Russia-Ukraine War

I'm feeling very upbeat about Ukraine's jaunt into Mordor.

The Russians have nothing left. I'm certain of it.

The first sign of their utter uselessness was long before the invasion of Ukraine, during the Battle of Khasham of 2018. A gang of 500 Wagnerites and their Syrian lackeys attacked a base with 40 Americans. The Americans couldn't quite believe the stupidity and responded by annihilating them. It is thought that Prigozhin ordered the attack in response to being indicted some days before in the US for election interference.

They say 200 of of them were killed, the Russian and Syrian accounts of course play down the figure. Exactly zero Americans were injured.

We then see the Special Military Operation of 2022 and the shambolic attempt to capture Kyiv Airport, the disastrous convoy of junk on the way to Kyiv, the extermination of the 1st Guards Tank Army and the other "elite" regiments. Then came Prigozhin's unhindered drive towards Moscow, which showed how exposed and vulnerable Russia is internally.

On top of that, their hardware has been proven to be absolutely rubbish.

Essentially, by three days in it was already looking like their invasion would not succeed. Their military is only good at murdering unarmed civilians, in fact they are quite excellent at that, but they are of use to neither man nor beast when it comes to taking on a well-trained and modern army.

They have now nothing in the way of military capability left. They have plenty of OMON, Rosgvardia and Putin's own personal little army, but these craven stay-at-home curs are only good for harassing civilians and will be seen nowhere near the front lines. They will no doubt be used to round up entire villages when full mobilisation is declared, drive them to the battlefield and form blocking units to prevent the retreat of those unfortunate devils.

Putin has massively overplayed his hand, due to his uncontrolled arrogance and lack of intelligence. A fool who overestimates himself and underestimates others, he never once thought that he could also be attacked by Ukraine. It is thankfully a long time since people have referred to him as a 4D chess master. I always thought of him as nothing but a coarse thug, more like the shadowy leader of a gang of child pickpockets than a statesman.

It is over for Russia. It is unclear how long more it will take, but it is over.

I hope I turn out to be right.

My personal favourite Russian clusterfuck was marching infantry through the forests around Chernobyl and hundreds of them ending up with radiation poisoning. Honourable mention of course to the elite Akhmat forces from Chechnya who are currently displaying their ferocious capacity for surrender and a speed of retreat that is genuinely remarkable.

You're (still) seeing this as a bit of a mad dash for the nearest decent sized city on the other side of the border. It's far more than that: Ukraine has moved the frontline 20-30km east-ish by exploiting a weakness in local Russian defence. There's no need for them to "get out".

This is very similar to what they did back in 2022 when they managed to break through various defences and drove the Russians wayyyy back from where they were. The Russians never really recovered from that - even today, they're still desperately trying to re-take towns and villages that they previously held, and at great cost.

In addition, there have now been so many Ukrainian soldiers trained in NATO countries - and, presumably, in NATO tactics - over the last two years (not to mention their own impressive drone army) that there's little reason to believe that these raids are being carried out only by the most elite troops. At this stage, the whole army can probably be considered "elite" compared to who and what they're facing.

I would expect that we'll see more attacks at various points along the border over the coming weeks, and a lot of sideways movement, resulting in an easily defended, easily-supplied, band of occupied territory that stays under Ukrainian control for a very long time - at least until they liberate Crimea and the Azov coastal towns. That's when they can invite Putin to the negotiating table.

Is there a chance that ,if Ukraine holds an area of territory in Russia for a decent length of time that the population (if it remains in place) will turn around and say "Could we stay in Ukraine ?"

Ukraine don't need to hold that territory. They just need to obliterate the airfields, munitions dumps and supply routes that accommodate glide bombs, missile and drone attacks which are used on Ukranian civilian infrastructure while they're there. If they wanted to, they could sweep southwards knocking out Russian defences from behind their own lines and reclaim the occupied regions as they go. With any luck they could finish off with the mother and father of all fireworks displays by taking out the Kerch bridge at midnight on New Years.

To be continued?

:-)

Ukraine in one week captured as much of Russia as they did of Ukraine for the first half of 2024.

Daft thought but maybe the Russians won’t so readily surrender if they were treated better by their own?

Meanwhile it sounds like FSB have also been bumped off the command of the counter attack (as have the army) and control given to an old Putin bodyguard, awaiting confirmation.

White House offers a solution

Your obsession with these random 'ordinary russians' posts is as odd as that fella who's obsessed with deporting Ukrainians back to the war. It's up there with the fellas in the other immigration threads who post random links to offences committed by asylum seekers to try and convince everyone that there'll all as bad as each other. It's a bit weird.

What do you have to say about the thousands of Russians in prison or on trial who actually did protest the war? The lawyers who defend those people in court? Are they guilty too in your eyes? Lack of differentiation is always borne of hatred and reveals a lot about the person propagating it

Those are clearly a minority of extraordinary Russians

The majority of “ordinary Russians” are too busy and too happy committing crimes in meantime, as Putin can’t single handedly be everywhere all at once in person to himself pull the triggers or connect torture equipment to genitals in person or push people out of windows or assault own soldiers or rape prisoners

The meme that most Russians are passive observers three years into this war is by now bordering on a joke

🤣🤣

And that's how I found them to be too when i was there. Lovely people trapped in a religious hell hole, where the Ayatollah and his Mullahs wield absolute power through pure savagery, behind a cloak of religion.

In a word: no.

Initial reports suggest that the vast majority of the population has been relocated to the Motherland, where they'll continue to drink the Kremlin Koolaid. If or when they return to the region, they'll have a Kremlin-approved opinion about the state of the place - if it's been turned into an apocalyptic hellscape by the Russian airforce, that'll be the fault of the Ukrainian nazis; if things are still much as they were when the refugees fled, that'll be because the Russian Army valiantly chased out the hohol horde before they could ransack the place.

The odd few that remain will be living in occupied territory according to the rules of an occupying force, so they're unlikely to experience the best of what a westward-looking Ukrainian lifestyle would bring them. The most we (or they) could hope for would be for the Ukranians to facilitate the election of Ukrainian/EU-friendly local governers who might then start talking about wanting some autonomy from the new Soviet Union … but how's that going for Belarus or Georgia?

BBC says 1000km^2

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lmr29ygjo.amp