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On July 15 2025 22:25 Jankisa wrote: I believe billiboy meant Marko Perković, aka "Thompson" who just had the biggest concert (by ticket sales) in History here in Croatia.
The guy is basically a war profiteer who bases his whole image on our war + being patriotic + God but also works with the criminals in power here and has had multiple law suits over not paying taxes, you know, like patriots do.
It's funny that Zeo the delusional is giving people shit about news sources (with sprinkled in trendy moronic words like AI slop because he thinks it makes him sound smart) while obviously eating up Russian propaganda how Ukraine is on the verge of collapse, I've read at least 20 headlines over the last year how Pokrovsk is basically conquered from nominally neutral news site in Croatia and it's still not even close.
After 11 years of attempts, 1 year of "full push" for it and tens of thousands of casualties Russians are still unable to take a town of 60k, but people are avoiding to talk about it because of mighty Russian summer offensive.
That's the one, thanks for the correction.
On July 16 2025 00:22 KwarK wrote:
On July 16 2025 00:14 Yurie wrote:
On July 15 2025 17:55 Manit0u wrote:
On July 15 2025 06:43 Yurie wrote:
On July 14 2025 19:57 Excludos wrote: Yeah, pretty much nothing of note is going on on the frontlines, other than, of course, that thousands of people are being wounded every day for extremely little movement. If Zeo thinks Russia is going to win by taking ground, I guess see you back in 200 years when they reach Kyiv.
What IS happening is that Russia is in deep shit with their economy. This is provable in a number of ways, including Russia itself admiting it. But anything negative coming out of Russia means Zeo will stick his head in the ground and pretend he doesn't hear it, only to pop up a few months later spewing the same bullshit all over again
Well the war is an interesting stage. It costs Russia a massive amount of money each day and will continue costing when it ends to transition people to other jobs when you scale down the military production. Or they do WW2 again and find another war or dump people somewhere without support.
You can run a war for a long time on poor finances though. Russia is burning a year of future economy per quarter of war, or something similar to that. It keeps getting worse but you can do it for a long time. I honestly don't think the economics will be what breaks the war. Sanctions hurt but many of the worst ones that could be inflicted are not being done thus Russia can limp along in the war.
I honestly don't think Russian economy will crash hard enough to stop war effort in the next 2 years. I think it will actually get more output for the war machine during that time period, at least for drones and other things they have managed to scale up.
The major problem is more on finding volunteers for the army that is in good enough physical shape and with enough training to keep an offensive war going. I think we will see the war slow down even more. Russia launching massive waves of missiles/drones at civilians and at the Ukrainian lines. With fewer and fewer offensives on the ground without leveling things first due to a lack of capacity in that area and a loss of will in taking the losses required for it. Which kind of leads to a stalemate until something gives, most likely the Russian will to continue with limited gains. A frozen conflict.
The problem with the whole Russian war doctrine is that it's unsustainable in the long run. So far they could continue by digging into huge Soviet stockpiles of equipment but this well has almost completely dried out. Despite switching to war economy and scaling up production they're unable to keep up with equipment losses any longer, that's why we see reports of Russian troops utilizing worse and worse equipment as the war goes on. Even if they manage to draft more men it's not of much benefit if they can't equip them or provide them with means of reaching the front lines.
Unless Russia will be able to somehow reshape its whole military and switch to a completely new doctrine (more drone based for example) I don't think they have much gas left in the tank. There were reports coming out last year that showed signs of Russia not planning on prolonging the war past 2025 (they probably won't have enough resources to go past that but only time will tell). This would also align with Putin's latest announcement that they plan to take the Donbas in the next 2 months (highly unlikely), which would let them reach a point where they could potentially consolidate and call it quits with at least something to show for it. Even if they did that though, right now I don't think Ukraine would be interested in doing any form of peace where they have to cede their territory.
Also true. Equipment suitable for frontal assaults is decreasing. Thus fighting at the front will decrease, while bombing keeps up. Doesn't mean Ukraine can push back the lines to where they want them for a forced peace on their terms.
