,

You know something funny?
I was listening to my Taiwan daily news and political talk show, they mentioned that the Polish President and government are quietly asking Zelensky to start peace talks and to negotiate.
Not sure how true that is, any of you guys heard any news in Europe ?

Douglas Macgregor has said several times that support for Ukraine is waning and that even the Poles are starting to scratch their heads seeing that Russia is not that gas station they thought it to be.

Of course Im pro-nato, NATO is a guard of the free western world.
I dont understand how can you live in the west and be a Russia fan. Dont you understand that they are our enemy who wants to enslave us?

Ukrainian best troops? How do you know it were best troops? Its just your imagination or Russian propaganda. Besides most of the Ukrainian troops retreated, when they couldnt effectively defend the ruins any longer.

What we dont exactly know is what was the rate of the meatgrinder.
5 attackers for 1 defender? 7:1? 3:1?
Obviously when one defends, you are in favor and loose less than attacking.

The mercenaries and prisoners, will Russia get more? They were advertising like hell for past year, and used all they could get on bakhmut meatgrinder.

You know that Russia went in completely unprepared, they met a Ukrainian army that had been build up since 2014 helped by the West which is why they were halted and eventually pushed back.

Since then Russia has mobilized and trained a whole lot more manpower (several hundred thousands) and their armaments industry is pumping out guns and ammo 24/7.

Factor in that factories and critical infrastructure in Russia remain functional (some got damaged in sabotage operations but that's hardly making an impact) while Ukraine is literally getting hammered by Russian missile strikes.

You know that it doesn't look good for Ukraine right?




Where did I say I'm a fan of Russia? My opinion is that NATO should stay were they are and forget about reeling in Ukraine and Georgia.

Russia wants to come to enslave you? Get that crap propaganda out of your head dude. Russia is not attacking NATO and they've got no interest in doing that.

And so Ukraine also got several hundred thousand troops, that makes them equal.
Also Ukraine gets/buys their ammunition from abroad, including NATO countries.
Also Ukraine receives continous serious funding and humanitarian help from EU and USA, while Russia makes nearly no profit this year from oil/gas and will probably run out of money or impose a severe taxation.
You know that it doesn't look good for Russia right?
I consider the sides equal. Russia has more population so could potentially draft more soldiers, hovewer since they are attacking side, the acceptance rate in Russian society for dead children, husbands and brothers than in Ukraine, who are playing defensive war.

This post was edited by Ironfister on May 21 2023 03:18am

Oh russia running out of ammunition and money again?

Again? Fo real?

Support for this war is waning everywhere, the key question is at which pace. If, for example, public support went from 72% to 69% over the span of 4 months, thzat would be largely irrelevant. If it went from 72% to 55% over the same timespan, it would be alarming.

Anyway, from what I can tell, the Poles are pretty gung-ho about fighting and resisting Russia. There's probably no place in all of Europe that's more anti-Russia than Poland. So while it could well be true that support for Ukraine is waning even in Poland, I'm very confident that they'd be among the last ones to give up on this war.




That's a risky bet though. Russia's economy is tiny compared to NATO-and-friends and highly dependent on global commodity prices. As an illustrative example, say that to keep up the current war efforts, Russia has to expend 10% of its GDP while the West only has to expend 1% or so for its support of Ukraine - at this rate, it would not be guaranteed at all that Western support runs out of steam before the Russians themselves do, even if we assume that Russia is far more invested in this war than the Western populace.



These Russian losses sound insignificant on paper, but are they? Russia just threw away a large chunk of its reserve of fighting-age men who can be recruited and deployed without impacting the domestic economy or increasing the risk of uprisings from their families, etc. Mustering a similar quantity of soldiers again will not be feasible imho because they'd need to recruit ordinary citizens with jobs and families.

The final assessment of the Battle of Bakhmut of course hinges on the actual loss ratio, which we don't know. Estimates range from something like 3:1 to 1:7 (Ukrainian losses to Russian losses).

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 21 2023 03:33am

They have no interest of doing that now, because they are busy in Ukraine. Few pages ago there was a letter from Russian PM from 2008 that NATO is cold-war relict and is not needed for security.
Now even you say that NATO is important for security.
So basically what the Russia actually says is BS, we really need to stop doing what they tell us, because as we seen in Ukraine this is a road to nowhere. Ukraine was denied NATO membership, not to provoke war, yet Russia attacked anyway.
Russia dont respect deals, they only respect force.

I do hope they wouldn't attack any NATO, but who knows Russians.
In fact the more we prepare, the less likely war is.
When the Russians decide to take Eastern NATO members, do you think they will say: "we are gonna crash NATO"?
Obviously not, they will tell things like "oh, we dont want to fight NATO, we just dont consider Baltics/Poland/Czechia as part of NATO, since they were recent additions".
Now what will western people do?
Many of them will say: "screw them, I dont even know where Vilnus/Warsaw/Prague is, let Russians eat them".
After they eat central Europe, the next step is Germany, who also were partially in Russian zone during the cold war. And they had nazist past. That makes 2 fine excuses to take Germany in next turn.
Such excuses might work on some Americans or French.
That's the way for Russians to work, piece by piece.
The solution is simple.
Stay united, defend collectively
Starting with Ukraine, there is really no need to let Russians conquer Ukraine. They arent nice, and they won't be nice to us if we will be nice to them.

This post was edited by Ironfister on May 21 2023 04:18am

It doesn't matter what Poland wants or doesn't want, if the collective west decides it is done with this war, it would simply return to the status quo of Poland being a joke country that the EU puts up with in order to have a buffer zone with Russia and "protect against Iran (LOL)"

It is a risky bet, so is the West funding this disaster at the cost of their already damaged reputation with the majority of the world. What does the financial situation look like if US dollar hegemony collapses? Even if they "defeat" Russia, whatever that looks like, the damage has been done.

Is that a good trade off for a plot of destroyed land in the most corrupt and poor country in Europe? Not in my opinion

We hear constantly about how this costs the west nothing relative to the size of their economies but what does that really mean? Seems like the quality of life of the average citizen in most western countries is dropping considerably, or are we still blaming the pandemic for that?

Bolded - Seriously? The country with 100 million more people is going to have personnel issues before Ukraine does? We aren't shipping them people yet remember, just our hand me down weapons.

There is a saying in Mandarin.

During a war , the one that supports and voice out most for you without putting boots on the ground for you, will be your worst enemy when the war ends.