Which is probably why they’re trying to bid up Ukraine with the US using their own minerals.
Edit: Although some are suggesting this article is just propaganda, Russia’s main challenge is that their economy is on the brink of failing and domestic support becomes a question if that happens. From a skim that appears to be the main thrust of it.
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The raped and butchered kids and teenagers in Bucha disagrees. You are either sorely misinformed or Russian psyops. I suspect the latter.
Must be nice in that parallel dimension of yours.
Jesus Christ what is this fucking take?
🥾👅
Somehow I don’t see u guys complain about Israel genocide - they don’t want to give Palestinians any rights at all
New Balatro card just dropped
Why not support both underdog victims of a imperialist regime?
I get supporting Palestinians, but why plead the Russian cause?
You are clueless. If you knew the facts you would be anti US, anti Israel, and pro Palestine.
You’re not looking if you see us not complaining.
I like how this reminds me of picking in stellaris between genocide and biological assimilation.
I’m so glad Lemmy lets me tag people
“People get better treatment than genocide” isn’t the brag you think it is
And as many 8th floor windows as they like to jump out of.
You might not want to use Israel as your benchmark of “fair”.
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I spent some time Sunday with a refugee from Donbass. This isn’t how she experienced it.
Right, that’s why they are bombing day care centers?
Step up, EU. It’s on you now that the US are traitors.
As an American I’d like to apologize for the shit show my country currently is.
I’ve never felt shame like this.
Start doing something about it, please.
You’ve had many opportunities to feel shame like this, starting with the unconditional support & complicity of the U.S. government in the genocide in Gaza…
Supporting the genocide in Gaza was my first deep shame for my country, and I’m not a spring chicken.
I actually really don’t care about Gaza.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t support what they’re doing over there… But… It’s a bunch of religious people fighting over what they think is holy land… When holy Land is in contention they’re always killing each other over it…
Do better. It’s a very powerful country backed by the US who is invading many countries while committing numerous war crimes including genocide and ethnic cleansing. If you don’t care about Gaza don’t pretend to care about human rights and the rule of law.
To be fair that’s a proxy war between the US and the Arab world.
It was always going to end one way. People are mostly desensitized and the Oct events pushed the majority off the fence. Which was kinda the point. It’s a rats nest and anyone trapped there is unfortunately walking dead trapped between the gears of globalism.
American voters had zero say in it really. I’m not sure anyone can do anything really. It’s like trying to hold back the sea.
It is only this bad because the US has provided nearly unconditional military, diplomatic and financial support to Israel for 75+ years despite them committing numerous war crimes, invading all of their neighbors and hindering countless peaceful processes. Israel can’t even defend itself without the assistance of foreign countries as we have seen last year when they needed the US, France, Jordan and others to step in when Iran sent a few missiles.
Y’all must have not been around for the Iraq invasion. I stopped being a Republican when my party lied its way into an unnecessary conflict. Iraq only had what Cheney and Reagan sold them in the 80’s. To fight Iran. It’s insane to me for people to forget this important point. We almost brought back the draft for that war. I heard from many leadership individuals that were from my home town. That it was coming any day. Thank god it didn’t. But they abused the troops by forcing them to do extra terms in the conflict zone. No one remembers that either it seems. The GOP was fine forcing service members back into contracts for another 3 years.
I didn’t forget about the Iraq war, I was in the streets protesting against it. It was painfully obvious the US administration was lying about WMDs.
But whattabout Vietnam?
What about it?
His point, I think, is the line of whataboutist thinking that got the conversation to this point, from the OP.
This is hopium.
Sometimes we need hope
They said this before
And it was true before. Strategic situations change.
Russia ran out of weapons and is now sharing a single Mosin Nagant between 100 men.
As much as that made me laugh it’s not true. I wish it was though.
They will start sending women. I assume that’s how mail brides started back in WW1?
I wonder how long before Putty notices he has fed everyone to the cannons and is now all alone.
If their losses climb back to 1800 per day, meaning 700-ish dead per day, and their population is about 140 000 000, that makes a nice round number of 200 000 days. Or 547 years. However, because the Russia’s population was already decreasing fast for other reasons anyway, the real number is more like 100-ish years.
BTW, Ukraine has lost on average 64 soldiers per day as dead during these three years. Counting with 40 000 000 inhabitants, that means the last Ukrainian will die on the front in 625 000 days from now. Or 1712 years.
