials are saying its unlikely that this Ukraine counter offensive will achieve the gold medal of piercing all the way to Melitopol. Just to get ahead of the misery merchants on the thread.

And while I'd actually agree that it seems unlikely that Ukraine will reach the sea of Azov by this time 8 weeks there really isn't anything new in the article that isn't widely known for months now.

• Ukraine not using NATO tactics but opting for small scale and attrition rather than driving all their units in a columns and taking huge losses
• Russian minefields and defenses more formidable than originally thought
• Ukr not having air superiority
• Counter offensive being a tough slog

By what metric are you basing this on? Ukraine are on the offensive and currently(going by Oryx) destroying Russian armor and equipment at a rate 3x to what they're losing. That's absolutely miraculous considering the defenders advantage. And an absolute disaster for Russia. Russian artillery and counter battery is being absolutely genocided daily.Russia even fired one of their most respected generals for saying as much. They fully lost 2 of their most effective anti armor helis yesterday alone. And continue to lose 1 a week.

The Ukr forces that have crossed the Dnipro continue to creep forwards towards the only good main supply line in the south by Oleshky. And Russia seem unable to dislodge them. Almost certainly because they simply don't have the reserves to do it. Another potentially catastrophic sign for Russia. And now as of a couple of days ago Ukraine has put their 82nd brigade into the mix. So we'll see soon enough why they've chosen to do this.

All that implies that a breakthrough is much MORE likely now than it was 2 months ago. Unless the mud season starts tomorrow. They may not make massive gains in this counter offensive noone here knows. But I just can't agree that the signs are terrible as of today.

Port on fire in Mordor

This is a good point. I remember hearing on an economist podcast an excellent remark that dictatorships often look very secure until about 5 minutes before they collapse. The stalemate situation could be similar. Or it might go on and on. Who knows...

They do. For example, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace have consistently voted against Europe in favour of Putin's Russia.

The recent term Campist encapsulates their thinking:

"A leftist who supports any country/organization simply for being opposed to the United States or the West, including authoritarian governments who would otherwise not follow leftist beliefs."

They are typically smart enough to make a vapid condemnation of Putin, but typically it's just window dressing before making statements that are directly in line with Putin's. The "Putin is bad but" trope.

The balls on whoever did this

It's funny how a policy of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was criticised when the US indulged in it e.g. with the Taliban, but is now a perfectly sensible policy when the anti-America/NATO types do it.

100%... taking tokmak would open up a potential dash to the coast but the town is 25km or so from the frontline with enormous russian defensive positions in-between. the russians will throw absolutely everything at the ukrainians to stop them getting to tokmak in order to prevent a potentially war ending scenario from occurring.

map below courtesy of ISW which illustrate the dense russian defenses.

I think Moscow Mick only sucks at Putins teat , cos he knows if he lived in Russia his corruption would of earned him kudo's

I know Russia are using them but I wonder will they increase production of them to use on Ukrainian military.

I don't think the war would be over no matter what was supplied but if everything that is going to be drip fed was just given straight away or ASAP including training on fighter jets starting immediately a huge number of Ukraine civilian and soldiers lives would be saved and Russia army casualties would be far higher.

By now they'd have probably retaken the south and northern luhansk province up by svatove. And by now they'd probably attempting to retake Crimea, Mariupol and Donetsk. Bakhmut would never have fallen.

But alas the West has appeased Russia too much and prolonged this war.