What I'm about to say maybe be totally shocking, but it's the truth. A few people have started to notice it, and it will be more apparent as time goes on, and there will be no reversal from this trajectory.
We are witnessing the total implosion of the Russian military force. The causes will be analyzed for decades (was it corruption? was it misguided doctrine?).
What's the basis for my claim? Some of the Russian (DNR and LDR, included) forces that are fighting currently (you can say conscripts or whatever, but they are troops in Uniform) are showing up with zero training. Zero.
Think about why that might be happening to the 2nd largest military in the world, that's not generally mobilized, fighting a small country in a "special operation".
That said, I don't think the PLA is as corrupt and if they decide to have some exercises across the straits, they will probably be better prepared and equipped. so we had better have some contingencies for a second theater.
USA doesn't have a first theater yet--no troops have been mobilized into Europe.
The $1T/year US military budget is insanely large. Chucking a few $B to Ukraine is not deteriorating anything. Supporting Ukraine is basically a cheap way to tie up Russia and use up old equipment that would have been retired anyway.
US defense industry is known to keep making new stuff and retiring the old in order to keep production lines from dying. There is a very deep reserve for all that stuff. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CmXz8Qd9yw
As for Taiwan, after the war started, Biden made removed the ambiguity around US involvement. And Taiwan has been preparing for a Chinese invasion far longer than Ukraine preparing for the Russian invasion (mostly since 2014). At this point, it's clear that if China invaded Taiwan, they'd have to do it entirely themselves. I don't think they're ready to take that risk.
This is disingenuous considering the entire Western World is helping Ukraine with weapons, intel, billions worth of aid, sanctions on Russia etc. Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine, but it's not just against Ukraine. In their view, they are fighting a war against the West in Ukraine.
US Lend Lease to Ukraine was what, $30B? And that money hasn't been even tapped yet. I don't know the current numbers today, but I'm thinking at least $5B has gone to Ukraine in arms, just from the United States. Ukraine's pre-war military budget seems to be about $6B. US is basically subsidizing UKR defense spending for the next 5 years.
Given the US defense budget is ~$1T, spending < 10% to drastically depleting the Russian military (without even using US forces) is an opportunity that will not be squandered.
Russia can complain all they want, but the truth is they can stop this war immediately by withdrawing. It's a war of choice that they can no longer withdraw from.
No, it doesn't, except in the sense that the conflict would have to shift to favoring Russia for it to be plausible for it to be “drawn out.”
Russia has already seen casualties that are probably on the order of those the (much larger) Soviet Union saw in its decade long war in Afghanistan, and significantly higher among senior officers—and that wars toll was a significant factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the toll on equipment which they have basically no way to replenish has been high as well.
> Last time I checked Russia had a 10/1 advantage in heavy artillery
Don't know when you checked, but Ukraine has been getting a flood of artillery from the West, with longer range guns than the Russians have.
> has not mobilized its army
They haven't done a formal mass conscription, instead doing a backdoor mobilization, but that's kind of irrelevant since they are running out of first-tier combat-ready equipment, pulling older stuff out of stores to send to the front.
> fighting with 1/5 of its available peacetime forces
Maybe in total manpower. One of the many reasons for the high casualties in senior officers (besides the inability to delegate in land forces) is that their combat-capable pilots are a narrow corps that is senior-officer heavy, and they have a similar issue with other critical specialty forces, and those can't be replenished on any reasonable timescale.
> has suffered massive casualties among its most capable forces.
Russia has suffered massive casualties both overall and among its most capable forces, and expended a lot of its most capable equipment, and no one is rushing them replacements.
Russia has many many more people, but it has shown hesitancy to do a general conscription. People don’t want to fight in this war.
Russia doesn’t have strong strategic bombardment capabilities, nor even air superiority. They’re also running out of military hardware needed to make use of. Their shitty 80 year old tanks are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Again, yes, Russia could go all out. They could launch nukes. But it’s something that would be very difficult. Putin may not survive if he tries to mobilize Moscow.
This claim is doing its rounds starting from the day one. This being the 100th day...
...maybe you're talking about the morale of all those dudes sheltering in Georgia and Turkey?
The fact that morale has been low since the start is not evidence that it’s higher now. Russia’s performance has been consistently poor
I don't think you are qualified to read Russia's military bloggers. They usually write things such as "in this and that division, there are such and such problems". How does that translate to your claim that morale (of whom? of everybody?) being at rock bottom (for how long?)
Which two objectives? They got their land bridge for Crimea and are almost fully in control of the Donbas. They also have ensured Ukraine can't join NATO now, unless they want to officially cede all of that land to Russia in exchange for peace, since a requirement to join NATO is that a country be in control of their borders.
From a logical standpoint, why would they want Kyiv and western Ukraine? 90% of the natural resources are in the east in addition to the reasons stated above for wanting control of those areas.
Ukraine being able to (at least temporarily) push the Russians from Kharkiv was huge for them, while the attack on Kyiv always seemed like just a list of targets that Russia just wanted to take out early on. Of course, I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes so who really knows.
This was true before the start of the current war in February, and had been true since 2014.
Said war has made NATO making some sort of exception for rump Ukraine as member significantly more likely to happen.
You tell me. Russia certainly tried to seize Kyiv in the opening days of the invasion. I think that bloody action carries more weight as a statement of intent, than your question does. Also, I think you were aware of it.
It's not exactly unrelated.
> and there is nothing outside of our ... media to suggest they ever planned to occupy the entire country.
Except for you know, the entire invasion. This is sophistry, and weak as well.
false
There's a strong argument that "the West" is supporting Ukraine to such an extent that Russia is at the disadvantage in the long game.
The Price of War - Can Russia Afford a Long Conflict? (Perun) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEpk_yGjn0E
Technological independence is easy to say and incredibly hard to do. Neither does independence means superiority or equality. Many forget that investment in technology takes time and comes at the expense of other things. China and Russia have budgeting constraints that will pull them away from investment in technology.
Also personally I don't want us to remove sanctions on Russia, ever. They are too dangerous for the world and will have to be defanged.
Probably true. But there's no situation in which Russia ends up richer for having gone to war than had they not bothered in the first place. Which is to say, everyone has lost already. It's a tragedy for all parties -- and it's Putin's fault.
But yeah the pre-2014 situation would be vastly better for all sides involved. Ukraine could have taken the Belarussian or Khazak trajectory.
Taking Mariupol will seem like a walk in the park compared to trying to take Odessa.
There's no way that Odessa falls to the Russians.
Russia is corrupt through and through and cannot built new companies. If the industrial capacity is bombed, it will be useless for them.
As for Belarussia? What trajectory is it to become Putins labdog?
That's largely false. The bottleneck is weapons, not people. That's not coming fast enough with Germany stalling or outright lying etc.
IT would take one small ($1 mil?) covert operation to blow up NS1 in two-three places to erase 40% of Russia budget revenue overnight. Sadly the only countries capable and crazy enough to do it seem to be leaning on wait and see approach (Israel) if not outright appeasing Putin (France).