this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Do elaborate on what it is you're confused by. Russian strategy has been destruction of Ukrainian army through attrition. Being a much bigger country with a big industrial base, this is the most sensible strategy for Russia.
Russia spent around 9 months making sophisticated layered defences over the past year while massively expanding the army. Ukraine was then forced to use human wave tactics to attack these defences by their western partners to try and show visible territory gains for continued support. This offensive failed miserably resulting in the loss of large portions of the equipment the west managed to cobble together, as well as trained and experienced soldiers. Russia actually ended up gaining more ground during this offensive than Ukraine did.
Now, Ukraine is out of weapons and manpower, and Russia is starting an offensive of their own having recruited over 300k new troops who have been trained and equipped during this time.
On the other hand, western powers are now admitting that they're not able to keep up with the rate of use ammunition, and Ukraine is now actively drafting women in to the military. Furthermore, many western economies are going into a recession, while Russian economy is showing growth and increase in military production.
On top of all that, we're now seeing the war in Palestine unfold which necessarily means that Ukraine will get even less support from the west.
Seems to me that this is precisely what U.S. Lt. Col. Alex Vershinin predicted would happen in his article that's linked above.
Their strategy was a lightning fast toppling of the government within a week with little to no resistance, such as they saw in Crimea.
Russia is also facing dire manpower issues. With too much drafting from Moscow, Putin's power is in danger. In fact, Ukraine is betting on these manpower shortages to attrit down to the point where the line becomes untenable. See here: https://youtu.be/lebWSl49R0c https://youtu.be/CqmQPev1Gvg
Gasa is certainly an issue, but with higher artillery production, linked bills, and diverted media attention, it has upsides for Ukraine too. https://youtu.be/tg7aw3T3nzg
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https://piped.video/CqmQPev1Gvg
https://piped.video/tg7aw3T3nzg
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Nowhere has Russia said anything of the sort, but you must know something nobody else does apparently. Russia certainly did get Ukraine to negotiate early on, but the west forced Ukraine to break off these negotiations bringing us to where we are today.
It's absolutely incredible that people still believe this stuff after a year and a half of it being proven wrong. You must be one of those geniuses who thinks China's about to collapse as well.
It's incredible what people end up believing when they just guzzle propaganda on youtube.
In any case, there's absolutely no point arguing with you since it's pretty clear that you live in a fantasy world. By next year even people such as yourself will have to start grappling with what's happening in the real world though.
You take their words at face value? It's from their actions and game theory of the situation. https://youtu.be/pBwT-5z9R5A
Did you watch the vid?
Did you watch the vid? It's a game theory and international relations teacher talking about their area of expertise. I'm guessing anything that disagrees with Russia though is propaganda for you.
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They've stated their objectives pretty clearly. Why would I take words of some random youtube troll over the official position?
The narrative this game theory and international relations teacher is feeding you is at odds with the reality we observe. The fact is that plenty of western experts such as Mearsheimer clearly explain what's happening, and their claims have actually been supported by what's observed https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine
Here's how things are actually going with now as reported by mainstream Spanish media https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-10-29/russia-halts-ukrainian-offensive-and-goes-on-the-attack.html
This is the real world as opposed to deranged fantasy wonderland you inhabit listening to your game theory and international relations teacher.
Did you watch the vid?
did you read the article?
Indeed. Whether the attack is a good thing or a bad thing depends on the casualty and material ratio vs the objectives taken. Which a game theory approach is much better for analyzing than just saying that Russia or Ukraine is gaining ground.
I never made the argument about gaining ground anywhere. What I said was that Russia's strategy is to grind down Ukrainian army through attrition. The game theory approach for analyzing this needs to account for the fact that Russia has a vastly larger population and massive industrial capacity that Russia inherited from USSR that the west is admitting is not able to match right now.
Also, every credible source such as BBC and Mediazona show that Russian casualties peaked before Ukrainian offensive started and have been falling since. On the other hand, Ukrainian casualties have been catastrophic even by western admissions.
Again, there is no point continuing this since clearly we aren't going to convince one another of anything. We will simply see who is right when the war ends.
I was taking about the article which seemed to be going off that.
Did you watch the vid?
Mearsheimer's article isn't talking about territory, and the article from the Spanish paper is talking about the fact that Ukrainian army is in an operational crisis right now. Did you actually read either one?
I watched part of it. Pretty much everything he says has been proven wrong since the video was made a year ago. The fact that you keep referring to the vid that made a bunch of wrong predictions is fascinating to me.
For example, Stoltenberg has publicly admitted now what the actual cause of the war was:
He also flat out lies claiming that nazis in Ukraine don't have support of political power when nazis are literally in Ukrainian government military. Top Ukrainian officials including Zaluzhny have Bandera portraits in their offices. Azov nazi battalion is officially part of the military in Ukraine. Western media can't even find soldiers to interview who aren't covered in nazi tattoos and paraphernalia. The fact that he ignores all of that shows that he is an intellectually fraudulent individual.