Reading these numbers, keep in mind that they are about dead soldiers, not about losses in manpower. Most of manpower losses come in the form of severe inrecoverable wounds. For Ukraine it’s 1:4 or 1:5, so per one dead you have four to five crippled, and for the Russia it’s 1:2,5. The Russia has less wounded because so many of their wounded become dead some hours after being wounded. So, the manpower losses are higher in Ukraine, but most of the lost Ukrainian soldiers return to their families, while a huge share of the lost Russian soldiers turn into soil.
Good ruzzians are soil? OK good notes.
LOL Almost no cannon fodder to send, the massive amount of arms and equipment they started with but now they’re starting to win?
No, they are not.
Trump is ditching them because they can’t win, and he doesnt want to carry a loser.
Harsh, unjust, but true.
Nah, Trump has a lot of experience carrying losers. Ukrainians are not suckers or crooks - that’s the actual reason.
One side has resorted to donkeys for logistics and importing North Korean footsoldiers.
Yeah, sounds like they’re winning /s
Hey, they took a wheat field last week!! Only 17.000 losses and a hundred tanks!
/s (almost not sarcastic as that’s actually how it goes)
Russia is not only startung to crumble militarily but also economically and they are already over as a world power.
I mean if you’re going to do the whole “bro I’m just telling it like is” play, then actually do it. If he drops support it’s simply because he’s not getting anything out it. Dude is simple as fuck - transactional.
Trump’s ditching them because he’s got Putin’s arm so deep up his arse he can taste his deodorant.
They can’t win? Why not? Russia does not have much left. We are already at the point of buggies, motorcycles and straight up walking to the front line. Oh and donkeys, that’s where they are.
Lol if you think Trump has any clue about military standing of anyone.
You’re completely delusional if you think Trump is ditching them for that reason. They could be winning completely and he’d still ditch them. He’s in bed with putin. That’s why he’s ditching them.
Trump is ditching them because he’s Putin’s bitch, no other reason. Regardless of Ukraine’s actual chances, Trump is not any sort of serious gauge of the situation. He has the approximate strategic understanding of a particularly inbred aristocrat’s particularly inbred toy dog.
Says Kyivpost.
Lines on the map seem to very slowly move in Russia’s favor and Russia’s “leadership” doesn’t care about human cost as long as it allows further operation of their state.
It’s their job to study strengths and weaknesses, so the quote is kinda stupid. Whether they are aware of anything can be said only retrospectively.
I just don’t see where Russia is losing, I live in Russia and every year since 2022 people (sometimes not the dumbest kind, but with age comes naivete, and everyone is naive outside of their immediate profession) around me would say how Russian economy and\or defenses are going to crumble soon because of this war.
And before that since 2020 how they are going to crumble because of inability to adapt.
And before that because of sanctions, yes, what was called sanctions then was seriously talked about.
And before that because stealing elections is unpopular and generally immoral.
And before that because Putin will certainly lose an election, right?
It just doesn’t work like that.
In Russia there’s an expression “глубинный народ” (something like “depths’ people” or “deep people”, hard to translate), meaning some consistent deep popular feeling about something, it’s usually ascribed barbaric feelings, like only caring how the rest of the world fears your nukes or hating everyone intelligent.
But it’s also sometimes ascribed wisdom. For example, about prophets predicting the death of Russia’s regime all by itself one day. Some of those prophets being children of the previous generation of that regime, supposedly separated from the current generation, but after becoming irrelevant coming back to their herd, like Sobchak.
Things are achieved when people work to achieve them, and with the amount of work they take, not the honest amount, not the amount those people can possibly do. Life is not honest.
Russia is not losing this war. It might reformat it into some kind of frozen conflict.
Defense Minister Ruslan Umerov said 96% of all drones fielded by the Ukrainian military are domestically manufactured. Syrsky said during 2024, Ukrainian drone producers delivered more than 1.3 million robot aircraft to the armed forces. About 85% of all Russian casualties and vehicle kills on the battlefield are scored by Ukrainian drones, Malyuk said.
Very interesting to see the statistics. I always assumed drones were doing the most damage but it’s nice to have a number confirm this.
Yeah. This entire conflict has had a certified MGS4 „War has changed” vibe to it since the very beginning.
But… war never changes!
They would prefer to have more artillery, though. In case-by-case evaluations (e.g. enemy tank formation spotted maneuvering at comparable distance), it often takes a much longer time (e.g. over an hour vs. some minutes) to neutralize the same kind of an opponent with drones, compared to smart artillery shells (e.g. BONUS).
