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Yeah, I don't think this is the case. They've stopped at nothing in punching back, starting from legitimate strikes at military infrastructure to burning fields and forests to intentionally targeting civilians with hitmen to shelling city centres (usually Belgorod).
If they could make a blackout, they definitely would. In fact, they did make one back in 2015 in Crimea by blowing the grid mast leading to the Peninsula. So much fun was had back then, so many funny caricatures were posted by the Ukrainians. I wonder where all those funny people are now
Russia and Ukraine can still escalate to plain old terrorism. Perhaps Ukraine doesn't have the means to reliably strike Moscow, perhaps they're scared of Russia's reaction, perhaps they're bluffing.
Anyway, I don't see what's so funny about Zelensky bullshitting left and right so that he can save his country and his people. I'm the first fed up with the circle-jerk around Ukraine but their desire to remain sovereign, not to suffer from Russian strikes doesn't deserve much mockery, they're not the ones that wanted to start a war with Russia.
Perhaps Ukraine doesn't have the means to reliably strike Moscow
I think it's the answer. Russia is interested in preserving as much citizens as possible in Ukraine, since (apparently) their goal is to let Ukraine as a state continue being - self-regulated, that can fulfill Russian demands, and the one that can be subdued politically and economically - so that's why they're not hitting critical infrastructure that would lead to a massive death toll amongst the civilians. This way they'll have sort of Belarus-light -- although much more subdued and weaker, but useful nonetheless.
Ukraine here just doesn't have a reliable means to strike critical infrastructure. Like, refineries burning is a cool show, but they haven't gained much from those strikes. Operations like that require hundreds of drones, month of planing routes and bypasses of Russian AD, tens of different specialists working together - just for a few drones to pass through the defenses and actually deal damage. It's not cost-effective at all, and them creating a show is just that - a show.
so in the end, it's just a situation of one being able, but not wanting it since it's going to be a headache to deal with later on; and another wanting it, but not being able to.
War is simply the implemntation of policy by other means when diplomatic ones dont work
A concession in the war for political gain isnt necessarily a loss. If anything its less of a loss if you dont have the upper hand in the military confrontation in that sector, ukraine gains much more from energy ceasefire than russia, yet they stupidly broke it in around mid 2023 or so thinking they could actually hurt russia enough, it was a mistake and the best courae of action is concessions to fix that mistake, continuing like this is unsusntainable for ukraine
Yeah, the thing is that concession is not something that Russia can demand. Ukraine is the one getting attacked, so they have the superiority here in whatever tactic they deem appropriate for defense, including bullshit.
Yeah, the thing is that concession is not something that Russia can demand. Ukraine is the one getting attacked, so they have the superiority here in whatever tactic they deem appropriate for defense, including bullshit.
Huh, you should let all the victors throughout history know that they weren't allowed to demand the concessions they got. Being attacked doesn't make you superior in any way unless you can win.
Thats not how the realnworld works buddy, its not basedd on moralities or law or whatever its based on pure might and the mightiest gets to make demands, otherwise theyll just take what thry want by force like russia is doing right now
it's not even that! Most wars in history ended up in some sort of haggles. "We get this, you get that, for this we would like this smaller region of no significance to you that would be beneficial to us, and also we will pay reparations"
Total losses and total victories are exceedingly rare. Russia and Turkey has had like ~27 declared wars between them over the centuries and neither side has been completely eradicated so far
Sweden is like world record warmonger country with over 40 wars between Sweden and Denmark ALONE IIRC as well, and yet, both are here
The first time the Kerch bridge was blown was with a truck full of explosives. The truck driver didn't know what he was transporting. He was blown up, killing one more family of 3, little girl included.
They've blown up Dugina, a daughter of a writer.
They've blown up a conference hall with 30 people just to kill a famous blogger. The said blogger died, the bystanders were injured, some of them became handicapped for life.
That's just the things on top of my head, without the instances of shelling/being on or near the frontline.
As I've said, the Ukrainian side never stopped at some moral line, there are no lines for them
I haven't seen the EU, UK, US - the latter doing so unanimously until this year - and just about the entire collective Western media claiming that Russia is the beacon of democracy, the beating heart of liberty, freedom and European values, contrary to what they've been propagating about Ukraine for years.
I couldn't give more of a shit about what those BS PR statements they make over Ukraine, it doesn't change the fact that Russia's actions do not put them above Ukraine on any moral spectrum.
the fact that Russia doesn't have a moral highground isn't the issue; the issue is trying to give a moral highground to Ukraine, on a pretense that they're the victims.
Russia's actions do not put them above Ukraine on any moral spectrum.
Which nobody claimed, by the way. Ukraine is the poster child, remember? You can't go out and say " b- but Russia is bad and stuff" when that has been on the menu for years now.