Neither party will likely find acceptable terms and the conflicts freezes, as in the previous 2014 war.
Freezing doesn’t work for Russia, they need it to end one way or another. Ukraine is backed into a corner, they can’t stop resisting and so they will keep resisting. Russia as the aggressor has the disadvantage of choice, they can give up at any time. As prices increase, consumer goods stop being available, losses mount etc. people will ask why they are fighting. For Russia the price of giving up is low, for Ukraine it is everything.
I think stoppinghte war is going to be very hard on the economy. You are going to have to integrate all these people back many that have serious injuries or mental health problems. Also, lots of them are going to have a fair bit of money and not a lot of goods to purchase, well the economy tries to move back to non wartime, or if they are planning more attacks (which seems likely) restocking so no much manpower or production capacity creating a lot of inflation. The skills a lot of people have gained along with questionable morality likely will also lead a lot of these people into organized crime style jobs. I do not know enough to make any specific claims, but it seems like a cluster fuck of problems waiting to happen.
What's the difference between stopping the war now and winning the war down the line for Russia? Same problems with the only difference beeing a victory parade.
If you're losing 50 dollars a day on gambling, what is the difference between stopping now and stopping in 2 years? I'll even throw in a celebration for you
Not sure if that matters when you can print money...
I think Ardias said it a few pages back that there are no troubling consequences yet for the average Russian. They get shells and probably other stuff from NK and the loss of life is minimal right now. So until something drastically changes (like the economic downfall that gets mentioned frequently here) Russia can do this indefinitely
Most of their MBT/IFV production relies on refurbishing old Soviet stock. They have spent most of that stock by now and what they have left is of worse quality. It's getting progressively harder for them to refurbish that junk. They're also running into similar issues with recruitment. They're finding it harder and harder to recruit new meat. The sign-on bonuses have quadrupled (?) in the last two years.
On July 15 2025 22:25 Jankisa wrote: I believe billiboy meant Marko Perković, aka "Thompson" who just had the biggest concert (by ticket sales) in History here in Croatia.
The guy is basically a war profiteer who bases his whole image on our war + being patriotic + God but also works with the criminals in power here and has had multiple law suits over not paying taxes, you know, like patriots do.
It's funny that Zeo the delusional is giving people shit about news sources (with sprinkled in trendy moronic words like AI slop because he thinks it makes him sound smart) while obviously eating up Russian propaganda how Ukraine is on the verge of collapse, I've read at least 20 headlines over the last year how Pokrovsk is basically conquered from nominally neutral news site in Croatia and it's still not even close.
After 11 years of attempts, 1 year of "full push" for it and tens of thousands of casualties Russians are still unable to take a town of 60k, but people are avoiding to talk about it because of mighty Russian summer offensive.
That's the one, thanks for the correction.
On July 16 2025 00:22 KwarK wrote:
On July 16 2025 00:14 Yurie wrote:
On July 15 2025 17:55 Manit0u wrote:
On July 15 2025 06:43 Yurie wrote:
On July 14 2025 19:57 Excludos wrote: Yeah, pretty much nothing of note is going on on the frontlines, other than, of course, that thousands of people are being wounded every day for extremely little movement. If Zeo thinks Russia is going to win by taking ground, I guess see you back in 200 years when they reach Kyiv.
What IS happening is that Russia is in deep shit with their economy. This is provable in a number of ways, including Russia itself admiting it. But anything negative coming out of Russia means Zeo will stick his head in the ground and pretend he doesn't hear it, only to pop up a few months later spewing the same bullshit all over again
Well the war is an interesting stage. It costs Russia a massive amount of money each day and will continue costing when it ends to transition people to other jobs when you scale down the military production. Or they do WW2 again and find another war or dump people somewhere without support.
You can run a war for a long time on poor finances though. Russia is burning a year of future economy per quarter of war, or something similar to that. It keeps getting worse but you can do it for a long time. I honestly don't think the economics will be what breaks the war. Sanctions hurt but many of the worst ones that could be inflicted are not being done thus Russia can limp along in the war.
