People in Britain who think they are governed by fools should take a closer look at the Russian and US presidents. Vladimir Putin is systematically ruining his country. His war of choice in Ukraine is an economic, financial, geopolitical and human calamity for Russia that worsens by the day. For his own murky reasons, Donald Trump, another national menace, offered him a lifeline last week. Yet Putin spurned it. These two fools deserve each other.
On the table in Moscow was a “peace” deal that, broadly speaking, rewarded Russia’s aggression by handing over large chunks of Ukrainian land, compromised Kyiv’s independence and weakened its defences against any future attack. The Trump deal, if forced through, would have split the US and Europe; ruptured Nato, perhaps fatally; reprieved Russia’s pariah economy; and probably toppled Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government.
These are key Russian war aims. But Putin, suffering from neo-imperial fantasies and legacy issues, said “no”. He reckons he can get it all, and more, by fighting on. He has persuaded the idiot Trump that Russia’s victory is inevitable – and that scheming Europeans are the real warmongers. Yet his premise is fundamentally flawed. Hard facts confound him. Almost four years on, he’s still trapped in Donbas mud and ice. And at home, things fall apart.
Pretty solid and good read. Also love the last paragraph.
Ukraine: are we a joke to you?
Don’t worry everyone if Russias economy collapses our American economy will help them out, nothing bad will ever come out of this…
People in Britain who think they are governed by fools should take a closer look at the Russian and US presidents.
That bigger fools exist doesn’t stop your fools from screwing up too.
Two fools don’t make a lesser fool.
Fucking good. I’m tired of the petty North Atlantic and Arctic sabotage missions. Ukraine can keep hitting oil refineries and eventually they won’t be able to afford to buy foreign fuel.
You know that’s hilarious after another post from the same news paper says that we are now aligned with Putin’s plan for the future.
So yes we are killing them but I’m reality we are helping them and killing ourselves. Yay.
Fuck maga fuck the pedos of the GOP for being traitors to the US. They should be hanged. Billionaires should also be hanged.
But oh well, one last thing the US is coming for the dual citizenship in the US. People are gonna have less opportunity to leave once the shit falls off the fan.
You know that’s hilarious after another post from the same news paper says that we are now aligned with Putin’s plan for the future.
Really not that different than Israel when you think about it
It’s an opinion piece. It’s not uncommon for newspapers to run conflicting opinion pieces.
Sucks to suck, Vlad.
I hope Putin is discovered while fleeing, and promptly suffers the divine plight of kings…
Really, all dictators should end up this way.
the war has “dramatically improved” the incomes of 20% of Russians, it is hugely socially divisive. “For the bulk of Russians, real incomes have fallen by 16% to 42%,”
Like most wars, this is why they tend to go on so long - because those that are making the most money from the war, reinvest some of it to keep the war going as long as possible. After all, they aren’t paying the price in money or blood, they just collect the spoils.
Putin’s readiness to risk the lives and wellbeing of ordinary Russians is only too evident, symbolised by the cynical signing-up fees and death benefits paid to infantry volunteers from poor rural areas – whose average frontline life expectancy is 12 days.
This is what will eventually end the war - they will simply run out of draftees, or the people will finally get sick of sacrificing their sons to advance corruption, and revolt, although that could be tough with any fighting-age men off getting slaughtered less than two weeks after joining. We may see something crazy like a Mother’s Rebellion, with a million mothers marching on the Kremlin and taking it over. It would be pretty tough to get Russian soldiers to fire on their own mothers.
the people will finally get sick of sacrificing their sons
This is what happened in the US with Iraq and Afghanistan, arguably similar forever-wars instigated to benefit a few. But holy fuck, it took nearly two decades.
I don’t know about that, I wasn’t hearing too many calls to end the over the number of soldiers being killed. Casualties were fairly low in the 9/11 wars, compared to Vietnam, which had 55,000 deaths in about a decade.
Calls to end the war over the high body count were much, MUCH, louder in the Vietnam era, to the point that it became a political liability beyond the young protesters. That’s why they finally abolished the draft, then probably would have left soon anyway, if they hadn’t been chased out by the North Vietnamese.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, there seemed to be more outrage over the amount of money that was being wasted to keep a war going with no real agenda or final objective. After a while it gets hard for Republicans to complain about the National Debt when they are wasting trillions of dollars on wars over nothing.