Also, in some weather drones don’t fly.
The flip side of that flips side is that stationary artillery is now obsolete. Drones force the issue where you need to be able to take your shot and GTFO.
From what I hear, they don’t always bother - if it’s a towed artillery piece, the circus of moving it is allegedly more dangerous than staying holed up.
(the following is “as far as I know”, might be inaccurate) They dig their gun into a wooded area, put lots of antidrone nets overhead, keep ammunition far away in diverse locations, and don’t stay near the piece when they aren’t using it. If a drone comes, there’s a chance it gets caught in the nets or detonates prematurely. If it hits, there is a decent chance that the gun can be fixed. If another battery starts trying to hit it, they hit back.
That percentage is way higher, than I expected. Happy for them, but the future of warfare sure looks scary
This war is a sample of what all major conflicts between industrialized nations are going to look like from now on. Even more utterly horrific for the average soldier. Death from above at any moment without warning, fuzzy front lines, the whole thing.
Equipment, too. The US DoD was looking at a new tank, but axed it. They don’t exactly give out their reasons why, but a good guess is they saw what drones were doing in Ukraine and decided the design would have been obsolete before the first one came off the assembly line.
You’d expect them to closely analyze the attacks and pour a few hundred billion into countermeasures though. Not exactly the same position that Russia is in.
The US military (and others) are pouring R&D money into anti-drone lasers. It’s the only way for the cost element of anti-drone defenses to make any sense. When that tech is mature and small enough in sure it will eventually be mounted on tanks .
They are coffins on tracks now. The tank, the warship, the aircraft carrier. All exceptionally vulnerable to $10k drones and thus: all obsolete. Until some sort of anti-drone minigun on AI enters service, the tank sits, the warship barely floats, and the aircraft carrier is 500km away.
But: attaching some sort of infrared and visible spectrum 360 camera to a processing unit isn’t beyond the pale already. It won’t be long until these units are all back in action. Stealth drones already? Hypersonic missiles? Good old fashioned AT launchers? Reactive armour? Spaced hulls? Laser interception? Gauss canons?
We’re in an accelerated arms race right now indeed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMBT
Six anti-drone radars, the weapon station gun is 30mm so not as beefy as a Gepard/Skynex but those are meant to take out more than drones. And, yes, AI-enabled targeting.
30mm is probably unsuited, you don’t need that calibre vs a drone, you need agility, and higher RoF.
The detection abilities all look undercooked for me too, some sort of mesh radar, infrared, and visible spectrum cameras combined with high speed classification network with targeting abilities, and realtime information about current friendly movements is still necessary to identify and confidently neutralise enemy drones. To counter jamming some sort of fibreoptic umbilical system and/or lifi would be necessary too.
And I know its being worked on, but people are being pretty hush hush about that. The challenge then being productionising these systems, it’s all very well on a test bed, but the front line has some rather extreme conditions for hardware, and software, and the manufacturing of these integrated systems is challenging too. You’ll need loads of them to really be effective. Mobile big dog type platforms would also be fabulous to run alongside a tank brigade
Skynex/Gepard are 35mm and can take down drones just fine, I suppose the 30mm also uses precision airburst. If you don’t disperse the drones it might happen that their fire control takes down five with three rounds. What I’m more worried about is number of rounds. Whether they need that calibre to do airburst properly or they keep it large so it can double as a third ground gun I don’t know.
We’ve had these for decades now. They’re called CIWS, and they’re capable of taking missiles out of the sky and turning inflatable dinghies into flotsam. They’re mounted on every aircraft carrier in the world - both US and otherwise - and we’ve fielded trailer mounted variants for at least 20 years. They were using them in Iraq to blow mortar rounds out of the air.
We have automated systems on vehicles capable of identifying a tank round traveling 1,700 meters per second via radar, figure out whether it’s going to hit or miss the vehicle, and fire an explosive at it to neutralize it if it is, all within a span of about 300 milliseconds.
The biggest issues with drones are largely man portable solutions and things that don’t send thousands of rounds of lead into the sky to rain down on a population center. Drones are small enough to fly indoors and cheap enough to be deployed in swarms. Figuring out how to counter those aspects is probably where the most energy is going to be spent.
Did not save the Moskva. Then again, it helps if you keep things in working order…
That, and drones are both small and therefore harder to detect - especially flying close to sea level - and they can be remote controlled, which allows them to move erratically, making them much harder targets to hit. There’s definitely a reason that countries are looking into things like lasers and blasts of air to knock them out of the sky instead of just filling the area with a lot of bullets.
