Great deal. Chalk it up as a win boys.

To your questions,

1) Ordinary Russians can feel joy and satisfaction in the liberation of their brothers & sisters within the ethnic Russian former territories of Ukraine (D and L) which includes the freedom of travel to visit their friends & family who were formerly in the open air prison, secondly Russian has gained the land bridge to Crimea, improving their economic prospects substantially, translating into better quality of life & secure investments for ordinary Russian people

2) Since I gave a summary of what they gained, the question is: is it worth the expense of a high number of casualties? That question I cannot answer since I'm not Russian and really cannot have a legitimate perspective on whether it was worth it or not. In my view, it's not worth it for the territory alone, but it might be worth it to put a halt to the further encroachment of foreign nations into their sphere of influence (priceless in a way)

I definitely agree that Putin has failed in his stated goals. Ukraine is not denazified - there has been no regime change in Ukraine and none of the Banderite neo-nazis within the Ukrainian government & military have been turned over to Russia. And of course he has not demilitarized Ukraine.

The way I see it is that Putin has overall came out ahead here with his gambit, even though his (quite lofty) goals were not achieved.

Would you go visit grandma in Bakhmut? Would you drive across the land bridge?

Honestly looks like clutching straws. And that's being generous.

A pointless war for the sake of denying the existence of a pro democracy pro western values Ukraine directly on Russias doorstep.

If Putin retires after his initial terms he probably goes down as the greatest leader in Russian history. Instead he refused a peaceful transfer of power or any semblance of democracy for the Russia people. Its a mess.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Oct 31 2023 11:55am

I complete agree.

There are different levels of winning and losing. By definition, one side in the war has an outcome that is favourable.

Russia succeeded in annexing 1/5 of Ukrainian territory with no loss of territory on their side, which is a pretty clear outcome to me.

I don't know, from my perspective, Russians yes are now free to drive across the land bridge. That's pretty big isn't it? Not to mention now having complete control over the Sea of Azov

It doesn't seem pointless to Russians, who now have a land bridge to their friends and family. From my perspective this is very clear.

Russia didn't achieve all their objectives but it seems to me they did pretty well for themselves in liberating Russian areas from Ukrainian rule.

This post was edited by El1te on Oct 31 2023 12:11pm

a motorcycle traveler i know rode his bike from mainland russia to crimea and from there through the occupied territory back to russia without a problem

he is bulgarian and was suprised when the locals told him that the area is pretty open away from the frontlines

i guess a different passport might cause problems over there

Not the Russian way, and I'm not even sure the Russian public ever wanted Putin to retire. The current situation is pretty fucked up, though.

The main achievement of NATO arms supplies to Ukraine was stopping the Russian initiative and even giving Ukraine the initiative for sustained stretches of this war. Note that we didn't actually give them a large number of artillery or battle tanks, very little tactical missiles, no helicopters and no fighter jets. Ukraine not being able to break through deeply entrenched positions with the extremely limited tools they were given is the expected outcome.

The support from other countries is heavily influenced by their own economic situation as well as international diplomacy, so using it as a measure for how the actual warfare is going is anything but objective.






Framing it as Russia losing the war is indeed silly. But even if the war is ended on the current lines, it's really fucking far from a big win for Russia. Yes, they gained territory, but aside from Melitopol, everything they conquered was either empty land or major population centers which they could only capture after bombing them into the absolute ground (Mariupol, Sieverodonetsk, Bakhmut, possibly Avdiivka).

And they paid for these territorial gains by permanently losing their closest and most solvent customers, turning themselves into vassals of Beijing, blowing up their budget, losing hundreds of thousands of lives as well as being faced with a reinvigorated and expanded NATO which is now more unified against Russia than it has been in over two decades. Additionally, they had to abandon their ally Armenia when Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh (a big symbolic hit for Russia's reputation as a reliable military partner) because they were stretched too thin. And of course there was the strange Wagner mutiny where Putin had clearly lost control over his own creation and saw his authority publicly challenged by a heavily armed private army which was marching on Moscow.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 31 2023 07:11pm

You're crazy if you think Europe saying no to cheaper next door natural resources will last more than a generation or two, if that. A good model is Germany post WW2. If Germany which caused so much destruction and death was able to reconnect to Europe post WW2, what makes you think Germany in 20 years will say no thanks to Russian resources? Heck, I damn near guarantee that even within 10 years Germany will be back to Russian gas.

All the things you subsequently described are peripheral tangents. 100k losses, Sweden and Finland joining, which were already NATO effectively and closer ties with Beijing are hardly the sky is falling, world ending losses you frame them out to be. They are worse off versus 2014 when they were looking at the prospect of completely losing Ukraine, including their warm water Crimea port. Today, they reversed at least a portion of those losses and captured 1/5 of Ukraine.

germany wont go back

why? the industry that needs large quantities of cheap gas is getting demolished right now, thats some 5D chess right there

the domestic needs can be covered with LNG

aside from that i agree with the rest, it was obviously costly, but hardly a catastrophe to move away from the shrinking markets of the west