Ukraine Conflict - In the grim darkness of the near future, there is only war!

[BruceVC]

1 minute ago, Elerond said:

Question is about optics

How will Russian leadership sell that they got about million men killed or maimed in war and all they gained was lift of sanctions put on them because of that war especially when you take account that Russian leadership has constantly said that sanctions have not have any impact.

Even in Russia that will cause unrest among the people 

Because Putin can claim a ceasefire is a " win " because Ukraine wont join NATO and Russia keeps the Donbas and Crimea 

Sanction relief will only come once the war is over but Russian will still gain the things I mentioned 

And Russia will also achieve its objective of extending its geographical border because the annexed parts of Ukraine are now Russian

Its not  the ideal outcome for Putin, he would prefer to occupy or defeat Ukraine completely and then he doesnt have to make any concessions because they the military winner 

But this outcome is better for Ukraine than Russia because at least the war ends and Ukraine will preserve 80% of its territory 

[Malcador]

They'll want them out of Kursk first, I think.  Although looks like that's going to happen by end of week

Edited Wednesday at 12:32 PM by Malcador

[BruceVC]

59 minutes ago, Malcador said:

They'll want them out of Kursk first, I think

Yes that would be part of the peace deal I imagine 

[Zoraptor]

10 hours ago, Elerond said:

How will Russian leadership sell that they got about million men killed or maimed in war..

That claim from Ukraine is a load of bollocks* so they don't really need to 'sell' it at all. 

Otherwise, same way Blair and Bush 'sell' Iraq or any other leader tries to sell something. Really though, Putin doesn't really need to sell much as western leaders have done an absolutely superb job of selling its necessity for him. Leaders always forget that much as you can use Putin's rhetoric to prove themselves right he can use theirs to prove his right.

*Always a bit of a laugh that the side that has had 31k (meh, 41k) casualties out of 1.2 mn military personnel is also the one that has had 14 rounds of the draft and is actively kidnapping people off streets plus is constantly complaining about manpower issues while the one that has a billion casualties hasn't had a single round of the draft (ok, excluding the annual National Service type draft if we want to get technical) and apparently a large numerical advantage despite the 5:1 casualty ratio against them.

Edited Wednesday at 09:23 PM by Zoraptor

[bugarup]

On 3/12/2025 at 12:27 PM, Elerond said:

Even in Russia that will cause unrest among the people 

I doubt it, after those war years. They seem perfectly happy with the situation. Unless war is actually postponed and all the violent degenerates come home to terrorize locals, and even then I'm not sure anymore. 

[HoonDing]

Word is Drump shared intelligence on Ukrainian positions in Kursk with Putin. To make them lose faster and accept a peace deal to make him look good.

With all the other nonsense going on daily, it's even not unlikely.

[Zoraptor]

Sounds like prime cope.

The pattern in Kursk was the same as in every other localised cauldron/ salient the Ukrainians have had in the war. Lose ground slowly, but steadily, then it all goes in a rush. See Avdiivka and Vuhledar over the past ~year. This is just highly prominent because Kursk had been hyped up by the press and Ukraine.

[Lexx]

You don't really need to be a tactical genius to tell your men to attack once news media is reporting that Trump has cut all ties. Sure there's still a little bit of risk involved, but it's Trump, so....

[Zoraptor]

Ukraine was still getting intelligence from everyone except the US, and still had recon drones and the like. The intelligence they got from the US would also not instantaneously have become outdated, there would have been a decent lag. Further, Ukraine launched some relatively successful local counterattacks elsewhere (eg Toretsk and Pokrovsk) over the same time frame. If lack of US intelligence was immediately crucial you'd expect those to have failed and Russia to have made large gains elsewhere as well.

End of the day they were in a narrow salient supplied by a single road, and that's perhaps the classic set up for failure- it was also precisely the situation the US has warned Ukraine about getting into and staying in repeatedly under the Biden admin; and which had resulted in sudden chaotic retreats multiple times previous. Default is that it happened again, without convincing evidence against. The main thing that seems to have changed on the battlefield was the number of fiberoptic drones deployed by Russia and their resistance to jamming. The Ukrainian attempt to fix that issue happened roughly 6 weeks ago, well before the Trump Zelensky meeting or intelligence freeze. It didn't succeed.

(Overall, it's a classic compounding attrition scenario. You need to send in, say, 50 vehicles with supplies and replacements. Losing a few percent is fine, but if you start losing 10% it's not. Each vehicle lost has to be replaced, but so does its supplies, so you end up sending 55 vehicles in while using 110% of the previous supplies and needing 5 extra vehicles. You lose 10% of the vehicles on the way back too, so that's actually 10 per day needing replacement. But, each vehicle lost on the road makes your other vehicles more vulnerable as they have to slow or even stop because of their debris; and good luck stopping to try to recover vehicles. But if you cannot maintain that 50 vehicles your ability to resist constantly drops, and eventually everything falls apart. Numbers illustrative, obviously)

[Malcador]

23 hours ago, HoonDing said:

Word is Drump shared intelligence on Ukrainian positions in Kursk with Putin. To make them lose faster and accept a peace deal to make him look good.

With all the other nonsense going on daily, it's even not unlikely.

Doubt it , but as you write it says a lot that it's within some possibility.