JamesNoBrakes

It's the age old problem of taking land and "winning over the population". The first is easy if you throw enough resources at it. I have no doubt Russia could flatten the country in a matter of hours if they wanted to. But they know that's a line they cannot cross without the rest of the world getting involved and a real WWIII situation breaking out. So they are trying to conduct a limited war and hoping they can just outlast the Ukrainians and they will "let go" of their occupied territories. They misjudged the resistance and will of both the Ukraine and the rest of the world on this matter, so there's not a great option to save face. Military analysis I've seen say Ukraine is in a better position with recruiting personnel to fight in the short term, more people available, so they need to use the momentum and take as much territory as possible. Russia on the other hand has a much longer spool up time to get conscripts trained and fielded, but in all likelihood this is what they do, half-assing the effort until either the Ukrainians just give up or they run out of their own "public" support.

rickair7777

Logistics principles relative to a mechanized land war in Europe really haven't changed much since 1939.

1. He needs enough stuff staged in RU to support his intentions.
2. He needs to be able to transport that from friendly territory, through potentially contested territory, to the front lines.
3. He needs to protect it enroute.

I think the log failure was more due to wholesale corruption and incompetence, which Putin was not aware of because it went all the way to his top boys, who naturally had to hide that. Maybe multiple layers of his mil bureaucracy didn't have good SA on the layers below them, so the problem compounded badly by the time it got to the tactical forces.

I also think the largest failure was actually that of poor joint/combined warfighting... unlike logistics that HAS changed dramatically since WW2. If he had done that right he might have rolled up all of UR in a week (like the US did in Iraq once or twice). But that's graduate-level skills, and again corruption obviously prevented RU forces from training they way they *should* have. The UR forces have been trained on that by the west since 2014, and they obviously sat up straight, paid attention, and took it seriously.

Corruption again? But I have to believe that the RU intel community badly misread what the western backlash and resolve would look like... it's not like RU doesn't know what our capabilities are, it seems like the RU headshed simply concluded that we wouldn't provide detailed intel assistance down to the tactical level, and copious advanced munitions, to UR. Oops.

I didn't think he'd invade UR because I didn't think he and his boys could be that stupid or disconnected from reality. I was wrong, they were.

Mesabah

No, Putin wants to make the BRICS the number 1 world power by monopolizing the resources they supply.

TransWorld

The better Ukraine and the rest of the world makes it tougher on Putin, and hopefully wins, the more it will reduce the chances Xi Jinping will seriously consider invading Taiwan.

rickair7777

You thought Putin had a logistics problem... ROTFLMAO

But I agree, the western backlash can not be encouraging to the CCP.

flyprdu

Hey wingedbeast, how's that boot taste?

threeighteen

China has no right to Taiwan. Taiwan however has a legitimate right to China. The ROC is still the legitimate Chinese government, the PRC is still the communist rebel government.

Elevation

While I agree with your sentiment, the United States stopped officially recognizing the ROC as the government of China and does officially recognize the PRC and its CCP leadership. Recognizing the Beijing government started with and was a big result of Nixon's 1972 visit to China. We officially stopped recognizing the ROC as China in 1979.

Hubcapped

In order to fully understand your position, what basis are you utilizing to justify your claims that Russia and China have legitimate rights to Ukraine and ROC respectively?

rickair7777

The Taiwan situation is very much in the eye of the beholder. The way the USG looks at it is this...

Taiwan is a territorial part of China. We would oppose an attempt by say Spain to invade and annex the island. We would also not support an attempt by the ROC to "merge" with another nation so as to secure their independence from Beijing. Say if they tried to become a prefect of Japan or ROK. Also we would not entertain a request for Taiwan to join the US as the 51st state... although if the PRC started a big war, who knows what might happen after the dust settles. Those are just hypothetical examples, no basis in reality.

We also do not recognize any inherent right of the CCP to rule Taiwan, although we do recognize the CCP as the mainland sovereign.

Our attitude is that the internal relation between Taiwan and the mainland (aka "China" and "East China" lol) needs to be settled peacefully and by mutual agreement between the two parties. We would certainly let ROC join the PRC if they legitimately chose to do so (they won't, the ROC leaders and upper crust of society are too afraid of the gulag).