Just like how one can't call out the Russian invasion exclusively before doing the same with all the invasions the West initiated, without being wholly hypocritical.
All of that stuff about law, morality, rights, none of that matters once a shooting war begins.
The only thing that wins a shooting war is hard power - bullets, missiles, artillery shells, drones, tanks, etc.
You only own what you can defend. If you can't defend it, its not yours. Doesn't matter how many sternly worded letters or PR media events you hold.
I say this because if NATO truly, genuinely wants to support Ukraine it needs to stop talking about rights and morality and it needs to start cranking out the artillery shells by the millions. All of this talk about laws and rights and freedom is a distraction from whats needed to win the war.
Either that, or NATO needs to admit it doesn't really care about Ukraine all that much and push Ukraine to take a peace deal while its still at least semi-intact.
I'm very frustrated by this halfway, lukewarm support which is doing Ukraine a terrible disservice. The current support is only enough to let Ukraine slowly lose. It feels like slow motion cruelty.
Just yesterday I was responding to these messages in another sub:
"You can find the reports of the Human Rights Ombudsmen of the LPR and the DPR. There are ~10k killed civilians in the DPR as a result of the shelling by Ukraine, 5.5k killed civiliansin in the LPR. In addition, there are a couple of thousand deaths in total outside of Donbass - in the Zaporizhia region, Kherson and Kursk/Belgorod."
In general, the loss of the Russian civilian population + separatist regions is about 17k of the population.
You can find statistics and data on those killed by Ukraine in Donbass on the websites of the human rights ombudsmen of local regions:
ombudsman-dnr. ru /category/obzor/
ombudsman-lnr. ru/
At the same time, the UN calculated a total of 14k dead in Ukraine.
10k dead in the territory controlled by Kiev - data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine - this is pretty complete data, since the commission is located directly there.
4k dead in the territory controlled by Russia - data from their open sources and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (when someone publishes full data on the deceased with the approximate circumstances of death). The UN does not have access to the territory controlled by Russia, so statistics are almost not collected.
In general, an in-depth review indicates that Ukraine kills civilians 1.5 times more often than Russia.
Didint the dpr lnr statistics account for people on both sides of the frontline?
Also there’s a challenge in looking at confirmed deaths only. Like Gaza deaths now are just pure estimates with alarmist no confirmed with certificates like the UN operates in Ukraine
That’s also interesting btw why the UN discriminates like that between the two
>Didint the dpr lnr statistics account for people on both sides of the frontline?
DPR - these are only those who died from Ukrainian shelling in Russian-controlled territory. The dead in Mariupol are not included in this list.
But the situation with the LPR is different. Initially, there were about 3.5k dead from the shelling of Ukraine. But now they are exhuming those who died in former combat zones and areas where civilians were massacred during the 2014 sweeps by the forces of the Tornado, Aidar and several other battalions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
>Also there’s a challenge in looking at confirmed deaths only. Like Gaza deaths now are just pure estimates with alarmist no confirmed with certificates like the UN operates in Ukraine
The institutions of power in Gaza have been destroyed. There is almost no normal work on the dead.
In Ukraine and Russia, every deceased person goes through bureaucratic procedures - a criminal case in court, an investigation, an autopsy, burial, and so on. All the destroyed buildings are being dismantled, and the dead are being buried.
Interestingly, the UN takes statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine for its reports, while pretending that the DPR and LPR do not exist and that this is still Ukraine. The Russian side also does not allow UN representatives to enter Donbass, because commission dont consider this territory to be Russian.
He should have thought about all this before backtracking from his election platform and skipping every off ramp thus far presented from when he first entered office.
I don't see any contradiction in these statements. They are functionally two sides of the same statement. They will respond to energy attacks with energy attacks, which is that first statement. If Russia wants to engage in a ceasefire, they will engage in a ceasefire, which is that second statement.
Russia is invading Ukraine, and Ukraine is defending itself. Ukraine would prefer Russia to stop their bloody invasion and go home and leave them in peace. If not, then they will fight back.
His point was that Zelensky seemed so confident he could blackout Moscow before. Now he's asking for a reprieve, upon discovering that he isn't actually able to blackout Moscow. But his own energy grid is already reliant on imports just to stay afloat.
Unfortunately for Ukraine, Russia has more and bigger missiles. Russia is the king of long range missiles, and their missiles were designed during the Cold War to take out NATO bunkers, so they have very heavy warheads that will wreck power plants. Ukraine's drones carry tiny warheads in comparison, they are unable to seriously damage Russian infrastructure.
War is about firepower and armies. Literally the only thing that matters in war is hard power.
