Fact is, the vast majority of Ukrainians just don't want to be with you. At some point, you'll have to accept their self-determination - not for moral reasons but practical ones. Russia does not possess the population, economic power and demographics to control a country as large as Ukraine.

The poster isn't independent. The person that did the RT is: https://x.com/RALee85

Rob is independent in his analysis, but not in his support.

How does parroting a non-independent tweet make it independent?

And your last sentence makes no sense

This post was edited by El1te on Mar 15 2025 04:06pm

He wouldn't retweet a view he hadn't done his own research on and came to the same conclusion.

It does if you're smart.

I mean there is overwhelming evidence that Russia has recaptured Sudzha, the only significant target Ukraine had captured on the Russian side of the border, and that a large number of Ukrainians were captured and large number were killed, and we've also seen proof of Russians executing surrendered POWs. The question is how many were cut off in the retreat, how many captured, how many killed. Ukraine is denying any encirclement or losses in the retreat and maintaining they somehow have freedom to maneuver even though Russia plainly holds the city and Ukraine was entirely defeated there. As I said, what we have now are known unknowns in the old Rumsfeld line.

Its not like the fact Ukraine knew they were under threat meant they would retreat without losses. We saw multiple times in major cities that Ukrainian leadership completely failed to retreat troops and suffered major losses and outright mutiny as huge numbers of soldiers were encircled at Avdiivka and Mariupol and others. All that footage of Ukrainian troops running across open fields on foot while being bombed, without even having armored vehicles, never bode well for the life of average cannon fodder.

If Ukraine had been doing a clean retreat there wouldn't be all this footage of POWs and equipment and disorganized retreats while being shelled. So now we can have the question of how bad was it, knowing that we can't know the answer to that

"Independent in his analysis, but not in his support"

The capture of Sudzha doesn't mean that a large number of Ukrainians were captured or killed in the process, especially if there was a planned withdrawal. Videos of POWs of social media doesn't confirm or point to either outcome, unless there are credible videos of large-scale POW capture.

You point to previous failures on Ukrainian withdrawals as an argument to support your view, but I think it makes it more likely that they withdrew properly this time. In Pokrovsk, they've taken a better approach than Avdiivka, for example.

I'll go with credible analysts over the shill until evidence suggests otherwise.

A credible analyst wouldn't reflexively accept the propaganda talking points of either side at face value, but instead point to the fog of war and unknowables in the absence of evidence.
Video POVs from both sides are the best insight we can actually get to the situation on the ground, and its a small slice in any given video. There are videos of soldiers in a clearly disorganized night time retreat, there are videos of groups of POWs, lots and lots of videos of captured equipment and corpses on the ground.
What does that actually sum up to? We don't know. If someone without operation level intelligence claims to know the answer, they're probably full of shit. And like I said, its unlikely we'll even know the answer 10 years from now

If we're going with top level analysis from someone with access to the full top secret intelligence briefings available to the US military, well Donald Trump says it looks pretty bad

You have the patience of a Saint to spoonfeed common sense to these guys