Remember what Obongo said about Sleepy Joe: "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up". And before you tell me about his very capable administration, remember this is what is running our government:
russia's growing more totalitarian by the day, one effect of that is that the government has extreme power over public narratives due to its direct control over the media. using that, it is relatively easy for them to agree to a mediocre compromise and ceasefire, and spin it as a great victory in the home media.
It's like saying a guy trying to stab you for your wallet deserves some of your money because you beat him up instead of just surrendering. Also BS on the "reasonable demands", Russia annexes a part of Ukraine and we should ignore that fact and how it paints every future interaction between the two countries because Russia dindu nuffing.
It's guesswork, but I think western countries will want to ride over a Ukrainian "victory" (whatever that entails) with help on rebuilding, especially if that will get the population to forget about how shit the situation at home is. If midway the global economy collapses then Ukraine wouldn't be much worse than any country with zero industry due to sending it all to China.
I have to wonder how long Russia can realistically maintain this tempo. The amount of supplies being expended here has to be astronomical. I know those old soviet stockpiles of Grad rockets are huge, but they aren't infinite. The Units involved in this fight have been going pretty much non stop for the last 3 months too. They are going to have to be cycled out and replaced at some point. But the only units that could replace them are the vastly inferior Conscript or Reserve units.
It has been rumored that if they do dip into their Reserve units that they're just going to be glorified meat shields used to buy time so other proper units can regroup.
Grad rockets are piss easy and dirt cheap to make. A single rocket is 300 dollars, which means it's probably even cheaper due to low manpower costs in Russia. It probably doesn't take very long for a well equipped factory to make one. Even the Soviet Union managed to make millions of similar rockets, and they weren't particularly rich or competent.
The troops are obviously being rotated. Not only did the ones from Kyiv have plenty of rest before being re-activated, but the absence of any large pushes should tell you that 90% of them are resting most of the time. Most Russian attacks are probing attacks, and don't require large swathes of manpower in any case.
Russia has 1 million active personnel. If reserve units were actually activated, they'd be to guard borders, headquarters and generally do what the 800,000 not activated troops are doing, which is mostly nothing. They're nowhere close to having to use reservists or conscripts.
i think before they start thinking about bringing in conscripts, they would bring in rosgvardia units first, no?
They've already been used, but to guard occupied areas so useful troops can do something else. From what we know they haven't done great when they accidentally have to actually fight.
They aren’t doing that. I think Russia is pretty well aware of how delusional Ukraine is going to be moving forward, so the war is being deescalated to something more akin to the Israel Palestine situation, where Russia knows they have a disputed border that they can periodically make incursions into and an artillery wasteland as a buffer zone between them.
well that's pretty much what Ukraine's been doing with much of its mercs/conscripts. Flush out those ruskie positions freedom fighters!
Green armbands are Kharkiv region btw. Yellow was central ukraine and blue was donbass region by my best guess.
Territorial concessions are a fact of life and especially eastern europe. Every single Eastern European state was born from making concessions to its neighbors, often after brutal wars and genocides. The reason Lithuanians and Polish don’t seethe over it anymore is because they don’t have a massive propaganda apparatus continuing to rile them up.
the israel palestine situation only came about after the israelis achieved total victory in the first arab israeli war, and every repeat war after that as well.
The Russians are retreating bravely and advancing cowardly.
With the power of anime, God, and communism on their side.