Soft power of words and media events doesn't win anything once the shooting starts.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Russia has more hard power right now. The US is not willing to send more military support to Ukraine. Europe isn't willing to send more military support to Ukraine either. I don't see any other support going to Ukraine from any other country. There's just no good options for Ukraine, only bad and worse options.
Afghanistan.. I don't think that was an actual war.. I think that was a military industrial complex move, that was no longer needed so we moved out.. the active combat mission even ended in 2014 I think, US was just... Hanging after that
You can take what Trump says with a grain of salt, but he’s been making several verbal threats against the Taliban to get Bagram airfield back.
You could say that the costs outweighed the benefits of maintaining a presence at the time when Biden finally pulled us out, but considering how obvious the advantages are of having a base of operations next to Iran and China now, it’s hard to imagine the MIC really go of it willingly back then.
Idk, our “occupation” of Afghanistan only resulted in US loses & diplomatic humiliation.
The US hasn’t won a major war since 1945 with its “superior” manpower + Russians weapons have been proved to be decades old if they even function at all
If Vietnam can stay independent, Ukraine can too, even if some neckbeard from Kentucky who doesn’t understand combat rules doesn’t think so :)
Literally the only thing that matters in war is hard power.
it's not always the case. For example, Ukraine was winning during 2022 even at firepower disadvantage, only due to Russian bad management, strategy and low manpower.
like, Ukraine had a shot at winning this war even with their hard power disadvantage, however tides have turned - Russian atrocious mismanagement got eventually fixed, while Ukrainian one started to grow. Instead of Russians sacrificing their troops from L/DNR to hold ground, it's Ukraine now bussifying their citizens as a cannon fodder.
Russia isn't winning solely due to them being at hard power advantage, and 2022 is a prime example of that, but because Ukraine had so many hickups; and their tactic of attiring Russians was flawed from the beginning, and based on the assumption that Putin won't have enough support in population to gather a significant number of soldiers without "racking a boat" too much.
Logistics is hard power. Its force projection, which Russia badly screwed up in the initial stages of the war. Having a thousand tanks run out of fuel on the road due to bad logistics severely dampens hard power.
Since then Russia has drastically improved its logistics. It now appears to be better able to supply its soldiers than Ukraine is, as evidenced by the Russian soldiers slowly creeping forward month after month.
Logistics is also what the US military is famous for. The US military can deploy a fully operational Burger King anywhere on the planet within 48 hours. There is no other military that has such immense force projection, and countries that attempt to test US logistics do so at their own peril. Most recently it was Iran, which was bombed from Missouri, about a 7,000 mile flight each way.
You can be good at logistics in Ukraine but you will still be targeted by drones, that is why Russia has been so slow to creep forward in Ukraine, Ukraine see all troop and logistics movement and if they can strike they do.
Comparatively, sending planes with missiles to the border of Iran from the US is easy, and quite safe, casualty wise, invading Iran to replace the regime would be very different.
Russia hasn't improved its logistics. It's now just fighting so close to their supply it's less of a problem. As they advance, it will become a bigger problem again. However their advance isn't even at a snals pace currently.
They started to hit Russian oil tankers And have been hitting Russian refineries hard. Ukraine has Less resources to restore its energy network than Russia but Russia is starting to take some heavy losses.
The Ukrainians have been bombing Russian refineries and power stations non stop for the past couple of months, now extending to Russia's oil tanker fleet.
Perhaps a more accurate thing to say would be that Ukraine is telling Russia that it will leave the Russian refineries and power plants and oil tankers alone if Russia stops bombing Ukrainian power plants and lines
Russia keeps saying they want peace and Zelenskyy keeps telling them sure prove it .... starting with a ceasefire
See Zelenskyy kept rejecting Russian proposals as he knew they were BS and the top minds from this sub and many others kept saying see Ukraine does not want peace. Now Zelenskky keeps saying yes and you lot shocker changed your gotchas
This stuff is easy ... but I have no clue if you lot are pretending to be clueless or are actually clueless
Russia feels it currently has the advantage. Giving a ceasefire allows time for Ukraine to rearm and reposition its troops. Ukraine desperately needs a breather right now as its being pushed on all fronts simultaneously. A ceasefire takes away Russian initiative on the battlefield, which is why Russia will never agree to a ceasefire.
What Russia has asked for is a peace treaty for the end of the war. Not a ceasefire, but a full end to the war, stating they want "root causes" to be resolved, which is a portion of territory ceded to Russia and Ukraine becomes neutral, not aligned with Russia. Russia has repeatedly stated this demand, and also stated if they don't get this demand met on the negotiating table they will take it on the battlefield instead.