He predicted that Ukraine capturing Crimea was a plausible outcome. We now know that it was not.
The idea that Russia was motivated by Ukrainian resources doesn't really stand to scrutiny either. Russia has massive untapped resources in the east, and it would be far easier to develop those than to go to war with NATO.
The reasoning he gives for the first strike advantage is directly contradicted by the quote from Stolenberg above. It makes it clear that Russia was in fact concerned about NATO expansion, and decided to take preemptive action to halt it after NATO refused to agree to stop expansion.
Once you bother reading the article I linked, you'll see that the whole 3-1 attacker advantage he talks about is not applicable in practice because both sides end up going on attack and defence. And as we just saw with the Ukrainian offensive disaster, attacks for Ukraine are far more costly due to lack of artillery numbers and air power.
He frames it as a territorial conflict, which again, as Stoltenberg explains, it is not.
The whole Kiev offensive narrative has been debunked many times already. The idea that Russia was trying to take Kiev with 100k troops is nonsensical given that they dedicated 40k troops to Mariupol which is a city that's an order of magnitude smaller. What the 100k troops were actually doing was pinning Ukrainian forces around Kiev while Russia consolidated their position in the east.
He claimed that sanctions would cause problems for Russian economy. Yet, the exact opposite is the case. European economies are in a crisis while Russian economy is growing faster than anyone expected.
Pretty much every single argument he's made was shown to be false. If you're still basing your understanding of the war on a deeply flawed analysis from a year ago, I can see why you have such a skewed understanding of what's happening.
I was more talking about the manpower video since that was more applicable to the article.
The manpower situation favors Russia in every way. First of all, 80% of the casualties come from artillery fire and Russia fires around ten times more artillery than Ukraine. This means that Ukraine is taking far more casualties than Russia in this war. This is reflected in Ukraine now having expanded its conscription to older men and even women. This wouldn't be needed if Ukraine wasn't running out of manpower. On the other hand, Russia isn't doing conscription or mobilization right now, and they raised around 300k volunteers over the past year.
Russian casualties corroborated by publicly available data as of 20 October stand at 34,857. We can also see how the casualties are steadily dropping since March
On the other hand, even western media admits that Ukrainian casualties stand at over 100k now. Again, given that Russia has a much bigger population, it's pretty clear that this is a catastrophic situation for Ukraine. It's also important to keep in mind that the trained and motivated troops Ukraine loses cannot be easily replaced. You can't just throw somebody into training for a few weeks and expect them to be an effective fighting force that's going to take on a seasoned and experienced army.
made my day 🤡
"publicly" doesn´t mean reliable, especially if it comes from "official" sources on either side.
Even western media openly admits this, but you keep on coping there buddy. The only clown here is the one who thinks that a country with a population of over 140 million couldn't recruit 300k people into military service. You know the same way people in US "volunteer" into military service because they don't have any better options in life.
Certainly more reliable than some dufus on youtube pulling numbers out of his ass. Anybody who is not a certified clown understands that.
also, highly encourage you to watch this 25 min video explaining the state of things by one of the most preeminent experts on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62FCVJycwSA
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Russia has more manpower but at the expense of pulling out troops from another theatre, which in turn would diminish Russian influence there, that's already the case with Central Asia and Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russian businesses is already short-staffed. Even if Russian wins, it is will be a Pyrrhic victory. Future generations of Russians will pay for the financial and human costs. Russia could even be beholden to China, who is keeping Kremlin afloat right now.
That's a whole lot of copium there, Meanwhile, Russia becoming beholden to China could only be a good thing.
Russian propagandists have said so many things before that turned out to be the opposite. We will conquer Ukraine in three days, Russia will win, we have more manpower blah blah. One year and a half later? Who made more progress since the Russians were pushed back? I guess the true fascists are the ones who invaded and killed Ukrainians along the way.
At least you and I both agree Putin needs to be toppled.
But is this tacit admission of Russia is going to lose anyhow?
The only people who said that Russia wanted to conquer Ukraine in three days are western propagandists. There isn't single statement from Russia saying anything remotely like that.
Russia literally gained more territory during Ukraine's offensive than Ukraine did.
Who do you think would replace Putin exactly. Putin is a moderate in Russia. You think Medvedev or Karyrov are gonna be more restrained? You're just utterly clueless.
Please don't put words in my mouth. Only an utter imbecile would look at what's happening and think that Russia is going to lose.
Putin himself stated they aimed to conquer Ukraine in three days.
[citation needed]
For your domestic audience, you'd ask that, tovarisch.
can't find one can you dumbass
Da tovarisch.
