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Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

As long as China supports Russia there is no way Ukraine is going to break Russia. Putin cares nothing about the human cost from his side and it's unlikely Ukraine can have enough of an advantage to be able to push back.

See the "spring offensive".

The reality is more or less a stalemate at this point. While the Trump administration treatment of Zelensky is a disgrace the reality is that some sort of ceasefire around the current borders is going to be the outcome that ends this war. We can work on forcing Russia to withdraw via economic and other pressure after the hot war is over. Just like we broke up the Soviet Union.

This idea of one more year and Russia will break is just a dream with no connection to reality. Putin is going to send a million man to fight with sticks before Russia breaks. And they will.

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Do you have any evidence that Russia is open to a ceasefire around the current borders?

Trump is pushing it after having talked to the Russians. I mean I don't have a direct line to Putin but if Russia isn't open to a ceasefire then none of this even matters. The fight between Trump and Zelensky is about Ukraine agreeing to a ceasefire.

Trump also wants to annex Greenland, take over the Panama canal and make Gaza into a beach resort. Also let's not forget when he sent out his son in law for a school project (peace in Isreal) who came back with a detailed plan without ever talking and involving the Palestinians.

The problem with a ceasefire is that Russia has an endless history of accepting negotiations only to use them to get a tactical advantage. It is standard practice for them. So of course Ukraine is very wary unless that can be prevented.

> the reality is that some sort of ceasefire around the current borders is going to be the outcome that ends this war.

No, it won't. With sufficient outside political pressure on Ukraine, it might happen, but (like many ceasefires) it would only be a brief pause, not an end to the war.

> We can work on forcing Russia to withdraw via economic and other pressure after the hot war is over.

Sanctions almost never work without someone actually fighting on the ground. If they are not tipping the balance of an active internal or external conflict, they can be endured basically indefinitely.

(Not that Trump seems inclined to either try to force Putin to withdraw or to maintain sanctions, in any case.)

> Just like we broke up the Soviet Union.

We didn't break up the Soviet Union, the republics of the Soviet Union broke it up, largely because of a crisis of legitimacy resulting from a hardline coup against a mildly reformist leadership. The main immediate US contribution, though, was bogging the USSR down in the long war it fought in Afghanistan by aiding the forces opposing the USSR there, the outgrowth of which was both the disatisfaction that provoked the reform efforts and the strong negative reaction to the subsequent hardline coup, not sanctions imposed without an ongoing armed conflict.

China can only support Russia in some specific, not too invasive ways. If structural points of a country break, there's no support recipe for that.

Financial and economic weaknesses are also working against Putin and his team from _within_ Russia.

> Just like we broke up the Soviet Union.

It was not entirely broken, since we have the living proof of it today in the Kremlin - same operating mode.

> Putin is going to send a million man

Why is he resorting to North Korean soldiers then? (which even then aren't infinite). Obviously, he has a problem at recruiting/training his own. Which puts him at odds with his own population.

So whose soldiers will it be next? China? not likely willing to deal with that. Iran? same. African countries? Not their war, they tell it themselves.

The issue is that Putin has cornered himself and his country, willingly, knowingly, into a no-way-out road. He had other options of both perspective and action.

The word on the street is that he's using North Korean soldiers because he can get them and he prefers that they are killed and not Russians. But he'll send Russians too.

You're applying western thinking here. The same sort of western thinking that thought Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine because what's in it for him or imagine some red lines or whatever. Russians aren't western. They don't think like us. The west always does this.

There isn't such a thing of at odds with his own population in Russia. Again you're applying western thinking to Russians. Check out some Russian jokes.

Logistics is not a matter of culture. When you run out, you run out.

Russia's population is 140 million. They're not going to run out of people. 17% of those or about 24 million are fighting age males (18-44). If you really need to you can definitely recruit 15-60 and woman.

Not sure if this is what you meant by logistics.

If you're thinking about supplying and maintaining their physical presence in Ukraine it doesn't look like that's a problem either.

"As of 2024, Russia produces about 3 million artillery shells a year, nearly three times the quantity from the US and Europe." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry_of_Russia

They're also still exporting weapons though significantly less than they used to export.

Maybe they can't sustain 10 years of war with the west continuing or increasing their level of support, assuming Ukraine can, but they are nowhere near being forced to stop [the] war.

Population alone and artillery alone are the ingredients of logistics, not logistics itself.

The failure of the initial 3-days invasion was a demonstration that the « great Russian army », even with the support of Wagner and Tchetchenia, was unable to plan, execute and sustain a flash attack.

Yes, they may improve in the meantime. But that takes years of discipline and continuous training. So while that’s an option for them, that’s also a weakness that can be decisive.

> Russia's population is 140 million.

Alledged population. Or are we also to believe their election results?

Is China supporting Russia? I see opportunistic grabs for cheap oil and gas but nothing more than that. It’s not fixing the rampant inflation and growing budget deficit.

> We can work on forcing Russia to withdraw via economic and other pressure after the hot war is over. Just like we broke up the Soviet Union.

You think Trump plans to maintain sanctions? You sweet summer child.

North Korea is a China agent in this context. China is pretty much supplying all the goods that went away due to western sanctions, everything Russian factories need, and buying all the exports that the west is trying to sanction.

My statement had nothing to do with Trump maintaining sanctions or not. If he doesn't some future administration will. US relations with the Soviets also fluctuated during the cold war.

> North Korea is a China agent in this context.

This simply isn’t true.

> China is pretty much supplying all the goods that went away due to western sanctions

This is not correct. Some countries are being used to bypass sanctions, including China, but this isn’t happening with government support and the extra costs of evading sanctions are putting inflationary pressure on goods in Russia.

> buying all the exports that the west is trying to sanction.

Barring oil and gas, there’s nothing Russia has that China wants. And even then, they don’t have the infrastructure to buy the volumes to replace European purchases, thus the black hole in the Russian budget.

Nothing happens in China without government support. In China you either do what the government wants or you are in jail or dead.

If Xi wanted Russia to stop the war, Russia would stop the war. The war is useful for China because it splinters the west, they get leverage over Russia, and it normalizes the kind of actions that it wants to take in Taiwan.

If China objected to North Korea sending troops to Russia then North Korea would not be sending troops to Russia. Pretty much all of North Korea's trade is with China. For sure North Korea has some degree of independence but sending soldiers to die for Russia is not worth it if it upsets China. This is clearly a nod, nod, wink, wink situation here.

"Most of Russia's exports to China originate from the mining and petrochemicals sectors.[64] More than half of Russia's exports to China come from mineral fuels, oil, and petroleum products (60.7%), followed by wood and wood products (9.4%), non-ferrous metals (9%), fish and seafood (3.5%), and chemical products (3.3%). China is also gradually becoming a major consumer of Russian agricultural products.[24]: 64

The main categories of imports to Russia from China are machinery and equipment (35.9%), clothing (13.7%), chemical products (9.1%), fur and fur products (5.6%), footwear (5.3%), and furniture (3%). Chinese electronics are steadily expanding their presence in Russian.[24]: 64"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Russia_relations...

There is nothing you just said that contradicts what I wrote.

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