TwinkleToes

There is light everywhere, but it does't come like you wish it would in a movie, with the detonation of the Death Star, or a fleet of A-10's arriving over the horizon to rip the enemy vanguard into strips of fruit leather to the soundtrack of Rock You Like A Hurricane

• 3 years on, Russia is an uber ride away from their starting points from territory they controlled a decade prior.
• Their vast and utterly irreplaceable Soviet stockpile is gone
• The Black Sea Fleet is effectively neutralized
• Their strategic bomber fleet is vastly reduced
• Their primary oil & gas export markets are dead
• They are junior vassals to China going forward. No request from Beijing can be refused beyond this point.
• The decades-old war chest of filthy oil & gas money is gone
• The easiest oil and gas to extract has already been taken. Every barrel they make going forward is more expensive, requires expertise they lack and can no longer lease from other countries, and is of declining strategy importance going forward anyways.
• The manufacture dates on Russia's stand off terror weaons show a hand-to-mouth production flow. As soon as things are made, they're fired at Ukraine. This means stockpiles are essentially empty.
• During 2024, Russia lost more men than any other year of the war, and used less heavy equipment. The heavy stuff is gone, and even 70 years of loaf vans are becoming rare. The golf carts, motorcyles and donkeys are evidence of their declining power. It takes exponentially more flesh to achieve anything that heavy metal ought to have done. It's not sustainable for anyone. Even though their macho chest-thumping boasts that they are vast and bottomless, the only thing that actually is, is their brutality and lack of humanity.
• Their A-50 AWACS-type fleet is functionally dead. They lost two of them last year, can't replace them.
• During August, there are now gasoline shortages and rationing starting in the far flung territories. This effect at the consumer pumps will spread, especially if Ukraine keeps hitting facilities. The price of a gallon of gas in Russia is currently the same as it is in the U.S., except that Russian salaries are 20% of what american ones are. Translation - consumers are now feeling the pain paying 5x what an american does for gas. This is going to lead to runaway inflation as the cost of transporting goods rises due to fuel costs.
• Their current strategy is to push small infiltration teams forward looking for weak spots. But they lack the reserves to exploit and reinforce those if they find them. Just last week we were hearing how there was a breakthrough of 15km north of Pokrovsk. Welll guess what - they couldn't reinforce it, the Ukrainians went in, cut them off and wiped them out. It was all posturing ahead of whatever that Alaskan boogaloo was with Trump.
• Pushing small infiltration teams forward, only to be wiped out in a couple of days is not a great strategy for conquest. It's more like pest-control. Sure, there's mice or roaches around, but you're able to kill them given enough time, drones and perseverance
• Ukraine, while suffering, is more than holding it's existential own against an alleged superpower. They haven't been drafting people under 24 yet. Their domestic capabilities are getting stronger and further reaching.

Russia is in an utterly disastrous military, economic and social situation. The ultimate proof is that they're stuck where they are, and can't seem to move forward in any meaningful way. This is it. This is all they can do. Ukraine isn't yet remotely desperate. They have many more cards to play, despite Trump's obedient insistence to the contrary. Ukraine's path to victory doesn't require full liberation of all territories yet. It would be wiser to keep bleeding Russia's dying war machine, and trade what are in the big picture, small pieces of land while Russia burns itself out in it's stubborn suicide.

Russia talks a lot about how good they are at war. Except - look at the history.

• Crimean War. Lost. Their expansion really never recovered after this
• Russo-Japanese War. Uttlery crushed.
• WW1. Beaten so badly, that the entire system collapsed.
• Polish-Russian War. Defeated.
• WW2. Rolled back to Moscow, after being backstabbed by their Nazi allies. Without lend-lease and invasions of Italy and Normandy, there might not be a russian state west of the Urals.
• Afghanistan. Rolled.
• Chechnya 1. Rolled.

The last war Russia won on it's own, was against Sweden in the 17th century. The rest has all been punching down on tiny neighbour states and running internal ethnic cleansing. They're absolutely shit at war. The evidence is there. They keep dying in vast numbers, waiting for something to happen. Often, in the long view of history, that something is a revolution, or a collapse, or both. But autocracies seem stable, until they're not. This Death Festival is unsustainable for any country, even one with such depraved leadership as russia.

Their macho moron strategy of Horde War presumed that having crap compared to NATO gear was fine, as long as you had enough of it. They could roll from Poland to Portugal before the feckless pussies in the West could even muster the stones to respond. Right? Well - that clearly is not the case, given that they can't even subdue a presumed inferior race right next door with the bare minimum of logistics challenges. Their entire Way of War has turned out to be fairly worthless compared to drones and stubborn national resistance in Ukraine. FIghting a unified Europe is so utterly out of the question now. We aren't quite grateful enough to Ukraine for what they've done. It was, of course, in their own service and they didn't get the support they deserved. We're trading Ukrainian blood for democratic liberty.