Drones also include the bomb seadoo things, its not just flying drones. I think sea skimming has also been a thing for 100 or so years for anti-shipping, the real change is the drastic reduction of cost.
Don’t agree with the aircraft carrier bit. The point of aircraft carriers has always been that they can sit way the hell back, because the aircraft are projecting all the firepower. The F-35 and Super Hornet for example have a combat radius of well over 1000km.
They have always been vulnerable in the sense that it doesn’t take much to destroy them, a few torpedoes or ASMs suffice. The hard part is getting those weapons on target. That means either getting close enough in a very hostile electronic warfare and anti-air environment, or acquiring a weapons grade lock on a moving target from hundreds of kilometers away.
Both are very hard problems to solve, and $10k drones do nothing towards solving that. The threat to worry about here is not drones, but hard to intercept hypersonic missiles that are self guiding through passive electro-optical sensors that allow them to intelligently pick out an aircraft carrier to home in on.
I wonder how fast they can produce and use those new laser weapons, they should rip most drones a new one. Currently, modern war looks a like a total cluster fuck for everyone involved, tiny accurate death from above at any time… sheesh… With laser cover, currently only available on tracks/wheels and in short supply, I think it would already look very different. I have no real clue what’s about to happen though, this war kicked off a crazy weird arms race.
The power requirements for lasers that can damage drones is pretty extreme. Ye cannae change the laws of physics captain! And so, deployments to mobile platforms likely to be probably more suited to a dedicated support type role IMO. Mounted to AFVs perhaps. LFVs anyone?
Hardkill APS seems to be less relevent these days for tanks aswell, if it even triggers on a drone there’s no help for the next 10 that show up.
Tanks will probably never become totally irrelevant but it will be hard to justify their price when drone swarms seem to be the future.
Probably not. It only worked so well against Russians because of how shitty their military is. A modern army with properly running vehicles and operating bases (instead of scrap heaps and open trenches) isn’t nearly as susceptible to short range civillian drones.
You need a small automatized AD machine gun or similar for every group of soldiers. Can be done, but requirea a huge amount of those anti-drone guns. Basically the amount of soldiers on the front, divided by ten or so.
Or just adequate cover. Or a drone jammer (something which exists and is available to civilians). Or a strategy that doesn’t leave your troops milling around in open trenches for weeks at a time. Or a reaper drone flying overhead that detects the signal from smaller civilian quadcopter which then jams the drone, locates it’s origin, ID’s the operators with thermal vision and lodges a hellfire missile up their ass.
Again, a competent modern military isn’t going to be vulnerable to this type of tactic.
Ah yes, man-made horrors beyond our comprehension.
It’s also a sample of what asymmetric warfare will look like. Militia groups can now buy or make their own loitering and guided munitions on the cheap. They won’t have anywhere near the range or capacity of the military grade stuff, but a remote-controlled flying pressure cooker still blows up well enough.
That’s good to know because it indicates they are less reliant on the US than one might assume. They’re doing 85% of the killing with their own tools.
True, but air defense is also critical. If Russia gets total air supremacy that changes a lot.
Russia is going to run out of troops.
IDK when, but they’re basically feeding their population into a meat grinder trying to take Ukraine.
That’s not too say the Ukraine isn’t taking losses… I’ve just, seen some numbers that indicate that Russia is going to run out of people to send to their deaths before Ukraine will.
Putin needs to give this up before he doesn’t have a military anymore.
hahahaaaaaaa still ibelieve your fantasy news?
Any day now!Ukraine is taking horrendous losses that we should be more concerned about. Stay focussed on Ukraine succeeding, not just Russia failing
Fair point.
Go Ukraine!
Russians are going to be less willing to die to invade Ukraine than Ukrainians are to defend their homes.
As a person who lives in a place, I would be hard pressed to ever be unwilling to defend the place where I live. I can’t even imagine giving up the fight so a foreign government can occupy the land I call home.
I would be surprised if Ukrainians would ever get tired of defending their home land.
I can, however, see Russians being unwilling to sign up to invade a country that clearly doesn’t want them there.
All I’m trying to say is: I agree.
defend US interests?
The kidnapping videos say enough about what ukranians want.Okay Z oomer
It’s also possible they will stop the zapp Brannigan tactics and dig in to wait for the west to lose interest.
