7 ms·

How deep does the rot in the Russian army go?

25 points by farseer 4y ago

codefreeordie 4y ago
It amazes me how much everyone seems to eat up all the propaganda without even realizing it. Every day, there are stories about how worthless the Russian military are, how hopeless their war is, how they're losing and Putin's in trouble, desperate, and idiotic. And maybe that's all true, I dunno. It's actually pretty hard to tell how the war is actually going for any side, given all the propaganda. But, Russia seems to be doing a lot of damage and holding at least some territory despite basically the entire world (except for Russia's apparent allies in this new Non-Western Axis, mostly China and Iran) providing historic amounts of military might. Sure, no troops (yet), but lots and lots of firepower. I mean, maybe Putin is a dummy and maybe the Russian military is rotting from the inside, but they've been at this for two months and so far nobody's been able to make them stop. Even though every single day I read a story about how Russia is just about to lose. Propaganda is powerful, but it's not healthy to believe your own side's propaganda any more than it is to believe the enemy's.
- farseer 4y ago
  Did you read the Article? No one is writing off the Russian Army, not even the author above. But they do make a valid point that all Western intelligence assessments were that Kiev would fall in a matter of days and Ukraine would be subdued quickly similar to how the Americans obliterated Iraq. Given the assumed capability of the Russian army, clearly that hasn't happened, and this article explains in all likelihood the shortcomings of the Russian military.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    That would be all Western intelligence assessments that one could read about in the mainstream media.
    - atoav 4y ago
      What other sources do you have that can speak freely about this?
      - throwaway4good 4y ago
        There are no sources with actual knowledge about the situation that can speak freely.
        atoav 4y ago
        What makes you believe that?
        throwaway4good 4y ago
        I shouldn't have used the word 'can', 'will' is more correct and makes it sound less conspiratorial.
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      The point about media and intelligence services is that intelligence services leak on purpose and intelligence services don't mind lying and manipulating; in fact it is at the heart of what they do.
    - rags2riches 4y ago
      You don't have to listen to what the parties are saying. Look at what they are doing. Consider the change in the amount and type of arms sent in support to Ukraine over the course of the war. I think that reflects a change in the true assessments of the possible outcome of the war.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    No one helped the Iraqis with with weapons, intelligence, money, materials and sanctions against their enemy to the degree Ukrainians were helped. If someone helped Iraq to the same degree, I'm sure US army would have had more trouble in conquering Iraq. And probably this will be the case for the next US war: Russia, China, Iran might help the enemies of the US.
- geoka9 4y ago
  > Sure, no troops (yet), but lots and lots of firepower. From my understanding, it's been only light weapons so far. Enough to make the Russian advance hard, but not enough to kick them out. It's about to change, though, as the allies have finally agreed to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons (and are now even talking of a lend-lease program).
- atoav 4y ago
  Of course we have to assume that there is a majority of content being created of Russian failures and losses, while Ukrainian losses might only receive a fraction of the coverage due to the nature of that war (Ukrainian civilians have smartphones, their network still works). And of course our military is gentle, works with surgical precision and has honor while their military is cunning, evil and violent, despite somehow being incompetent and incapable at the same time. It is propaganda. Still. Russia has been faring so much worse than any observer would've guessed that some people started to rely on a mix of wild speculations and conspiracy theories to bridge the yawning chasm this has left in their world view. It is clear that many observers overestimated the Russian capabilities by a few magnitudes (or others might argue: they underestimated the Ukrainians).
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    >Russia has been faring so much worse than any observer would've guessed Ehh...not everyone. In 2020 there was a little-commented-on war[1], at least in the mainstream press, that saw the first widespread use of drone technology in a peer conflict. Lots of folks who pay attention to this stuff suspected that, at some point, we'd see something similar in a larger war with how new technology affected tactical outcomes. Plus, Russian doctrine appears to have stayed largely static since the days of Soviet Union (massed tank columns, massed artillery, infantry moves in later to pick off what's left). That particular doctrine seems (imo) to be uniquely weak against a modern battlefield that's packed with sensors. Everyone knows, generally speaking, where everything is now so things are telegraphed ahead of time pretty easily. So I guess what I'm saying is this isn't really that surprising. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war
    - atoav 4y ago
      Sure, not "literally" everyone – even I have read commentary which laid out pretty much what turned out to be likely afterwards. It just wasn't in any way a wide spread opinion.
