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I don't need a lecture on Russia's character. What I was curious to learn from you, or anyone, what could be done differently to defeat them? How would Russia r

I don't need a lecture on Russia's character. What I was curious to learn from you, or anyone, what could be done differently to defeat them? How would Russia respond if we send more advanced weaponry? Does Ukraine have the men to fight? I'm getting downvoted but honestly looking for answers.

picafrost 2y ago
It’s a war of attrition now, which is a war of will and logistics. Can anything be done differently? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Isn’t victory under these circumstances making the war so costly that your opponent must find a way out? The US was doing that. Russia’s will has won out over the US’s, that is a defeat, and we can only hope next time it isn’t the same.
- clivestaples 2y ago
  War of attrition. I thought we'd be further along after three years of sanctions and weapons but I wonder if Ukraine has the manpower to keep it up. From what I understand, Ukraine is drafting men ages 25-60 which may signal they need boots on the ground soon.
  - picafrost 2y ago
    Ukraine probably does not. Is Russia willing to risk the possibility of US/EU troops ending up on the other side of the trenches? Probably we’ll never know now, and maybe that’s better. But is it better that Russia knows maybe three years and the US might call it quits? My country, Norway, shares a border with Russia. We have 5.5 million people. Would the US abandon us because we’re running out of troops? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves.
yks 2y ago
The realistic answer is to say that Ukraine is going to be supplied with weapons for as long as needed, case closed. The whole Russian strategy after the initial blitz failure was to wait for Trump to get into power, who telegraphed to anyone with the brain, that he doesn't care about Ukraine and loves Putin very much. Russia can't do it forever, but it focused on appearing "strong" until the elections, the bet that paid off for them. Now imagine they were facing a prospect of non-friendly US administrations for decades, they would've already stopped.
- ssssvd 2y ago
  Except Putin doesn’t need to outrun America — he just needs to outrun Ukraine. There’s a finite number of Ukrainians, and an even smaller number of Ukrainian men actually willing — or physically able — to fight. 20% of the population already left, and around 1.5 million of them went to Russia. Another 15% are stuck under occupation. Ukraine’s demographics were already a disaster after the WW2 wipe-out, the Soviet collapse, and 30 years of economic decline and emigration. Now they’re drafting 18 to 60-year-olds just to keep units filled - at 40%. So what happens in a year or two, when there’s no one left to draft? The Poles aren’t volunteering to die en masse, and they’re the only EU country with anything resembling a real army — and even that is one-fifth the size of Russia’s. So who’s holding the line then? The US Army? The Marine Corps? Is anyone actually ready to send Americans to die in the Donbas?
  - yks 2y ago
    Russian economy doesn't have enough juice to "outrun Ukraine" under the sanctions regime and the war intensity they maintain to impress the Westerners. It's not a "year or two", it's a decade at least.
    - ssssvd 2y ago
      So what’s the plan here, exactly? Keep Ukraine on life support for a decade, hoping Russia collapses under sanctions? Cuba’s still standing after 60 years. Iran after 40. The USSR took decades to fall — and none of them had China bankrolling their survival. Russia’s economy bleeds, but it’s not cut off. China sends tech and machines, India buys the oil, and Europe keeps quietly paying top dollar for gas through backdoors. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s population shrinks, its economy is wrecked, and its army can’t fight without Western money, Western weapons — and soon, Western bodies. Because if you actually want to push Russia back — not even collapse it, just push it back — that means European and American troops on the front line. Conscription, mobilized economies, the whole package. Without a sustained meat grinder to chew up Russian forces, Russia just consolidates and digs in — with China keeping the whole thing afloat. And if the West isn’t ready for that, who exactly do you think will still be standing in 10 years? The only guaranteed winner? China — with Russia as a client state, Europe as a deindustrialized theme park, and America too exhausted to stop them. If this is a game of who bleeds out last, Ukraine’s already done, Europe bleeds out first, Russia bleeds to its usual stupid level — and China walks away without a scratch.
cloverich 2y ago
> I was curious to learn from you, or anyone, what could be done differently to defeat them Russia doesn't have infinite capacity, their primary strategy was to take as much as possible at all costs as fast as possible, while waging info campaigns against the far right, in the hopes that Trump would come to power and cement a deal with them. If that option goes away, it strictly reduces Russias exit strategies. They can't escalate, because the west has more leverage and more options, it would be zero sum at _best_ for Russia. The West would likely hand them Crimea for peace, but giving them all of Donbas is too large a victory for Russia. The post WW2 orders foundational principle is that appeasement of land grabs leads to stronger positions for the grabber - see Hitler's numerous escalations before his full on attack as an example. Ideally you don't wait until the attacker is on your door step before fighting back, that's what this whole debacle is about. Some of the options could have been: - Continue on, but with aligned support from the left and right (read: Russian psyops campaign vs the US right failed). Probably enough on its own. - Pressure China (tariffs) to pressure Russia - Pressure Europe to increase commitments - Offer Russia Crimea (already done ages ago, when their position was stronger) - Setup an increasing schedule of more advanced weaponry > How would Russia respond if we send more advanced weaponry? AFAIK they haven't responded to the last several increases; what would they respond with? The Nuke is their last card, and in addition to pulling in more Western support would alienate the other players (India, China) who have their own leverage on Russia. IDK overall it seems like the only major limitation here was the psychology of Trump's party.
- yks 2y ago
  > the only major limitation here was the psychology of Trump's party. The party that has 50/50 chance of winning the elections has been communicating to Putin all this entire time that they will hand him Ukraine when they win. Now they conclude that this strategy didn't help Ukraine and therefore it's time to hand Ukraine to Putin. Brilliant strategy, I wish them to enjoy their Russian friends who will definitely not screw them over very soon.
- ssssvd 2y ago
  And what exactly is "The West" these days? A glorified open-air Continental museum, a failed British Empire with an army the size of Belarus, and a bickering hegemon half-convinced it should retreat to regional power status, house divided and all. Europeans are still high on their own supply, fantasizing they’re global players, when in reality they’ve got no money, no energy, no industry, no credible army, no unity, and no diplomatic weight — not even within their own borders. Europe spent decades as an American piggy bank and a strategic liability. Now the bill’s come due — and Uncle Vlad is doing Uncle Donald a favor, playing the bogeyman just well enough to scare Europe’s capital and industry back into the safe harbor of the New World. And if Russian pressure helps deliver "MAGA in four years" by triggering capital flight from Europe to the US — is Ukraine really too steep a price for such a valuable service?
ssssvd 2y ago
You can’t fully defeat a nuclear power. You can, at best, drive it back — if you’re willing to pay the price. And that price means Europe will have to absorb a dramatic, sustained drop in quality of life — plus forced mobilisation. Even the Poles - the most serious player in Europe right now — only have about 200,000 troops. The British and French combined have maybe 40,000 soldiers actually capable of high-intensity combat. That’s enough for, what - four weeks of real war? After that, there will be no volunteers. That means a draft. So the real question is: Are you ready to be drafted to “defeat Russia”?

