If the war ends with Putin holding Ukrainian territory, he will have won something. Ukraine will have lost something and I don’t think Ukraine would consider such a result a win. If Putin holds more than in 2014 at the end of the day, he will be crowing no matter how much he has cratered his country.
For Ukraine that would not be a complete loss, no. Survival (already almost guaranteed, I think) is already a sort of a win, considering what Putin was aiming for. But hardly an unqualified one. And however much Russia loses in the short and medium term (financially, militarily, diplomatically), if they’re still holding something in the end they will not have completely lost, either.
I’m a little more with Dissonance in the pragmatic “it-ain’t-over-until-it’s-over” camp. Our resident apologist aside, Russia has been massively bled and its prospects, even possibly as a fully functioning country going forward, are distinctly gloomy. But it isn’t all sunshine and roses on the Ukrainian side either. I’m betting on them, but the war hasn’t been close to “won” and nobody is coming out of this in good shape. It is not inconceivable that if Ukraine is forced by sheer exhaustion to bleed land for peace, they will end up the overall losers in the very long term.
The Soviet Union wasn’t in the Allies during the Winter War. The Allies - which was the UK, Commonwealth and France along with the Polish government in exile - at the time very nearly went to war with the Soviet Union while they were in the sitzkrieg with Germany. The League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union because of the war, for what that mattered.
World opinion largely supported the Finnish cause, and the Soviet aggression was generally deemed unjustified. World War II had not yet directly affected France, the United Kingdom or the United States; the Winter War was practically the only conflict in Europe at that time and thus held major world interest. Several foreign organisations sent material aid, and many countries granted credit and military materiel to Finland. Nazi Germany allowed arms to pass through its territory to Finland, but after a Swedish newspaper made this public, Adolf Hitler initiated a policy of silence towards Finland, as part of improved German–Soviet relations following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[201]
The largest foreign contingent came from neighboring Sweden, which provided nearly 8,760 volunteers during the war. The Volunteer Corps was formed of predominantly Swedes, as well as 1,010 Danes and 727 Norwegians. They fought on the northern front at Salla during the last days of the war. A Swedish unit of Gloster Gladiator fighters, named “the Flight Regiment 19” also participated. Swedish anti-air batteries with Bofors 40 mm (1.6 in) guns were responsible for air defence in northern Finland and the city of Turku.[202] Volunteers arrived from Hungary, Italy and Estonia. 350 American nationals of Finnish background volunteered, and 210 volunteers of other nationalities arrived in Finland before the war ended.[202]Max Manus, a Norwegian, fought in the Winter War before returning to Norway and later achieved fame as a resistance fighter during the German occupation of Norway. In total, Finland received 12,000 volunteers, 50 of whom died during the war.[203] The British actor Christopher Lee volunteered in the war for two weeks, but did not face combat.[204]
France had been one of the earliest supporters of Finland during the Winter War. The French saw an opportunity to weaken Germany’s resource imports via a Finnish counteroffensive, as both Sweden and the Soviet Union were strategic trading partners to Germany. France had another motive, preferring to have a major war in a remote part of Europe rather than on French soil. France planned to re‑arm the Polish exile units and transport them to the Finnish Arctic port of Petsamo. Another proposal was a massive air strike with Turkish co-operation against the Caucasusoil fields
The first intervention plan, approved on 4–5 February 1940 by the Allied High Command, consisted of 100,000 British and 35,000 French troops, which would disembark at the Norwegian port of Narvik and support Finland via Sweden while they secured supply routes along the way. Plans were made to launch the operation on 20 March under the condition of a formal request for assistance from the Finnish government to avoid German charges that the Franco-British forces were an invading army. On 2 March, transit rights were officially requested from the governments of Norway and Sweden. It was hoped that Allied intervention would eventually bring the neutral Nordic countries, Norway and Sweden, to the Allies by strengthening their positions against Germany, but Hitler had by December declared to the Swedish government that Franco-British troops on Swedish soil would immediately provoke a German invasion.
That’s where you’re misunderstanding me. I’m just pointing out that any declaration that Russia has lost the war are 1) very premature and 2) those saying Russia has lost are ignoring the very big elephant in the room that Russia is still sitting on almost 1/5 of Ukraine. Declaring that Russia has already lost is looking only at all those other factors and ignoring the fact that Russia still controls 20% of Ukraine. I don’t think many Ukrainians would agree that Russia has already lost the war while so much of their country is still under hostile occupation.
I’m going to turn this right back on you @Dissonance - because you keep saying some flavor of, and I quote:
When in my first (!) response to you I said the following:
I have never argued that they haven’t claimed territory. I haven’t even argued that they might not keep the territory. And I fully grant that the war itself isn’t over, after all, I’m the one with the thread about Putin’s possible willingness to use Nukes if he actually thinks this will all end badly for him!