We may see something crazy like a Mother’s Rebellion, with a million mothers marching on the Kremlin and taking it over.
Thankfully, Putin has already aimed to prevent this since Second Chechnya by refusing to use Conscripts exactly for this reason.
Even the Ukrainians admitted that the Russians have refused to send conscripts into Ukraine.
A Mother’s Rebellion is far more likely to occur in Ukraine due to Busification.
It would be pretty tough to get Russian soldiers to fire on their own mothers.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Those who would refuse to fire would get shot. Now they may not try very hard to aim well, but still.
False hope title.
The modern internet and media age in a nutshell: “Everything you believe in is succeeding and your enemies are getting DESTROYED with facts and logic.”
Scary
Yep. It’s far from over for Putin. Got really lucky with Trump, and with slow and divided EU. Plus Gaza genocide to avert the attention. Still ain’t over but i feel Ukraine is on the ropes. I hope they prove me wrong.
None of the circumstances you mentioned were luck. Trump is his patsy, Trump is closely aligned with Israel (Netanyahu), and Russia is a primary instigator of European discord. His international game is on point.
The election of Trump was lucky. He helped but it was not like he knew trump would win.
News websites need to stop saying Russia’s economy is crashing, I feel like I’ve read this headline 100 times over the last 3 years. It’s the wartime economy of a petro-state, they don’t need that many outside buyers of their oil to make their highly controlled domestic wartime production work. Traditional global indicators of economic health shouldn’t be applied for as long as this continues, claiming otherwise is just false hope and a poor excuse for providing less help to Ukraine.
We just need to keep up the pressure, and to do that America needs to either shut the fuck up and keep out of it, or come back into the fold
shut down the shadow fleet
end the war
If all American foreign policy just disappeared the world would be at a net positive overnight - and it’s not even close.
3 years of us arming Ukraine, encouraging them to NOT negotiate (when they had much better position to previously than they do now), and then abandoning them once we finished dumping all our weapons. America was proud to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Russia is like the bullie that punches you in the face.
America is like the bullie that spends weeks pretending to be your friend just so they can steal your lunch money, humiliate you in front of your friends, and then push you into the other bullie that’ll punch you in the face for bumping into them.
Also, Trump just puts a blunt face to what America has always been. Foreign wars in this country are bipartisan. Ukraine would be just as fucked if Harris was president. She’d just have a better narrative for it to make Americans feel less guilty for the fucked up way we treat our “allies”.
they still have potentially 70million men, they arnt running out of that.
But how many are willing to fight?
Been waiting for Russia to collapse since 2014ish
Might outlast the US.
Couldn’t care less if they all fall. The only good thing about the US is they speak the same language as me.
Also Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson
You make an excellent point.
I do hope that, when the US fractures, Caloreginton will continue to provide good work for talented people in entertainment. Or at least a plane ticket to Hollywood North.
We will still speak the same language and Scarlett Johansson would still exist presumably if the US collapses. Hell depending on how it collapses it may even result in more good things popping out of it’s former territories, kinda like how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. wouldn’t exist without the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hell of a trade lmao that’s like saying the 2008 crash was good because we got a cool movie out of it
All empires collapse it’s moreso what you get out of themwhen they do that matters. Frankly I’d say the collapse of the United States will be ultimately good in the long run.
Fuck the US deal. Handing large parts of Ukraine to the russia. Fuck tRump.
I’ve been hearing the same since the start of the war - Russia is running out of weapons, economy is collapsing etc. but here we are, Russia still kicking Ukraine’s ass and sending hundreds of drones and plenty of missiles each day. Russia is resilient plus help from NK, China and Iran - I doubt they will collapse anytime soon. But even if they collapse, who will get the helm? Will it be better for Ukraine? World?
I think you’re being abrasive about it, but are making a decent point.
Yes, lots of clickbait exaggerated Russia’s fragility. Some actual analysts underestimated certain aspects of Russia.
And Russia won many geopolitical dice rolls:
- Trump won.
- Europe is still bickering internally.
- India bought their oil for a long time.
- China stayed tolerant.