America probably wants a medium-term ceasefire in Ukraine so it can focus on China. Or Iran. Republicans are sort of split on that. Europe/Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals so both a peace deal and a ceasefire are probably not on the table
for years, all we heard are suggestions of capitulation, wrapped in a neat package of "peaceful agreements". Bar is so low, that I could consider Trumps peace-plan as the closest thing we got to some kind of sensible agreement, solely on the fact that it addressed Russian demands, but softened them up, and even offered Ukraine reparations from Russia (yes, peace plan included 100bil reparations coming from a winning side, and even then it was seen as a capitulation suggestion)
Party that's winning a war rejects ceasefire proposed from the party that's loosing. Nothing particulary surprising about this tbh.
Both parties should have signed a peace treaty in Istanbul instead of this colossal waste of life. Borris Johnson should be put on the front lines as tribute to his interference and war mongering.
friendly reminder that russia could've done literally nothing before the war started, and the war wouldn't have started. Russia started the war, they are the aggressors
It's the same lie that also embezzles how Ukrainians and Russians are fighting and dying on both sides of this conflict, so people like you can feel all smug when you allegedly only cheer for them "evil Russians" to die and demand the fighting shall keep on going until something happens that will never happen, Ukraine winning.
That happening is about as plausible as Iraq winning in 2003 or Venezuela winning in 2026, but recognizing that would also mean recognizing realities getting in the way of your fantastical narratives splitting the world into "good versus evil".
i dont see how any of this justifies an invasion of Ukraine, nor does it justify the conscription and shit going on in Russia. Where soldiers are being sent out with rusty guns, and notes on how to kill themselves properly with grenades.
I don't really give a fuck about anything else you have to say. Russia has made it abundantly clear that it cannot be taken at its word. From claiming this is a "special military operation" to saying they have parts of the region occupied, only for Ukrainians to show that is straight up false.
It really doesn't seem very complicated, do i trust the former comedian that both doesn't want to be president, and doesn't want to fight a war? Or do i trust the oligarch that started this invasion and is willing to send scores of his people to their deaths just to maybe take some land? It's really not complicated.
All those precognition psychics on Reddit are always surprising, shouldn't you be a billionaire by constantly knowing the lottery numbers/stock market ahead of time?
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Zelensky, 27.09.25:
Zelensky, 09.12.25:
What happened?
Playing the devil advocate here,
If you want to punch me, I can punch you back.
But I'd rather not being punched.
I don't think the role of devil is preserved for Zelensky in this scenario
Yeah, I don't think this is the case. They've stopped at nothing in punching back, starting from legitimate strikes at military infrastructure to burning fields and forests to intentionally targeting civilians with hitmen to shelling city centres (usually Belgorod).
If they could make a blackout, they definitely would. In fact, they did make one back in 2015 in Crimea by blowing the grid mast leading to the Peninsula. So much fun was had back then, so many funny caricatures were posted by the Ukrainians. I wonder where all those funny people are now
Russia and Ukraine can still escalate to plain old terrorism. Perhaps Ukraine doesn't have the means to reliably strike Moscow, perhaps they're scared of Russia's reaction, perhaps they're bluffing.
Anyway, I don't see what's so funny about Zelensky bullshitting left and right so that he can save his country and his people. I'm the first fed up with the circle-jerk around Ukraine but their desire to remain sovereign, not to suffer from Russian strikes doesn't deserve much mockery, they're not the ones that wanted to start a war with Russia.
I think it's the answer. Russia is interested in preserving as much citizens as possible in Ukraine, since (apparently) their goal is to let Ukraine as a state continue being - self-regulated, that can fulfill Russian demands, and the one that can be subdued politically and economically - so that's why they're not hitting critical infrastructure that would lead to a massive death toll amongst the civilians. This way they'll have sort of Belarus-light -- although much more subdued and weaker, but useful nonetheless.
Ukraine here just doesn't have a reliable means to strike critical infrastructure. Like, refineries burning is a cool show, but they haven't gained much from those strikes. Operations like that require hundreds of drones, month of planing routes and bypasses of Russian AD, tens of different specialists working together - just for a few drones to pass through the defenses and actually deal damage. It's not cost-effective at all, and them creating a show is just that - a show.
so in the end, it's just a situation of one being able, but not wanting it since it's going to be a headache to deal with later on; and another wanting it, but not being able to.
He should have asked for an energy ceasefire 3 months ago then not now.
There were talks about energy ceasefire a year ago but were abandoned because of kursk incursion
Should have tried restarting them then.
War is simply the implemntation of policy by other means when diplomatic ones dont work
A concession in the war for political gain isnt necessarily a loss. If anything its less of a loss if you dont have the upper hand in the military confrontation in that sector, ukraine gains much more from energy ceasefire than russia, yet they stupidly broke it in around mid 2023 or so thinking they could actually hurt russia enough, it was a mistake and the best courae of action is concessions to fix that mistake, continuing like this is unsusntainable for ukraine
Yeah, the thing is that concession is not something that Russia can demand. Ukraine is the one getting attacked, so they have the superiority here in whatever tactic they deem appropriate for defense, including bullshit.
