Russian officials publicly assure the world that their invasion will only last 1 week due to their overwhelming military superiority.
109 weeks later without a victory, losing twice as many soldiers and equipment, Russian officials swear that the US, not an active combatant, is going to be so embarrassed.
I was watching an analysis on the 2023 progress of the war. The author said that while he acknowledges that Russia seems to have the favour making the war a stalemate and took more strategic, albeit small, locations than Ukraine did; this leads to Catch-22 for Kremlin that the more Ukraine struggles, the more money Ukraine will receive which is not on Russia’s favour.
There’s also the fact that Russia never really seemed to account for most of its monetary and material taps getting turned off. When you’re (ALLEGEDLY) throwing conscripts out there without even a single full magazine of ammo, you’re burning through old post-WWII ammo stocks, and constantly having to beg old SSR states “hey can we buy/borrow some of your tanks and APCs please,” it doesn’t look great.
The trouble is, the material taps haven’t turned off they’ve been rerouted. Apparently enforcing sanctions is hard and more importantly also pisses off your donor base consisting of amoral business types. You can find any number of articles of Ukrainian complaining (even years into the war) that they find western electronics in downed Russian missiles.
The Kremlin warned that American support for Ukraine could turn into a decade-long folly, urging the U.S. to not oppose its invasion of the country as Congress appears set to pass a $60 billion aid package.
Buried lede: Russia thinks its “three-day special military operation to
de-nazifyremove US biolabsde-NATO Ukraineresurrect the Soviet Union” could take a decade. 😂Also, they think they might need a decade to defeat a power that has a fifth of its military size, and which has, so far, roundly managed to make a laughingstock out of much of the Russian military.
Let’s assume Ukraine and all the funding it receives does delay it a decade and Russia eventually wins.
Isn’t that still a resounding success delaying Russia by 10 years and crippling them from the extended war?
It might suck for Ukraine, but from a foreign policy perspective that’s a success
💯💯💯 these fuckers are enlisting prisoners and using 50 year old tanks. Their readiness is supremely fucked RIGHT NOW let alone a year or more from now.
Any victory, if ever, will be phyrric at best.
Uhh no it isn’t? What the fuck? The very fact of a war is a foreign policy disaster if you care about the well being of Europe at all. God I hate America sometimes
The war is inevitable. America doesn’t decide if Russia invades Ukraine or not. It can only decide if it will help Ukraine or not.
If america helps Ukraine, they will severely cripple Russia, thus making later invasions unlikely.
I america doesn’t help Ukraine, Russia will just get what they want and move on to invade more countries, leading to more wars.
You can’t just give a flower to the invader, say “peace” and suddenly there are no more wars.
Really?
Last I checked, we haven’t had almost 500k casualties and lost billions in military craft to old mothballed weapons we since moved on from.
It’s actually kinda incredible for Russia to have not realized that the US is literally just letting Ukraine integrate itself into NATO standards by training on and building up NATO standard equipment as it runs out of the shitty Soviet era alternatives
Meanwhile Moscow is instead developing a dependency on Iranian and Chinese made military hardware, stuff that neither is especially willing to part with given their own war plans.
The US could 1000% just barely provide enough aid to tactically let Russia chew its teeth out trying to break Ukraine, but it’s sending what Ukraine needs to win whenever it can because the US sees Ukraine winning as more important than Russia losing at this point.
US is literally just letting Ukraine integrate itself into NATO standards by training on and building up NATO standard equipment as it runs out of the shitty Soviet era alternatives
Not just Ukraine, either! All the NATO Eastern Bloc countries donated their Soviet equipment (and much more) and are actively rearming and retraining their own militaries on NATO standard equipment.
Unfortunately “barely enough” is closer to the mark. Ukraine should’ve had this funding last year and we should’ve been close to the next round at this point. If this is actually all America can muster when it is committed to “winning” then then thats a bit sad and scary considering the incompetent broke ass country we are trying to beat while having homecourt advantage.
The only thing that gives me solace is the thought that this is carefully architected to bleed out Russia and not actually a show of real force.
You have to remember that half of the political parties in the US are owned by and promote Russian interests. That’s the only reason it took 8 months to get this funding approved, and it was approved in spite of the former fuckwit president.
If only they had oil, they’d be a
free countryneo-colony of Biden a long time agoThey have enormous amounts of natural gas dipshit.
That’s Russia, I meant Ukraine would be free if they had oil
Shit head
The Black Sea Ukrainian Shelf was discovered in 2012 to contain an estimated 2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Access to a huge portion of it depends on Crimea which was annexed in 2014.