      - remarkEon 4y ago
- saargrin 4y ago
  they claimed to be 2nd best army in the world then, having invaded a minor military power in a surprise attack , they had been rolled back almost to their starting point while losing 10% of their TOTAL combat troops and large percentage of their effective armor , their black fleet flagship and 8 generals, and all that before their adversary even had the time to call up reserves so having achieved nothing,and committed heinous war crimes in the process,they are back to trying to keep DNR/LNR i would say thats quite a significant rot thats like if US was beaten by Iraqi army during Desert Storm
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    They suffered huge losses in the war with Finland. But they still took a part of Finland. They suffered big losses in the war with the Axis, but they still won. They beat French Empire. They beat the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Empire.
    - saargrin 4y ago
      russian empire and its successors are really good at picking at cadavers they rolled up the Ottomans when they were already the Sick Man of Europe they rolled up Habsburgs after the empire was bled in Izonzo and elsewhere they rolled up Bukhara and Samarkand when those were rotten, same as Caucasus They had many very close calls and their demographics + distances saved them But they no longer have favorable demographics and distances are much much shorter nowdays
  - jhgb 4y ago
    > and 8 generals Isn't it 11 generals now? After the command center strike that apparently killed two instantly and injured a third one sufficiently for him to later die in a hospital.
- parasti 4y ago
  It is a mistake to assume both sides in this war are equal. There is no "equality of opinion" here, there is no "equal amounts of propaganda" on both sides. Only one side in this war has invaded the other side's country, blocked their own citizens' access to information, persecutes domestic calls for peace, and promotes violence toward the other side publicly on national television. This is not propaganda, these are facts.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    True, but information getting out is very uneven, leading to many incorrect inferences. Russia is sustaining high losses, but they can afford many more losses than Ukraine can, without necessarily losing as a result: they can keep sending in more men, more tanks, more planes, more helicopters, and more missiles. Western countries are sending in small arms, but those need to be delivered precisely to where the Russians are by troops who know how to use them effectively. Most of us would hate for Ukraine to lose, and Russia seems to be doing poorly, but it has frequently been a mistake to expect Russia to fail in the end just because they start out badly.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      This is true, but that was also the case for Russia in Afghanistan, or the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It's hard to tell what Russia's goals really are because on one hand they say "we just want the Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk to be free", and on the other hand Putin is also openly saying Ukraine isn't really an independent country. Besides, Kyiv isn't in Donetsk or Luhansk is it? Maybe Putin's map is wrong. Even if they managed to complete their military goals this week by defeating the Ukrainian armed forces and toppling the Ukrainian government they will either have to retreat and leave Ukraine independent with extremely hostile views towards Russia (and will probably try to join NATO/EU), or they will have to occupy an extremely hostile population who feel their country is invaded by a hostile malevolent power. It seems to me that Russia already lost, no matter what happens militarily; they dug themselves into a pit that will be very hard to climb out of. The biggest question is how much (more) Ukraine will lose in all of this.
- saberdancer 4y ago
  You vastly overestimate the amount of western help to Ukraine. Sure there is some equipment that reached the front but that is mostly handheld weapons (anti tank or short range anti air). These types of weapons usually do not win was but increase amount of attrition to the opposing side. Russia's "victories" are extremely small and came at a great cost. They cannot win the war by having these type of battles with these losses. It is just not sustainable. Whatever metric you use. Their plan was to topple the government and expectation was that most Ukrainian army will surrender due to fear of mighty Russian army. Once that failed they have entered into a conflict they cannot win conventionally and that will cause them massive damage for little to no gains. Whole operation in the north of the country is exactly the model how this war is going for Russia. And the worst thing for Russia is that they are still not "all out". They are not mobilizing hundreds of thousands of conscripts from previous years so it's likely that soon they will be outnumbered on the battlefield. Once Ukraine brings up their reservists and new volunteer units to the battlefield it is to be expected that the tide turns against Russia. Ukraine right now is trading time and small villages for attrition against Russian forces. It is working very well. Similar game plan was used to great success around Kyiv, Sumy and Chernihiv.
- Sakos 4y ago
