“Pulled out of” is a polite way of saying “they retreated because they were totally defeated”.
And that is how Russia wins. They turn the city to rubble, and then move on to the next city.
They can keep this up for a long, long time, because they care nothing about the lives of their own men, or the damage to the Russian economy.
From Bachmut to Avdiivka took half a year. At this rate they may not reach Kiev. But they will conquer all the territory that they need for a land bridge to Crimea.
The western nations don’t seem to care enough to stop Putin, even though they are next in line.
Well, one way is just by driving a lot of vehicles and men through the minefield. Eventually you get a path that’s de-mined, but littered with damaged vehicles and corpses. Russia seems to be willing to take that exchange right now.
Videos from the war in Ukraine show Russian soldiers clearing land mines, but it’s not exactly a “safety first” approach. …
The videos, shared this week by open-source intelligence accounts on Telegram and X, showed soldiers detonating mines. The first video shows a soldier hitting a mine with a wooden log, prompting a moderate explosion. The soldier doesn’t appear to be use any typical mine-clearing equipment or special protective gear and is seen sitting on the ground in close proximity to the explosive.
I think one - little talked about - root-cause for RU being in relatively good shape mid-to-long term in this war is western-political-porkbelly-cycles.
There will always be political “parasites” that do knowingly the WRONG thing b/c it helps them in the short run … We all know who they are - as they are in the news all day … and RU is playing the keys of this keyboard to perfection (one of the few things they do really well )
And as long as there are divided congresses in western democracies (statistically very likely) - you will have cases where often a minority can block o severely limit the action-space of a government.
RU does not suffer from this - as their monolithic autocracy will be completely aligned with the war effort
Well, their equivalent is the TSAR getting “unwell”
In almost every instance in history of a democracy beating a regime, it’s because the democracy had resource advantages. The Allies beat the Axis because the Allies had 5x greater numbers, better tech, Etc.
But in a war where the democracy and dictatorship have equal tech and numbers, I’d put my money on the regime winning. Because the regime has the advantage of efficiency and no internal obstruction.
Which, as I said upthread, is utterly false. The Russians are totally unambiguously absolutely positively thoroughly outnumbered. And outgunned. If the West bothers to show up.
Fascism is built on lies – including soldiers and officers necessarily telling lies to their superiors. Lies are not a good foundation for high military performance.
Russia is operating a war time economy and using meat-grinder tactics. These sound like they could be two different issues but they are linked. Russia has full employment (because of the military footing thing) but when supply can’t keep up with demand you get inflation.
Why does this limit meat grinder tactics? Because you need to regularly draft new men to fight and that increasingly means pulling them from their jobs producing the stuff their army needs. Which means supply becomes even more strangled which further reduces production which pushes up inflation and so on and so on. Basically Russia’s tactics are completely unsustainable.
And the issue will become more acute still as they run out of old stock. Hence Putin making deals with North Korea and Iran. He is desperate. And you’ll also notice how there have been no new drafts for a long time.
Russian inflation is already showing signs of getting out of control (supposedly)
History shows that a society’s culture and its level of civilisation is usually what wins wars. Eventually the Roman’s always won out - even if they lost large battles - because they could organise supply chains, educate and train its troops, feed them properly, innovate change, produce better weapons, have a proper chain of command etc etc. Dictatorships do not generally have very well functioning systems because it’s all operated to serve the dictator.
On the other hand a democracy’s appetite for war may be limited, so if it’s not an existential fight they may just throw in the towel. However for Russia this is a war of choice and for Ukraine it is existential. Ukraine’s problem is supply of weapons. Europe will slowly ramp up production and who knows what will happen in the US.
I don’t think Russia stands a chance of getting to Kyiv. But they may try to keep the land they have annexed and call it a victory and maybe build some fortifications on the new “border”. Ukraine will try to win them back with or without the help of Europe and the US. It will take longer without but you’d expect both Ukraine and its Eastern European allies to ramp up production until they are producing large stocks of better weapons than the Russians are able to. And then it’s a matter of time.
Not related to the war but something that will be an issue between Russia and Germany: On 13 February a German was arrested on arrival in St. Petersburg with six gummy bears containing THC. [How stupid can you be?]
I get the impression that any Westerner foolish enough to travel to Russia right now is found to be carrying THC.
Correction: Putin cares nothing about lives or damage to the economy. But despite what he might think, Putin is not Russia. And if he doesn’t care about Russia for long enough, he might find that to be even more the case.
Sadly, I fear Putin appeals to strong currents of opinion in Russian society, and doubt whether western-style democrats are all that powerful or effective.
Russia has published a video of the customs check and the man seems not to deny that the gummy bear bag was his, so it does not seem to have been planted on him. The customs agent did not even need work hard at getting something on him - there was a picture of a cannabis leaf printed on the package . I just hope he will live through the Russian penal system (they could always add espionage or something if there is no concession forthcoming from Germany).
The Czech Republic has found 800,000 soviet era shells that can be donated to Ukraine within weeks as long as someone pays for them.
The news articles on this are all a bit vague about where they are coming from. ‘Abroad’ apparently. My guess is it’s a former soviet state that wants to remain anonymous as they’re technically neutral. So maybe one of the many ‘Stans.
Only six THC gummy bears in the bag, though? Sounds like he failed to live by the old adage, “If you’re smuggling drugs into another country and you eat half the evidence, you might as well eat all the evidence because half-as-dumb is more than twice as likely to get you caught going through customs than just plain dumb.”
The problem with the bundle of arrows analogy, same as the yoke and the arrows, is that it is directly linked to fascist symbology. I know you have them on your dollar bills too, taken from another cultural reference, but it is still fascist in Europe.
Hades can be very unfriendly. And uncomfortable.
I believe most Germans will agree with the “how stupid can you be?” part, so I doubt he will be considered valuable enough to exchange for a murderer. Sorry for him, he is not going to enjoy the foreseeable future, but he will not have much public sympathy.
. I just hope he will live through the Russian penal system (they could always add espionage or something if there is no concession forthcoming from Germany).