- Wagner coup failed, but only barely.
And so on.
There are some nasty, ambitious figures in Russian politics apparently “reigned in” by Putin now. If he’s deposed… what happens? Do we get a Russia fractured by warlords armed with Soviet warheads? I’d much rather see it vassalized by China or something.
And yeah, at the end of the day this is the physically largest country on Earth, backed by the most populous, invading a tiny one. Endless war is utterly catastrophic for the Russian people, but (if the US basically withdraws from NATO and Europe keeps being Europe), they are on an extremely slow track to grind down Ukraine and claim the ashes :(
Anyway, you should read ISW’s reports on the war:
https://www.understandingwar.org/
They have a quite grounded take. And from the even before the war started (when forces massed on the border), they’ve been warning that Russia has the political power to grind on. They tried to warn policymakers about the clickbait.
India bought their oil for cheap and kept lowering the price and paid them in rupees not dollars so they had to spend that money in India.
Yeah, they are still able to trade with China (which happens to make everything anyway), and as opposed to most countries, Russia can still draw on a lot of the remaining Soviet infrastructure that was specifically built because Russia needed to be self sufficient during the cold war.
As long as Putin can manage to remain in power Russia can keep this war going.
Not for much longer. While they may have the equipment but they are lacking the most important thing: manpower. They already lost a huge amount of men and they can’t really conscript more since that will just make the collapse come faster. All those men, dead, or fighting are just people that can’t work and pay taxes, can’t start families. It’s a productivity and demographic disaster. It’s unsustainable and you don’t need an economics degree to see it.
Though I suspect the reason Putin is keeping the war going is because he has no choice. He was offered one of the best peace deals by the US and they refused it. Why? Because Putin is scared. Once the war ends a lot of angry men with combat experience are going to return home. And those men will look at how the war was run, how some people were safe while they died in the mud. That’s just a revolution waiting to happen. It has happened before, World War 1 veterans overthrew the Kaiser in Germany and installed the Weimar republic. The 1917 Russian revolution was started by WW1 veterans. Hitler was a WW1 veteran and he tapped into the anger of other veterans to help him gain power early on.
russia is also a war economy, thier lackluster economy prior to war, is pretty much ruined, he has no choice.
Manpower is a bigger issue for Ukraine compared to Russia. Ukraine is at least not doing human wave tactics and doing more to keep their guys alive, but Russia can last longer in that aspect as well.
I do agree that Putin can’t stop the war for anything less than complete victory, otherwise people will start asking questions about why this was necessary as you said.
Ukraine is at least not doing human wave tactics
Neither does the Russians
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russia still has hordes of undesirables, ethnic russians to draw from. i wonder if he targets the more remote /nomadic tribes in siberia.
That’s exactly what’s been happening. Pootin lures the poverty stricken people of the tiny repressed republics, with huge (to them) sign on bonuses, so a huge proportion of the casualties comes from these people. The chuds in Moscow and St Pete’s are Pootangs base, so he doesn’t mobilize those, and it’s also where all the mineral wealth from those republics goes. The Moscow state is a colonialist power, oppressing and raping all around them, while giving nothing back in return, and that particular political situation is very explosive. Those republics don’t want to be ruzzian any more, and who can blame them? Ruzzia is only held together by military force and right now, the mighty midget Pootin, has his pants down around his ankles, and he’s trying hard to not bend over.
1.2 MILLION dead ruzzians
According to Ukrainian MoD perhaps. Here are more realistic numbers.
You might enjoy all the ruzzian assaults on motorbikes against fortified positions,
Russia and Ukraine use ATVs and civilian vehicles such as motorbikes for last mile resupply; these vehicles are sometimes used for assaults but that is not their main purpose.
In many cases, assaults are conducted utilizing BMPs and tanks as per standard Russian Motorized Rifle doctrine.
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they are lacking the most important thing: manpower.
This is a problem that Ukraine suffers, not Russia.
they can’t really conscript more since that will just make the collapse come faster.
What are you talking about? Conscripts aren’t even being used in the Special Military Operation in the first place, even according to the Ukrainians.
It seems so, indeed.
