QFT

I hope the mods are paying attention

Russia being on the backfoot in Kursk probably also took the winds out of the sails of a few folks in this thread who love to harp about UKraine's imminent collapse. For most of 2024, a lot of you guys assumed that they were done and that their defeat was at most a few months away.

Will Ukraine be able to hold the Kursk territory in the long run? No, of course not. But Russia's response to an attack on its own territory has been surprisingly feeble and slow. More importantly, the Kursk incursion shows that the strategic initiative is not exclusively with Russia and that they don't have huge amounts of reserves on standby who can be deployed on a moment's notice.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 20 2024 11:29am

The Kursk incursion only hastens the collapse of Ukraine (draining manpower and resources).

And what do the Ukrainianians gain here? Farmland and hamlets which most likely explains the slow Russian reaction. No one expected that Ukraine would attack in this direction.

This post was edited by Djunior on Aug 20 2024 11:42am

Yes we did because we did not anticipate the two richest continents under the leadership of the US doing dozens of rounds of crowdfunding to send to Ukraine. You realize what we sent to Ukraine per year actually exceeded Russia's annual military budget?

I agree it's feeble and slow, but there's no sense of urgency for Russia as they basically have them contained. That territory is basically sparsely populated small towns that Ukrainians drove 10-15km into. The real challenge now is moving anywhere as you have Russian drone overwatch picking off convoys left and right. That's why i said in the beginning, it's embarrassing for Russia but could be extremely costly for Ukraine for no real strategic gains. I mean what's the play here now? Hold this territory until there's some peace talks in 2025? You think Russia will yield any territory in Ukraine to get Kursk back? Of course not, they'll just create parking lots of those towns with Ukrainians still in them and not give anything back.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 20 2024 12:20pm

As someone who gives 0 fuck bout who wins, i give props to Russia for literally dictating this war up to now with outdated equipment when the whole world been supplying Ukraine with both weapons and $ . Once China and HK and India decide to step in, it'll be a disaster for Nato and Ukraine. Keep in mind, India is slowly becoming an enemy to the western world while we also import millions of em in our country to work in every facet of our society while killing our workforce.

They are playing the long game.

The same can be said about a lot of the gains the Russians made. Since breaking through at Avdiivka, what they gained can also be described as mostly "farmlands and barns".





Not sure if it was you or someone else, but wasn't a major talking point in this thread that Russia gets significantly more bang for the buck from its military spending, that NATO might have 20 times the defense budget than them, but that the actual quantitative disparity is much smaller than that? That argument of course cuts both ways.

Moreover, keep in mind that Russia has been putting its vast soviet-era stockpiles to good use during this war. Their pre-existing stockpiles of artillery and shells are what enabled them to grind Ukraine down whenever they've reached major cities.


Zelensky spelled it out a day or two ago: they want to create a bargaining chip for peace talks. I'm sceptical that that's gonna work, but we shall see. It also allowed Ukraine to replenish its stock of Russian pows that they can use in prisoner exchanges. In any case, the second stated goal is to "bring the war to Russia", to make their cities and civilians bleed just as much as Ukraine's do. Sounds silly tbh. If you ask me, the main achievement is the morale boost that this incursion has given Ukraine and its allies, a morale boost which was desperately needed.


Would Russia really be willing to bomb its own towns into the ground? Kinda risky for Putin from a PR point of view. My guess is that they could eventually encircle the Ukrainian troops and starve them out; or force them to retreat by the threat thereof.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 20 2024 02:42pm

The bargaining chip only works if you can actually hold it and they concede that point. Bringing the war to Russia may be a good morale booster and provides nice headlines to spam on western air waves but in a year from now, put yourself in Russia's shoes, why would they yield anything when they are clearly driving forward? It's pretty clear which of the two sides is on a clock, Russia can simply say no thanks to a peace that doesn't suit them because western support is finite.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 20 2024 02:55pm

Well, yeah, this whole concept of creating a bargaining chip only works if Ukraine can eventually stop the Russian advance in the south and east. That's basically what this war will come down to in the end. Because IF they can do it, then I don't see Russia going all in to break through. In that scenario, I see Russia settling with what they got and the conflict petering out.

Agreed. It would appear that the main strategic objective of the kursk incursion is a land grab that they can swap with Russia later. The Ukranians have shown (with just a wee bit of nato help) that they have mastered the art of maneuver warfare. They only thing they are missing is f16s with jassms and then they can hold on indefinitely, relative to their manpower.

This has indeed put Russia on its back-foot and now Russia has to dedicate ALOT reconnaissance towards their northern border because the ukranians are making probing attacks all along the front. If the ukranians can grab a little bit more land and then call it quits when they start taking too many loses, I'd give them a solid 8.5/10 so far.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/19/ukraine-orders-families-to-leave-key-city-of-pokrovsk-amid-russian-advances

Pokrovsk is being evacuated. Russian and Ukrainian forces are currently fighting in Hrodivka and Novohrodivka, which are the last major towns between the front-lines and the Pokrovsk/Myrnohrad urban sprawl.



I think their response has a lot to do with the fact that they refuse to move troops from the Pokrovsk direction (~100k+) in order to defend sparsely populated settlements that Ukraine will struggle to hold long-term. The fact that they've lost Russian territory is hugely embarrassing, but the administration will try and spin it as Russia being existentially at risk. In terms of resources, it's probably good news that the most experienced Ukrainian troops aren't on the Donbass front-lines.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Aug 20 2024 04:21pm