picafrost 2y ago

It’s a war of attrition now, which is a war of will and logistics. Can anything be done differently? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Isn’t victory under these circumstances making the war so costly that your opponent must find a way out? The US was doing that. Russia’s will has won out over the US’s, that is a defeat, and we can only hope next time it isn’t the same.

clivestaples 2y ago
War of attrition. I thought we'd be further along after three years of sanctions and weapons but I wonder if Ukraine has the manpower to keep it up. From what I understand, Ukraine is drafting men ages 25-60 which may signal they need boots on the ground soon.
- picafrost 2y ago
  Ukraine probably does not. Is Russia willing to risk the possibility of US/EU troops ending up on the other side of the trenches? Probably we’ll never know now, and maybe that’s better. But is it better that Russia knows maybe three years and the US might call it quits? My country, Norway, shares a border with Russia. We have 5.5 million people. Would the US abandon us because we’re running out of troops? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves.

yks 2y ago

The realistic answer is to say that Ukraine is going to be supplied with weapons for as long as needed, case closed. The whole Russian strategy after the initial blitz failure was to wait for Trump to get into power, who telegraphed to anyone with the brain, that he doesn't care about Ukraine and loves Putin very much. Russia can't do it forever, but it focused on appearing "strong" until the elections, the bet that paid off for them. Now imagine they were facing a prospect of non-friendly US administrations for decades, they would've already stopped.