I honestly don't think Russian economy will crash hard enough to stop war effort in the next 2 years. I think it will actually get more output for the war machine during that time period, at least for drones and other things they have managed to scale up.
The major problem is more on finding volunteers for the army that is in good enough physical shape and with enough training to keep an offensive war going. I think we will see the war slow down even more. Russia launching massive waves of missiles/drones at civilians and at the Ukrainian lines. With fewer and fewer offensives on the ground without leveling things first due to a lack of capacity in that area and a loss of will in taking the losses required for it. Which kind of leads to a stalemate until something gives, most likely the Russian will to continue with limited gains. A frozen conflict.
The problem with the whole Russian war doctrine is that it's unsustainable in the long run. So far they could continue by digging into huge Soviet stockpiles of equipment but this well has almost completely dried out. Despite switching to war economy and scaling up production they're unable to keep up with equipment losses any longer, that's why we see reports of Russian troops utilizing worse and worse equipment as the war goes on. Even if they manage to draft more men it's not of much benefit if they can't equip them or provide them with means of reaching the front lines.
Unless Russia will be able to somehow reshape its whole military and switch to a completely new doctrine (more drone based for example) I don't think they have much gas left in the tank. There were reports coming out last year that showed signs of Russia not planning on prolonging the war past 2025 (they probably won't have enough resources to go past that but only time will tell). This would also align with Putin's latest announcement that they plan to take the Donbas in the next 2 months (highly unlikely), which would let them reach a point where they could potentially consolidate and call it quits with at least something to show for it. Even if they did that though, right now I don't think Ukraine would be interested in doing any form of peace where they have to cede their territory.
Also true. Equipment suitable for frontal assaults is decreasing. Thus fighting at the front will decrease, while bombing keeps up. Doesn't mean Ukraine can push back the lines to where they want them for a forced peace on their terms.
Neither party will likely find acceptable terms and the conflicts freezes, as in the previous 2014 war.
Freezing doesn’t work for Russia, they need it to end one way or another. Ukraine is backed into a corner, they can’t stop resisting and so they will keep resisting. Russia as the aggressor has the disadvantage of choice, they can give up at any time. As prices increase, consumer goods stop being available, losses mount etc. people will ask why they are fighting. For Russia the price of giving up is low, for Ukraine it is everything.
I think stoppinghte war is going to be very hard on the economy. You are going to have to integrate all these people back many that have serious injuries or mental health problems. Also, lots of them are going to have a fair bit of money and not a lot of goods to purchase, well the economy tries to move back to non wartime, or if they are planning more attacks (which seems likely) restocking so no much manpower or production capacity creating a lot of inflation. The skills a lot of people have gained along with questionable morality likely will also lead a lot of these people into organized crime style jobs. I do not know enough to make any specific claims, but it seems like a cluster fuck of problems waiting to happen.
What's the difference between stopping the war now and winning the war down the line for Russia? Same problems with the only difference beeing a victory parade.
If you're losing 50 dollars a day on gambling, what is the difference between stopping now and stopping in 2 years? I'll even throw in a celebration for you
Not sure if that matters when you can print money...
I think Ardias said it a few pages back that there are no troubling consequences yet for the average Russian. They get shells and probably other stuff from NK and the loss of life is minimal right now.
If Rubio is to be believed, Russia has suffered 100k KIAs since the beginning of the year. This might still be sustainable, but it certainly isn't cheap.
On July 15 2025 22:25 Jankisa wrote: I believe billiboy meant Marko Perković, aka "Thompson" who just had the biggest concert (by ticket sales) in History here in Croatia.
The guy is basically a war profiteer who bases his whole image on our war + being patriotic + God but also works with the criminals in power here and has had multiple law suits over not paying taxes, you know, like patriots do.