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I wouldn’t really mind him not having a military anymore…
To be clear: The Russia’s losses are increasing month after month, but their recruitment capacity is not. They are recruiting about 1000 soldiers every day, maybe a bit less. And the number seems to be going down, not growing. They are losing 1300 to 1800 each day now meaning a net loss of something like 400 to 900 soldiers per day!
They won’t run out of population anytime soon, but they will run out of soldiers.
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That only means they will have to scale back offensive operations and switch to a defensive posture.
Yup. And that means the Russia will be losing huge amounts of troops and equipment without gaining anything from it. The Ukrainian economy is very small, I think about the size of Slovakia’s economy. The EU can hold Ukraine’s economy up as long as it wants to. Nobody is doing the same for the Russia.
If the Russia had to switch to defending territory without gaining anything more, how would it push for a victory before its economy collapsing?
Russia has been steadily and slowly gaining territory over the last year.
If the Russia had to switch to defending territory without gaining anything more, how would it push for a victory before its economy collapsing?
The current attempt is Trump. It’s doubtful the Russian economy will collapse any time soon. They still have some slack and the Russian population could suffer far more. Their strategy after the first couple of months was to outlast Ukraine and its supporters. The moaning about costs in the countries supporting Ukraine is only growing. Russia has a firm lid on all opposition.
Nobody is doing the same for the Russia
China
the Russia has been steadily and slowly gaining territory over the last year with a speed of 0.7 % of Ukraine’s territory per year. Which is not strategically relevant. Strategically seen, the Russia has not advanced.
I don’t really see China starting to actively cover the Russian budget. That would jeopardize China’s trade with Europe.
The Russia’s strategy has been to outlast Ukraine’s supporters will to support Ukraine. That will never happen, unless the voices making the fake claims about time being on the Russia’s side are given too much space. Helping Ukraine is so much cheaper than the costs that incur if the Russia takes over Ukraine that there is no logical reason for the EU to end Ukraine’s support ever. Even if some countries were to withdraw their support, enough will retain it to keep Ukraine’s head over water.
The Russian economy will collapse, sooner or later.
The Russian economy will collapse, sooner or later.
I agree, but think it’s later. Russia needs to lose on the battlefield as well before they stop the war.
If it’s a year later, then it is. The Russia won’t be able to recruit soldiers after its economy collapses. They are in for salary and death compensation that is defined in Rubles. Once the Ruble compensation loses its value, relatives get less motivated for letting their sons go to the front. And when the 2000$ salary becones a 100 $ salary, nobody goes to war for that money.
Without soldiers the front cannot be kept.
They are losing 1300 to 1800 each day
Russia is losing up to half a million men per year? What’s your source for this? It seems outlandish
Ukraine publishes daily statistics about Russia’s manpower losses. One would think those numbers are simply propaganda and any army would “of course” exaggerate such numbers.
But, firstly: The numbers reported by Ukraine rise and fall hand-in-hand with the numbers given by Oryx. There is something of an almost fixed multiplier between Oryx numbers and official data provided by Ukraine. And the Oryx numbers are always published later than Ukraine publishes its own, so Ukraine cannot be just copying Oryx’s numbers and multiplying them. And it’s logical that Oryx shows only a fraction of the real number, because for most Russian combat losses there is no photo proof, and Oryx only counts what has photo proof.
So, at least the Ukrainian numbers rise and drop without fake data added. Then the question is whether the scale of the numbers is correct, or if Ukraine intentionally inflates them with some static multiplier. Since there is data about the Russia’s recruitment capacity and the whole size of the Russia’s army, it’s visible that by recruiting about 1000 per day they can keep their army’s size constant. That shows that the losses must be around the same ballpark. And it coincides with the numbers published by Ukraine.
But yes, now that Russians mostly do not have tanks to use in their attacks, they are really using pure meat wave attacks, and that costs a LOT of men. There’s a reason Putin is trying to convince Trump to force Ukraine into an armistice. Losing that many soldiers – indeed almost half a million per year! – is extremely unsustainable, no matter what image Putin is trying to give.
And remember: these numbers are about irrecoverable losses, of which only a fraction are deaths. The number of deaths is far lower.
It’s roughly 1 death for 3-4 injured and out of combat
For the Russia it’s about 1:2½, and getting worse, for Ukraine it is currently around 1:4 or 1:5.
I think these guys are CIA bots. They aren’t using common sense. Everyone including the state department and CIA agrees that Russia has air superiority right? What do you think the casualties of Russia are compared to Ukraine?