Huh, you should let all the victors throughout history know that they weren't allowed to demand the concessions they got. Being attacked doesn't make you superior in any way unless you can win.
Thats not how the realnworld works buddy, its not basedd on moralities or law or whatever its based on pure might and the mightiest gets to make demands, otherwise theyll just take what thry want by force like russia is doing right now
it's not even that! Most wars in history ended up in some sort of haggles. "We get this, you get that, for this we would like this smaller region of no significance to you that would be beneficial to us, and also we will pay reparations"
Total losses and total victories are exceedingly rare. Russia and Turkey has had like ~27 declared wars between them over the centuries and neither side has been completely eradicated so far
Sweden is like world record warmonger country with over 40 wars between Sweden and Denmark ALONE IIRC as well, and yet, both are here
AFAIK they have been asking for one for more than that.
The first time the Kerch bridge was blown was with a truck full of explosives. The truck driver didn't know what he was transporting. He was blown up, killing one more family of 3, little girl included.
They've blown up Dugina, a daughter of a writer.
They've blown up a conference hall with 30 people just to kill a famous blogger. The said blogger died, the bystanders were injured, some of them became handicapped for life.
That's just the things on top of my head, without the instances of shelling/being on or near the frontline. As I've said, the Ukrainian side never stopped at some moral line, there are no lines for them
Lmao, you make it sound like Russia has the moral highground here.
I haven't seen the EU, UK, US - the latter doing so unanimously until this year - and just about the entire collective Western media claiming that Russia is the beacon of democracy, the beating heart of liberty, freedom and European values, contrary to what they've been propagating about Ukraine for years.
I couldn't give more of a shit about what those BS PR statements they make over Ukraine, it doesn't change the fact that Russia's actions do not put them above Ukraine on any moral spectrum.
the fact that Russia doesn't have a moral highground isn't the issue; the issue is trying to give a moral highground to Ukraine, on a pretense that they're the victims.
Of course they're the victims lmao, they got invaded twice.
Doesn't being invaded by the rapacious forces of the murderous house elf automatically make Ukraine the victims?
Who invaded Crimea?
Which nobody claimed, by the way. Ukraine is the poster child, remember? You can't go out and say " b- but Russia is bad and stuff" when that has been on the menu for years now.
Just like how one can't call out the Russian invasion exclusively before doing the same with all the invasions the West initiated, without being wholly hypocritical.
Ukraine is victim of an invasion, again you guys keep trying to muddy the waters when it comes to who's responsible for invading who.
All of that stuff about law, morality, rights, none of that matters once a shooting war begins.
The only thing that wins a shooting war is hard power - bullets, missiles, artillery shells, drones, tanks, etc.
You only own what you can defend. If you can't defend it, its not yours. Doesn't matter how many sternly worded letters or PR media events you hold.
I say this because if NATO truly, genuinely wants to support Ukraine it needs to stop talking about rights and morality and it needs to start cranking out the artillery shells by the millions. All of this talk about laws and rights and freedom is a distraction from whats needed to win the war.
Either that, or NATO needs to admit it doesn't really care about Ukraine all that much and push Ukraine to take a peace deal while its still at least semi-intact.
I'm very frustrated by this halfway, lukewarm support which is doing Ukraine a terrible disservice. The current support is only enough to let Ukraine slowly lose. It feels like slow motion cruelty.
I really don't think 2 can play at that game, as Russia's attack has resulted in orders of magnitude higher civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side.
What makes you think that?
Just yesterday I was responding to these messages in another sub:
"You can find the reports of the Human Rights Ombudsmen of the LPR and the DPR. There are ~10k killed civilians in the DPR as a result of the shelling by Ukraine, 5.5k killed civiliansin in the LPR. In addition, there are a couple of thousand deaths in total outside of Donbass - in the Zaporizhia region, Kherson and Kursk/Belgorod."
In general, the loss of the Russian civilian population + separatist regions is about 17k of the population.
You can find statistics and data on those killed by Ukraine in Donbass on the websites of the human rights ombudsmen of local regions:
ombudsman-dnr. ru /category/obzor/
ombudsman-lnr. ru/
At the same time, the UN calculated a total of 14k dead in Ukraine.
10k dead in the territory controlled by Kiev - data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine - this is pretty complete data, since the commission is located directly there.
4k dead in the territory controlled by Russia - data from their open sources and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (when someone publishes full data on the deceased with the approximate circumstances of death). The UN does not have access to the territory controlled by Russia, so statistics are almost not collected.