Yeah, but that means you’ll never find a flushing toilet outside of Moscow or St Pete’s, like ever! The midget dictator Pootang has spent all of ruzzia’s treasure bombing hospitals, and given away any future that you ruzzian peasants might have hoped for. Ruzzians will live in the mud forever. Deservedly.
Wow what a great person
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Ruzzia is a grey, third world toilet, that will be paying reparations forever once they finish losing.
Worked great against Germany after world war 1.
Yeah, but no-one cares about ruzzia, it’s a bunghole country. Germany eventually got it’s shit together, and is a very respected, valuable member of humanity again. ruzzia isn’t capable of that because it only has sheep who need to be told what to blindly do between vodka shots and smokes, assuming that they don’t destroy themselves by smoking next to a gas storage tank. Ruzzia should learn to package mediocrity for export, because that’s all they do well. Oh wait, they are already exporting that… !
Russia still has plenty of customers for their exports and they won’t lose any territory after this is over.
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Its so cringe to assume any realistic comment is Russian. Its clear from your comments in this thread you have no idea what’s happening. You must get only feel good stories like the one op posted.
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Do you genuinely think im russian or support russia? I hate Russia. I wish they were losing. I am happy the war has slowed to a crawl but im not stupid enough to think its going well for Ukraine. You have no idea how moronic it looks to be gloating over the current situation as if Ukraine is about to crush Russia. So cringe
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Russia still kicking Ukraine’s ass
What, in your mind, is the attrition/casualty rate per kilometer of advancement by the Russian army?
I don’t think you’re getting information from an impartial news source.
What does that matter? Is Russia efficient? Probably not. Does Russia care about their casualties? Likely not. Are they throwing a ton of manpower and resources at Ukrainians? Yep. Are they advancing? Slowly, but yes, all over the front. If I have impartial news sources, please, show yours where it is shown that Ukraine is pushing Russians out instead. I’ll be more than happy to see those.
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They don’t need to push Russia out so long as Russia is losing far more men and equipment. This is a war of attrition and despite being far larger Russia is losing.
Fighting age men and equipment are finite resources.
They might gain ground now but Russia will be unable to hold it, assuming that the EU and US continue to back Ukraine.
OK, you are speaking like the Ukraine has infinite resources and tactically loosing ground just to deplete Russia. I’m sure that they have the plan to loose strategically important cities just for that.
US continue to back Ukraine? Please, do a reality check. While EU is only backing Ukraine halfheartedly and not even the entire EU.
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the Ukraine
You let the mask slip for a second there Sergei.
This is dumb. It’s dependant on the mother tongue how and if a definitive article is being used with Ukraine. In German for example, you say “die Ukraine”, and a natural translation into colloquial English results in the use of “the Ukraine”. This doesn’t mean to be a Sergei.
The US is still sending weapons. Check that reality.
Of course Ukraine doesn’t have infinite resources but they are spending theirs much more wisely.
Russia is already a pathetic shadow of its former self and its only downhill from here. Broke bitches thinking they’ll own Europe hah.
The US is still sending weapons. Check that reality.
US is selling weapons to European/NATO countries and even that is limited. On the other hand US is appeasing and siding with Putin wherever they can which speaks more than those profit from selling weapons.
Of course Ukraine doesn’t have infinite resources but they are spending theirs much more wisely.
Sure they do and at the same time they don’t have enough of those. What is the endgame here? Hoping that Russia collapses somehow before they conquer whatever they are set to?
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In English you say ‘losing’, not ‘loosing’. Hope that helps.
No this is the wrong takeaway. Russia is losing more than Ukraine on a day by day basis. But Ukraine is losing the attrition war.
Have you ever fought/served in an armed conflict?
The phrase “Russia is kicking Ukraine’s ass.”, to me, comes from someone who is, at best, an AirSoft cosplayer.
It’s hyperbolic propaganda at face value, and doesn’t match up with credible intelligence analysis reporting from news agencies both in and outside of NATO countries. The narrative spun by such hand-waiving talk is that casualty attrition rate per kilometer gained has no bearing on logistic or strategic capability.
Anyone who has been seriously involved with warfare knows that the casualty rates of the supposed 2nd/3rd most capable military in the world are appalling considering the relatively small size of the Ukrainian military. This is an absurd gamble Putin has made. The men lost now will not be there to finally take Kyiv.