Lol what? Russia does not have air superiority. You need a functioning air force for that. They’re to scared to fly anything and Moscow has been hit by Ukrainian drones.
Lol air superiority. Lol I say.
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It’s not that they will run out of people. They have people, but to keep recruitment levels so high and equipment manufacturing so high they are overcharging their economy. Right now in Russia there are three types of jobs if you want to make money afaik, work in the military complex (arms manufacturing), in the gas extraction industry or directly in the military.
It’s Dutch disease x100, if the state at some point stops being able to fund the war machine, their economy collapses.
To add to this, Putin can recruit from the poorest regions for a while, but at some point he needs to get men from the larger cities. The last thing he wants is protests from Moskou etc. The average person from Moskou hadn’t had that much negative effects from the war yet. But if you, your son or father is forced to the battlefield it’s a different story.
who is kidnapping kids?
Russia? From Ukrainians? Is that what you mean?
No, nice diverting to the fact some kids were SAVED from ending up like this:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukrainian-girl-gives-nazi-salute-6328675
Any country will take children from unfit parents.
But you know very well the ones that didn’t get brainwashed are now kidnapped by the Banderites, same as the elderly.
This is already from more than a year ago, imagine now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.htmlProbably they will find something like this now: https://www.reddit.com/r/ColorizedHistory/comments/8dox22/this_13_year_old_german_of_the_hitler_youth/
I just checked some other articles from MRonline, it’s claiming Ukraine started the war.
https://mronline.org/2025/02/26/yes-ukraine-started-the-war/
…and it’s saying that it’s because of the local small scale conflicts in Crimea, within Ukraine, which Russia then moved into?
Look, I’m not going to waste more time discussing here. Regardless of a few cases of bringing up by crappy parents, Russia has no right to kidnap children. Hey, even if Ukraine is taking soldiers by force, at least they give them basic training compared to Russia.
I hope you’re right. Because in general the reaction of the Russian population to the war has been so meek, I’m starting to doubt it would be any different once recruitment starts hitting the biggest cities.
It’s so meek because of the political stance of “I am not political” that permeats the whole society.
Its main idea is that “I make actively sure to not see or hear what is happening around me, and in return I can live my life reasonably carefree.” That’s an unspoken contract between the junta leading the country and its populace. If one side breaks the contract, it’s null and void.
The funny thing is, the people have not noticed that the contract has been broken, because they are actively avoiding noticing anything that has to do with society!
And the word “actively” is of great significance. Because it’s not passivity, it’s a stance held up actively by each individual. The situation of the Russia is all the time deeper and deeper “in your face”, and eventually it’ll be so deep that there’s nothing the individual can do to avoid noticing it.
And then they become active in… Well, some other manner.
Im afraid this is happening in America
Why?
People are proudly political here.
We also live very comfortable lives compared to the Russians. Most of us don’t want to ruin that.
I do see a lot of of US people saying stuff like “all politicians are always corrupt”. That’s the thought Putin has been trying to actively cultivate in Russians’ minds, because when people don’t trust politicians in general, they won’t come to think that they could vote in someone who is much less corrupt than Putin.
When people lose their trust in national politics ability to act in the best interest of their nation, they will get proud of being apolitical. After all, for them it’s come to mean “not taking part in a corruption scheme”.
Also… My impression is that a growing amount of people in USA are NOT living more comfortable lives than rural Russians. Living in an RV and having to work two jobs isn’t really very different life from living in a dilapidated and crooked wooden house that’s letting the wind in from several places. I don’t know how common that kind of living is in the States, but it seems to be an existant phenomenon. Those people do not live in a different comfort than people in the poorest regions of the Russia. Also, I’ve seen photos of large amounts of people living in kind of streetside villages consisting of camping tents. That is a kind of life that is less comfortable than anything I’ve seen during my travels in the Russia.
A much smaller share of US people live under such.circumstances than is the case in the Russia, but for those who do, I am absolutely able to fathom why any change is better for them than status quo! There’s only one way to go from the rock bottom.
Because people are beginning to shut down or ask what someone else will do about this.
LOL you live like ants compared to the rest of the world, you just don’t know it.
No healthcare, sick days, massive homelesnzss and junkies.
The US is a shithole.
Makes sense their leaders would be so buddy-buddy with north korea.
oh yes the sanctions will force Russia to surrender.
Any day now! 🤡No, the bombs will once it’s army is destroyed, and any attempts to rebuild are routed.
O my sweet summer child You have a lot of imagination.