US is literally just letting Ukraine integrate itself into NATO standards by training on and building up NATO standard equipment
Excellent point. Due to the equipment Ukraine now has the west is at a point where they will stand to lose a lot of valuable technology if Russia wins making it necessary for western intervention if things go bad for Ukraine.
exactly the fuckers say like usa is fighting there lol
At the risk of being jingoistic, this type of opponent is exactly what our military is designed to utterly destroy. If the US was an active participant it would have very quickly wiped the floor with the Russian army and would be dealng with Russian backed insurgents in the east.
Ukraine has been beating them with the stuff we routinely throw away (when the Republicans don’t get in the way), I am convinced they have no non nuclear answer to our actual military.
40 years ago maybe, but afaik after 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan the us army has shifted quite far into focusing on counterinsurgency and away from fighting vs mass armor and artillery
The USA has plans, thousands of plans and how to modify them agains the russians (well the USSR), and that’s as important as having the right tools/weapons.
I mean, they’ve gotten way better at it, but most of their equipment and doctrine are still targeted at utterly destroying a near peer level threat. The f-22 wasn’t designed to fight insurgents, nor is it suited to that task.
I would think that the USAF would happily establish and easily enforce a no fly zone over Ukraine and could probably pull it off within a few days of getting the order conservatively.
There was the story a few years ago when a well equipped and trained Wagner battalion “accidentally” picked a flight with a US army unit or base in Syria and got immediately demolished.
Writing this out definitely feels like braggadocio and it likely is. But I would think the Russians don’t want to find out why we don’t have universal healthcare first hand.
Seems a little high. Russian casualties are probably closer to 350k according to Western estimates.
I wonder how many died though (edit: Ukraine claims 180k but their casualty estimates are reportedly high, so probably less than 180k dead)
By contrast, the United States lost fewer than 2,500 service members in the entire 20 years we were in Afghanistan.
funny that the Russkis mention Afghanistan 😅
And as always, as long as the cunts in Russia are complaining and riding their propaganda train at full speed, we are doing something right.
These brainiacs had concerts singing Gruppa Krovi from Kino to recruits early in the war. A literal Afghanistan-era Soviet anti-war anthem. They have no sense of irony.
Irony is caused by memory. Vodka solves that problem.
Hey Putin, remind me again how many days into your 3-day special military operation you are?
Their progress bar is showing 2000%, big stonks vibe
Removed by mod
Well, they are essentially gambling on war fatigue. Putin seems to have no problem throwing more meat at the problem, that’s what they’ve always done
They only have so much meat before the populous collapses.
Russia has more meat than Ukraine, so lets hope Ukraine runs through Russia like a grinder
when russia does the invade i believe that. but now ukraine have to break through heavily fortified occupied territories. idk how ukraine can manage with current donations and if they still have enough manpower. ukraine also suffers heavy casualty
Well the us finally pushed through funding and ukraines strategy has been to take opportunities with very heigh kd ratios. Its doable and when its a right for ur nation that’s all ya need
There are a lot of Russians, and nobody dies quite like them
“Die for your tsar and receive no glory for you are nothing but animals” - every Russian leader ever
Yeah, Afghanistan was pretty embarrasing for the USSR
Here’s what stories I remember from USSR-Afghanistan war, told by actual veterans:
They would punish extremist acts by throwing women and children out of a helicopter, Pinochet style. The person who told me that drank ever since he got back from the war and never stopped.
There was one man who left his tent for a midnight leak and came back to his entire tent with their throats slit. Had insane PTSD.
My father-in-law got his legs messed up by machine gun fire, got airlifted to East Germany to get put back together, doesn’t talk much, but still drinks a lot.
I was just about to say Russia fucked up pretty bad in Afghanistan as well.
You could say it was their Vietnam.
The usa getting involved in Afghanistan is nothing to be proud of. Many War crimes have been committed there by us.
You mean the one where the USA gave a fuckload of material and immaterial aid as much as they could to any radical extremist willing to hold an AK47?
Yeah, I’m going to put the USSR firmly in the “Right side of history” looking back at USA’s shit
It’s a very weird thing for the USA to be proud of
Wait, so you’re saying Russia is going to lose again?
Don’t feed the .ml.
Says the hamburger
I’m not literally a hamburger. I’m not even American.
Hamburgers are German - Hamburg
But it was a joke
Ahh… lemmy.ml users, so predictable, so dumb.
Yeah Russia just showed up to plant sunflowers and give everyone candy.
it doesn’t take much effort to see the standard of living before the usa came.
Holy shit. Just wow.
Russian government spokespeople say lots of things.
Very few of them are true, or accurate.
Oh it’s a bit dumber than that. Russia tried to occupy Afghanistan in the 1980s and got fuckin romped worse than the US did and that was with peak Russian power and no near endless supply of Russia surplus for insurgents to use.
