The media won’t give me great answers to this question and I think this I trust this community more, thus I want to know from you. Also, I have heard reports that Russia was winning the war, if that’s true, did the west miscalculate the situation by allowing diplomacy to take a backseat and allowing Ukraine to a large plethora of military resources?
PS: I realize there are many casualties on both sides and I am not trying to downplay the suffering, but I am curious as to how it is going for Ukraine. Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning, those have existed forever, but they seem to have grown louder now, so I was wondering what you thought about it. Also, I am somewhat concerned of allowing a dictatorship to just erase at it’s convenience a free and democratic country.
Arms dealers.
Reminds me of the starting scene in Lord of War
“Warlord.”
“I prefer it my way.”
Came here to say “Raytheon”.
The Military Industrial complex … which has no allegiance to any nation and controls more money than most nations in the planet.
Even the US is beholden to it’s power … one of the best descriptions of America is that I’ve ever read was …
The US isn’t a nation … it’s a corporation with a military.
arms manufacturers
Came here to say this.
winners: arms manufacturers and dealers, “defense” industry, military-industrial complex
losers: soldiers, civilians
Truly the only trustworthy source
the Capitalism
Ohh, cmon now! Seriously? You blame this on Capitalism?
The propaganda is strong against the Western system. There is an argument to be made that the origins of this conflict are in energy finds in the Black Sea. Ukraine is uniquely positioned to take advantage of access to the European and Asian markets. Competition in these sections would threaten oligarch monopolies. These energy monopolies are granted to the oligarchs by Putin himself and this is the entire basis of power in the Russian Federation.
This is simultaneously the reason for the conflict and why the oligarchs have been lock step the entire way.
It’s this capitalism? Absolutely not.
Is it economic power? Absolutely so.
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Considering this is a war of attrition, “winning” such as it is doesn’t look like conscripting every man, woman and child that can hold a gun to get blown up in trenches. They should have just negotiated a year ago.
And they were very close to doing just that until the west stepped in and told Ukraine to stop negotiating https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms
I wish it wasn’t paywalled, I remember being hopeful something might happen but then Boris showed up- people still talk about it, just not always in english.
Bojo sabotaging the negotiations was a heinous crime against humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result and millions more had their lives ruined.
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Britain has the geopolitical relevance of the North Sentinel island and Boris can’t even control his hair not to mention a foreign nation. Even if he told Ukraine to not negotiate why would they listen?
Because Boris is just the messenger boy for the empire.
But why? The US has plenty of people to deliver a message like that that would actually be believable, like if Boris told another country that the US wants this or that it just would sound like he’s lying. This whole thing sounds too convoluted and ridiculous to be true.
I mean that’s what Ukrainian chief negotiator told us himself now, and this is what western media admits. UK has always acted as a running dog for the US, and I’m not sure why anybody would find the idea of Boris being the one to deliver the terms to Ukraine as a representative of NATO convoluted or ridiculous. Boris represents the country that’s most closely aligned in US in Europe, this makes him the natural person to go and tell Ukraine what NATO and US want from them. You seem to be making this more complicated than it is.
I’d say the only ones winning are those selling stuff to Ukraine and Russia. I also remember a panel some months ago, about how the other EU countries will help rebuild Ukraine once the war is over. To me, it looked like they were already slicing the not even dead body in order to profit off it.
Ukraine as a whole is at a bigger loss, given all the infrastructure damage and population losses, this one counting both deaths and people fleeing the country.
How is rebuilding a country equivalent to slicing it up?
Slicing it up like slicing a cake. Dividing up the profits between themselves. Rebuilding a country doesn’t happen for free you know. There’s no depths to the debt the west can plunge Ukraine into over this war, unless we force Russia to pay. I hear they have lots of oil.
What a terrible analogy. It implies that “rebuilding” Ukraine will actually involve destroying it just because people are paid to do the work.
Ukraine will likely lack the money to pay for the work for decades, so they’ll likely have to compromise with treaties and concessions beyond the reconstruction work. The more likely result will be a very weak government that’ll have to concede to several wants of the companies working there, who will use their money to put political EU pressure on Ukraine.
It implies that “rebuilding” Ukraine will actually involve destroying it just because people are paid to do the work.
You can only rebuild what has been damaged or destroyed and the companies that offered help see future profits going up with every building that crumbles. None of them are doing anything out of goodwill, they just see money to be made.
The media won’t give you “an answer”. Is a war like a board game where everyone can see the pieces and count the score according to the rules? What is Russia objective? Idk. Are they meeting it? Sure, to some degree. At what cost? We’ll we only have a small sense of the costs.
Is Ukraine “winning”? Well they have lost so much but not everything. Are they meeting their objectives? We’ll their state didn’t fall. That’s good.
And you just want some OP ED at NYT to just sum it up like it’s a football game?
:100:
Death is the winner of any war
Well, you’re going to get different responses, many of which are good points, and depending on the person you asked.