On top of that, there’s very little to stop the PLA from rolling his entire South-Eastern flank and putting their giant dick in his puckered asshole. It’s convenient for them for the Russian Federation and NATO to be occupied so they may sell their influence with relative ease, and continue dicking with their other Asian neighbors.
Do you believe that the Ukrainians will just stop fighting after Kyiv has fallen, by the way?
I also don’t take the view that the Russian Federation is “losing”. The Ukrainians are certainly barely managing a desperate struggle for survival; their only hope is international military pressure from other geographic theaters of operations and/or a collapse of Putin’s regime. They must also try to keep engaging the invading forces in a war of maneuver instead of static defense with dwindling man-power and arms.
However, despite all of that, the Orcs are far from “kicking Ukraine’s ass”. If they were, in my opinion, we’d see Russian Federation flags a few kilometers outside of Kyiv, and even more probing of Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, and Finnish airspaces.
I had to say something. The bullshit of “Russia is kicking Ukraine’s ass,” is too strong of an odor to ignore.
Haven’t they been liquidating good reserves just to make ends meet?
In the first 2 years, we waited for use of armoured vehicles to hit their monthly rate of production. This has largely happened, the reserves of armour that USSR built up have been spent by Russia. Vehicles that still stand in parking lots require deep renovation (slow and costly). So this prediction has largely come true.
In the first 3 years, we waited for Russia’s sovereign wealth fund to empty, ending Putin’s ability to shelter the economy against the cost of war. This now seems to have largely happened, as the central bank is selling reserves of gold. It follows that more appropriate things to sell are scarce.
We also waited for Russia’s inventory of civilian planes and railway locomotives + carriages to degrade due to lack of spare parts. This has not fully come true. Planes fly less, railways transport less, but they smuggle spare parts from third countries.
We have waited for Russia’s oil and gas revenues to fall, and they have fallen, considerably. At current levels, under Ukrainian “sanctions by drone”, Russia has to cut other budget lines to finance the war - and it has cut or frozen other budget lines (social security, health care, education, almost everything - war makes up approximately 40% of the government budget).
We have waited for the wages of soldiers to drop, and for soldiers to understand that inflation will make the money they got worthless. This has only partly happened - several regions have announced that they cannot pay large one-time compensations to people going to war.
We have waited for a crisis in Russia’s economy, and in some sectors there already is a crisis. Purchases of new cars, real estate and agricultural equipment have fallen sharply. Many companies have reduced work weeks (reduced pay), owe employees wages, or cannot service their debts.
If Putin overplays his hand and economy does collapse, this does not automatically mean his replacement. He’s a dictator and has a KGB background, he knows to expect rebellions and can supress them. He knows to expect a coup and may prevent one.
Eventually he’ll be replaced. We can’t influence or predict the personal characteristics of his successor, but whoever replaces him will very surely want to end the war, and doesn’t have to save face while doing that.
However, Levada’s polls - arguably the only polls which could indicate the real state of Russian society - do not indicate the ground shifting yet. They indicate that people are universally tired of the war, but not yet willing to end it by returning land to Ukraine.
For example, the “country is going in the right direction” indicator currently stands at 65%. Surfing on waves of war propaganda, it topped at 75% last year (rising from a low of 48% before the war - explains why Putin needed the war - to secure his own power), but it’s in a downward trend.
So, sadly, propaganda is still working, but it’s not working as well as it used to. In the “battle of the fridge and TV” (for people’s opinion) sadly the TV still prevails.
Eventually he’ll be replaced. We can’t influence or predict the personal characteristics of his successor, but whoever replaces him will very surely want to end the war, and doesn’t have to save face while doing that.
One thing I learned reading the ISW’s reports (especially around the Wagner coup attempt) is that Putin is apparently a moderate in Russian politics. There are some regional leaders I might honestly prefer Putin to.
If you think of Kadyrov, he’s visibly very unwell. Watched a video of him condemning a Ukrainian drone strike recently. Barely keeps his eyes open and reads like a robot.
If you think of Kadyrov
Yeah, the Chechen guy.
he’s visibly very unwell
I don’t wish sickness on folks, but honestly, that’ll help me sleep easier. What he says in public is scary.