Maybe they’re saying Zelensky will make another 9/11 like Osama did after we supported him in Afghanistan?
e: ya’ll ever hear the old addage “don’t downvote the messenger”? go and downvote putin or something.
USSR went there on the request of their government at the time (unlike America’s rampage invasion) and withdrew after the USA heavily armed extremely backwards Muslim extremists who were doing every war crime in the book
It’s still a better ending than a 20 year war (u lost lmao)
Damn so close.
Lmaoooo
it doesn’t take much effort to pick up a history book. You shold try it sometime.
You’re trying to make a point but it’s idiotic since you don’t know my stance on anything, you’re just guessing and poorly at that I might add.
“u lost lmao”?
peak burn, right there. 🙄
They seem say whatever would be best for them regardless of truth, so you can’t even rule out what they say like if they consistently lied.
Ruzzia knows all about humiliating fiascoes.
Especially in Afghanistan.
Just like the British. Also especially like Afghanistan.
Maybe great powers should leave Afghanistan the fuck alone.
I think you are correct.
Ukraine wants the help. Afghanistan didn’t. Also, the Soviet Union did a similar thing in Afghanistan.
Afghani’s did want the help. They just didn’t want someone else telling them what they should do … again.
I always know someone doesn’t know anything about Afghanistan and its people when they refer to them as Afghani’s.
An Afghan is a person. Afghani is a currency. Anyone who calls them Afghani doesn’t even know the right term to call the people. It is a giveaway to how little you know about them when you don’t even know what to call them.
Meanwhile all the Chineses and Viet Congs are turning in their graves right next to the Afgani.
Yeah, remember when we told them NOT to make apostasy from Islam illegal?
Oh, wait, we didn’t even bother doing that much.
The War in Afghanistan didn’t fail because we were Big Bad Westerners Imposing Our Way Of Life, it failed because neither the Coalition nor the post-Ahmad Shah Massoud anti-Taliban forces had anything resembling a united direction they could agree on leading the country in. Post-2003 the Coalition plan was “Don’t fail” (Don’t fail at what? Now you’re asking questions that should have been fucking asked); the post-Ahmad Shah Massoud anti-Taliban forces’ plan was “Every warlord for himself”.
Turns out absolute shitheads (the Taliban) with a definite plan can overcome a squabbling mass of decent people (everyday Afghanis), opportunists (contractors et co), and shitheads (hi brutal but pro-national government warlords) who are all at odds with each other.
The question is, which time Afganistan, when Russia had to get out or the US?
Was about to say, at least the US withdrawing from Afghanistan isn’t literally a cause of the entire country collapsing into 14 smaller new states and also the entire western bloc
Tbf it kinda is, because if the US had gone into Afghanistan with a plan to help Afghani’s fix infrastructure, homes, trade routes, etc things would have turned out far better than they did.
Again, which time?
I can’t wait to hear what Habitual Linecrosser has to say about this.
He knows all about fiascos in afghanistan
The difference is that Vietnam and Afghanistan were civil wars. It’s very difficult to win a war when a sizable portion of the citizens are fighting against you. Ukraine seems to be very united against a common enemy: Russia.
if anything, even if Russia were to magically take Kyiv tomorrow, they are going to be fighting heavy insurgencies for decades to come. it’ll be the Afghanistan war (the one wot killed the USSR) 2.0 on caffeine.
And they are no where near as economically or militarily strong as they were when the USSR was even at its weakest
The difference is that Vietnam and Afghanistan were civil wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas
A civil war that’s been ongoing since 2014.
Ukraine seems to be very united against a common enemy
Western Ukraine, sure. But that’s not where Russia’s military is occupying territory.
Because Russia had so much success against Afghanistan themselves. Pretty sure they’ve had their asses handed to them in the far east as well.
Because Russia had so much success against Afghanistan themselves.
Despite nominally being a staunch supporter of George Bush Jr’s War on Terror, Afghanistan was one place Putin absolutely refused to give support. You can call it cowardice or wisdom or simply being once-bitten-twice-shy, but the Graveyard of Empires isn’t the place you send in troops casually.
Pretty sure they’ve had their asses handed to them in the far east as well.
Do you mean the Russo-Japan War? That was over a century ago.
With the exception of the First Chechen War, The Post-'91 Russian Federation’s record on the battlefield has generally been successful.
Russian military leadership is well-blooded and one of the only institutions that wasn’t gutted by Perestroika. The folks who were laughing up their sleeves at the “Oversized Gas Station” when the Ukraine fight started may have underestimated the monster that was unleashed.
Ah Afghanistan. Where empires go to die
Russia says US support for Ukraine will end as ‘humiliating fiasco’ like ‘Vietnam and Afghanistan’
Of course that Is what Russia says. They were hardly likely to say ‘That’‘s it, game over for us, we’re withdrawing all our troops now.’