It all sucks. It sucks that they chose to do this. This is a brutal, disgusting war of hubris driven by vile gangster ghouls trying to get a little bit richer. But the divorce is final. There will be a Ukraine with territorial integrity and no delusions about Russia's malign nature going forward, if there ever was. And Russia will continue to try corrosive mischief for a few more decades yet before imploding into a wasteland plagued by infighting, casual ethnic cleansing and corporate warlodism.

Putin's legacy will be maybe the worst Russian - ever. Which is saying something. There are no upsides to Russia going forward, especially if their orange puppet croaks before extracting some kind of bad peace that the military situation on the ground doens't justify. It just takes time and won't come in a super satisfying endpoint. Ukraine wins by suriving. Russia loses in every scenario. They've lost The Very Future and will be a dead zombie society going forward.

Yeah, that's fair. What I'm clumsily trying to say is actually optimistic - that if things were going better for Russia, they would be further west and there'd be no talk of peace, even on ludicrous terms.

And in cold calculus knowing full well it prolongs the suffering of innocents - if this was a board game, the smart thing to do might be to keep fighting and letting Russian hubris bleed itself to death. It kind of makes you think North Vietnam's strategy against the U.S. is the way to go. Keep bleeding them until they decide it's no longer militarily possible or politically worthwhile to keep fighting. Anything less than that ensures Russia will try again the first second they're able.

Totally. Zero chance Ukraine agrees to this. They would be giving up 250k citizens and 7000 sqare miles that has hundreds of billions in resources in them. You want it Russia? Come and take it.

While this is a historic and devastating tragedy for Ukraine, it's helpful to remember this means Ukraine has already won the war. Russia can never do this type of invasion again, their Soviet stockpile is gone, the war chest is spent, they are a pariah for the next several decades. They are in terminal demographic decline, and they will not be able to re-arm before Putin dies to fight a war of this scale again. It's all blackmail, corrosive misinformation and political mischief for them past this point. Their primary export market for oil and gas are dead, they have become China's vassal, and have assembled a crappy coalition of corrupt allies who only run on bribes and are of limited diplomatic use. They lost Syria, they've lost Iran's proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. They've lost the Black Sea Fleet. They've lost much of their strategic bomber fleet. Once he falls, there will be infighting, as there ALWAYS is when Russian emperors die.

It's kind of comforting to know Putin will die before he sets foot in Kyiv. In many ways, you can consider this the last war of the 20th century. The great, if not-quite-as-envisioned revenge project of the dead idea of the Soviet Union.

Find it helpful to remember this is all noise-making frmo an increasingly irrelevant US administration. Trump always overplays his hand and imagines he has more leverage than he actually does, because he's an idiot. But that's for another post.

Ukraine hasn't REALLY pushed itself to existential levels yet, haven't drafted 18-25 year olds, and can probably resist Russia for many more years just on European support, for whom the issue isn't some petty political jagoff to play for the rubes at home. For Europe - while they havent re-armed as fast as they should have before or after the war, they at least intellectually understand this isn't a game. Stop Russia now, or they WILL be on your doorstep next. Ukraine may or may not be getting stronger - but Russia certainly isn't. If they were, they wouldn't be asking for peace, even on ludicrous terms.

Russia is, through it's proxies, asking to be given something for a ceasefire. If they could be doing better on the battlefield, they would, full stop. The goal was always complete conquest. That ship has sailed, right to the bottom of the Black Sea, and now they want something in return to pause their indiscriminate butchery. The fact that they are the ones tabling even ludicrous peace narratives is a positive thing to anyone pro-Ukraine. It means Russia knows they can't win. There will be many sad days up to and after a ceasefire - but while it is a massive tragedy - Ukraine endures, and has survived.

Now watch the tankies' chest thumping replies.

Barbarian Terrorist Petromafia negotations 101.

Reuters lacks my comic sensibilities

right. Well - we're not talking about Israel at all here, sorry. I'm sure there's lots of space to discuss it not in an explicitly Ukraine themed thread.

Kind of obvious that this was always The Plan. And they will probably go much further than logic/reality justifies, because there is no going back. This is an all or nothing gamble by the black hearted, petromafia gangster ghouls in charge of Russia. They will never again have the remotest element of surprise that they would actually do this type of naked imperial land grab against sovreign European states.