In general, an in-depth review indicates that Ukraine kills civilians 1.5 times more often than Russia.
Didint the dpr lnr statistics account for people on both sides of the frontline?
Also there’s a challenge in looking at confirmed deaths only. Like Gaza deaths now are just pure estimates with alarmist no confirmed with certificates like the UN operates in Ukraine
That’s also interesting btw why the UN discriminates like that between the two
>Didint the dpr lnr statistics account for people on both sides of the frontline?
DPR - these are only those who died from Ukrainian shelling in Russian-controlled territory. The dead in Mariupol are not included in this list.
But the situation with the LPR is different. Initially, there were about 3.5k dead from the shelling of Ukraine. But now they are exhuming those who died in former combat zones and areas where civilians were massacred during the 2014 sweeps by the forces of the Tornado, Aidar and several other battalions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
>Also there’s a challenge in looking at confirmed deaths only. Like Gaza deaths now are just pure estimates with alarmist no confirmed with certificates like the UN operates in Ukraine
The institutions of power in Gaza have been destroyed. There is almost no normal work on the dead.
In Ukraine and Russia, every deceased person goes through bureaucratic procedures - a criminal case in court, an investigation, an autopsy, burial, and so on. All the destroyed buildings are being dismantled, and the dead are being buried.
Interestingly, the UN takes statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine for its reports, while pretending that the DPR and LPR do not exist and that this is still Ukraine. The Russian side also does not allow UN representatives to enter Donbass, because commission dont consider this territory to be Russian.
What happened to the institutions of power in Mariupol? How many people went through the normal bureaucracy there?
lol at trying to whitewash Dugin’s viper of an offspring 🤣
Still a civilian which makes this a plain terror act.
He should have thought about all this before backtracking from his election platform and skipping every off ramp thus far presented from when he first entered office.
Wow what happened in 2014 for that to happen, did this really come out of nowhere?
No, it came from the trains of friendship of the 90s and 2014.
Maybe they are just too busy jumping?
I don't see any contradiction in these statements. They are functionally two sides of the same statement. They will respond to energy attacks with energy attacks, which is that first statement. If Russia wants to engage in a ceasefire, they will engage in a ceasefire, which is that second statement.
Russia is invading Ukraine, and Ukraine is defending itself. Ukraine would prefer Russia to stop their bloody invasion and go home and leave them in peace. If not, then they will fight back.
His point was that Zelensky seemed so confident he could blackout Moscow before. Now he's asking for a reprieve, upon discovering that he isn't actually able to blackout Moscow. But his own energy grid is already reliant on imports just to stay afloat.
I mean, the Russians never stopped attacking Ukraine's grid. This is just different approaches to get them to stop.
Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Center, stated that Ukraine may not have enough equipment to restore the energy system after several Russian strikes. He noted that there are currently no resources for massive restoration of reserves. There are virtually no reserves. "We may run out of equipment to restore the energy system if Russia launches another 2-3 strikes", Kharchenko stated.
They let the missiles do the negotiating.
Unfortunately for Ukraine, Russia has more and bigger missiles. Russia is the king of long range missiles, and their missiles were designed during the Cold War to take out NATO bunkers, so they have very heavy warheads that will wreck power plants. Ukraine's drones carry tiny warheads in comparison, they are unable to seriously damage Russian infrastructure.
It's really funny how american conservatives even started talking like Trump.
War is about firepower and armies. Literally the only thing that matters in war is hard power.
Soft power of words and media events doesn't win anything once the shooting starts.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that Russia has more hard power right now. The US is not willing to send more military support to Ukraine. Europe isn't willing to send more military support to Ukraine either. I don't see any other support going to Ukraine from any other country. There's just no good options for Ukraine, only bad and worse options.
"the only thing that matters in war is hard power"
Except for Afghanistan and Vietnam where America lost.
I'm in agreement with Vietnam
Afghanistan.. I don't think that was an actual war.. I think that was a military industrial complex move, that was no longer needed so we moved out.. the active combat mission even ended in 2014 I think, US was just... Hanging after that
Good point, yeah that's a better way to think about it.
You can take what Trump says with a grain of salt, but he’s been making several verbal threats against the Taliban to get Bagram airfield back.
You could say that the costs outweighed the benefits of maintaining a presence at the time when Biden finally pulled us out, but considering how obvious the advantages are of having a base of operations next to Iran and China now, it’s hard to imagine the MIC really go of it willingly back then.
outlasting an occupation is hard power too
Getting tired of an insurgency is different than losing a war.
To use your analogy, it would be like Russian troops getting tired of insurgency attacks on their troops occupying Kyiv for two decades.
If Russian troops are in Kyiv its safe to say Ukraine has lost the war.
