Russia - threadbanned users in OP

You are just ignoring what I have posted and repeating nonsense that numbers of dumb artillery shells is what will decide the outcome of putin's attempt to seize parts of Ukraine. putin's forces since the more widespread invasion of Ukraine two years ago are down nearly ten thousand artillery systems and large numbers of other weapon systems and huge numbers of their trained troops so increasingly they wont be able to do anything other than send waves of poorly trained new recruits to provide fertiliser for Ukrainian soils. Increasingly Ukraine is now also able to strike at putin's empire with their own longer range weapons making his empire building more costly and even more clearly a huge mistake that the people of the russian federation will take decades to recover from and could bring it as an individual economic area to an end.

Apart from UK and Germany

wars tend to go on longer than they need to because rationality goes out the door , what would a survey of males aged 18 to 50 have to say? morally that the only group who's opinion matters as they are ones paying the price, if an honest survey came back with 70%-90% support, I'd say fair enough but I'd imagine its lower.. Going by the rhetoric of the yanks, their main motivation is to hurt Russia, in that context Ukrainian men are expendable, the yanks lack the motivation to give Ukraine a tap on the shoulder to seek peace while no doubt only seeing Ukraine now in terms of Biden's electoral chances this year. its all very grubby.

It saddens me to hear that kind of rhetoric. We all hope for a Ukrainian victory as soon as possible. But also hopefully with as little loss of life as possible. Those Russian imperialists you refer to are likely the exact same people as you, me and the men/ women they're facing off against in Ukraine. Ordinary people, dragged into a war, compelled to 'answer' 'their' nation's 'call'. Conscripted, poor, uneducated. Going by the rhetoric on here, if we were all Russian, sitting in Moscow, half of ye would be queuing to sign up for the war effort. I doubt very much that the grunts on the frontline in Ukraine have any imperialistic dreams. They most likely just want to stay alive, not be beaten or shot in the back by their commanding officers, get some food, try to stay warm, do as little as possible, keep their heads down and get home to their families.

This war, of one man's making, is a pure and utter tragedy. It's good to discuss it, good to keep up to date on developments, great to hope for positive news from the Ukrainian side. But lets not glorify the slaughter of fellow human beings.

Well you clearly would not be signing up to defend your own people - so your view is understandable. Nobody is glorifying the slaughter, it would be far better for all if Mr.Putin's army retreated back behind their own internationally understood borders.

But they're not Paddi - so what would you do if you were a Ukrainian of service age and capability?

The death of Russian soldiers is a NECESSARY evil because they are the core driving force of Putins effort to take over UKr. There are no ifs or buts about Ru dead soldiers. These are the actual people that are advancing into UKr/shooting UKr soldiers /Ukr civilians. So the more the merrier as the saying goes. The way to reduce Ru soldiers deaths is for them to immediately move back to the Ru |Ukr boarder pre 1991 - end of.

BUT if there was a more humane way of getting Ru to move back to the pre 1991 border- I would be definately on for that

No, it is not quite the only group that matters. No sign of Russia stopping right now whatever words might come out of Putin's mouth, if the Ukrainian military fails, everyone gets the joy of being occupied by the Russian military in regions they capture.

Your idea of people bravely resisting that and Russia being somehow forced out any time soon by costs imposed by an occupation, when they seem undeterred by ruinous costs they are incurring in this war is a pipedream. For someone who likes to call other people "rubes", it seems idealistic and naive to me. Even if they do get forced out, it will be long after they have done horrible damage.

Technology heavily favours the occupying power now if you have no qualms or morals at all and are willing to be as brutal as the SS, which the Russian military certainly is on evidence of their behaviour. You think it's like the US in Iraq or even Vietnam or something, it is really not.

They will use the information to have to weed out anyone remaining in regions they occupy who might resist, and extended families + they will all be cowed, end up in a Russian prison or dead. Thanks to the IT revolution, they will be very efficient at that.

It is why we are seeing so few dictatorships get toppled these days imo, they don't need many functionaries, propagandists and goons and secret police any more to keep a firm boot on the neck of a large (by comparison) population.

Apart from the 800 non US NATO soldiers who died in Afghanistan, I wonder how much that war cost NATO countries (excluding the US)