Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

I'm not going to say I'm optimistic for Ukraine this year but my own guesses as to what will pan out for 2025 are as follows and I think there is a distinct possibility that putin may have no choice but to give up on his adventure in Ukraine as his economy will no longer be propped up sufficiently by his "friends":

Trump will play more golf and make newsworthy social media posts than do anything about Ukraine.

putin's terrorists will continue to get killed and wounded in huge numbers while they try to occupy parts of Ukraine.

The armed forces of Ukraine will surprise putin with another attack where his forces don't expect it.

putin's empire's economy will continue to wilt and suffer from frequent careless smoking incidents.

Ukraine's growing domestically produced long range strike capabilities will make life for puitn even more difficult.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-struck-hundreds-of-targets-deep-inside-russia-in-2024-what-did-they-achieve/

Happy new year!

Having read this post the first words that came to mind were naieve, sanatised, minimalist with the truth, key bits missing and who do you think you are fooling

If The USSR had COMPLETE control over the nuclear arms physically in UKr why then were they part of the agreement when UKr ‘split’ from the USSR which then - of the oblasts, republics, et. Al. That wanted to ‘stick’ together to become the Russian Federation.
Was it the scrap metal value that that the USSR/RF wanted back or was it the ‘fear’ that if the physical aspect of the nuclear arms were left in situ in UKr that the UKranians might get hold of the code to activate them from the ‘bowls of the Kremlin or somehow develop its own code to activate them OR WHAT?

There must be SPME REASON as to why USSR/RF wanted I

The nuclear arnaments covered in the agreement re the establishment of UKr as an independant and sovereign state?

burns never mentioned Finland and Sweden wanting to join and ultimately joining NATO , !!!!! What u have quoted Sands is HIS Opinion and he is entitled to it. - and that is subject to Burns having said it / it not being taken out of context

@Wibbs "Put it this way; Ireland was once part of Great(er) Britain was "legally" codified under the Act of Union, until we decided feck that and feck off, but it would be a re-writing of history to claim we were never part of Britain."

Well I get what you are saying but if legality must be subject to the vicissitudes of history and force let's forget about all other issues and do a vicissitude on Russia and bomb them into oblivion. Then we can do the legal bit and Russia will be legally fuked. If that's what it all boils down to (might is right) let's do it. Russia has been doing it for ages.

To that poster, NATO is hostile.

Some people have a simple emotional view of countries as personas. These people are very susceptible to dumbed down history with cherry-picked info that portray e.g. the US as an "evil" persona, responsible for pretty much all the bad in the world. Back when I protested the Iraq war, I became very familiar with it.

Once these people have developed that emotional view, that's it, they then filter all info through that bias. So if they view the US as evil, they by default then NATO is also "evil" - and everything goes through that distorted lens.

This goes all the way back, in e.g. WW2 this type of reductionist propaganda was extensively used by the German Nazi party and Japanese Nationalists as a way of shifting blame away from themselves for their naked imperialism.

Often these people don't genuinely support Putin personally, but their dislike of the US/West/NATO is so disproportional, they view him as the lesser evil. And defend him as such. Which is why their views are so similar to Putin's.

(Or sometimes they'll just support Putin our of sheer bitterness for being called out on it so many times)

It's not to be confused with normal valid criticism of leaders or their administrations or foreign policy decisions.

And because they are driven by set world views rather than facts, that often pitches them at odds with the truth - which is why they are so reliant on the same basket of truth bending tricks that dodgy politicians use. Which is why we get all these red flags.

Come across a Boards poster or anyone who is strangely pro-Putin? You'll usually find that common denominator.

Hopefully the world will get to 2026 without nuclear Armageddon

Sounds like somebody has been watching too many 80s holocaust movies over the break….

Looks like someone really has it in for the 810th Brigade. Three significant hits in a week, and two of them after Forbes published this account of them being knackered and needing to take time off.

Happy new year ! Russians are insane.

If you look at the large cities in Ukraine, Russia rely heavily on Donetsk as a hub. It's like Kyiv and it provides a great platform to store weapons for the frontline.

The more Russia moves forward the further away they are from their large hubs like Donetsk and Luhansk and the closer they'll be to Ukrainian strongholds like Zaporozhye, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Pavlograd etc.

They need to capture cities like Bakhmut, Toretsk, Povtrosk etc and taking them after they've been levelled isn't ideal. Without that they don't have good staging points. Going by what happened in Vovchansk and now Toretsk it looks like Ukraine will make them level these cities before potentially retreating.

Instead of their consistent gains snowballing I think they'll end up over stretching themselves which will cost them in the long run.