this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
1688 points (96.5% liked)

World News

38548 readers
1923 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah for as boneheadedly stupid as Russia has demonstrated themselves to be throughout this engagement, last years thunder runs were never going to be as successful this year as they were last year. Last years deep penetrating attacks were fun for watching the lines on the map move, but ultimately lacked grand operational value. They were high strategic value, to be sure, as they boosted morale, but the factors of asymmetric warfare are shifting. Russia will continue to have more materiel but aide has been balancing that, meanwhile Ukraine is receiving higher quality equipment and better trained operatives. I think the two big changes are Russia is learning lessons from last year and being more defensive this year, and similarly, Ukraine has been forced to learn their allies are much more willing to provide military aide for field testing than they are to provide the strategic goods Ukraine needs to take care of their populace. The result is Ukraine has much more offensive capabilities but is more interested in bolstering defenses to enter winter when the strategic value of glass increases.

Both sides are much less interested in knock out blows now that they've penetrated the others defenses and realized they don't have the capabilities to execute those. The war has slowed down as both sides try to make sustainable holdable advances as well as bleed the other side faster than their own side bleeds to death. The question is, does Russia have more blood to bleed that Ukraine can ever draw, or is Ukraine bleeding faster than they can sustain long enough to bleed Russia out. I'm no expert, but my observation is that it seems like Russia is overly confident in how much blood they have. Sure the Wagner rebellion fizzled out and Preghozhin is presumed dead, but everyone saw it. The Russian populace is starting to get uncomfortable with the numbers of rapists and murders receiving pardons to go rape and murder Ukrainians before returning home to continue their vile ways. The Russian populace experienced something like 1 year of freedom following the fall of the Soviet Union before the current fascist movement took power and has over 1000 years of learned helplessness, but Putin is seemingly pushing every single button and pulling every single lever that could result in his people finally saying "enough is enough"