Trolls & bots fail to understand or accept that Russia is anything but infinite and inevitable - but numbers are numbers. They’ve spent half of their entire Soviet inheritance to steal what they sit on today. The war doesn’t end when they get to zero vehicles. The half they’ve squandered is surely the BETTER half, and they still need an army for territorial defense and internal repression. Ukraine is not about the break, and this is probably the best position Russia is ever going to be in. This is the endgame of this messy, abusive Divorce, and Pootz has to come up with some whopper lies to say it was all worthwhile.
They seem to have run out of tanks about a year ago. They of course have thousands left, but they now have to consider the risk that a tank might be destroyed today and thus not usable tomorrow. They still use tanks, and lose a few, but they no longer take risks with tanks without considering the costs and so they don’t use nearly as many as they used to because they want to preserve those they have left.
We generally expect the same is happened to artillery about now, though we don’t know exactly when. They get to choose how many they will risk.
Whether they have run ‘out’ is moot. They’ve squandered their BEST, at any rate, and aren’t bothering to use what remains, and that’s kind of the point. Saying that it’s ‘half gone’ is the same as saying it’s ALL gone in the context of trying to conquer ukraine. You have to keep a fleet available for credible border defense, future offensive operations (which are now probably off the books) and internal oppression of your own population. And as you say - both in terms of armor and artillery - even if you have remaining stockpiles, you can’t sustain this burn rate, and each piece you move forward is less effective that the one it replaced, both in terms of age, utility and the caliber of who’s left operating it.
Capabilties degrade when you piss away your army in a sunk cost fallacy revenge project.
I have had the understanding since already around summer 2022, that the Russia is completely all-in. Putin sees it so that the Russian Federation equals Putin. For him the loss of his junta means the death of the Russia. If not putting everything in play means your junta will be toppled (that is, in your eyes: Your country will be destroyed for good), then you will absolutely put everything in use. After all, what use is it that you’ve saved some tanks in storage if your country gets destroyed for good?
They might hold on to a part of their tanks for a couple of months or so, but quite soon they will be on the front as well.
Consider that they are rational and greedy. Like gangster barbarians, which they pretty much are, the only difference being they traded fur pelts for tailored suits. The smartest among them realizes that the project has failed, and that only hubris is keeping them going, hoping for something - anything - to change. But if having practical control over the obese, octogenarian U.S. president isn’t enough to extract a favorable peace, then it’s hard to see what else could possibly create a strategic win for Russia.
Why would they not fight to the last man, tank and artillery piece?
Because even now, life is worth living for the perverted gangster ghouls in charge. They haven’t really lost anything personally significant. There is no opposition, and they can still live comfortably by Russian oligarch standards. Their biggest fear is each other.
You still need an army for token territorial defense and internal oppression. Russia is run by their intelligence services, after all. They’re not fighting to the last man. They are already in negotiations with a position growing weaker by the day.
and Pootz has to come up with some whopper lies to say it was all worthwhile.
I think that it largely is oriented around the whole of NATO being trying to attack Russia and Russia trying to defend itself.
Could be. The recent, obvious strategy of flying drones and jets blatantly into NATO airspace has some purpose behind it. It seems foolhardy to invite NATO to attack Russia, but in that case, you’d probably see a much more explicit level of support from China, including direct military support/aid or even Chinese military intervention. On balance, I think the probing nature of those recent incidents is just to test the political response of NATO, see if they’re really willing to take action over transgressions in Poland, Romania & the Baltics.
I don’t read much Russian media, but from what I’ve seen of Russian political cartoons and translated TV over the war, the “NATO is attacking us” thing is a theme.
Some of it related to where Russia had made a blunder and had a poor military outcome. My guess is that it’s maybe politically acceptable in Russia to lose a battle against NATO or something, but not against Ukraine, that the latter is a humilliation or something like that. After Ukraine did its Kursk offensive into Russia, I saw a bunch of material like that. Material all about how it must have been the US or UK who planned it. shrugs I was thinking “I’d be more worried about the actual offensive”, but TV was more worried about establishing that Ukraine couldn’t manage something like this.
That chauvanism makes a lot of sense, that it is unacceptable to admit even a stalemate versus a presumed “little brother” inferior race. But - what are your options? Are they willing to lose ALL face AND remaining military might in an actual, sustainted battle with NATO? With what objective? To get your ass kicked just enough to say that it’s okay you lost to the full weight of NATO, versus admitting you put your dick in a woodchipper in Ukraine?
The thing they’re actually best at is corrosive lies. Lies are the very language of Russia - if they stopped fighting today and simply claimed glorious triumph over the combined forces of NATO, the population would on the whole accept it and be thankful the whole damn thing is if not over - at least paused. I don’t think it suits them to ACTUALLY fight NATO, if all you’re looking to gain is an excuse for losing.
So - why keep fighting? <free shrugs>, other than the old chestnut of sunk cost fallacy. No wars are infinite, especially at this intensity in terms of resource and human life consumtpion. Russia seems to figure there is still something to gain from slugging on. Whatever that is, who knows. They’re putting a LOOOOOOOOT of resources into fueling right wing populists across the globe and it does appear to be working well enough to continue. Whether that matters on the battlefield of Ukraine in a time scale that aligns with Putin’s remaining life span is a whole other question.
