Quote (Prox1m1ty @ Dec 29 2023 04:33pm)
All of it is embarrassing.
The infantry losses. The ground equipment losses, although this has been a hallmark of Russian miltaty strategy ever since its inception, see Grozny.
The aircraft losses. The black sea fleet being picked off.
The failure of air defense.
The length of time the "special miltary operation" has taken.
The loss of key battles, Hostomel, Kiev, Kharkiv retreat, Kherson retreat, failure to mount an attack on Odessa.
Russia is taking WW2 casualties in a completely different century.
Trying to rationalise this is truly indicitive of your lack of integrity on the matter.
Making excuses after the fact for the ineptitude of the Russian miltary is even further absurdity.
They knew the risks and they still rolled over the border.
Outside of Hostomel, which was more of a trying to secure a strategic airport rather than a full on battle, there were no battles fought in any of those cities. This is basic knowledge and if you look at what the city of Kharkiv looks like today (from a destruction/battle scars) and where actual battles were fought you'd understand this is evident.
Look at what cities like Bachmut, Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Avdiivka, and so on look like to see actual battles.
Russia most likely has between 50-100k dead, in contrast WW2, 30 million dead. On a historical basis, those are minimal losses for them. The more you speak the more of your ignorance is displayed.
Quote (Black XistenZ @ Dec 29 2023 06:45pm)
While I generally agree, it should be noted that Russia only has a population of 145m, compared with 42m for Ukraine. The numbers advantage in terms of population and GDP was far less lopsided in the invader's favor than it usually is for successful invasions. Particularly since the defender knew the invasion was coming and had been preparing for it for almost a decade.
My point is that given this starting position, it was asinine for Russian leadership to try to pull off this invasion without going all out from the get go. It's clear that the Russians vastly overestimated the capacities and competence of their military and vastly misjudged the Ukrainian resilience and the Western resolve.
It can't be completely ruled out yet that Russia might be able to grind out a technical ""win"" in the end (one in which the spoils are outweighed multifold by the costs), but this whole process has indeed been embarrassing for the Russians.
If this war ends with Russia fully maintaining all of the captured territory while it's opponents crowd sourced hundreds of billions without dislodging them from those gains, silly to frame that as an embarrassment. I'm trying to think back in history where a country/empire captures this amount of territory and it's framed as an embarrassing loss, help me out?
Outside the military sphere, we're 2 years since sanctions that would crush Russia were implemented. If they survive economically and lets say actually thrive once this is over, it will be viewed as a pretty strong blow to US led western hegemony.
This post was edited by ofthevoid on Dec 29 2023 08:12pm