# What can Russia accomplish with more soldiers w/o heavy military equipment **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Tags:** ukraine-invasion\ **Created:** [September 23, 2022, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104 "2022-09-23T23:09:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/161 "2022-10-14T11:22:23Z")
Agree Putin wants to drag this out through the winter. Climate change may have an impact on his fortunes: a mild European winter would lessen everyone’s pain, a harsh winter might play into his hand. If, in the spring, EU and the US have as much resolve as today, even with expected political changes forecast, that’ll be bad news for Putin. A lot of moving parts, and a lot can happen in the next 5 - 6 months. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/162 "2022-10-14T12:35:46Z")
Yep, that’s the ship I was thinking of. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/163 "2022-10-14T13:18:03Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Putin threw decades of winning into a dumpster, poured gasoline on it and set it ablaze. His place in history is going to be a very different thing than it would have been if he hadn’t made this last, fatal toss of the dice. Well let’s be clear, his place in history would have been in that same dumpster. He’s led his country to economic stagnation, isolation, endemic corruption and to forget human rights were ever a thing. But yes, if he had sat on the 2014 borders, then, internationally, he would still have been respected as a great strategist – as the icing on a pile of shit cake. Meanwhile domestically…I think it depends what follows Putin. If he had died prior to the Ukraine mess, then sure, a majority of Russians would have idolized him, at first. But, if what follows is a free press and liberalized markets, how long would that last? His legacy depends on Russia remaining poor, and misinformed. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/164 "2022-10-14T15:21:01Z")
> [@scabpicker](#): > > Yep, that’s the ship I was thinking of. I figured it might be. Further down in the Wiki article, > The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as [flagship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship) of the reserve squadron at [Älvsnabben](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84lvsnabben) in the Stockholm Archipelago. At the same time the king’s subordinates lacked the political courage to openly discuss the ship’s problems or to have the maiden voyage postponed. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/165 "2022-10-14T15:22:14Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > Thanks to inflation and crime fears, Republicans win big in next month’s elections. They start making noises about impeachment (not going to happen) and a government shutdown unless wasteful expenditures to support Ukraine militarily are curtailed. This. Because Putin owns most of them. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/166 "2022-10-14T17:50:17Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Well let’s be clear, his place in history would have been in that same dumpster. > He’s led his country to economic stagnation, isolation, endemic corruption and to forget human rights were ever a thing. Oh, yeah - the history books would have recorded him as a ruthless, expansionist autocrat ruling over a kleptocratic state. But a relatively successful piece of shit as those kind of monsters go. Now he is going to go down as the guy who ultimately over-reached and shattered Russia for a generation. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/167 "2022-10-14T18:14:29Z")
Seriously. He just could not leave it alone. He had to keep poking at it. Idiot. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/168 "2022-10-14T19:33:26Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Putin won in 2014 and did so handily. He had been winning all along - Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea. He could have sat pat and nobody would have done shit about it. More or less that same could be said of Hitler- Austria, and The Sudetenland. Fascist Dictators are like that. And Putin is a Fascist. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2022, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/169 "2022-10-15T02:48:11Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > I’ve got a few Nigerian princes who need your help transferring large sums of money out of their country that would like to contact you via email for your banking information for anyone buying [Heinrich Severloh’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh) fairytale. Total American casualties at Omaha beach on D-Day were 2,400 along a 5-mile front. Quoting the introductory paragraph from wiki rather than the part where he describes his fairytale: Even if he had caused 1,000 casualties, it would have been among the biggest news of the day. The Allies made their share of mistakes during the war, but throwing that many soldiers blindly into one machinegun next was not one of the. Anyone who has read much about WWII should know the improbability of that clam by comparing it to other battles where troops did get slaughtered en mass. One of the bloodiest couple of nights in the Pacific War came when Japanese Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi threw 6200+ IJA soldiers against the Marines dug around the airfield in Guadalcanal, at [the Battle of Edson’s Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Edson%27s_Ridge). The Japanese did their infamous night charges, drawing machinegun fire from many Marines. Even then, it was 800 to 850 Japanese KIA over two nights over the 1100 feet of the ridge, and these kills included those from artillery. ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2022, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104/170 "2022-10-15T02:58:13Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > > [@SunUp](#): > > > > Thanks to inflation and crime fears, Republicans win big in next month’s elections. They start making noises about impeachment (not going to happen) and a government shutdown unless wasteful expenditures to support Ukraine militarily are curtailed. > > This. Because Putin owns most of them. correct me if wrong, but the whole lend/lease figure allows Biden to bypass the house … or so I heard … so I am not that clear on how a potential R - win would impact any help eager to learn more from the 'muricans on the board [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-russia-accomplish-with-more-soldiers-w-o-heavy-military-equipment/972104.md?page=8)