Russia - threadbanned users in OP

News re MoscowMarge

"I can't see more money ending this thing"

Russia is invading the country. The only thing stopping that from occurring are the Ukrainians. Ukrainians are running low on ammo. Money buys ammo. It buys arms.

When the invasion began on the 24th of February, 2022, the objectives of both sides were pretty clear. Clear not even from leaders' statements but just from the movements on the battlefield. Russia wanted the whole country, making a three pronged drive at it and a beeline for Kyiv, with the assumption that once that fell and the sitting government arrested and 'dealt with', anything holding out would capitulate or pretty quickly come to terms. Ukraine's objective was pretty much to stop this from happening.

Now, the thing is that this remains pretty much Russia's objective because they could easily enough put a line under the 20 percent of Ukraine which they've captured and the land bridge to Crimea and call it a day, but they don't. The problem with that is that it doesn't really matter if Russia mine the whole of the territory they occupy (and given the way they wage war, this type of approach cannot be ruled out), that defensive posturing is not going to generate the forward movement required to capture any more large areas of territory, and Ukraine will have learned the lesson from last year's Summer offensive that ground offensives without air support just are not workable, so Ukraine will be busy building fortifications as well.

The summation of this is that there is far more political imperative on Russia to attack, given what they want to do and their supposed numerical advantage, but since the front line settled in April/May of 2022, Russia have shown little to no ability in rapid advance, and in one whole year, their only two victories of any note have been Bakhmut and Avdiivka which they only managed to capture after months and months of bloody meat assault.

The Ukrainian strategy until the end of this is likely to be to hold the line - attrit the Russians with technology rather than manpower - defend in depth - evacuate civilians close to the front - and counter punch with quick armour in areas where holes open up. Above all, bleed Russia until domestic political support for their war collapses.

I suspect there are logistics teams all over the US and possibly the likes of Ramstein ect just chomping at the bit to do what they've been trained for, and to do what they do best. They'll crank up that machine to full pelt now and hopefully get what's needed into the hands of those lads over there. Those logistics teams are solders too and will move heaven and earth to support the good guys in this fight.

I would also imagine there were massive sighs of relief and even some celebrations from mud holes up & down the front line!

Cry harder, Marge.

For now. Fox News sometimes run things like this up the flag pole to test the direction of the wind but reverse course if they get blowback. I have read at least one story about Murdoch/Fox being ready to cut Trump loose, but then doing a 180. God forbid Newsmax be able to usurp that audience.

Why is it shameful.

As I mentioned many lives were lost as a result of people playing politics.

Saw on Sky news earlier someone said that this US package should be enough to keep Ukraine fighting but will not be enough to really challenge and defeat Russia. Also, that this package will just lead to more Ukrainian towns and cities being ground to dust.

Thing are looking pretty bleak if that opinion is anywhere near accurate.

Altough your mentioned point 1 and 2 could be realistic, unfortunately point 3 is unlikely to happen. Cant recall it ever happening before either. Baltic States still have list of OMON butchers on their wanted list and all lawful requests to Russia since arly 1990ties to hand them over for prosecution have been turned down. Some of them live cosy lives and hailed as heroes.

So no, unfortunately Plytkin, loshad Lavrov, Simonyan, Skabeyeva, Solovyov and thousands of others will be a job for Ukrainian special unit similar to Mossad to hunt these down individually and hang on nearest lampost.

Where Vladimir Putin is concerned, there's only one thing you can be sure of and that's even iF there was a peace deal hammered out, it would only last as long as it suited Putin. And then, back to battle again. He's done this time and time again. There are no circumstances under which he or his mafia can ever be trusted. Except of course by defeating him so badly that he cannot ever go to war again. Then maybe a modicum of trust might be OK, but even then, I wouldn't trust him 100%

"such an olive branch"

The Ukrainian armed forces had to deal with 6 cruise missiles, hundreds of moskovyte soldiers and huge numbers of other lethal weapons being used to attack their country yesterday. You have a bizarre idea on what the symbolic olive branch should look like.

Meanwhile reports of more bad news for putin's naval forces in occupied Crimea.

https://kyivindependent.com/explosion-in-sevastopol-russian-ship-reportedly-on-fire-and-crimea-bridge-closed/