will Russians settle for ceasefire without Nikolaev and Odessa? I’m not sure.

Storming either city will be prohibitively costly. I think one thing that has been evident throughout this war is Russia tends to take calculated risks and really doesn't chose hills to die on. For example when the counter in Kharkiv was taking place, they could have thrown numbers and probably saved Izium but it would of been costly and uncalculated, so they just retreated and retrenched further east.

The problem is trying to take either one of those is maintaining supply lines and logistics, increasingly further from your own base. It's a huge mistake many militaries made in historical wars. If we look at the map, Russia would have to somehow maintain control of the north bank of Kherson to siege a fairly large city like Nikolaev. It would be hard because Ukraine can just strike the bridges and trap armor or personnel on the northern bank. It's why Russia gave up the city of Kherson without a fight, they knew they'd get trapped.

Amphibious landing also wouldn't make sense nor does Russia have the capability to basically land thousands of artillery, tanks, etc around Odessa to siege that city. How do you resupply and feed those that land? Either one of these cases the losses would be monstrous. If Bakhmut had losses of like 50k, these would be at the very least tripled IMO.

Edit: so I think at this point, at least in short term, probability of Russia taking them or asking for them as part of peace is close to zero. Ukraine wouldn't agree to give up access to the Black sea.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 17 2023 08:47am

Did the budget of these DOD/Alphabet agencies suddenly rise by a huge amount in 2022? I don't think so. Also note that high upfront payments to Ukraine were necessary to arm up their military and logistics accordingly. Once they're equipped to hold off further Russian incursions, we only need to replace what they lost in the respective year.


Imho, Western and Ukrainian leaders all know that this war has to end sooner rather than later and that they won't retake the Donbass or Crimea. Ukrainian leaders of course can't admit this in public. For strategic and psychological reasons, they have to keep up the pretense.

The point of continuing the war is to, first, wear down Russia's military even further, and second, to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position before the eventual, inevitable peace talks. To get concessions out of the Rusians, the threat of new Ukrainian counteroffenses must be as credible as possible.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 17 2023 11:51am

The big strategic dilemma of Ukraine right now is that they don't control the southern bank of the Dnieper River. Therefore, Russia has the ability to shut down the central shipping route which is vital for a significant chunk of Ukraine's economy. On the other hand, there are zero natural obstacles or defensive lines south of the river, so hypothetically, if Ukraine tried to control a strip of land on the southern bank, they would expose themselve on a huge, indefensible frontline.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 17 2023 11:50am

Define a victory for Russia.

Support in the country is irrelevant to whether there remains support in Congress.

To stay "Russian Federation" at the end of this war of agression.

To continue forcing Europe/ USA to self-expose themselves to be leftwing-Fascist occupied states which use government power to BAN political opposition after catastrophically losing the debate on issues, disfiguring the corpse of "EU/US dEmOcRaCy" leftwing-Fascists pretended to love so much

& keep keeping the lines mostly static after the EU/USA leftwing-Fascist coalition sunk XXX billions into the opposite



This post was edited by HeLiCaL on Oct 17 2023 06:24pm

I hope you realize that across the Western world, it's generally the political left which supports the Palestinian cause and tacitly sympathizes with Hamas while the political right is almost uniformly pro-Israel.


Only as long as the issue remains low-salience and there is no strong public consensus. If, say, public sentiment is 60:40 in favor of ending the support while the issue is not even ranking among the top10 issues for voters, it's no problem for Congress to continue the support. But if, say, public sentiment is 80:20 against the aid and it's the #3 issue, then politicians would seriously risk getting primaried if they continue going against public will.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 17 2023 07:13pm

Political leftwing-Fascists support defending Israel's border while letting illegal aliens flood the Western world while being in power, allowing the police to make calling someone a lesbian to be an arrestable offence, allowing people (Tommy Robinson) to be jailed for years for standing outside a courtroom.

(example: UK "conservative" party)


Political far-left Fascists support Hamas, while wanting even more illegal aliens to flood the Western world, openly supporting people be arrested/jailed for opposing them, and saying to women raped by Arabs to shut their mouths in the name of "diversity".

(example: UK labour party, Jeremy Corbyn wing in particular)

This post was edited by HeLiCaL on Oct 17 2023 07:54pm