Russia - threadbanned users in OP

China's exports to Russia are supporting Russian military production. As for your other point , why wouldnt be stronger? at the start of the war the Russians didnt have much in the way of drone tech, now they do, no doubt they have also improved their anti drone tech etc. and an obvious point is that they will have learned a lot more that cant be achieved by just training, so their kit will improve too. They will have ploughed through a lot of their soviet era stuff but at some stage that would be written off as junk anyway.

"The best thing Ukraine could do now apart from calling it a day"

That sentence says it all - we understand your perspective. So you think that Ukr should call it a day, come out hands up and say sorry Vlad, we made a mistake and we all love you?? You live in some fantasy land comrade.

I would have advised hitler to do the same thing after D day (Actual ref to 2 German generals after D day breakout) , its not about apologizing, its about how to get out of the mess with more of your people and land intact. Best case for Ukraine is the final borders stay roughly where are now, worst case Russia take another 20% of the country and it ends at that point, I just dont think Ukraine have another offensive in them that would achieve success, hence my position. If I thought Russia was on the verge of collapse I'd say go for it.

Russia doesn't have much offensive capability, they essentially grind forward with artillery and throw 30 and 40 yr old men with 1 week's training in. They can take a settlement or small town but typically at massive cost to themselves and high attrition on top of that.

Ukraine know that with the right pressure (and equipment) it's possible to take more territory, and that exerts massive pressure on the Russian military, in some areas a few KM puts them within striking range of critical Southern supply lines.

Things are very much in limbo right now (winter + waiting for funding news from US)

But you don't have a clue about the detail of the real picture on the ground. No more than I and everyone else here. It's very unlikely that you are posting here and have deep penetration into the military & political thinking on either side and their allies.

So you're just expressing a political wish - you think that Ukraine should just call it a day. Which is fine but we should be clear that you're happy to see Russian aggression prevail and for them to re establish this part of their empire.

Russians make a beautiful little doll, it's called a Matryoshka doll, and what makes it different from other dolls is that inside the first one, there's another smaller one, and another, and another etc. and that describes Russia. Churchill's description or Russia is also pretty good. He called Russia a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. In my opinion, the degrading of Russia as a Country or State is gathering force. Regardless of the war being in a stalemate situation presently, (and that's only if you go by territory lost or gained) Putin cannot achieve his original goals. His personal bank (Russian Wealth) is diminishing rapidly, Russian infrastructure is failing (Heating in apartment blocks failing due to lack of maintenance, as the engineers are all in Ukraine, and the heating issue is only one of thousands of similar breakdowns across the Country) Again, memories of communist times, crowds queuing for food. If this was happening in any normal Country, there would have been revolution a long time ago, long before it even got to this stage or anything like it. But this is Russia, and to my mind, it's like a train on its tracks, it can travel only in the direction of the tracks (and these are communist tracks) it can of course change direction, but that means changing tracks. And that's the problem, Russians basically fear changing tracks.

On 1, I don't get why it is "ropey", given what Russia has done, once the needed legal mechanisms are carefully put in place to do it - effectively as another Western sanction on Russia. edit: that it will mostly go to US defence contractors is, I would say, a conspiracy theory. The plan was that it be used to rebuild Ukraine post war, given its very unlikely we'll ever see Russia pay a cent of reparations for wrecking the country.

Russia are at least as hostile now to Western countries as the Soviet Union was in most dangerous days of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1980s.

That hostility should be fully reciprocated, tit for tat, cutting off relations as much as possible and burning bridges down by the US and EU.

Not taking these assets as using them as see fit to damage Russia is continuing a foolish pretense that things can be normal or will go back to business as usual soon. They won't and are more likely to get worse and move closer to a war involving EU countries in coming years, especially if things go as poorly for Ukraine as you seem to think they will (don't share that view, and am more hopeful).

Afaik Putin has enacted laws to allow Russia to expropriate assets of Western companies that try to exit Russia - the ones that tried to ride it out are trapped now (can't leave without taking the hit and writing off everything).

Think some have been taken in hand and effectively stripped anyway, because what they were doing was considered essential, and Putin wanted him/his oligarchs to control it rather than having them likely on a go slow or a wind down under control or management of a Western company (maybe headquartered in an "unfriendly" nation) during the war.

Russia also pirated a few bn Eur of leased aircraft to keep its domestic aviation going under sanctions - this seems to be down the memory hole now though. They have no leg to stand on if wailing and crying foul about their Western assets being taken off them, if and when it happens it will be just a delayed response to their own actions, because the wheels move slower in countries that are democratic.

Ukraine and Russia are changing the nature of war, with the drone asymmetry and the cost of defending against them, also have you not seen how an Iran proxy/alliy can fck up global trade with drones/missiles? The US should be very worried about the can of worms they are helping to open.

The US are actively working on there own systems involving drones for the last 20 years and anti drone systems along with half of the world unfortunately Ukraine and Russia didn't change anything really other than using fpv drones more .

The US invented Drone strikes 🤦

There's currently nothing stopping individual countries sending money but the problem there is not every country can afford to send tens of millions or billions , and it's not as if Ukraine has no money at all ,

The biggest complaint Orban currently has he wants the EU to oversee the distribution of any aid rather than handing out tens of billions over to the Ukrainian government