  Most of the weapons provided aren't sufficient to retake territory. The only reason why Ukraine regained the north of Kiev is because Russia packed up and left. Ukraine has primarily been getting short-range defensive weapons and some drones. You need armor and artillery to mount effective offensives. It's clear so far that while Ukraine can put up a stiff resistance, they aren't as capable of doing the required combined arms assaults that they need to push Russia out.
  - lolc 4y ago
    My understanding is that Ukrainian units have been supplied with and trained on modern artillery for the last few years. And that this is the reason that they can hold against the Russian army so well.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/27/ukraines-artillery-might-be-winning-the-war-with-russia/?sh=e07a8993b48d https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/27/ukraines-ar... Everything I've read so far makes me believe that they mostly or only have ex-Soviet artillery. I don't doubt that they had help training though.
      - lolc 4y ago
        Thanks for pointing that out.
- philwelch 4y ago
  When the war started, most people expected that Russia would overrun Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks. That didn’t happen. It’s been two months now, and with the length of attention spans, that’s apparently long enough for people to forget those prewar expectations.
- jkhloiujlknmk 4y ago
  > but they've been at this for two months and so far nobody's been able to make them stop Not true. The Ukrainians made their Kiyv front stop.
- pasabagi 4y ago
  I think the propaganda aspect is not so much about the performance of the Russian military (on any objective measure, it's been very bad), but rather on the claims that the Russian military is unusually brutal and indiscriminate, and the complete amnesia when it comes to similarly brutal, indiscriminate practices by other militaries. For example, the reason why Mariupol is such a wreck is because that is what a city looks like, after weeks of urban warfare. That's what Falujah looked like. That's what Mosul looked like. It's not that the Russians are evil bogeymen - it's simply that if you're trying to take a city, you either have to wreak havoc on that city, or you have to take unsustainable casualties. When you see images of people with their hands tied dead in a basement somewhere, that's what counterinsurgency looks like. When you see kids missing arms, that's what aerial bombardment looks like. When you see hospitals get bombed, civilian cars getting riddled with bullets, this is all what war looks like. The propaganda aspect is simply that when those cars were Iraqi cars, those people with their hands tied were Afghanis, or those kids were from Syria, we never saw those pictures. So now, every talking head goes on about how brutal the Russians are being, as if it was in the nature of the Russian military, rather than simply in the nature of war itself.
  - 331c8c71 4y ago
    That's why the Western propaganda is so effective. Even the producers (let alone consumers) don't realize how biased and manipulated the product is.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Imagine the U.S. trying to invade Mexico but running out of fuel before Mexico city, this along with the tactical issues they've had clearly indicates there is something deeply rotten in the Russian military. This isn't propaganda, you can see it in OSINT thats beencollected.
  - Paradigma11 4y ago
    No Mexico city but Chihuahua and taking 2 months to occupy Tijuana, or well most of it.
- EliRivers 4y ago
  so far nobody's been able to make them stop Someone sure seems to have stopped them occupying Kyiv. Someone appears to have stopped them rolling west across Ukraine as far as the Dnieper. every single day I read a story about how Russia is just about to lose. They already did, surely? Russia comes out of this in a worse condition and situation than they went in. Sounds like a loss.
- csomar 4y ago
  > Every day, there are stories about how worthless the Russian military are, how hopeless their war is, how they're losing and Putin's in trouble, desperate, and idiotic. This is highly relative of where you live. In some places, Russia is winning (on the TV) and is on the cusp of taking over Kiev any minute now. > And maybe that's all true, I dunno. It's actually pretty hard to tell how the war is actually going for any side, given all the propaganda. I think it's fair to say, given that Putin retreated from Ukraine's North, that the war is not going in his favor. > But, Russia seems to be doing a lot of damage and holding at least some territory despite basically the entire world (except for Russia's apparent allies in this new Non-Western Axis, mostly China and Iran) providing historic amounts of military might. Sure, no troops (yet), but lots and lots of firepower. Russia is the world's, supposed, second military. Also, only a handful of countries are helping Ukraine. Most countries are watching on the sidelines.
throwaway4good 4y ago
https://archive.ph/czTjr https://archive.ph/czTjr
wrp 4y ago
This 1854 article from The Economist makes an interesting comparison. https://twitter.com/DecodingTrolls/status/1513153478146764803 https://twitter.com/DecodingTrolls/status/151315347814676480... I've been trying to follow the battlefield progress of the war, and there are very few articles out there by analysts who are expert on military operations and the specifics of Russian and Ukrainian goals/capabilities. The current article has a few good quotes but also offers some cringeworthy judgments.
- T-A 4y ago
  The best (publicly available) daily analysis that I know of is ISW's: https://www.understandingwar.org/ https://www.understandingwar.org/