It's funny that Zeo the delusional is giving people shit about news sources (with sprinkled in trendy moronic words like AI slop because he thinks it makes him sound smart) while obviously eating up Russian propaganda how Ukraine is on the verge of collapse, I've read at least 20 headlines over the last year how Pokrovsk is basically conquered from nominally neutral news site in Croatia and it's still not even close.
After 11 years of attempts, 1 year of "full push" for it and tens of thousands of casualties Russians are still unable to take a town of 60k, but people are avoiding to talk about it because of mighty Russian summer offensive.
That's the one, thanks for the correction.
On July 16 2025 00:22 KwarK wrote:
On July 16 2025 00:14 Yurie wrote:
On July 15 2025 17:55 Manit0u wrote:
On July 15 2025 06:43 Yurie wrote:
On July 14 2025 19:57 Excludos wrote: Yeah, pretty much nothing of note is going on on the frontlines, other than, of course, that thousands of people are being wounded every day for extremely little movement. If Zeo thinks Russia is going to win by taking ground, I guess see you back in 200 years when they reach Kyiv.
What IS happening is that Russia is in deep shit with their economy. This is provable in a number of ways, including Russia itself admiting it. But anything negative coming out of Russia means Zeo will stick his head in the ground and pretend he doesn't hear it, only to pop up a few months later spewing the same bullshit all over again
Well the war is an interesting stage. It costs Russia a massive amount of money each day and will continue costing when it ends to transition people to other jobs when you scale down the military production. Or they do WW2 again and find another war or dump people somewhere without support.
You can run a war for a long time on poor finances though. Russia is burning a year of future economy per quarter of war, or something similar to that. It keeps getting worse but you can do it for a long time. I honestly don't think the economics will be what breaks the war. Sanctions hurt but many of the worst ones that could be inflicted are not being done thus Russia can limp along in the war.
I honestly don't think Russian economy will crash hard enough to stop war effort in the next 2 years. I think it will actually get more output for the war machine during that time period, at least for drones and other things they have managed to scale up.
The major problem is more on finding volunteers for the army that is in good enough physical shape and with enough training to keep an offensive war going. I think we will see the war slow down even more. Russia launching massive waves of missiles/drones at civilians and at the Ukrainian lines. With fewer and fewer offensives on the ground without leveling things first due to a lack of capacity in that area and a loss of will in taking the losses required for it. Which kind of leads to a stalemate until something gives, most likely the Russian will to continue with limited gains. A frozen conflict.
The problem with the whole Russian war doctrine is that it's unsustainable in the long run. So far they could continue by digging into huge Soviet stockpiles of equipment but this well has almost completely dried out. Despite switching to war economy and scaling up production they're unable to keep up with equipment losses any longer, that's why we see reports of Russian troops utilizing worse and worse equipment as the war goes on. Even if they manage to draft more men it's not of much benefit if they can't equip them or provide them with means of reaching the front lines.
Unless Russia will be able to somehow reshape its whole military and switch to a completely new doctrine (more drone based for example) I don't think they have much gas left in the tank. There were reports coming out last year that showed signs of Russia not planning on prolonging the war past 2025 (they probably won't have enough resources to go past that but only time will tell). This would also align with Putin's latest announcement that they plan to take the Donbas in the next 2 months (highly unlikely), which would let them reach a point where they could potentially consolidate and call it quits with at least something to show for it. Even if they did that though, right now I don't think Ukraine would be interested in doing any form of peace where they have to cede their territory.
Also true. Equipment suitable for frontal assaults is decreasing. Thus fighting at the front will decrease, while bombing keeps up. Doesn't mean Ukraine can push back the lines to where they want them for a forced peace on their terms.
Neither party will likely find acceptable terms and the conflicts freezes, as in the previous 2014 war.
Freezing doesn’t work for Russia, they need it to end one way or another. Ukraine is backed into a corner, they can’t stop resisting and so they will keep resisting. Russia as the aggressor has the disadvantage of choice, they can give up at any time. As prices increase, consumer goods stop being available, losses mount etc. people will ask why they are fighting. For Russia the price of giving up is low, for Ukraine it is everything.
