Meanwhile in Ukraine

[Martin Hash]

With today’s battle technology, massing troops or sending in waves of armor would be annihilated.

[Haumana]

We've been conditioned to rapid advance shock and awe warfare against 3rd rate opponents. So Russia not taking Ukraine in a month looks odd to us. But there are several factors at play here you have to understand.

1. Wars done happen that way in Ukraine. Due to terrain and weather you have up to 4 months a year to make advances.

2. This is a war of NATO v. Russia.

3. Russia doesn't fight rapid advance wars.

Also, There is a lot of Russian/Soviet era history in these Ukrainian cities.There is a bit of kid gloves going on, so American style shock and awe clearly is not part of the plan. Does anyone really think that Kiev couldn't have been looking like Gaza right now if that were in Russia's long term interests?

[The Conservative]

Does winning mean
- continuing to exist as a major power?
-conquering Europe/asia/something else?

or are we in some imaginary global struggle because the Cold War never ended in some sick neocon heads

Russia won't conquer anything. In their case, being able to come back to the people saying they were able to keep the "west" from taking over another country. Whatever mindset you want to call it.

Realistically, Putin is still playing KGB mental games while the others are playing Patty Cake. He doesn't have to win actually to win. He just has to sell his loss a win to make it look like he put mud of the Western Pigs.

[TheOneX]

We've been conditioned to rapid advance shock and awe warfare against 3rd rate opponents. So Russia not taking Ukraine in a month looks odd to us. But there are several factors at play here you have to understand.

1. Wars done happen that way in Ukraine. Due to terrain and weather you have up to 4 months a year to make advances.

2. This is a war of NATO v. Russia.

3. Russia doesn't fight rapid advance wars.

Also, There is a lot of Russian/Soviet era history in these Ukrainian cities.There is a bit of kid gloves going on, so American style shock and awe clearly is not part of the plan. Does anyone really think that Kiev couldn't have been looking like Gaza right now if that were in Russia's long term interests?

Russia tried the shock and awe strategy at the beginning of the war, and completely failed.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I think they believed that the threat of being invaded by a superpower would achieve their goals. They underestimated the scale of corruption in the west. Our elites just used it as an excuse to plunder the treasury. What’s a few million Ukrainians.

[Montegriffo]

Looking more like the UK PMs are on a personal mission to start WW3 - and people are noticing.

France, Germany, etc are against it. Boris and Starmer are specifically lobbying like hell against the rest of NATO, and their own ministers.

There’s a slim timeline possibility that we get out of this when the general public sees the UK PM as a screaming lunatic.

Side note: Luongo is now the foremost expert on geopolitics as far as I’m concerned.

Boris resigned from his seat in June 2023 when he received the draft of the Commons Privileges Committee investigation into his conduct that unanimously found that he had lied to the Commons on numerous occasions.

Starmer has a huge commons majority, he will serve his full 5 year term and likely another if the Tories can't get their shit together and do something about Reform.

[Martin Hash]

Boris was an even bigger Ukrainiot. Farage is wishy-washy. Britain is lost.

[Montegriffo]

Boris was an even bigger Ukrainiot. Farage is wishy-washy. Britain is lost.

Boris is a wannabe Churchill.
Sees himself as a great writer and wit and a victorious wartime leader.
Unfortunately he was a bit of a dud.

[C-Mag]

Big Serge is one of the Internet’s best military historians. Here, in one of his characteristically long and detailed analyses, he provides his 2024 summary of the Ukraine conflict and explains how Ukraine is effectively debellized.

2024 actually saw several very important developments which make the coming shape of the war relatively clear. To briefly recapitulate:

* Russian forces caved in Ukrainian defenses at depth across an entire critical axis of front. After remaining static for years, Ukraine’s position in Southern Donetsk has been obliterated, with Russian forces advancing through an entire belt of fortified positions, pushing the front into Pokrovsk and Kostayantinivka.

* The main Ukrainian gambit on the ground (the incursion into Kursk) failed spectacularly, with the salient being progressively caved in. An entire grouping of critical mechanized formations wasted much of the year fighting on this unproductive and secondary front, leaving Ukrainian positions in the Donbas increasingly threadbare and bereft of reserves.

*An attempt by the Ukrainian government to reinvigorate its mobilization program failed, with enlistments quickly trailing off. Decisions to expand the force structure exacerbated the shortage of manpower, and as a result the decay of Ukraine’s frontline brigades has accelerated.

* Long awaited western upgrades to Ukraine’s strike capabilities failed to defeat Russian momentum, and stocks of ATACMs and Storm Shadows are nearly exhausted. There are now few options remaining to prop up Ukrainian strike capacity, and no prospect of Ukraine gaining dominance in this dimension of the war.
In short, Ukraine is on the path to debellation – defeat through the total exhaustion of its capacity to resist. They are not exactly out of men and vehicles and missiles, but these lines are all pointing downward. A strategic


Ukrainian defeat – once unthinkable to the western foreign policy apparatus and commentariat – is now on the table. Quite interestingly, now that Donald Trump is about to return to the White House, it is suddenly acceptable to speak of Ukrainian defeat.
Robert Kagan – a stalwart champion of Ukraine if there ever was one – now says the quiet part out loud:

Ukraine will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control.

Indeed.

None of this should be particularly surprising. If anything, it is shocking that my position – that Russia is essentially a very powerful country that was very unlikely to lose a war (which it perceives as existential) right in its own belly – somehow became controversial or fringe. But here we are.

[SuburbanFarmer]

They’re going to make a hell of a show about it in the media, blaming trump for their collapse.