Excargodog

Might as well save them for more permissive environments...

https://i.ibb.co/R0L20Tw/IMG-7240.jpghttps://ibb.co/T8zc8M3]https://i.ibb.co/R0L20Tw/IMG-7240.jpg[/url]

Sliceback

I'm surprised he's not organizing a parade for Putin's house cleaning. That's what strong men do!

Lowslung

Excargo and I obviously have differing ideas of what "doing well" means for the Ukrainians. Let me be clear: I willingly concede that the Ukrainians remain the underdogs here. The Russians hold many of the advantages that matter. Quite frankly, they should have overrun Kiev within days of starting their "special military operation" that was originally billed as "just a training exercise". Remember those days Excargo? So to me, "doing well" means holding off a massively advantaged enemy for weeks, months, and now years, and making them pay dearly for every inch of territory they intend to hold. We have seen first hand (unfortunately from the losing side at times) that a population eventually gets tired of seeing its boys wasted on questionable objectives in foreign lands. The Russians are learning the same hard lesson. We've seen first hand that an invaded population will fight with all its heart to reclaim what's theirs, knowing that the superior force will get tired and eventually leave. Again, Russia is learning this hard lesson. Yes, the Russians have the advantage and it's entirely possible they will continue to make gains on the battlefield. But it's going to be a long slog and they are going to pay for every inch. Even when they think they've secured a piece of land, insurgents will pop up and make life hell for the rear echelons & supply chains. An invaded population will keep this up for years. And we should give the Ukrainians all the help they need along the way. Firstly, because it's the right thing to do. Secondly, because every minute the Russians spend mired in Ukraine is a minute that they aren't threatening Poland or Lithuania or Czechia. Every T-90, Su-35, or infantryman they lose is one more that won't be threatening their neighbors and, frankly, if you believe Russia's neighbors are not North America's problem, you're a moron either unable to understand the most basic tenets of geopolitics, or, more likely, you've willingly bought the Russian talking points in a pathetic pursuit of petty perceived personal political gain.

MaxQ

Indeed.

Ukraine wins by not losing.
Just like Viet Nam and the French, then the USA.
Just like Afghanistan and the USSR, then the USA.

The first two lines of the Polish National Anthem translate to:
"Poland has not yet perished,
So long as we still live."
(Referring to the dark days of being partitioned).

This opening stanza illustrates what Putin's version of history, and the concept of "little Russians", is up against. This ethos of 'we're still here. we are not Russian. we will no longer submit to criminals.'
When Zelensky said "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition" Russia had already lost.
Putin is a Slav. Deep down, he knows it as well.

Excargodog

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but only time will tell. But it's clear that Ukraine has sustained enormous damage and equally clear that they were not in terribly good shape to begin with - certainly not in terms of demographics. They hit their peak population of about 52 million in 1992.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-m...%20from%202020.

with about 25% of those people being Russian speaking. But they had already bled down to about 45 million people before the Russians took Crimea through a combination of one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, a lot of outward migration, and the relatively high mortality of an aged population.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...on-in-ukraine/

It is estimated that the current fertility rate in Ukraine is only about 0.7 children per woman and that is the lowest rate in the last 300 years, well below China's rate when they were enforcing the one child policy. While the war has precluded a recent census, current estimates of Ukraine population are as low as 29 million.

https://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-...cial%20Studies

Needless to say, a population of 29 million and a fertility rate of 0.7 to not presage a huge population increase in the future. And the longer UK refugees live as refugees in the rest of the EU, Canada, and elsewhere, the fewer are likely to return. From a demographic perspective even an advantageous exchange rate - that is, three times as many Russian deaths per Ukraine death, simply isn't enough to upset that. Now demographics aren't destiny, but as far as manpower is concerned it runs pretty damn close. And the longer this goes on, the more damage the country sustains, the more people are going to leave and the ones that leave will be disproportionately the women and kids, the very people that the Ukraine can least afford to lose. I don't see time as favoring the Ukraine, even if this were a stalemate which currently it is not.

Your opinion may differ - you are entitled to that - but mine remains that the Ukraine needs to cut the best peace deal they can get and the sooner the better. Their dreams of restoring their country to its internationally recognized borders appear to me to be unrealistic.

METO Guido

Perception bias. They claim it for themselves. Not entirely dissimilar to another strip of dirt used to be called Palestine. As you say, we don’t live in a bubble. Get on with it or walk away. Cut, cut, cut.

Excargodog

The war in the Ukraine - like most wars - is a learning experience. And it's not just a learning experience for Ukraine. It's a learning experience for NATO as well. The whole "force-multiplier" high tech weaponry movement has had multiple drivers. The "we can do more with less" is driven by a lot of factors but among those factors is high personnel costs in developed countries. In the US, personnel costs are at an historic high - consuming 25% of the DOD budget which doesn't even count VA spending.

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine....-historic-high

But unlike money spent on equipment, which may have a 25 year lifetime, or money spent on facilities, the direct personnel costs are a constant drain. That money is simply used up as far as the DOD is concerned. While yes, the do-more-with-less was also motivated by the desire to put fewer troops at risk, the main driver is that you simply wouldn't need as many personnel, as many facilities, or as much equipment to perform the same mission.

What Ukraine learned in their attempt at a counteroffensive and what the rest of NATO is going to school on is that the sort of combined force tactics we have been building our doctrine around - the "force-multiplier" concept - simply may not be possible against a near-peer adversary and that perhaps the failure of the much vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive that yielded little or nothing had nothing to do with any deficiency of the Ukrainians as much as just not being possible to execute in a near-peer environment. That the Ukrainians were right to abandon that doctrine despite the criticism they took for it, because they were there and could see it wasn't working.

In any event, a couple of articles worth perusing:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/02/air-defense-shapes-warfighting-in-ukraine.html

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/russias-battle-hardened-army-learning-very-bad-news-nato-3074506


Some excerpts:


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ReluctantEskimo

What per se, in your propaganda-addled mind, do you think that previous treaties were inadequate, and yet... a future treaty will be effective?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

Excargodog

What, in your propaganda addled mind makes you think that's an appropriate way to ask that question if you want a respectful answer? (Or that Wikipedia is a definitive source for anything?).

But I'll give you an answer anyway, one you won't like but I'll give you it respectfully anyway. And here is a better source than Wikipedia:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/t...s-obligations/

First of all a memorandum is NOT a legally binding agreement. It's a political statement of INTENTwhich can change at any time. That's not my opinion, that is long established by international law and US State Department policy.

https://2009-2017.state.gov/document...tion/65728.pdf

And I would refer you to the last page of that State Department document which specifically mentions that the obligations given to both the Ukrain and Georgia were in fact non-binding. Unless they had been formalized as a treaty and ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, they couldn't actually be legally binding, being rather a political statement on the part of the Bush and Clinton administrations toward the then-existing Ukraine government.

That brings up a large number of factors.

One is that the the current Ukraine government is NOT the government to whom those political promises were made. That government went away in Feb 2014 with the Maidan Revolution.
Another is that when Russia subsequently took the Crimea,in March of 2014, Obama opted not to make the political promise any big issue, commenting that Ukraine was more important to Russia than it was to the US.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/t...e-and-ukraine/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/11...georgia-biden/

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obama-ukraine-russia-putin-
219783

By doing so, he effectively renounced the treaty,leaving the only other signatory besides Ukraine to be the UK - the guys who have failed their last two Trident missile firings due to inadequate training of their own nuclear forces and who sure weren't going to take on Russia by themselves and basically did little:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speech...ions-in-crimea

Now if you are asking me if this was fair, Oh h€\\ no, and if I'd been advising Ukraine at the time I would have said get a formal treaty, ratified by the US Senate that Obama could not as easily have weaseled out of. Even then I'd have advised them to keep a limited nuclear deterrent - the equivalent of the UKs Trident force (albeit with hopefully better trained personnel) or France's Force de Frappe. Had they done that I doubt they would be in this position but both Bush (the elder) and later Clinton were hell bent to get every part of the old Soviet Union they could out of the nuclear business and all the potentially salable fissionable material out of the hands of terrorists so they sort of sold the naive (and at the. Time exceedingly corrupt) government an unenforceable "memorandum" in place of a treaty.

Which is not to deny that treaties (as well as Memorandi have not been violated, but tell me what war hasn't ended in a treaty or at least an armistice? Even after we nuked Japan twice and they unconditionally surrendered there was still a treaty.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-d...ender-of-japan

Sometimes the terms are bad, sometimes good, but what do you want to happen? Ukraine fighting to the last man? They are losing. And at the end of the war, whenever it comes and however it ends, they are still going to share a lot of border with Russia.

ReluctantEskimo

It was a rhetorical question to illustrate the stupidity of your position that "Ukraine must negotiate a peace deal asap."

Treaties, memoranda, napkins. The written words mean nothing if the men in power do not honor them. The Russian government has repeatedly illustrated that they have no honor when it comes to international relations.

So given your choice of fighting to the last man, or giving Russia a ceasefire to reconstitute their forces and finish the conquest in 18 months, option A seems the best choice.