I think stoppinghte war is going to be very hard on the economy. You are going to have to integrate all these people back many that have serious injuries or mental health problems. Also, lots of them are going to have a fair bit of money and not a lot of goods to purchase, well the economy tries to move back to non wartime, or if they are planning more attacks (which seems likely) restocking so no much manpower or production capacity creating a lot of inflation. The skills a lot of people have gained along with questionable morality likely will also lead a lot of these people into organized crime style jobs. I do not know enough to make any specific claims, but it seems like a cluster fuck of problems waiting to happen.
What's the difference between stopping the war now and winning the war down the line for Russia? Same problems with the only difference beeing a victory parade.
If you're losing 50 dollars a day on gambling, what is the difference between stopping now and stopping in 2 years? I'll even throw in a celebration for you
Not sure if that matters when you can print money...
I think Ardias said it a few pages back that there are no troubling consequences yet for the average Russian. They get shells and probably other stuff from NK and the loss of life is minimal right now.
If Rubio is to be believed, Russia has suffered 100k KIAs since the beginning of the year. This might still be sustainable, but it certainly isn't cheap.
KIA is also cheaper than left permanently disabled. You can double or triple that number. Russia is on the border of collapse. The biggest mess only starts when Putin falls. The big question is do they get rid of the source of overly strong power or do they double down so the fall never happen again...
Russians are frogs in cooking pot. Nothing changes fast enough for them to risk their life because getting thrown to jail is not worth it yet. Russian is failing at every single level, not only economy. The only divvied they have is being able to bomb civilians while Ukrainians can't do that. Which pretty much shows they are doing something right. Getting ruined and killing your neighbors while letting the majority of the population live a normal life.
On July 15 2025 22:25 Jankisa wrote: I believe billiboy meant Marko Perković, aka "Thompson" who just had the biggest concert (by ticket sales) in History here in Croatia.
The guy is basically a war profiteer who bases his whole image on our war + being patriotic + God but also works with the criminals in power here and has had multiple law suits over not paying taxes, you know, like patriots do.
It's funny that Zeo the delusional is giving people shit about news sources (with sprinkled in trendy moronic words like AI slop because he thinks it makes him sound smart) while obviously eating up Russian propaganda how Ukraine is on the verge of collapse, I've read at least 20 headlines over the last year how Pokrovsk is basically conquered from nominally neutral news site in Croatia and it's still not even close.
After 11 years of attempts, 1 year of "full push" for it and tens of thousands of casualties Russians are still unable to take a town of 60k, but people are avoiding to talk about it because of mighty Russian summer offensive.
That's the one, thanks for the correction.
On July 16 2025 00:22 KwarK wrote:
On July 16 2025 00:14 Yurie wrote:
On July 15 2025 17:55 Manit0u wrote:
On July 15 2025 06:43 Yurie wrote:
On July 14 2025 19:57 Excludos wrote: Yeah, pretty much nothing of note is going on on the frontlines, other than, of course, that thousands of people are being wounded every day for extremely little movement. If Zeo thinks Russia is going to win by taking ground, I guess see you back in 200 years when they reach Kyiv.
What IS happening is that Russia is in deep shit with their economy. This is provable in a number of ways, including Russia itself admiting it. But anything negative coming out of Russia means Zeo will stick his head in the ground and pretend he doesn't hear it, only to pop up a few months later spewing the same bullshit all over again
Well the war is an interesting stage. It costs Russia a massive amount of money each day and will continue costing when it ends to transition people to other jobs when you scale down the military production. Or they do WW2 again and find another war or dump people somewhere without support.
You can run a war for a long time on poor finances though. Russia is burning a year of future economy per quarter of war, or something similar to that. It keeps getting worse but you can do it for a long time. I honestly don't think the economics will be what breaks the war. Sanctions hurt but many of the worst ones that could be inflicted are not being done thus Russia can limp along in the war.
I honestly don't think Russian economy will crash hard enough to stop war effort in the next 2 years. I think it will actually get more output for the war machine during that time period, at least for drones and other things they have managed to scale up.
