What's the purpose of them destroying Ukrainian cities that they wish to annex? Will they just send a bunch of Russians to "colonise" them again, as they did with Crimea?
"If we can't have it, no one can".
Decrease in Russian glide bomb attacks recently:
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Ammo dump getting BTFU and now Russia has to move their aircraft at least 200 miles back from the front or risk getting ATACMs.
It does seem that Assad is now a loser that Putin dropped. Everyone probably saw how Trump greeted Zelensky in the restored Notre Dame, but this might help Putin in that he can concentrate on Ukraine.
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Syria was a very longterm Soviet client which ensured Med access and a flanking of NATO. It is surely more crucial than, say, Georgia.
tl;dr: Russia has been pulling assets from Syria since at least 2023 to try to fill gaps in their needs in Ukraine.
Focusing solely on Russia, in the very short term, this is a boost for Russia. Their airwings will be recalled and they won't be wasting resources trying to keep Assad from collapsing. But its a very minor gain - Russian forces in Syria were largely Syrian (or other TCNs) and its unlikely they will be exfiled to Ukraine. Erdog is almost certainly going to deny the Russian ships the Bosporus, and the Baltic is now a NATO bathtub, so they will need to send them to the pacific or hope the icepack is thin enough to send them to Ostrovnoy.
Its almost more likely they'll send them to Cuba incase the CIA starts getting ideas.
In the long term, this is crushing for Russia. Forgetting about loss of prestige and more evidence that Russia is Fake and Gay, This removes their primary "fell off the back of a truck" way of exchanging materiel with Iran. It will make flights to their new African holdings more expensive - something that might become more important now that everyone is taking note of how Assad collapsed in about two weeks.
Operation Barbarossa like rest of the German invasion of Russia lies one of the greatest unanswered "what ifs" in WWII history. That "what if" the Germans had got a clue when they were initially treated as liberators by everyone who had been brutalized by their Soviet overlords. Since the discussions of this have been verboten every where online and offline, it seems to be the one possible way for Germany to not lose WWII. As all other remotely viable options with the United States in the war just mean Germany will be the one to get nuked first instead of Japan.
Having them as willing cannon fodder always been the main point of this scenario just due to not having manpower in real life. Secondly it's more fun to stay in character and be the lesser of two evils. Instead of being out of character right off the bat by being the good guy.
Not really different from real life as FDR had gone pretext hunting and outright baiting. Which got the Japanese to bite at Pearl Harbor and the autistic Austrian Painter just had to show solidarity of getting Germany to declare war too.
This ignores German's vast food shortage, and one of the reasons they become unpopular was taking grain to feed Germany.
But Albert Speer talks about how immediately after taking Ukraine, no occupation force was needed until they fucked that up with Aryan Nationalism.
The only way this really changes the equation is - if we ignore Germany's food shortage - if Stalin had abandoned Moscow and Hitler has offered terms. Until the very end of the war Germany didn't suffer from a lack of troops, it suffered from a lack of ability to keep them supplied.
If they had kept the Slavic SSRs friendly, it might have slowed down the Soviet advance and have seen the allies get to Berlin first. But for that to really matter Patton needs to have not gotten Jeep'd.
The only scenario that sees the Third Reich as anything other than a force destined to implode under is own weight is the Germans win in Stalingrad. This allows Germany to isolate the Caucases, cross the Caspian, liberate the Axis-sympathetic Elder Shah and fix their oil supply problem.