ssssvd 2y ago
Except Putin doesn’t need to outrun America — he just needs to outrun Ukraine. There’s a finite number of Ukrainians, and an even smaller number of Ukrainian men actually willing — or physically able — to fight. 20% of the population already left, and around 1.5 million of them went to Russia. Another 15% are stuck under occupation. Ukraine’s demographics were already a disaster after the WW2 wipe-out, the Soviet collapse, and 30 years of economic decline and emigration. Now they’re drafting 18 to 60-year-olds just to keep units filled - at 40%. So what happens in a year or two, when there’s no one left to draft? The Poles aren’t volunteering to die en masse, and they’re the only EU country with anything resembling a real army — and even that is one-fifth the size of Russia’s. So who’s holding the line then? The US Army? The Marine Corps? Is anyone actually ready to send Americans to die in the Donbas?
- yks 2y ago
  Russian economy doesn't have enough juice to "outrun Ukraine" under the sanctions regime and the war intensity they maintain to impress the Westerners. It's not a "year or two", it's a decade at least.
  - ssssvd 2y ago
    So what’s the plan here, exactly? Keep Ukraine on life support for a decade, hoping Russia collapses under sanctions? Cuba’s still standing after 60 years. Iran after 40. The USSR took decades to fall — and none of them had China bankrolling their survival. Russia’s economy bleeds, but it’s not cut off. China sends tech and machines, India buys the oil, and Europe keeps quietly paying top dollar for gas through backdoors. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s population shrinks, its economy is wrecked, and its army can’t fight without Western money, Western weapons — and soon, Western bodies. Because if you actually want to push Russia back — not even collapse it, just push it back — that means European and American troops on the front line. Conscription, mobilized economies, the whole package. Without a sustained meat grinder to chew up Russian forces, Russia just consolidates and digs in — with China keeping the whole thing afloat. And if the West isn’t ready for that, who exactly do you think will still be standing in 10 years? The only guaranteed winner? China — with Russia as a client state, Europe as a deindustrialized theme park, and America too exhausted to stop them. If this is a game of who bleeds out last, Ukraine’s already done, Europe bleeds out first, Russia bleeds to its usual stupid level — and China walks away without a scratch.

cloverich 2y ago

> I was curious to learn from you, or anyone, what could be done differently to defeat them Russia doesn't have infinite capacity, their primary strategy was to take as much as possible at all costs as fast as possible, while waging info campaigns against the far right, in the hopes that Trump would come to power and cement a deal with them. If that option goes away, it strictly reduces Russias exit strategies. They can't escalate, because the west has more leverage and more options, it would be zero sum at _best_ for Russia. The West would likely hand them Crimea for peace, but giving them all of Donbas is too large a victory for Russia. The post WW2 orders foundational principle is that appeasement of land grabs leads to stronger positions for the grabber - see Hitler's numerous escalations before his full on attack as an example. Ideally you don't wait until the attacker is on your door step before fighting back, that's what this whole debacle is about. Some of the options could have been: - Continue on, but with aligned support from the left and right (read: Russian psyops campaign vs the US right failed). Probably enough on its own. - Pressure China (tariffs) to pressure Russia - Pressure Europe to increase commitments - Offer Russia Crimea (already done ages ago, when their position was stronger) - Setup an increasing schedule of more advanced weaponry > How would Russia respond if we send more advanced weaponry? AFAIK they haven't responded to the last several increases; what would they respond with? The Nuke is their last card, and in addition to pulling in more Western support would alienate the other players (India, China) who have their own leverage on Russia. IDK overall it seems like the only major limitation here was the psychology of Trump's party.

yks 2y ago
> the only major limitation here was the psychology of Trump's party. The party that has 50/50 chance of winning the elections has been communicating to Putin all this entire time that they will hand him Ukraine when they win. Now they conclude that this strategy didn't help Ukraine and therefore it's time to hand Ukraine to Putin. Brilliant strategy, I wish them to enjoy their Russian friends who will definitely not screw them over very soon.
ssssvd 2y ago
And what exactly is "The West" these days? A glorified open-air Continental museum, a failed British Empire with an army the size of Belarus, and a bickering hegemon half-convinced it should retreat to regional power status, house divided and all. Europeans are still high on their own supply, fantasizing they’re global players, when in reality they’ve got no money, no energy, no industry, no credible army, no unity, and no diplomatic weight — not even within their own borders. Europe spent decades as an American piggy bank and a strategic liability. Now the bill’s come due — and Uncle Vlad is doing Uncle Donald a favor, playing the bogeyman just well enough to scare Europe’s capital and industry back into the safe harbor of the New World. And if Russian pressure helps deliver "MAGA in four years" by triggering capital flight from Europe to the US — is Ukraine really too steep a price for such a valuable service?

ssssvd 2y ago

You can’t fully defeat a nuclear power. You can, at best, drive it back — if you’re willing to pay the price. And that price means Europe will have to absorb a dramatic, sustained drop in quality of life — plus forced mobilisation. Even the Poles - the most serious player in Europe right now — only have about 200,000 troops. The British and French combined have maybe 40,000 soldiers actually capable of high-intensity combat. That’s enough for, what - four weeks of real war? After that, there will be no volunteers. That means a draft. So the real question is: Are you ready to be drafted to “defeat Russia”?