25 points by farseer 4y ago

It amazes me how much everyone seems to eat up all the propaganda without even realizing it. Every day, there are stories about how worthless the Russian military are, how hopeless their war is, how they're losing and Putin's in trouble, desperate, and idiotic. And maybe that's all true, I dunno. It's actually pretty hard to tell how the war is actually going for any side, given all the propaganda. But, Russia seems to be doing a lot of damage and holding at least some territory despite basically the entire world (except for Russia's apparent allies in this new Non-Western Axis, mostly China and Iran) providing historic amounts of military might. Sure, no troops (yet), but lots and lots of firepower. I mean, maybe Putin is a dummy and maybe the Russian military is rotting from the inside, but they've been at this for two months and so far nobody's been able to make them stop. Even though every single day I read a story about how Russia is just about to lose. Propaganda is powerful, but it's not healthy to believe your own side's propaganda any more than it is to believe the enemy's.

farseer 4y ago
Did you read the Article? No one is writing off the Russian Army, not even the author above. But they do make a valid point that all Western intelligence assessments were that Kiev would fall in a matter of days and Ukraine would be subdued quickly similar to how the Americans obliterated Iraq. Given the assumed capability of the Russian army, clearly that hasn't happened, and this article explains in all likelihood the shortcomings of the Russian military.
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  That would be all Western intelligence assessments that one could read about in the mainstream media.
  - atoav 4y ago
    What other sources do you have that can speak freely about this?
    - throwaway4good 4y ago
      There are no sources with actual knowledge about the situation that can speak freely.
      - atoav 4y ago
        What makes you believe that?
        throwaway4good 4y ago
        I shouldn't have used the word 'can', 'will' is more correct and makes it sound less conspiratorial.
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    The point about media and intelligence services is that intelligence services leak on purpose and intelligence services don't mind lying and manipulating; in fact it is at the heart of what they do.
  - rags2riches 4y ago
    You don't have to listen to what the parties are saying. Look at what they are doing. Consider the change in the amount and type of arms sent in support to Ukraine over the course of the war. I think that reflects a change in the true assessments of the possible outcome of the war.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  No one helped the Iraqis with with weapons, intelligence, money, materials and sanctions against their enemy to the degree Ukrainians were helped. If someone helped Iraq to the same degree, I'm sure US army would have had more trouble in conquering Iraq. And probably this will be the case for the next US war: Russia, China, Iran might help the enemies of the US.
geoka9 4y ago
> Sure, no troops (yet), but lots and lots of firepower. From my understanding, it's been only light weapons so far. Enough to make the Russian advance hard, but not enough to kick them out. It's about to change, though, as the allies have finally agreed to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons (and are now even talking of a lend-lease program).
atoav 4y ago
Of course we have to assume that there is a majority of content being created of Russian failures and losses, while Ukrainian losses might only receive a fraction of the coverage due to the nature of that war (Ukrainian civilians have smartphones, their network still works). And of course our military is gentle, works with surgical precision and has honor while their military is cunning, evil and violent, despite somehow being incompetent and incapable at the same time. It is propaganda. Still. Russia has been faring so much worse than any observer would've guessed that some people started to rely on a mix of wild speculations and conspiracy theories to bridge the yawning chasm this has left in their world view. It is clear that many observers overestimated the Russian capabilities by a few magnitudes (or others might argue: they underestimated the Ukrainians).
- remarkEon 4y ago
  >Russia has been faring so much worse than any observer would've guessed Ehh...not everyone. In 2020 there was a little-commented-on war[1], at least in the mainstream press, that saw the first widespread use of drone technology in a peer conflict. Lots of folks who pay attention to this stuff suspected that, at some point, we'd see something similar in a larger war with how new technology affected tactical outcomes. Plus, Russian doctrine appears to have stayed largely static since the days of Soviet Union (massed tank columns, massed artillery, infantry moves in later to pick off what's left). That particular doctrine seems (imo) to be uniquely weak against a modern battlefield that's packed with sensors. Everyone knows, generally speaking, where everything is now so things are telegraphed ahead of time pretty easily. So I guess what I'm saying is this isn't really that surprising. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war
  - atoav 4y ago
    Sure, not "literally" everyone – even I have read commentary which laid out pretty much what turned out to be likely afterwards. It just wasn't in any way a wide spread opinion.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
