Quote (Prox1m1ty @ Dec 17 2023 06:31am)
You realise that the West sent a fraction of its capabilities and Russia is still floundering to take more than 15% of Ukraines territory?
I mean you can use whatever framing you like but its been a military disaster for Russia.
Not really hard to frame it otherwise
The US and EU threw our military might behind Ukraine and gave them a blank check for weapons. We declared we wouldn't let Putin win, and would do whatever it takes to stop him, and would accept nothing short of all pre-2014 territory coming under Zelensky's control. After 2 years the result has been that Russia has seized all the ethnic russian oblasts, the most populous and resource rich parts of the country save Odessa, they've fortified their lines and completely repulsed a counteroffensive, and the west has been left with control over a bombed out shell of a western Ukraine, the poorer and weaker half of the poorest and weakest country in Europe. Russia has taken losses that aren't even a blip on its historical bounce-backs, but western Ukraine has been depopulated and has almost no young men left. Russia is using the stalemate to rebuild infrastructure in the territories its conquered at rapid pace, meanwhile western Ukraine is teetering on the verge of implosion and maybe even another coup if western backing can't stabilize it in time.
I mean, right now Zelensky is begging for the US to keep him in power and Russia is replacing heat and water utilities for central Mariupol and constructing hundreds of single family homes. We're losing this war