Oh how quick propagandists are to forget...
russian troops were in Kyiv but they got routed and withdrew after heavy losses.
You:
You were talking about Afghanistan. American troops were occupying the country for about two decades until the US got bored of it and left.
To use the same analogy, this would be like Russia getting bored of occupying Kyiv for two decades.
Either way the war had been lost two decades ago, the country was successfully invaded.
“Bored of it” = losses and expenses of the failed occupation exceeded political appetite.
Idk, our “occupation” of Afghanistan only resulted in US loses & diplomatic humiliation.
The US hasn’t won a major war since 1945 with its “superior” manpower + Russians weapons have been proved to be decades old if they even function at all
If Vietnam can stay independent, Ukraine can too, even if some neckbeard from Kentucky who doesn’t understand combat rules doesn’t think so :)
it's not always the case. For example, Ukraine was winning during 2022 even at firepower disadvantage, only due to Russian bad management, strategy and low manpower.
like, Ukraine had a shot at winning this war even with their hard power disadvantage, however tides have turned - Russian atrocious mismanagement got eventually fixed, while Ukrainian one started to grow. Instead of Russians sacrificing their troops from L/DNR to hold ground, it's Ukraine now bussifying their citizens as a cannon fodder.
Russia isn't winning solely due to them being at hard power advantage, and 2022 is a prime example of that, but because Ukraine had so many hickups; and their tactic of attiring Russians was flawed from the beginning, and based on the assumption that Putin won't have enough support in population to gather a significant number of soldiers without "racking a boat" too much.
Logistics is hard power. Its force projection, which Russia badly screwed up in the initial stages of the war. Having a thousand tanks run out of fuel on the road due to bad logistics severely dampens hard power.
Since then Russia has drastically improved its logistics. It now appears to be better able to supply its soldiers than Ukraine is, as evidenced by the Russian soldiers slowly creeping forward month after month.
Logistics is also what the US military is famous for. The US military can deploy a fully operational Burger King anywhere on the planet within 48 hours. There is no other military that has such immense force projection, and countries that attempt to test US logistics do so at their own peril. Most recently it was Iran, which was bombed from Missouri, about a 7,000 mile flight each way.
You can be good at logistics in Ukraine but you will still be targeted by drones, that is why Russia has been so slow to creep forward in Ukraine, Ukraine see all troop and logistics movement and if they can strike they do.
Comparatively, sending planes with missiles to the border of Iran from the US is easy, and quite safe, casualty wise, invading Iran to replace the regime would be very different.
Russia hasn't improved its logistics. It's now just fighting so close to their supply it's less of a problem. As they advance, it will become a bigger problem again. However their advance isn't even at a snals pace currently.
Warfare is about mathematics.
Kiyiv is under pressure from it's western "allies" to push for a ceasefire, this isn't rocketscience, this is geopolitics 101.
If they don't like their "allies", why don't they ignore them altogether and show how it should be done without the "allies"?
We get it you support Russia
Because they'd rather like to join their tree house in the future without the neighbourhood bully hanging them upside down from a lamppost
After Ukraine struck those two tankers in the black sea, Russia escalated and struck some 750kv substations that had been untouched until now.
Those substations are the backbone of Ukraine's energy grid and 750kv transformers are effectively irreplaceable in war time.
Fr i came here saying we were promised blackouts in moscow
But the only blackouts in "moscow" was the moscow hotel in kiev
We didn’t like the threats
They started to hit Russian oil tankers And have been hitting Russian refineries hard. Ukraine has Less resources to restore its energy network than Russia but Russia is starting to take some heavy losses.
They’re losing even worse what do you think happened?
It's called being ready to punch a bully back if the bully punches first
I see. Any reason they've decided to mot punch back but ask for a time out?
The Ukrainians have been bombing Russian refineries and power stations non stop for the past couple of months, now extending to Russia's oil tanker fleet.
Perhaps a more accurate thing to say would be that Ukraine is telling Russia that it will leave the Russian refineries and power plants and oil tankers alone if Russia stops bombing Ukrainian power plants and lines
Yeah, but did that initial plan of making a blackout in Moscow work? What's the reason why they've decided to change the initial tactic?
Russian cocksucker in chief, I mean, commander in chief. Probably.
Russia keeps saying they want peace and Zelenskyy keeps telling them sure prove it .... starting with a ceasefire
See Zelenskyy kept rejecting Russian proposals as he knew they were BS and the top minds from this sub and many others kept saying see Ukraine does not want peace. Now Zelenskky keeps saying yes and you lot shocker changed your gotchas
This stuff is easy ... but I have no clue if you lot are pretending to be clueless or are actually clueless
Russia feels it currently has the advantage. Giving a ceasefire allows time for Ukraine to rearm and reposition its troops. Ukraine desperately needs a breather right now as its being pushed on all fronts simultaneously. A ceasefire takes away Russian initiative on the battlefield, which is why Russia will never agree to a ceasefire.