saargrin 4y ago
they claimed to be 2nd best army in the world then, having invaded a minor military power in a surprise attack , they had been rolled back almost to their starting point while losing 10% of their TOTAL combat troops and large percentage of their effective armor , their black fleet flagship and 8 generals, and all that before their adversary even had the time to call up reserves so having achieved nothing,and committed heinous war crimes in the process,they are back to trying to keep DNR/LNR i would say thats quite a significant rot thats like if US was beaten by Iraqi army during Desert Storm
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  They suffered huge losses in the war with Finland. But they still took a part of Finland. They suffered big losses in the war with the Axis, but they still won. They beat French Empire. They beat the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Empire.
  - saargrin 4y ago
    russian empire and its successors are really good at picking at cadavers they rolled up the Ottomans when they were already the Sick Man of Europe they rolled up Habsburgs after the empire was bled in Izonzo and elsewhere they rolled up Bukhara and Samarkand when those were rotten, same as Caucasus They had many very close calls and their demographics + distances saved them But they no longer have favorable demographics and distances are much much shorter nowdays
- jhgb 4y ago
  > and 8 generals Isn't it 11 generals now? After the command center strike that apparently killed two instantly and injured a third one sufficiently for him to later die in a hospital.
parasti 4y ago
It is a mistake to assume both sides in this war are equal. There is no "equality of opinion" here, there is no "equal amounts of propaganda" on both sides. Only one side in this war has invaded the other side's country, blocked their own citizens' access to information, persecutes domestic calls for peace, and promotes violence toward the other side publicly on national television. This is not propaganda, these are facts.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  True, but information getting out is very uneven, leading to many incorrect inferences. Russia is sustaining high losses, but they can afford many more losses than Ukraine can, without necessarily losing as a result: they can keep sending in more men, more tanks, more planes, more helicopters, and more missiles. Western countries are sending in small arms, but those need to be delivered precisely to where the Russians are by troops who know how to use them effectively. Most of us would hate for Ukraine to lose, and Russia seems to be doing poorly, but it has frequently been a mistake to expect Russia to fail in the end just because they start out badly.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    This is true, but that was also the case for Russia in Afghanistan, or the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It's hard to tell what Russia's goals really are because on one hand they say "we just want the Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk to be free", and on the other hand Putin is also openly saying Ukraine isn't really an independent country. Besides, Kyiv isn't in Donetsk or Luhansk is it? Maybe Putin's map is wrong. Even if they managed to complete their military goals this week by defeating the Ukrainian armed forces and toppling the Ukrainian government they will either have to retreat and leave Ukraine independent with extremely hostile views towards Russia (and will probably try to join NATO/EU), or they will have to occupy an extremely hostile population who feel their country is invaded by a hostile malevolent power. It seems to me that Russia already lost, no matter what happens militarily; they dug themselves into a pit that will be very hard to climb out of. The biggest question is how much (more) Ukraine will lose in all of this.
saberdancer 4y ago
You vastly overestimate the amount of western help to Ukraine. Sure there is some equipment that reached the front but that is mostly handheld weapons (anti tank or short range anti air). These types of weapons usually do not win was but increase amount of attrition to the opposing side. Russia's "victories" are extremely small and came at a great cost. They cannot win the war by having these type of battles with these losses. It is just not sustainable. Whatever metric you use. Their plan was to topple the government and expectation was that most Ukrainian army will surrender due to fear of mighty Russian army. Once that failed they have entered into a conflict they cannot win conventionally and that will cause them massive damage for little to no gains. Whole operation in the north of the country is exactly the model how this war is going for Russia. And the worst thing for Russia is that they are still not "all out". They are not mobilizing hundreds of thousands of conscripts from previous years so it's likely that soon they will be outnumbered on the battlefield. Once Ukraine brings up their reservists and new volunteer units to the battlefield it is to be expected that the tide turns against Russia. Ukraine right now is trading time and small villages for attrition against Russian forces. It is working very well. Similar game plan was used to great success around Kyiv, Sumy and Chernihiv.
Sakos 4y ago
