The captured cities are just one obvious indicator as to which country is winning. Some other obvious indicators:
All the captured cities belong to one country.
Also all the bombed ones.
Also all the lost territory.
Also all the civilian deaths.
That’s not winning. I’ll call it winning when the Russians are being consistently pushed back.
There are plenty of indicators that Russia will lose, as you’ve mentioned, but economic and political effects are usually slower than military ones.
When I see Russian troops retreating back to Russia, I’ll concede that Ukraine is “winning”. (God, I wish we would stop treating war like a football game - Damn you, George Carlin!)
How about if those “recon tanks” are just inside the Ukraine side of the Ukraine/Poland border, and their formations and actions make it apparent that they’re trying to locate and interdict supply routes from Poland into Ukraine. Is that a “fair” tactical action to counter NATO/Poland supplying Ukrainian forces? To imitate myself, is it a case of “logistical warfare is logistical warfare”? Or would it be a “red line” escalation that demanded the protection of the Ukraine/Poland supply routes? The point isn’t that the actions and counter-actions are the same, or that one action can’t be perceived as worse than the other. The point is that each antagonist has low-conflict goals they want to achieve, while not spurring the other side into a higher level of conflict. Drone flights across a border, when there’s already cross-border reconnaissance going on by the opposing side, aren’t spurs to a higher-level conflict. They’re not crossing any red line.
Those drone flights weren’t even the most provocative anti-NATO action taken this week by Russia. The Yavoriv base missile strike killed 35 people, including citizens of NATO member-states. There’s been no reported forceful response to that attack. If the Yavoriv attack hasn’t crossed any red lines, there’s no a drone flight across a border is going to.
Honestly, I could see Sikhs joining the legion and Gurkhas doubly so, although the latter aren’t Indian.
Well, to use mjmartin’s analogy but making it 3 - 0 Giants in the first quarter, maybe the high schoolers aren’t winning but they’re exceeding expectations going in. If it’s still 3 - 0 when the negotiations game’s done, the Giants will still be a laughing stock and the coach replaced.
I think the next round of negotiations should start with:
We have it on good authority that NATO is not interested in Belarus if Russia leaves Ukraine now…
Raise the stakes.
You, in 1778: “Gen. Washington is on the losing side, no matter how bravely he fights.”
That’d be funny, but rather transparent. Even if Lukashenko is reluctant to send his troops into Ukraine, that’s a long, long way from NATO membership.
(Unless you meant that NATO would invade Belarus, which Putin knows also wouldn’t happen.)
So I’ve been cued. In recent posts, I’ve been arguing that both NATO and Russia want to take low-conflict actions against the other, while avoiding high-conflict actions. NATO’s been supporting the Ukrainians with logistics and intelligence, and the Russians have been doing what anti-NATO actions they can. However both sides militaries have been avoiding shooting at each other. That won’t hold if NATO starts attacking Russian aircraft. Russia’s best choice would be to admit they’ve lost and retreat if that happens. But there best choice before the invasion when they started receiving warnings about it was to call the invasion off. Russia doesn’t seem to be making the best choices lately. So what would the Russian response to attack against their aircraft be? My guess is missile strikes against NATO airbases. Everything NATO has said has indicated that would trigger a full military response. So not just an air attack, but a full combined forces attack against the Russian forces in Ukraine do drive them out. Which in a conventional warfare scenario would happen - if Russia’s getting stalemated by Ukraine, they’re going to be utterly defeated by NATO. Would Russia risk escalating beyond conventional warfare at that point by using tactical nuclear missiles to deter NATO forces? I’d hope not, but like I just said, Russia hasn’t been making the best choices lately.
Can we at least agree that “not losing” isn’t the same thing as “winning”/
Football is war with more rules.
Does he now?
If NATO has to get involved then Belarus’s roll as a staging area will be removed as a safe harbor.
If only there was a major NATO war game going on in the region. Then someone who used war games as an excuse for war would ponder things.
NATO invading Belarus is out of the question for the same reason NATO sending troops to Ukraine is unlikely unless Russia (or Belarus) oversteps first. NATO will act defensively; they’ll only weigh in properly if a NATO country actually gets attacked.
Putin would love for NATO to act aggressively. It would serve his narrative swimmingly.
We’ve already supplied entry level weapons to shoot down Russian aircraft. The reason we don’t engage in air to air combat is it’s a direct confrontation and we risk losing aircraft from missiles launched from Russia.
But there is a third alternative. Sell Ukraine the same level of missile systems Russia has. they can launch them from the Ukraine.
His failures so far would suggest otherwise. He’s begging China for food. “Please sir, may I have another MRE?”
He’s sweating bullets that he doesn’t have.
I’m not suggesting we invade Belarus as some kind of tactic. I’m saying Belarus is toast if NATO (and all of Europe) decides Putin has crossed the line.
Your view seems to be that unless a defending army can stop an invading army at the border, then they are losing. This is not a good indicator of which side will eventually win a war.
Look at Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Unlike the Nazis, the French Army managed to occupy Moscow. They still lost.
As has already been pointed out, the Russian military is strong on firepower, but weak on logistics. Therefore, defending on the border actually plays to the Russian strengths as they will have short supply lines and can therefore maximize their firepower. The better strategy is to over-extend and harrass the Russian logistical supply lines. Unless the Ukrainian army invades Russia and disrupts their supply lines there, which is unrealistic at the current time, this is something that can only be done through interdicting Russian supply lines in the Ukrainian territory that the Russians are occupying. The longer the Russian supply lines are, the slower the rate they are supplying their front-line troops and the harder it is for them to defend their supply convoys from ambushes. Unless the Russians are capturing territory of strategic significance, then small losses of territory here and there by Ukraine are not necessarily a negative, as they offer opportunities to engage the Russian military on much more favourable terms.
I agree with this. Russia is doing some incredibly stupid shit right now, and it would not be a great idea IMO to assume that they would take a sensible course (or even a sane course) of action if things heated up significantly.
Also, right now NATO has the high ground in terms of what the rest of the world thinks. They do not have military in another country. Russia has invaded, and is the blatantly obvious “bad guy”. If NATO starts a shooting war, even non-nuclear, then it gives ammunition to the “both sides bad” crowd around the world, some of whom are just waiting for that excuse.
The US has announced additional aid, following Zelenskyy’s speech. 100 grenade launchers seems like a small number, unless there’s something I don’t understand about grenade launchers.
Biden said the new assistance includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 100 grenade launchers, 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenade launchers and mortar rounds and an unspecified number of drones.
It’s an AP story. I apologize for the Yahoo! News cite.
Putin:
The kidnapped mayor of Melitopol has been freed in a “special operation”: