re: Russia prolonging Ukraine war

quote:

---

quote:

---

Russia is getting to work some of the flab out of their military.

---

If by "working the flab out" you mean losing 400,000 men, depleting their ammunition stocks to the point that they're begging the Norks for artillery shells, and bringing tanks from the 1950's to the front because of their losses, then you're right.

---

Well... yeah. Loss of numbers is high, but Russia infamously has both numbers, and a generally poorly trained and equipped military.

They're burning through stockpiles of munitions and gear they've had for decades, instead of scrapping those or selling them all to other countries/militia. None of that stuff would be any good as frontline gear against the US or NATO anyway, but they're using it up instead of leaving it in warehouses until it's just piles of rust and sawdust.

Loss of personnel- they don't view things the way we do in the West. These are simply pawns, useful cannon fodder. Their doctrine would be to have heavy losses in a real conflict, but win through attrition.
They are getting in real live combat now, and weeding out a lot of filler, as well as establishing what strategies and tactics work and what doesn't. And they are doing so in a conflict they may not "win", but absolutely won't lose actual Russian territory no matter what. The worst that can happen is Ukraine holds out, and they withdraw; the Ukrainians aren't going to march into Russia.

And the Russians, as they come out the other end of this, will have a lot more skilled and capable military, and will end up being better equipped in a few years.

quote:

---

quote:

---

And just to keep perspective, hitting Ukraine is a bigger target than anything we've done.

---

It's been over 2 years and Russia only controls a small part of southeastern Ukraine.

---

People need to keep perspective on just what this conflict is.

When someone says "first world, third world" etc, that goes back to a Cold War POV.
First World is US, Western Europe and similar countries. NATO (and Japan, etc) for lack of a better term.
Third World is all the little shithole countries a major power could kick over without much effort.
SECOND WORLD is the Soviet sphere; Russia, the Warsaw Pact, probably China. MAYBE North Korea, if you count China.

Ukraine is Second World, as is Russia. This is like-on-like, separated mostly by total resources. A good comparison would be if Texas had left the United States in the 1990's, and we now have the US invading Texas today. The US would win in a fully committed war, because the US has more resources and manpower. But like we're seeing in Ukraine, it would be a hell of a fight and very contested, up until the smaller country runs out of resources.

The US has NOT faced anything of the sort since WW2. Kicking Panama's, Iraq's or Afganistan's teeth in, is not comparable. Deploying to Korea in the 50's while China was still in disarray, or Vietnam later, is not the same. And even with Korea, when the Chinese got involved, we'd do well man-for-man, but the ratio of US to Chinese troops created a disparity we couldn't overcome.