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Comment by mandelken | Hacker News Reader

Since the 2022 Russian invasion, the West has provided 200bn in aid to Ukraine [0]. And Russia has been winning on the ground lately. It seems the West is thinking more aid will not change the outcome, but only diplomacy will.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-...

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Russia has not been winning on the ground. It's two and a half years into the war and Russia is still stuck contesting edge territories. Russia has overwhelmingly larger numbers, but with as high as 7:1 casualties to Ukraine and with a significant increase in casualties over the last eight months.

The frontline is stabilized and the ruble is collapsing. What exactly is being won here?

The western aid was an important lesson on the importance of proper timing for investments: it was always too little to win, but too much to loose outright. Had Ukraine been able to strike with full force from the beginning, the world could look very different right now.

Russia has been gaining tiny amounts of ground while suffering massive losses. Latest estimates say casualties are currently averaging 1,500 a day.

Total casualties since the start of the war (less than 3 years ago) are 600,000+. That's about 200,000 more than more than the US sustained in Korea, Vitnam, First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and The Second Gulf War combine.

Heh, if you call few meaningless villages per day winning. Whats really happening is decimation of russian armed and naval forces (and young population) dramatically to the point where russia is regional power at best, not any form of superpower anymore and its weapons are often considered as subpar. They almost emptied massive cold war stockpikes of more sophisticated technology.

Which seems to be US plan since beginning, give enough support to make them bleed but not really corner them existentially to trigger nuclear strikes.

We can see a massive success here, mostly due to very predictable russian stupidity and primitive emotions at controlling positions. Well done CIA, well done indeed, hopefully this will make world a better place in the future. But it can easily backfire too.

This Russian losses are primarily not young people actually. There’s been somewhere in the ballpark of 600-800k casualties (I believe the latter) which has been a huge struggle for the labor force. But, in fairness, it hasn’t been the young folks.

Allocated is not the same as delivered

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