But the point is, in terms of net loss or gain, this is pretty unequivocally a NET loss for Russia, with a miniscule chance that in the long run (probably several decades IMHO) they’ll come out ahead through the territory grab.
I don’t think it’s a secret that by some (but not all) metrics, this is a proxy war for the West, in that the West is effectively neutralizing Russia militarily through its support for Ukraine without engaging directly.
That doesn’t change the fact that the war itself is entirely the fault of, and at the instigation of, Russia, and the “look what you made me do!” rationalizations don’t change that. The West didn’t start this, nor did it force Russia’s hand. This is all on Putin.
In this context, “proxy war” seems like a loaded and inaccurate term, as it suggests that Western nations are gleefully fulfilling a plan to weaken Russia. Supporting a beleaguered independent nation in order to protect it and other countries in the region obviously does have an element of self-interest, as an unchecked imperialist power is ultimately dangerous to everyone.
Also, Russia could have decided to not start this stupid freaking war in the first place if it didn’t want the west supplying Ukraine. It is 100% on Russia. They are the only bad guys in this war.
Oh I agree. Again, it doesn’t mean that the West pursued this war with the goal to weaken Russia. But as the war is (very unfortunately) happening nonetheless, it is offering a number of opportunities to realign global soft power. The West would likely be supporting Ukraine anyway for the reason you mentioned, but there are side benefits even as there are also significant bad things (because war).
Yes and no, propaganda ultra-Z saber rattling aside about Poland being next, no one in power or in a position to be the next in power in Russia is insane enough to actually attack Poland - and if they are we are all thoroughly and completely fucked anyway. The weapons that are ultimately defending Poland in extremis are the US strategic nuclear arsenal and Article 5 of NATO.
Not that Poland is placing all its faith in nuclear deterrence and faith that nobody in Russia would be insane enough to attack a member of NATO. Poland is doubling the size of its army and purchasing arms from everywhere, including making the largest arms deal that South Korea has ever had which will include licensed domestic Polish production of South Korean K2 tanks modified to suit Polish needs and the technology transfer for them to be produced in plants in Poland, which could potentially open up the door for them being built for other European nations there. I guess not surprisingly Perun has a video on this, featuring The Chieftan:
What @Jackmannii has said about “proxy war” being a loaded term is something that should be considered in how it is being used by Russian state propaganda. The war special military operation in Ukraine is being sold to the Russian public exactly as he describes it, Russia had to invade Ukraine because NATO was using Ukraine as a proxy and putting Nazis in power. This is just one of the latest articles from TASS on NATO gleefully using Ukraine as a proxy to attack Russia, they’ve been saying this since the war sorry, special military operation started.
MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. NATO is fighting a full-scale war against Russia, using the Kiev authorities as proxies, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an op-ed dedicated to the 15th anniversary of Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia and Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which was published on the aif.ru website.
Absolutely no sense of the irony of stating such in an op-ed dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia sorry, the Georgian invasion and oppression of Russians in South Ossetia.
Regarding “proxy war” being a loaded term and Russian state propaganda usage of the term claiming the collective West put Nazis in power in Ukraine and are using it as a proxy to fight Russia, here’s a new one to me, though apparently dating back to April 2022. It has the added advantage of explaining why Russia’s invasion was such a poorly mismanaged shitshow. According to Russia, all those troops massing on the Ukrainian border in Russia and for some odd reason in Belarus right near Kiev were actually for real for real just conducting training exercises in February before the invasion when they discovered Ukraine’s secret plan to invade Donetsk and Luhansk in March, so they had to pre-emptively invade Ukraine right away without the luxury of having the time for putting together a proper invasion plan. Boy were they lucky they just happened by coincidence to have over 200,000 troops conducting training exercises in Russia and Belarus on the Ukrainian border with the ones in Belarus conveniently positioned to invade and drive on Kiev when they discovered Ukraine’s diabolical Nazi plan!
The explanation and footage of the documents ‘supporting’ this discovery are at start at 3:05 in this video. Unfortunately, the documents are of course in Cyrillic, and I haven’t been able to find the documents or another source backing this up.
Russia has no issues with artillery ammunition shortages. Clearly, that is why they are chopping apart RBU-6000 anti-submarine mortars and slapping them on top of MT-LB armored tractors in their latest attempt at emulating Mad Max.
The Forbes article is probably a bit too mocking; it could be an effective improvised weapon. It’s the fact that Russia is improvising weapons to come up with solutions to their artillery problems that is indicative that such problems exist, however. You don’t start looking at how to use your stocks of anti-submarine mortar rockets as artillery if you’ve got no issues with stockpiles of your more conventional artillery ammunition. A more nuanced look at this improvisation from Military History Visualized:
And if the analysis of the five scorch marks in the northeast quadrant as being former Ka-52s is correct, five in one day in what was apparently the first ATACMS strike of the war.
