I guess the questions now are
1) how long will it take for Russia to fully capture Donetsk as they start threatening Kramatorsk and Sloviansk
and
2) what will Russia do once it has Donetsk

this has been the obvious point at which they'd agree a permanent ceasefire / peace deal on status quo lines, without needing to haggle over land swaps. But they'd still care about nato expansion and the militarization of west Ukraine
we could be talking a year out

Another major sticking point for peace negotiations might be the Dnieper river. The industries in Kyiv and the Dnipropetrovsk region all rely on shipping their goods in and out via the Dnieper river, it is THE central waterway in Ukraine. Dito for the vast farmland to the west. On the flip side, the Russia-controlled areas to the east of the river are far less dependent on the Dnieper for transportation/logistics. Any realistic peace plan would come with divided control over the left and right bank of the river and give both sides the ability to fuck it up for the other side. On aggregate, Russia should gain more leverage out of this situation than rump-Ukraine. Russia would imho have the ability to outright strangle rump-Ukraine's economy by blocking the Dnieper...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 30 2025 05:55am

LOL

NATO has been expanding for decades and every single round it started with aspirations.

So, do you understand what it means?

LOL

I understand Ukraine is NOT a NATO, even though they desire to become one.

Quit saying they already are.

Point out where I said they already are

Go

@Djunior did vlad pay for all of your FG, or some other oligarchy?

EZ


Once again, nato did not welcome them
They aspire to become part of.


Game. Set. Match.

Now, go back to accepting Putin handouts since you've been proven clueless once again.

I made my fg playing D2R when it came out and crushed it.

Nice shit post Said you understand you're losing hard here




That's the official NATO statement just what I said, nowhere did I say they already are in NATO

So, point out where I said they're already in NATO

Loser

Djunior won all his fg in a bet with me, I gave him 10:1 on joe biden falling asleep during the last debate

Kramatorsk/Slovyansk are much bigger than anything that was fought over thus far and that would be an extremely costly battle. Ideally for the Russians is they get them without a battle or next best is they create another horse shoe around them and once again slowly weaken the defenses. But IMO that would take awhile and i don't think they'd want a huge bloody battle over these that would probably result in six figure losses.

They are threatening Dnipro and Kharkov now though, the calculus then becomes is if Ukraine doesn't yield Donetsk, Russia just keeps pushing in other areas and could very well end up with 1/3 of Kharkiv & Dnipro. NATO is a dead aspiration but the militarization of Ukraine is continuing and idk how that's solved here. I long thought Europe's economy coming under strain would be the catalyst here. Countries like Germany, Poland, etc are already tired of all the endless hungry mouths. At some point the liability becomes too great. What's the ROI here for Germany? Your energy costs are through the roof, you now have a few million Ukrainians on welfare, you will be asked to pony up billions on reconstruction and wtf do you get in return?