Yeah it’s a little more complicated than that.
Here are a few things that might sour the Slava Ukraini camp:
*This war won’t end this year
*Russia will not lose to Ukraine
*Energy prices will skyrocket (killing many worldwide)
*Food prices will skyrocket (killing many more worldwide)
FWIW, I loathe Putin - not that it matters to folks.
I think it’s “slobber Ukraini”.
*This war won’t end this year
*Russia will not lose to Ukraine
*Energy prices will skyrocket (killing many worldwide)
*Food prices will skyrocket (killing many more worldwide)
And all because Russia invaded, though n. 2 is still in doubt. Vietnam and Afghanistan should warn anyone about who will win in the end.
If overseas energy prices skyrocket faster than they do here, is that a bad thing?
“This war won’t end this year - Russia will not lose to Ukraine”
Conscript Armies in dictatorships can be brittle - at some point, they turn around and shoot their commissars, like the Chinese in Korea, or just park their tanks and let Boris Yeltsin use them for a podium.
That point is a bit of wildcard.
NATO has clearly decided to fund and operate a counter-offensive by he Ukrainians. A new standing Command has been established to supervise it, with an American 3 Star in charge. Armor and artillery are going in by the boatload now, not just an airlift flow of plane loads. S. 3522 - The Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, Passed 100-0 in the US Senate, and was passed out of committee in the House today (27 April). Restrictions were just lifted on giving the Ukrainians real time operational (targeting) Intel.
There is a new level of hurt heading Russia’s way, in both Military losses, and economic losses. By June the Russian financial defaults, bankruptcies and unemployment will start obviously mounting. Putin and Lavrov might be all for everyone else paying whatever it costs, but everyone else will likely get fed up with that at some point. As the Europeans replace Russian oil and gas, budget shortfalls (and a crashing economy) are going to set the ruble printing presses into hyperdrive. I am not sure that past war games simulated the kinds of economic effects we are now looking at, and how that will rock the hopes and dreams of a population that has grown used to seeing a better future ahead for the last 20 years.
Putin has betrayed the Russians’ dream for prosperity, and that will become painfully apparent over the coming months. They are also now clearly heading for an artillery pounding in the next couple of months that they were very unlikely to have planned on.
At some point the public, and/or the conscript kids being sent into the meatgrinder, are going to reach their breaking point.