Posted on 02/19/2023 10:21:07 AM PST by Chode
After a year of hard fighting there are a rush of observers trying to make sense of the current balance of power in Ukraine. The focus in often on (often small) movements in the frontlines, casualties, or the performance of particular platforms and systems.
Those things matter, but wars are not generally fought to take individual trenches or solely to inflict casualties. They are fought for strategic objectives.
In this episode I dig into Russia's history of Empire, its modern strategic objectives, and try to assess whether or not the war in Ukraine represents a success or failure by Russia's own chosen metrics (as far as they can be determined). My suggestion is that in repeating a number of the mistakes previously made by leaders of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, it can be argued that Putin has already condemned the Russian federation to a strategic reverse.
What remains to be seen, is whether Ukraine can win a victory from Russia's defeat, or if it will be left to lose as well.
” places Russians did want to defend”
Russia retreated from Kherson right after it had declared it had annexed Kherson. Sounds like it couldn’t defend that bridgehead as much as it would have wanted to do so.
The Izyum-Sumy area was excellent defensive terrain. Russia also lost the direct rail line from Belgorod to the Donbas, its principal logistics route.
That is, Russia has a potential incapacity in defense, and is likely to be vulnerable to losing ground.
none of that, NONE, has anything to do with the video...
and Perun doesn’t give opinion like that guy
you mistake me for posting to incite, i post to let others decide what to make of it since he does not do opinion pieces
but you do you
Those weren’t Russians .Those people were seeded there by Stalin to replace Tartar people he shipped off further east. As to Afghanistan, we never should have gone in there in the first place. Same with Iraq. If Bush had kept the Iran/Iraq war going for a few more years both countries would have been no factor in the Middle East. Even if Russia wins they will never control Ukraine. There are still people there who remember the Holodomor.
U.S. President Joe Biden is in Kiev today to rescue his lunatic project of destroying Russia by proxy war. But there is no good way to do that.
A review of 'western' media shows that the inevitable outcome of the war is now recognized. The only still open alternatives are to risk a large nuclear war or to retreat from 'western' dreams of its permanent hegemony.
Few 'western' officials will admit that the war is lost, that Russia has won in Ukraine. But it has. It had won the war when it successfully trapped the Ukrainian army into a war of attrition.
A the Russian commentator Sacha Rogers writes (in Russian, machine translation):
This war has already been won (moreover, what is most offensive for various "unrecognized geniuses", without their participation and contrary to their foolish ideas of how it should be won). It was won at the moment when, instead of a highly maneuverable war, our General Staff imposed a positional “standing” with an attrition war on the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Strictly by the textbook: Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material.
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But the Ukrainian army does not have the material and manpower ready to launch some kind of counter offense that would have a chance to be win the war. It doesn't even have enough to regain some significant territory.
The third army it would need would have to be much stronger than the two armies it has already lost. And its not coming.
and somebody called the Kremlin giving them advance notice...
are the RATS trying to get rid of him??? /s
now we’re paying their retirement payments
We've lied to the Russians over and over again. We promised no eastward expansion of NATO and lied. We encouraged Ukraine to break the Minsk Agreement, which it signed, that would have prevent this war and ended the civil war we set off in 2014 with illegal coup we fomented.
There is no chance Russia will exit this war without guarantees what is left of Ukraine is a neutral state.
Russia will be destitute for a generation after paying the reparations needed to rebuild Ukraine.
Russia at present has no power to make demands
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