the nationalists in kiev still dream about capturing some of russia

The counter-attack that's coming up won't have the same level of success as previous ones. . City of Kherson is on the northern bank of a huge river with Russian supply lines having to go over vulnerable infrastructure. They pulled back because it would have caused huge number of troops/hardware to get trapped on the northern side.

Kharkov offensive was successful because like you said Ukraine had the overwhelming number superiority. Russia had little chance of defending the North-East of Kharkov because at that time they didn't have the numbers to defend that large swath of land. Today, they mobilized 300+k troops, there really aren't the gaping number mismatches as before.

A side note though, I think this war ends in the next year maybe year and a half tops. One thing no one is talking about is the upcoming elections. Being anti-war/anti-Ukraine funding is going to be an immensely strong electoral issue if the war is not over by then. Both DeSantis and Trump are verbally critical of the war, if that's an indication of the position they will hold in 2024, democrats don't want to be on the other side of that issue. Not when we have huge massive inflation, people are going to be really pissed and push back on further 100+billion a year for continuation of a war meanwhile people are paying 2x more for everything. So it's in the interest of the democrats here to end the war prior to elections IMO with some potential framing of how we (the US) both defended Ukraine as well as ended the war.

alot to mull over in there.

"no leader" who suspects it might be bs, but wants deniability for a decision they are going to make regardless, does. that's my point. a leader who is sceptical of the narrative, or a leader who is determined to make a decision based on actual facts, however, will most definitely "ask for details" concerning the ONE CENTRAL QUESTION they allegedly base their decision on. again, plenty of leaders, who were also pressured by the US, said "no".

and it's not like mi6 leadership faced any kind of consequences for their devastating "mistakes", right?

the "obvious reason" is that you consider blair to be "the best PM since attlee" and want to downplay his role in the invasion of a sovereign country for bs reasons, leading to death and despair for millions of people.



creating an unlikely hypothetical (saddam only attacked iran because the guys who armed and supported him, the UK and the US, promised him war spoils for conquering its oil fields, telling him iran would be an easy target), a worst case scenario for iraq's potential future, doesn't magically absolve the US and the UK from their responsibility for what ACTUALLY happened.
do we blame anyone for not having removed kim jong un, pootin, or other murdering despots of this world? not really - and again, blair didn't "intervene" because saddam was "butchering his own people" (in reality, he butchered mostly kurds and parts of the shia majority) - he did it because of (non existing) WMDs.

the idea that saddam would just randomly attack iran again, after making no meaningful progress for eight years there, when iraq was much stronger, militarily and diplomatically, is preposterous. iraq was in no position to do so after getting slapped by the yanks for going after a target they did NOT approve of in the gulf war.
yes, he would have kept oppressing and murdering opposition (something the UK and US were perfectly fine with btw for the time they supported him btw), but that pales in comparison with the chaos and suffering the invasion caused.

just because the US undeniably bears the main responsibility, doesn't mean the UK's role isn't a prominent one throughout the middle east's recent history - and that blair doesn't deserve to stand trial for his decision to invade a sovereign country based of fake evidence...

Blair was the best PM since Attlee in terms of domestic policy, no doubt about that IMO. His record on the economy, education, health, and public finances were amazing. I give credit to Scaly for mentioning this years ago when I had the same opinion of Blair as you.

MI6 leadership should definitely be questioned about their role in the UK going to war, I never said they shouldn't.

Blair obviously didn't think the intelligence was bs, otherwise he wouldn't have acted on it. That's just a strawman argument you've conjured up because you can't accept he took rational decisions using subpar intelligence.

Sometimes, tinpot dictators don't think entirely rationally. He could have done loads of weird shit, just look at Putin.

This post was edited by dro94 on Mar 20 2023 04:31pm

Americans still overwhelming support Ukraine, so I doubt the dems are just gonna sack Ukraine off because the Republican nominee wants to.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/02/23/what-public-opinion-surveys-found-in-the-first-year-of-the-war-in-ukraine/

Should just use the frozen Russian money to fund the war instead of our own. Pretty sure Estonia and another small country have already done it.

Thanks ofthevoid, Johnny and Xisten for sharing thoughts, agree with most of what you guys said. Ferdia your unherd video with the German professor was very interesting, enjoyed it.


Off topic but does anyone here speak romanian? Or understand it? Need some help translating a short video I found.

You're throwing "overwhelmingly" rather liberally here. Almost none of the quoted polls in your source show growing support for the war but rather the opposite. Favoritism towards wars always fades with initial ferver and support eventually slowly losing it. No reason to think Ukraine will somehow be different. If this war makes it to election night I'd put money most Americans aren't for it and it won't be an unavoidable issue because if it's someone like Trump he's already been very vocal about it.

From another source:



https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/support-for-ukraine-aid-softens-in-u-s-public-poll-says

Well, either way, it's not a politically good choice for Democrats to say they won't support Ukraine, is it? That's what you were inferring before.

Support has diminished, but let's put that in context: from extremely high to pretty high, and while the downward trend in support may continue, there's also equal reason to believe it's not linear and won't decrease continuously.

The framing wont happen in a vacuum during an election/debate like it is in polls with favorable framing of questions. If the question is level set as a contrast of how much we've sent while how much our economy flounders and how costs due to inflation have spiked most people are going be like "why tf are we sending so much money there when we're struggling" <-- this is 100% how Trump would frame it and most Americans would agree.

I noticed on social media anyone that's even remotely center-right or to the right is always critical of us being part of the war in those terms. Dozens of FB posts reinforcing this. It's not that they are pro-Russia or hate Ukraine it's 95% of the time because they are selfish and from a fiscal perspective don't want 'muh taxes' going to various places.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 20 2023 05:13pm