this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023

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178

Who's winning the war in Ukraine? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The media won't give me great answers to this question and I think this I trust this community more, thus I want to know from you. Also, I have heard reports that Russia was winning the war, if that's true, did the west miscalculate the situation by allowing diplomacy to take a backseat and allowing Ukraine to a large plethora of military resources?

PS: I realize there are many casualties on both sides and I am not trying to downplay the suffering, but I am curious as to how it is going for Ukraine. Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning, those have existed forever, but they seem to have grown louder now, so I was wondering what you thought about it. Also, I am somewhat concerned of allowing a dictatorship to just erase at it's convenience a free and democratic country.

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[+] [email protected] -11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Putin did expect the invasion to be fast and achieve their goals quickly. It was a mistake on his behalf.

Except that now we have Ukrainian chief negotiator having come out and openly admitted that Russia and Ukraine were on a verge of making a deal back in last March before Boris Johnson sabotaged it. The only reason this was is still going on is because the west couldn't accept peace and decided to cynically push Ukraine into further conflict.

The result was many countries around the world pledging military support.

What actually happened was that NATO countries wanted to break and balkanize Russia, which was openly said by lots of western officials. The west made a mistake thinking that they could easily break Russian economy using sanctions while using Ukraine as a proxy without having to put NATO boots on the ground. Now we're seeing this massively backfire with western economies going into a recession while Russian economy is now growing.

Western powers could arm Ukraine and it would win.

They literally can't, and even NATO officials now admit that the west lacks industrial capacity to keep up with Russia even in basic things such as shell production.

They have had no problem spending trillions of dollars over decades to protect their influence.

This is not a problem that can be fixed by throwing money at it. This requires building factories, training workers, creating supply chains and so on. These things simply can't be done overnight. All throwing money at the problem does is raise prices as anybody with even a modicum of economic knowledge could've predicted

In October, NATO’s senior military officer, Adm. Rob Bauer, said that the price for one 155mm shell had risen from 2,000 euros ($2,171) at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to 8,000 euros ($8,489.60).

Putin does not care how many troops he loses. Russia doesn’t really care how many people it loses unless those people are from the cities. Russian culture dehumanises the poor and mixed ethnicities.

How to say you're a racist without saying you're a racist.

The hope would be that world leaders realise before it’s too late that the only way Ukraine can win, is that if Russia loses.

There was never any scenario in which Ukraine could win and it's absolutely incredible that western propaganda machine managed to convince so many people of this insane fantasy. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians lost their lives in a NATO proxy war with Russia, and Ukraine will likely cease to exist as a functioning state at the end of all this. All for the insatiable need for NATO expansion. Stoltenberg finally let the cat out of the bag and told us that this was the real reason for the war:

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Except that now we have Ukrainian chief negotiator having come out and openly admitted that Russia and Ukraine were on a verge of making a deal back in last March before Boris Johnson sabotaged it.

Source? Because the only "deal" I can find is basically a surrender of Crimea and the Donbas in 2022.

Now we're seeing this massively backfire with western economies going into a recession while Russian economy is now growing.

Again, source? Sure, this is true if you look at single numbers, but there are huge difference between Europe shifting away from over a decade of quantitative easing and into repair mode, and Russia who is nationalizing businesses left and right and forcing companies to sell them foreign currencies at a discount to prop up the ruble. The need for foreign capital is so massive, due to capital flight, you can land 15% interest in Russia right now.

The three things propping up the Russian economy are the high oil price, China and massive government intervention.

even NATO officials now admit that the west lacks industrial capacity to keep up with Russia even in basic things such as shell production.

Because lobbing shells at eachother is Soviet doctrine, not NATO. NATO doctrine is to bomb the everloving shit out of someone with massive air superiority. If NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, there would be no need to more 155mm shells.

And because it's not doctrine, nobody really wants to build more artillery factories that will sell great now, and get mothballed in 5 years. If Russia steps into NATO territory, those factories will sprout like mushrooms, but it's simply a bad business decision to do so now.

He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe

And tell me, when a dictator known for annexing other countries demands appeasement, how effective has that been historically? I don't even need Czechoslovakia for this example, although it's a classic. Did Russia stop after, say, two Chechen wars, Georgia, Abkhazia?

"There wouldn't have been a war if putin got what he wanted without one" is a shit take

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Funny how you request sources to one argument but swallow the other without question and provide none for your counter arguments.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 months ago

Source? Because the only “deal” I can find is basically a surrender of Crimea and the Donbas in 2022.

https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms

Again, source?

Europe is in deep shit because it got cut off from cheap pipeline gas. Plain and simple. Now, Europe is forced to buy LNG on the spot market at an order of magnitude higher price, and a large chunk of this LNG still comes from Russia. The only difference is that now it's sold through middlemen at even higher markup. German industry is no longer competitive with China, and it's now shutting down

The three things propping up the Russian economy are the high oil price, China and massive government intervention.

Russian factory activity grew at fastest pace in over six years in September. This should not be a surprise to anyone because western companies left a void that's now being filled domestically

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-factory-activity-grows-fastest-pace-over-six-years-sept-pmi-2023-10-02/

On the other hand, US manufacturing output actually shrank to lowest in three years

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-03/us-manufacturing-activity-shrinks-by-most-in-three-years

Because lobbing shells at eachother is Soviet doctrine, not NATO. NATO doctrine is to bomb the everloving shit out of someone with massive air superiority. If NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, there would be no need to more 155mm shells.

Because lobbing shells is what actually works. Vast majority of casualties in the war come from artillery fire. That's the reality. All the magic NATO wunderwaffe failed to make any visible impact in the conflict. IF NATO decided to send 200 F35s to Ukraine, they would just be shot down by Russian air defence. Also, the fact that you think F35s would make any difference in this kind of war shows your profound lack of understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate here.

And because it’s not doctrine, nobody really wants to build more artillery factories that will sell great now, and get mothballed in 5 years.

NATO isn't building artillery factories because NATO shipped all its industry overseas and isn't capable for producing the basics that any army needs.

And tell me, when a dictator known for annexing other countries demands appeasement, how effective has that been historically? I

Once again you show deep and profound ignorance of the subject you're opining on. To help you get a bit of an understanding, let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

here's how the election in 2004 went:

this is the 2010 election:

As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

Ukraine is clearly not some homogeneous blob, but a large country with complex cultural and ethnic situations.

In fact, what we see in Ukraine is directly modelled on what NATO did in Yugoslavia where NATO recognized breakaway regions and then had them invite NATO to help break up Yugoslavia. Russia recognized LPR and DPR and then had them invite Russia to help. So, if you want to know how that works out then you can look at modern Serbia and the breakway regions.

“There wouldn’t have been a war if putin got what he wanted without one” is a shit take

There wouldn't be a war if NATO just got to do what it wanted is the only shit take here.