Russia is running out of troops but their recruitment numbers are way higher than Ukraine’s. I support the Ukrainian armed forces unconditionally and have donated to them multiple times so believe me that it brings me no pleasure to say this, but there is no way Russia runs out of soldiers before Ukraine does.
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Russia won’t run out of troops, but they will run out of capable troops: Russian Casualties & Force Generation - Losses, Recruitment & Sustaining the war in Ukraine
yes kidnapped ukranian teens are so muck better trained. 🤡
they will run out of capable troops
I think you’ve got the wrong tense there, comrade.
How manu are is still left of well trained VDV and guards units?
Honest question, what makes Ukraine troops that much better trained?
“Capable” in this context doesn’t just refer to training alone.
As laid out in the video, Russian recruits are getting older and older (as in: have sometimes even fought in Soviet era conflicts) and recruitment standards are dropped more and more (apparently having Schizophrenia is OK for a Russian soldier) to keep a steady influx of warm bodies. Next, Russian recruits appear to be broadly separated into two groups: The meat shields who are rushed to the front with minimal training to plug the biggest holes in the units (stark examples include only multiple days between reported recruitment and death). The second group is going through a more traditional training regiment but also shortened. This shortening also applies to officer candidates.
In short: Recruits are getting less physically capable due to the average age increasing drastically over time, and militarily less capable due to shortened or basically nonexistent training.
As for the Ukrainians: I expect the video with analysis on their casualties and recruitment to drop this week.
Because Ukranian troops have 2 things Russian troops will never have.
- Commanders that don’t use idiotic human wave attacks.
- Shoes.
It’s good to remember that a small subset of Ukrainian commanders do see soldiers as mere cannon fodder. Mere 11 years ago, the Ukrainian military was run almost precisely the same way as the Russian one. And many commanders are from before 2014. Many of them have converted to the new ways since 2014, but some haven’t. That’s a problem that severely hampers Ukraine’s recruitment capacity. Still, Ukrainians are a nation that will flex when it needs to. If the Russia starts advancing faster than the 0.7 % of Ukraine’s total area in year like they did in 2024, people get more afraid of what is going on and get motivated to join the armed forces.
Also
- a good reason to fight
The motivation of russian soldiers is about as sound as was the motivation of US troops in Vietnam. “Protect the free world from communism by attacking another country”. Yeah, ok.
The US had an active force of half a million troops at the height of that attempted occupation and a total of more than 3 million troops had been deployed in Vietnam over the course of the 6 years of war. The US committed various terrorist acts and warcrimes. By the numbers, they had superiority in pretty much every way. At some point it looked like there were doing fine, and they utterly lost. They lost 58k soldiers.
Sounds vaguely familiar to me.
Do you even realize that Ukrainian terrorism via the SBU (CIA) happens around once every two weeks?
The thousands of ethnic Russians killed by banderists?
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Unfortunate slight difference, The US was unwilling to go full scorched earth, the potential effect of the US bomber fleet using just conventional munitions was described as having the potential to do almost as much devastation as a nuclear strike, despite the warcrimes the US still held back. I doubt Putin would bat an eye at such a policy we’re simply fortunate the russian military simply isn’t capable of that kind of attack.
The US was unwilling to go full scorched earth, the potential effect of the US bomber fleet using just conventional munitions was described as having the potential to do almost as much devastation as a nuclear strike, despite the warcrimes the US still held back.
Look I want to live in a universe with a version of the US without Henry Kissinger too, but this just doesn’t seem like an honest view of the history here.
I don’t understand in what sense the U.S. held back from bombing. Fuck, one of the major criticisms of U.S. military strategy in the Vietnam war was the idea that if they just bombed them hard enough, over and over and over again carpet bombing with B-52s loaded to the brim with conventional bombs, than that would magically win the war all by itself.
Along the way, Rolling Thunder also fell prey to the same dysfunctional managerial attitudes as did the rest of the American military effort in Southeast Asia. The process of the campaign became an end unto itself, with sortie generation as the standard by which progress was measured.[129] Sortie rates and the number of bombs dropped, however, equaled efficiency, not effectiveness.[130]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
https://renewvn.org/the-most-bombed-place-on-earth/
https://www.maginternational.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/laos/
To be clear, I don’t think this makes the illegal Russian invasion and war in Ukraine okay. I am against the war and support arming Ukrainians, fuck Putin, but I think it is important to be realistic about things as we discuss this. I am not even sure the Russian military could even approach a conventional bombing campaign on the same scale, I certainly don’t think they could do it without getting absolutely chewed up by AA since most of the munitions would have to be likely delivered by ground attack aircraft like the su-25 or even more vulnerable strategic bombers.