But imo, it is hard to tell. And the best response we can say is: we don’t know. Ukraine retook many territories but so has Russia. Both sides suffered many casualties. The problem with analysing the war is the white noise coming from emotional responses on the events of the war happening at the time.
When Ukraine was invaded, everyone thought they will capitulate. They didn’t. Kyiv then retook Kharkiv Oblast, everyone thought Russia will surrender. The Ukrainian counteroffensive was hyped, but disappointed many. Prigozhin tried to coup Putin and thought it is the end of Putin, but they’re still here.
So, the best response to your question is, we don’t know. And that’s the most certain answer you could get and that is not a bad thing. For those who tend to forget, we still have the fog of war shrouding our vision. We don’t know what will happen in many months to come. Hindsight only tends to be 20/20 after an event.
However, I think the two major considerations for this year is 1. Ukraine had been effective in interdicting Russian logistical lines and sent the Russian Black Sea fleet reeling away from Crimea. Those are Ukrainian strategic gains that are often forgotten and not seen by the mainstream as important, who see ground combat as more important. 2. Though on the other side, the Russian support for Putin is still strong and either they support the war or ambivalent. In this case, Putin won the hearts and minds of Russians to either support or turn a blind eye to the conflict. Propaganda war is as important as military one to convince enough of the public to support it.
Russia. It’s a war of attrition and Russia has the manpower and industrial capacity
the west didn’t misread the situatiom because the west doesn’t care about Ukraine they just wanted to kill people
It’s considered a positional stalemate, and that is politically advantageous for Russia. Both parties have been able to set up considerable defensive positions, making progress extremely costly. Both parties are still fighting for progress nonetheless, where Russia has the most trouble achieving it and Ukrainian forces are making small gains (field by field) on a consistent basis. But knowing that the frontlinie is many miles deep and there is intense trench warfare to make a few yards progress… There will be no swift or decisive victory on either side.
Putin has most of his followers convinced that he is fighting nato backed nazis. So even when Russian war tactics are brutally inefficient and the losses in personell and equipment are enormous, there is little internal political backlash. Internationally the conflict is seen as a regional dispute. Since Ukraine isn’t a part of a large international alliance. Western sanctions on Russia aren’t as impact full as they could have been.
It’s looking likely that the war in Ukraine is going to last a very long time. With guerilla attacks on Russian territory becoming more likely and higher in frequency. Russia doesn’t have the equipment left for large scale invasions, doesn’t have the money to create meaningful reserves. And the kremlin needs defensive power in other places along its border.
European and western sentiment is that Putin will not stop until the old ussr borders are back under his control. And being securely and unquestionably positioned as world superpower.
Usa has been diverting its weapons supplies to its holocaust in palestine. Most of ukrainian weapons production is in the east, which is no longer under their control. I’d assume they will run out of weapons sooner or later.
The arm industry and drone makers
The capitalist class in the USA is winning the war. Russia is surviving, and Ukraine is losing. The goal of the war is to launder as much tax payer money from working class USA and Europeans to the political elite and their friends as possible. They do this by purchasing weapons from their own capitalists using tax money. The capitalists then share the money with the bureaucracy that facilitates the money laundering. The secondary goal is to subjugate Russia, and failing that, hurt them as much as possible so that they can be subjugated in the future. Subjugating Russia is necessary because Russia’s military power is regularly used against the interests of the capitalist class in the USA.
Anybody in weapons manufacturing is the real winner of the Ukraine war.
I’ve been following along daily, have an army background so take from that what you will.
I think Russia is winning the war, strategically. They are losing a small amount of ground, but there’s no breakthrough and every day that goes by in the current state is a day closer to a fragile peace deal that secures Russia’s winnings. I think anything beyond Krim is just buffer zone. This is fundamentally about securing access to ocean - Russia is extremely constricted in getting its navy to sea.
With a frozen war Ukraine won’t be admitted to NATO - in that way, I think Russia is content to have a frozen conflict, because it creates a weak buffer state between Russia and NATO.
So in terms of securing its desired outcomes, Russia is winning.
I would disagree. It is still far from being able to tell with clarity if Russia is winning. Plenty of things could still happen. Somehow, we’re often forgetting naval warfare and focus too much on the army/ground level. Ukraine managing to turn the Russian fleet scurrying away from Sevastopol, as it had become too vulnerable for missile attacks, is no easy feat. And they killed the top Russian Black Sea officers (I’m convinced Admiral Sokolov is dead). This gave Ukraine needed breathing room to finally resume grain shipments, which could help Ukraine further finance the war and remove Russia’s stranglehold and ability to blackmail the world from accessing grains.
Although, how would all these translate to victory on land? Obviously, Ukraine will have more money coming in from exporting grain and other commodities. Might this allow them to buy more and better weapons? An option I see is Ukraine being able to intertidict Russian logistical lines, which they have proven to be pretty adept at. But the question is, would this lead to desired strategic successes and more immediate outcome desperately wanted by the West (we don’t need to know what Ukraine wants because they could keep going forever if they could)? Only time will tell.
