Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jun 4 2023 02:09am)
Napoleon's troops were fundamentally unable to maintain the logistics required to keep a country as large as Russia occupied. A century later, the nazi troops had more modern technology at their disposal, most of all motorized vehicles, so they made more progress, but they were still hailing from a nation which had a population of 70m and limited natural resources going up against a nation which had around 150m inhabitants at the time, and vastly larger natural resources... and Russia still almost lost.
Also note that we're talking about entirely different campaigns here. Russia is yuuuuuuuuuge, trying to conquer and then hold it is a monumental task. Ukraine doesn't need to do any of that to win this war. This time around, Russia is the aggressor, the one trying to conquer. The European part of Russia alone has an area of around 4m square kilometers, Ukraine only has 600k. So they only need to hold on to one seventh of the territory Napoleon or Hitler would have needed for victory. And they got homefield advantage while Russia is the one having to maintain logistics on foreign soil.
And like I've stressed many times before: the NATO countries alone (excluding allies like SK and JP) have a GDP ten times as big as Russia's, so as long as Ukraine isn't trading at extremely lopsided rates (10:1 in Russia's favor is ludicrous), we actually can grind this out if really necessary.
Ukraine realistically is a country with sub 30 million people at this point. Large swaths of its male population have already been mobilized. I live in the US and in my city I’ve met a fair amount of Ukrainian refugees both male and female.
I don’t really know how much the ‘well’ has left to give. This war is absolutely crippling Ukraine, the longer it goes the worst their prospects are of being a functioning independent state. They were already the poorest country in Europe prior to the war, even if they recover the Donbas , they are going to be extremely damaged, in debted, with a much smaller population.
To give you a personal example, my wife’s cousin has a 14 year old son and she lives in western Ukraine. Her husband is already in Holland and has been working there for a few years. They are now planning for their son to leave the country because they’re scared he’ll get drafted. This is the reality and the things I’d say hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are considering.
And to what end? Idk taking this to its logical outcome ultimately fighting was objectively worse for them.
This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jun 4 2023 05:54am