A bombing campaign of that size is essentially impossible to do in a near peer conflict like the war in Ukraine which is an environment where both sides have extensive missiles armaments, radar and electronic warfare capabilities.
In addition to all the other valid arguments I want to also mention the rotation principle of the ukrainians. They deploy for six months to the Frontline and then rotate between the dugouts and a safehouse for two weeks at a time. So their soldiers have time to relax and eat good food even while deployed which keeps morale high.
Russia used to just keep their common troops on the frontline until they were exhausted. If I recall correctly they changed this in the last months, but they most likely lost almost all of their pre war trained troops.
Well the Ukrainians are at least trying to train their troops while Russia has been caught shoving raw recruits into the front line after literally no training. Those reports are obviously magnified by each side’s information ops but we do know the Russians have a survivability problem. The two biggest things you learn in basic are what to do when someone starts shooting, and how to hit things with your rifle. Everything else is extra that’s meant to make you able to use specialized equipment. The real learning environment has always been combat itself. And in this arena the Ukrainians are absolutely dominant.
cope and wishful thinking.
And propaganda mostly
Not true. Ukraine is the one with the manpower shortage.
Wow, what an incredible take with zero supporting information, either information I’ve seen published, ever, or information provided by you, the poster.
Thanks for this, DrDickHandler, it’s really helping this conversation evolve into something better!
(/s for anyone too tired to see it)
USA’s Mr. 47 will seriously take $5m from Mr. Putin to invite him to live in ‘the land of the free’. And spend all of his ruble there.
They need to give it all they’ve got and go all out. Leave it all on the battlefield and give 100%. Don’t hold back and go the extra kilometer.
I’ve found that Colonel Maruks Reisner provides some of the best information available on the war.
He doesn’t update frequently but all his analysis are sober, detailed, and realistic. He states his pro-Western, pro-NATO, pro-Ukrainian bias clearly.
If I could sum up the general trend of his presentation it’s, “The status quo favors Russia. If we don’t get our heads out of our asses and step up Russia will win.”
So, are they already taking Crimea back, after regaining Luhansk and Donetsk? Because that’s what “starting to win” means. Oh, the kyivpost…
In what world is “total victory” equivalent to “starting to win”?
In Zelensky’s.
The main, possibly only, glimmer of hope in the article was “assets in and outside Russia had strong evidence that Russian arms production during 2025 has flatlined and is likely to contract, because of parts and labor shortages,” and Russia is drafting 100,000 fewer men than last year. That seems well short of “starting to win,” unfortunately. Ukraine also appears to be losing 1/3 of their military support if what Zelensky said in the article is true. Did I miss something?
The Russia was able to barely retain the size of its forces when its losses were 800 to 1200 per day. Now they are 1300 to 1900 per day, and its ability to recruit new troops has not risen and it seems it may have even decreased.
That means, the size of the Russian armed forces is decreasing by 500 to 700 soldiers each day! In a year that makes 180 000 to 255 000 soldiers per year. When their army shrinks in size with about 200 000 soldiers per year, they’re very soon going to have plenty of “fun” trying to defend all of their front.
Defend their front from what? How is Ukraine’s army doing?
From Ukraine reclaiming their territory starting probably around summer 2026 or late winter 2026. The Russia won’t be able to stop that if they don’t have troops.
Regarding how the Ukrainian army is doing… That’s a broad question. But, put shortly: they have managed to mostly hold back a Russian invasion for 11 years now. Especially the last 3 years it has been faring far over expectations. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War . It’s high time you get acquainted with this theme now in 2025!
Here I have a source too, one that’s a bit more specific: https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-army-war-attrition/
Relevant quote:
"The problem that Ukraine is facing is not that they are running out of money, [it] is that they are running out of Ukrainians,” U.S. `Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during his confirmation hearing.
My opinion: They’re not going to win. Also it’s disingenuous to say they’ve been holding back a Russian invasion for 11 years.
Marco Rubio is in Trump’s administration. Nothing that comes from there should be assumed true.
They are not running out of Ukrainians. They will have enough of them for another 1300 years with this pace of losses. Also the Russia isn’t running out of Russians for several centuries at this pace.
What is happening, however, is that the Russia is losing soldiers faster than it can recruit new ones.