🤡
You admit to wanting Russia to become beholden to China. The only way for that to happen is Russia losing the war in Ukraine, or Russia having lost so much finances covering it. So, you do admit that Russia will lose or it becomes too costly that Russia will become China's subservient.
Da klon? Every post you make, acting like a clown and are pretending not to know things, will fund your dacha? Da? 🤡 Remember though, Ukraine gained more territories in three months than Russia has with failed offensives in Adiivka and north Donetsk. Not even your comrades will deny that despite your pretending ignorance that Putin thinks he will conquer Ukraine in three days. But keep talking, I will help you fund your dacha.
That's not what I said dummy. That's just a straw man you made because you lack basic reading comprehension.
Still waiting for that quote from Putin there. Surely you wouldn't have just made it up. Nobody would be that stupid right?
You tell me tovaricsh if you are pretending not to know and stupid. But then again, propagandists are paid too deep and filthy like animals to tell the truth.
Russians are interesting lot, even both Russian communists and neo-Nazis are imperialists and genociders who support Putin, despite the lack of ideological commonalities. The only common denominator is being ultranationalists. It just confirms anyone's observations that Russians are nationalists first, and whatever second.
Don't worry, keep talking mud. I am helping you fund your dacha somewhere in Siberia when Russia collapse again for the second time in thirty years so you could stay nice and safe there.
You said there was a quote from Putin, and I'm waiting for you to show me that quote. Since we both know this quote doesn't exist, that makes you a liar and the fact that you continue trolling here makes an idiot.
Also, hilarious that a Canadian would bleat about genocide. Canada is the home of genocide and continues to commit genocide against the native population last I checked.
Finally, I'm a Canadian living in Canada, but good to see you expose yourself a racist scumbag that you are here.
Seems like Russia is still stuck in the 19rh century to think imperialism and genocide is still normalised then?
Sure you are a Canadian, tovarisch. Keep posting and spewing bs. I will help you buy a dacha eventually. For every nonsense you spout, you get paid a cent. Da?
To sum up, you got caught lying and now keep trying to deflect from that. If you were smarter, you'd take the L and move on, but here you still are. 😂
K comrade.
By the way, you never answered the question. Have you spoken to those imprisoned during the Soviet Union? Or will you keep lying that there were never any arbitrary arrests?
You're a curious specimen. How's it going there in St Petersburg without Prigozhin?
Have you spoken to the residential school victims?
Tell, me what it's it like being a genocidal settler who steals land from the native people and then systematically eradicates them.
You have yet to provide any evidence for these arbitrary arrests, I'm sure you'll do that as soon as you find that Putin quote. 🤡
Lol, spoken like a true Krembot with the whataboutism! Oh you crack me up. I'm asking you non-playable character with repeating script. You keep lying that mass arrests never happened in the Soviet Union. Have you spoken to the former detainees? I'm not denying that the genocide of Native Americans, you're the one denying that there was no arbitrary arrests and promoting genocide of Ukrainians. Have you spoken to former detainees? I'm not even Canadian nor live there, you're the one who claims to be one.
Tell, me what it's it like being a genocidal settler in Canada ~~Ukraine~~ who steals land from the native people and then systematically eradicates them. Tell me what it's like being a propagandist despite falling value of ruble? See, I am helping you buy a dacha by keeping you engaged. Many Russians never had it so good, am I right? All the blood money from killing and promoting the genocide of Ukrainians lets buy you Audi and pick up truck for your mommy and daddy in a Siberian village? Da tovarisch?
Have you spoken to former detainees in the Soviet Union? Putin commemorated the former gulag inmates you know? So you can't deny that mass arrest never existed. Scramble now for whatever script you'll be given comrade on how to respond to that.
I see you've got nothing new to say, but you really are bothered because every time you respond with a word salad. Imagine living in a nation that's built on the genocide of the native population, that operated concentration camps for kids into the 80s, and that currently continues to occupy unceded native land, and brutally repress native population, and bleat about USSR. What an utter hypocritical imbecile you are. What a complete and utter piece of human garbage Canada managed to produce. The most hilarious part is that you don't even realize what you are.
I don't live in a settler country. Did one of your agents forget who you are speaking to? Trolling multiple people at the same time?
Imagine being paid to spout word salad, dodge questions, and promote the dehumanisation and genocide of neighbours, all in the name of Putin and a country who is going to lose and be a puppet of China.
What a human garbage Kremlin has produced. I hope you realise what you are-- a genocide denier and a misinformation whore paid a cent per post. How do you sleep at night knowing you are brainwashing people and twisting history and the future of society? Have you spoken to former detainees of USSR? How would your handlers spin Putin admitting the crimes of your country with its gulag?
Why would I believe anything a proven liar has to say. You're just a troll who's easy to bait, you can't help yourself. 😂
Cos I am helping you earn a ruble per post. Have you asked former detainees of gulags of their experience?
How was your experience?