Well, they started taking ground that the Russian Army gave up when it realized it wasn’t going to take Kyiv and redeployed to hold Donetsk and Mariupol. I know a lot of people are portraying that is Ukraine “pushing” them to the East but the intelligent strategy of war is not to try to hold positions that you cannot logistically support, and it was clearly a vast miscalculation on the part of Putin (who was apparently directing the objectives) to anticipate taking Kyiv in a blitz that would knock out opposition. The Russians are now well secured in Mariupol and along the Donbas region, and until Ukraine gets artillery in position and has sufficient air superiority to prevent the Russians from taking out their guns they aren’t going to be able to dislodge them. Right now, lacking those elements, it is essentially WWI-style trench warfare in which neither side gains much ground or can maneuver into a superior position.
This is why Zelenskyy is still pleading for MiGs; even with the artillery, they need to be able to keep the Russians from striking back. The other alternative is to disrupt supply lines to the Russians from behind the front and starve them out, which is why Ukraine is being so coy about all of the explosions and apparent sabotage occurring within Russia (and the Russian Foreign Minister whinging about how unfair it is for Ukraine to strike them on their own territory is frankly pretty hilarious, like the bully whom complains about getting a bloody nose from the nerd he was just terrorizing), but that still takes time to have the desired effect, especially since Putin has made it clear that anybody retreating back to Russia is going go face punishment.
Alright, I’m sure its stinky but I don’t think surströmming is downing any planes. It’s been long on my list of things to try and this PBS video, I think, is pretty balanced and makes it seem not so bad:
It’s also likely the case that Turkey would be quite happy to drop their opposition for the right price, be that in cash, goods, trade concessions, or some other consideration. They aren’t stupid.
Yeah, at this point it is clear that the Russians are not going to take Ukraine with conventional forces, and even trying to hold the territory they now occupy is going to eventually bankrupt Russia, but if history has taught us nothing else it is to not discount the tenacity of the Russians even against interminable opposition.
In fact, it seems to be a major source of pride in Russian culture. I can’t think of a Russian war in recorded history that they won by prowess. The signature victories all seemed to come from just outlasting their opponents and a bloody-minded willingness to suffer any losses and pay any price to do it.
It is bad. Trust me. I eat all sorts of very stinky foods, and they all disappoint me in not being anywhere near as bad as their reputation. Surstrõmming is the one exception. It is far worse than even the vivid descriptions of its olfactory effects warned me. When you see the videos of people vomiting as they try to ingest the stuff – that’s totally true. It wasn’t that bad to me, but it’s pretty much the only food I’ve ever eat that I hesitated to put in my mouth. It’s very easy for me to see how someone could retch trying to eat that.
And now a fucking lunatic on Russian state TV is proposing nuking Finland and Sweden. I hope that he’s just the nutbag mentally ill equivalent of Alex Jones, and it’s basically just performance art.
Recently, any time I’ve seen a CNN (or someone else) special about the making of Putin or the mind of Putin etc, there are always clips of Russian current events shows in which the personalities are as unanchored in reality as Putin. So, unfortunately, this is not surprising at this point.
The difference between the 2014-2022 war and the war now of course being that the West is now REALLY pouring its economic might into one side of the war, a level of sheer industrial and commercial might that Russia hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of competing with.
In all honestly, Russia’s only real chance of a truly worthwhile victory was what they attempted - the rapid war of maneuvre that could surround Kyiv in a week and cause such massive organizational shock to Ukraine’s military and government apparatus than Ukraine simply fell apart.
But Russia’s entire army and command structure just wasn’t up to the task of doing this. It was never in the cards. So, in a very real sense, Russia lost this war not in 2022, but over the course of the last ten years or so.
Russia HAS lost wars, after all.
Well, to be pedantic, he said “Deploy.” To deployt nuclear weapons means to place them in position for a given type of use. Russia already made a similar claim a month or so ago, saying they were deploying nukes in the Baltic, which was meant with yawns because everyone figured they were already doing this.
What could that mean? The location of ICBMs hardly matters… are none of Russia’s big long range nukes ready for use at the moment, and he’s saying they should be brought back into service? Or moving tactical nukes to the Finnish border for… um… defensive purposes?
Agreed. And this is what puzzles me. After this was clearly not going to work, Putin (Russia) has just kept up what is quite clearly going to be a campaign that is embarrassing Russia, depleting it’s armed forces, and making NATO even stronger. They have basically made everything worse for themselves, and are continuing to dig the hole even deeper.
There are only negative consequences for Russia now, and the situation for them gets worse every day. If this continues, Moldova and Georgia are going to be asking to be in NATO.
This infuriates the crap out of me. I fully recognize the political and strategic importance of Turkey by virtue of their geographic location on the planet. But in doing this they could IMHO cause some real damage. If Turkey vetoes this and won’t be swayed, this will be a terrible outcome and a really big loss.
They often outfought less-disciplined opponents in the open field a la the senescing Ottoman state and they’ve had a few outstanding maneuver generals like the brilliant Alexander Suvorov. Even when they are stubbornly plowing through, there has often been a genuine skill to what they are doing - they’re just willing to take the losses. So I think that is a little bit of an exaggeration. But one with a real element of truth, I’ll grant - Russian military doctrine has been more reliant on mass force and more heedless of casualties than most for quite a long time.