What Russia has asked for is a peace treaty for the end of the war. Not a ceasefire, but a full end to the war, stating they want "root causes" to be resolved, which is a portion of territory ceded to Russia and Ukraine becomes neutral, not aligned with Russia. Russia has repeatedly stated this demand, and also stated if they don't get this demand met on the negotiating table they will take it on the battlefield instead.
Thats the ceasefire vs peace treaty situation.
Tbh both sides don't want peace , Ukraine knows Russia won't accept ceasefire and Russia knows Ukraine wont accept peace deal without ceasefire first.
So yeah both sides have excuses to not have peace and will blame each other for not wanting peace
America probably wants a medium-term ceasefire in Ukraine so it can focus on China. Or Iran. Republicans are sort of split on that. Europe/Ukraine and Russia have incompatible goals so both a peace deal and a ceasefire are probably not on the table
^ this
for years, all we heard are suggestions of capitulation, wrapped in a neat package of "peaceful agreements". Bar is so low, that I could consider Trumps peace-plan as the closest thing we got to some kind of sensible agreement, solely on the fact that it addressed Russian demands, but softened them up, and even offered Ukraine reparations from Russia (yes, peace plan included 100bil reparations coming from a winning side, and even then it was seen as a capitulation suggestion)
diplomacy is, apparently, dead lol
How does a ceasefire prove it ? They can use ceasefire only to rearm, regroup and strike again.
Perhaps the point is that agreeing to an energy ceasefire will delay the signing of a real ceasefire agreement?
Of course, this is a completely unfounded assumption, but still?
No, it's just Russia's main trump card and easily the most effective use for expensive missiles/rockets(whichever)
Party that's winning a war rejects ceasefire proposed from the party that's loosing. Nothing particulary surprising about this tbh.
Both parties should have signed a peace treaty in Istanbul instead of this colossal waste of life. Borris Johnson should be put on the front lines as tribute to his interference and war mongering.
friendly reminder that russia could've done literally nothing before the war started, and the war wouldn't have started. Russia started the war, they are the aggressors
And Ukrainian nazi battalions could have not shelled Dombas after the coup. But here we are
i wonder how much they paid you to say these things lol. i hope you aren't spouting this vile shit for free
Already in February 2014 there was a transition deal with the Yanukovych government that should have peacefully ended the situation. Want to guess who violated it to coup an elected governemnt? Right Sector did.
Not much later a ceasefire deal in Geneva was about to defuse the situation when the same Right Sector goons again violated it by attacking separatists in Slovyansk.
Western propaganda and people like you claimed it was all a lie, a Russian false flag, insulting anybody daring to disagree. Yet barely 2 years later those same Right Sector goons openly bragged how they launched the "first offensive battle of the war", in Slovyansk.
Yet here you are still peddling the same narratives coming straight from Radio Free Europe in an even dumber form of "Nothing ever happened in Ukraine until Russia invaded!"
It's the same lie that also embezzles how Ukrainians and Russians are fighting and dying on both sides of this conflict, so people like you can feel all smug when you allegedly only cheer for them "evil Russians" to die and demand the fighting shall keep on going until something happens that will never happen, Ukraine winning.
That happening is about as plausible as Iraq winning in 2003 or Venezuela winning in 2026, but recognizing that would also mean recognizing realities getting in the way of your fantastical narratives splitting the world into "good versus evil".
i dont see how any of this justifies an invasion of Ukraine, nor does it justify the conscription and shit going on in Russia. Where soldiers are being sent out with rusty guns, and notes on how to kill themselves properly with grenades.
I don't really give a fuck about anything else you have to say. Russia has made it abundantly clear that it cannot be taken at its word. From claiming this is a "special military operation" to saying they have parts of the region occupied, only for Ukrainians to show that is straight up false.
It really doesn't seem very complicated, do i trust the former comedian that both doesn't want to be president, and doesn't want to fight a war? Or do i trust the oligarch that started this invasion and is willing to send scores of his people to their deaths just to maybe take some land? It's really not complicated.
Criticism of Nazi battalions shelling civilians is apparently vile now. The state of you
Your brain on Russian propoganda
Russia would have never honored a peace treaty.
And yet Merkel admitted that the west didn't honor the Minsk agreements.
Ah yes, the characteristic feature of Russian propaganda: randomly blaming the UK
You dont even know what the "peace treaty" looked like. Stop yapping just for the sake of yapping.
Russia would have never honored a peace treaty.
All those precognition psychics on Reddit are always surprising, shouldn't you be a billionaire by constantly knowing the lottery numbers/stock market ahead of time?