But - the landscape now is way beyond the likely most pessimistic estimates they had in their 2022 war plans. Primary o&g export markets destroyed. The majority of their soviet military stockpile inheritance destroyed. 1 million+ war casualities that will be a burden on the state going forward in terms of pension, disability, and military usefulness. A stable of third-rate allies of limited diplomatic use who only run on bribes. The implosion of their most pugnacious allies (Wagner, Syria, Iran and it's proxies Hamas and Hezbollah) who had been most useful in creating mischief among Russia's western enemies. Terminal demographic decline pushed into hyperdrive by this maniacally stalemated war. The critical loss of power projection into the Baltic, Black Sea and Mediterranean. The depletion of missile stocks. The implosion of their arms export industry due to the crap perforamnce of their second rate 'good enough' weapons systems compared to commercially available drone technologies. The demonstrated impotence of their air defense. Their new vassal status as the junior partner to China, to whom they can refuse no requests for resources on favorable terms going forward. The declining strategic importance & increasingly large extraction costs of their only real exports, oil & gas + minerals, made worse by their willful destruction of their own labour force.

Hell - the very abrupt obsolescene of their entire way of Horde War. Their philosophy since the 1950's was that it didn't matter that NATO had better gear - their medium tier tanks and artillery was good enough as long as you had enough of it, and that they could push from Poland to Portugal before NATO even started to think about being able to respond, because the Euros are a bunch of feckless pussies who won't fight anyways....right? Tanks, artillery and crude, inhuman mass have proven to be NOWHERE near as overwhelming as they assumed, even in a flat, relatively poorly equipped country right next door.

It's maddening that Russia continues to insist it's winning but - in the big picture.....they're getting absolutely obliterated, at the micro and macro level. It's not necessary for them to admit it for it to be objectively true. The war ends when Putin dies, full stop. How that happens is the only thing left to ponder.

? nobody mentioned Israel. Well - you did, but not sure why. I take that back - I have an idea why. I'm sure I'm going to regret responding to a 2d old burner account - but, here we are.

Fo Sho. I guess what I'm saying is it's still amazing how truly awful he is at it. And it screams how utterly desperate and terrible Russia's position is, despite their bluster and obvious failures, that they are somehow winning.

You can understand why they are trying to strong arm Ukraine into absurd concessions for almost nothing in return in terms of security guarantees - the war is not going well for Russia, they're still within a cab ride of their start position, destroyed their entire soviet arsenal inheritance, lost the Black Sea fleet, lost their 30-year Oil and Gas war chest, lost vital pieces of the Air Force's C&C, destroyed their primary oil export markets to Europe, wiped out their arms export industry, have made themselves a global pariah for decades, suffered 1 million casualties....etc etc etc.

And Trump is an obese octogenarian, who eats like a stoned toddler, and is likely to get his maneuverability clipped in the mid-terms. They're on a speed run to try and force an agreement that is more favorable to Russia than reality, never mind justice, should allow. This war will likely go down as one of the greatest self-owns in the history of foolhardy imperial misadventures. The scale of it is not far off of the Persians deciding to go teach that impudent Alexander a lesson. Trump's absurd tactics is, like so much of his entire schtick, based on complete bullshit and disastrous assumptions about how strong his position is. 4D Chess.

Curious whether a spectacular attack against Moscow during this period would be beneficial to Ukraine or not. Ukraine could always have fought a 'dirtier' version of this war, like how they blew up Dugin's daughter early on. They undoubtedly could be doing more terroristic type attacks in Russia, but one of Ukraine's supporters' valued concepts is the moral high ground. Since the Dugin bombing, they have only targeted high level military officials and a prominent Z Blogger with assassination attacks here and there.

The irony of the orange Moron withdrawing most support is that he has little remaining leverage to make either side do anything. The Art of the Deal, you see. 4D checkers.

If Ukraine launched a wave attack on Victory Day, is it more likely that would trigger a vicious response, demoralize Russians into believing this war isn't worthwhile, maybe both? It would definitely trigger a harsh response - but like the Tet offensive...which was a tactical disaster for North Vietnam...it did shock the U.S. so much that the war was seen as unwinnable afterwards. But - that's not a perfect example, because there is no Walter Kronkite in Russia, and public opinion doesn't count worth a sack of rotten beets.

Hard to say whether Ukraine should respect it and hope it translates to a ceasefire, or whether to really go for it and show the Russians and their leadership that they not only cannot win this war, but that they cannot protect themselves from embarrassment, and that it's not going to get better until they get serious about fucking off.

No serious minded person expects Russia to respect any truce anyways, in the short or long term. The only way to ensure long term peace is to destroy Russia's long term capabilities. Even with European support alone, they can probably continue to bleed out and degrade the Russian war machine for a long time yet. Funny, all Trump's bullshit bluster about how Ukraine 'doesn't have the cards'. They absolutely do. They have a lot more cards to play than Trump does.

This is a great way to call Trump's bluff and expose his true allegiance. Of course, Trump refuses this out of hand even though it's completely in-line with his talking points about wanting Europe to buy American arms and invest in their own defense. Yet - it's a flat no from him. Zelensky could have done this offer behind the scenes, but he does so publicly because he knows what the answer will be, and that it exposes Trump's true motivations.