What I’d close with re: “why keep fighting” is this: Russia knows that their campaign of terror bombing civilians and pushing small infiltration teams forward isn’t a great long term strategy for territorial occupation. Pootz said recently “wherever we put a russian boot is OURS!”. That is a childish and absurd thing to say, but - he is a big boy who said it for a reason. In that clumsy attempt to redfine what it takes to legitimize spoils of war, it maybe reveals that they know that their current strategy does not achieve their objectives. Fine - you can push small groups of men into farm fields and abandoned villages very slowly. But what good is that if Ukraine can almost certainly kill them all EVENTUALLY with drones, artillery, snipers, etc. Infiltration isn’t a great occupation strategy.
So - keep fighting, until…something else happens. That’s always been the russian way. Keep dying, in massive numbers, until something else happens. The problem with their history is that that ‘something’ is often a revolution that overthrows the current government.
I keep repeating this, but I’ll repeat it again:
I believe at this point Putin already knows the Russia has lost, but he also understands that what comes after the war is worse for the Russia than anything this war can possibly offer.
90 000 soldiers returning from Afghanistan to USSR with 300 million inhabitants caused the absolute clusterfuck that the 1990’s in the Russia were. Those soldiers, gotten used to violence, were a horror. They are what was the base that gave birth to the internationally famously violent Russian mafia back then.And now there aren’t going to be 90 000 soldiers returning, but 700 000. And not to a country of 300 million, but to a country of 140 million. That’s a 15-fold problem in comparison to population size compared to the end of 1980’s and the 1990’s. They’re gonna have the 1990’s again, only multiplied by 15. And because the soldiers are now much more cruel yet than the Soviets were in Afghanistan, the multiplier should actually be even higher than “mere” 15.
Putin can get the Russians to stay in the war for another half a year or year by talking NATO NATO NATO blah blah. It’s several months more time before the onset of an absolute mayhem unheard of even in the Russia. Eventually the war will end, the soldiers will return home and, well, streets in all cities will have twelve bandits per hundred metres.
I believe it would still make more sense for almost everybody in the Russia to let the mayhem begin sooner than later, because if they wait more, it will be even crazier. It’s already at the point where the only thing that can be done is for local groups to arise, and basically become independent countries, then denouncing the “heroes” and starting to actively protect their own area from the returning orcs. The Russia cannot do this, but Tatarstan can, and Republic of Sakha can. The earlier they end the war, the less people they will lose, and the more refineries and such they will have left.
Anyway: Putin knows he’s lost the war. He just wants to delay the inevitable as much as possible. If you assume this, the rest actually starts making a lot of sense.
China must be loving this…
No doubt. Wihout expending a single soldier’s life or piece of equipment, they got promoted to undisputed master of the axis of authoritarian nightmare shitholes, can demand ANYTHING from russia going forward and won’t be refused. They solved all their water, resource and mineral needs for a century or more, have gained strategic access to the North Pacific, which China has n-e-v-e-r ever had in history. Russia has become the junior vassal resource yard for China’s next century of growth. Now they have to solve their demographic problems, or it won’t matter much.
Putin will end up being the worst russian in history, which is REALLY an accomplishment. The man who gave the country away to China, pissed away the entire inheritance of the USSR, destroyed their primary export markets for a vanity revenge project.
What if they visit the middle aisle of Aldi though?
Don’t worry, we’ve left some diving fins and an electric scooter as decoys while we relocate most of the strategically useful inventory to Lidl
With the immense power contained within the kid’s activity books, seasonal candle holder, and random baking sheets they find, Russia will be unstoppable!
They might find some of Aldi’s nuts.
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If this were a board game, now is precisely the time that China would push into Siberia all the way to the Western edge of the Urals, and there’s not much Russia could do about it short of nukes.
short of nukes
That is a very big thing Russia could do about it.
Russia doesn’t have any working nukes. If it did, it would have thrown one at Ukraine. And nobody would give a fuck about it - neither the US nor any other nuclear power would get into it over Ukraine getting nuked. Am ukrainian, before y’all talk any shiz.
Russia has thousands of nukes. No doubt they aren’t in the best shape ever but they don’t need all of them to work. And there’s no way they’d nuke Ukraine. The rest of the world would ostracize them. You’re just wrong.
Have you seen these nukes? Do you believe the russians at face value?
That’s a pretty big bet that no country would ever be prepared to make. That’s like gambling the guy who broke into your home doesn’t have any bullets in his gun
If I am punching the guy that broke into my house in the balls repeatedly and he doesn’t shoot me, he either has no bullets or no gun.
This is a horrible take; russia underspent on their army (with current results) to upgrade and refurbish the nuclear forces.
The trick is that the money for the nukes was stolen. Nukes have value as a boogey-man and the russians expected everybody to be scared of the idea that they had nukes. You seem to believe them on this front.
Well yes, I am a sane person who watched a nuclear program, monitored by outside observers, be refurbished.
What, you got a really cool youtube video I have to see?
lol what?
Which would assure their complete and total destruction. Of course nukes are a big thing. They’re the LAST thing.
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If you wanted it.
Does Russia want it? I mean there’s like a slice that’s good human temps, but otherwise it’s just generally gross climate.
It’s got lots of electrolytes.
I wonder… what has become of those who first gave Pootin the “two weeks” figure?
Honestly - I think that’s probably what anyone would say to a Mad King. They honestly probably thought that life is too good to screw it up - that he wouldn’t actually invade and ruin the whole damn party. The intelligence services and siloviki (baron merchant oligarchs) were all fat, rich and controlled a huge, fairly rich country life a mafia. Why screw it all up? For the vanity of a wicked old perverted gangster ghoul.
Good time to invade.