Most of the weapons provided aren't sufficient to retake territory. The only reason why Ukraine regained the north of Kiev is because Russia packed up and left. Ukraine has primarily been getting short-range defensive weapons and some drones. You need armor and artillery to mount effective offensives. It's clear so far that while Ukraine can put up a stiff resistance, they aren't as capable of doing the required combined arms assaults that they need to push Russia out.
- lolc 4y ago
  My understanding is that Ukrainian units have been supplied with and trained on modern artillery for the last few years. And that this is the reason that they can hold against the Russian army so well.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/27/ukraines-artillery-might-be-winning-the-war-with-russia/?sh=e07a8993b48d https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/27/ukraines-ar... Everything I've read so far makes me believe that they mostly or only have ex-Soviet artillery. I don't doubt that they had help training though.
    - lolc 4y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out.
philwelch 4y ago
When the war started, most people expected that Russia would overrun Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks. That didn’t happen. It’s been two months now, and with the length of attention spans, that’s apparently long enough for people to forget those prewar expectations.
jkhloiujlknmk 4y ago
> but they've been at this for two months and so far nobody's been able to make them stop Not true. The Ukrainians made their Kiyv front stop.
pasabagi 4y ago
I think the propaganda aspect is not so much about the performance of the Russian military (on any objective measure, it's been very bad), but rather on the claims that the Russian military is unusually brutal and indiscriminate, and the complete amnesia when it comes to similarly brutal, indiscriminate practices by other militaries. For example, the reason why Mariupol is such a wreck is because that is what a city looks like, after weeks of urban warfare. That's what Falujah looked like. That's what Mosul looked like. It's not that the Russians are evil bogeymen - it's simply that if you're trying to take a city, you either have to wreak havoc on that city, or you have to take unsustainable casualties. When you see images of people with their hands tied dead in a basement somewhere, that's what counterinsurgency looks like. When you see kids missing arms, that's what aerial bombardment looks like. When you see hospitals get bombed, civilian cars getting riddled with bullets, this is all what war looks like. The propaganda aspect is simply that when those cars were Iraqi cars, those people with their hands tied were Afghanis, or those kids were from Syria, we never saw those pictures. So now, every talking head goes on about how brutal the Russians are being, as if it was in the nature of the Russian military, rather than simply in the nature of war itself.
- 331c8c71 4y ago
  That's why the Western propaganda is so effective. Even the producers (let alone consumers) don't realize how biased and manipulated the product is.
mhh__ 4y ago
Imagine the U.S. trying to invade Mexico but running out of fuel before Mexico city, this along with the tactical issues they've had clearly indicates there is something deeply rotten in the Russian military. This isn't propaganda, you can see it in OSINT thats beencollected.
- Paradigma11 4y ago
  No Mexico city but Chihuahua and taking 2 months to occupy Tijuana, or well most of it.
EliRivers 4y ago
so far nobody's been able to make them stop Someone sure seems to have stopped them occupying Kyiv. Someone appears to have stopped them rolling west across Ukraine as far as the Dnieper. every single day I read a story about how Russia is just about to lose. They already did, surely? Russia comes out of this in a worse condition and situation than they went in. Sounds like a loss.
csomar 4y ago
> Every day, there are stories about how worthless the Russian military are, how hopeless their war is, how they're losing and Putin's in trouble, desperate, and idiotic. This is highly relative of where you live. In some places, Russia is winning (on the TV) and is on the cusp of taking over Kiev any minute now. > And maybe that's all true, I dunno. It's actually pretty hard to tell how the war is actually going for any side, given all the propaganda. I think it's fair to say, given that Putin retreated from Ukraine's North, that the war is not going in his favor. > But, Russia seems to be doing a lot of damage and holding at least some territory despite basically the entire world (except for Russia's apparent allies in this new Non-Western Axis, mostly China and Iran) providing historic amounts of military might. Sure, no troops (yet), but lots and lots of firepower. Russia is the world's, supposed, second military. Also, only a handful of countries are helping Ukraine. Most countries are watching on the sidelines.

throwaway4good 4y ago

https://archive.ph/czTjr https://archive.ph/czTjr

wrp 4y ago

This 1854 article from The Economist makes an interesting comparison. https://twitter.com/DecodingTrolls/status/1513153478146764803 https://twitter.com/DecodingTrolls/status/151315347814676480... I've been trying to follow the battlefield progress of the war, and there are very few articles out there by analysts who are expert on military operations and the specifics of Russian and Ukrainian goals/capabilities. The current article has a few good quotes but also offers some cringeworthy judgments.

T-A 4y ago
The best (publicly available) daily analysis that I know of is ISW's: https://www.understandingwar.org/ https://www.understandingwar.org/