The major problem is more on finding volunteers for the army that is in good enough physical shape and with enough training to keep an offensive war going. I think we will see the war slow down even more. Russia launching massive waves of missiles/drones at civilians and at the Ukrainian lines. With fewer and fewer offensives on the ground without leveling things first due to a lack of capacity in that area and a loss of will in taking the losses required for it. Which kind of leads to a stalemate until something gives, most likely the Russian will to continue with limited gains. A frozen conflict.
The problem with the whole Russian war doctrine is that it's unsustainable in the long run. So far they could continue by digging into huge Soviet stockpiles of equipment but this well has almost completely dried out. Despite switching to war economy and scaling up production they're unable to keep up with equipment losses any longer, that's why we see reports of Russian troops utilizing worse and worse equipment as the war goes on. Even if they manage to draft more men it's not of much benefit if they can't equip them or provide them with means of reaching the front lines.
Unless Russia will be able to somehow reshape its whole military and switch to a completely new doctrine (more drone based for example) I don't think they have much gas left in the tank. There were reports coming out last year that showed signs of Russia not planning on prolonging the war past 2025 (they probably won't have enough resources to go past that but only time will tell). This would also align with Putin's latest announcement that they plan to take the Donbas in the next 2 months (highly unlikely), which would let them reach a point where they could potentially consolidate and call it quits with at least something to show for it. Even if they did that though, right now I don't think Ukraine would be interested in doing any form of peace where they have to cede their territory.
Also true. Equipment suitable for frontal assaults is decreasing. Thus fighting at the front will decrease, while bombing keeps up. Doesn't mean Ukraine can push back the lines to where they want them for a forced peace on their terms.
Neither party will likely find acceptable terms and the conflicts freezes, as in the previous 2014 war.
Freezing doesn’t work for Russia, they need it to end one way or another. Ukraine is backed into a corner, they can’t stop resisting and so they will keep resisting. Russia as the aggressor has the disadvantage of choice, they can give up at any time. As prices increase, consumer goods stop being available, losses mount etc. people will ask why they are fighting. For Russia the price of giving up is low, for Ukraine it is everything.
I think stoppinghte war is going to be very hard on the economy. You are going to have to integrate all these people back many that have serious injuries or mental health problems. Also, lots of them are going to have a fair bit of money and not a lot of goods to purchase, well the economy tries to move back to non wartime, or if they are planning more attacks (which seems likely) restocking so no much manpower or production capacity creating a lot of inflation. The skills a lot of people have gained along with questionable morality likely will also lead a lot of these people into organized crime style jobs. I do not know enough to make any specific claims, but it seems like a cluster fuck of problems waiting to happen.
What's the difference between stopping the war now and winning the war down the line for Russia? Same problems with the only difference beeing a victory parade.
If you're losing 50 dollars a day on gambling, what is the difference between stopping now and stopping in 2 years? I'll even throw in a celebration for you
Not sure if that matters when you can print money...
I think Ardias said it a few pages back that there are no troubling consequences yet for the average Russian. They get shells and probably other stuff from NK and the loss of life is minimal right now.
If Rubio is to be believed, Russia has suffered 100k KIAs since the beginning of the year. This might still be sustainable, but it certainly isn't cheap.
As usual with these guys, he's correct only in if you are blind and deaf and trust Russia. Those 100k are Russia's own numbers; every recorded deceased name they've released. However the math doesn't math, and we know Russia lies for breakfast.
We know that the casualty numbers have now breached 1 million. Having a fatality to death rate of 1/10 in a peer to peer war is unheard of, especially considering the Russian Zerg fighting doctrine of "Throw bodies on the problem until it goes away". To put it into perspective, in WW2, Russia had a 44% fatality to casualty rate. If we are being generous, and claim 1/4 fatality rate in the current conflict (Which is likely, based on various independent numbers), That's still 250k fatalities for Russia, a long long way from their official number
On July 15 2025 22:25 Jankisa wrote: I believe billiboy meant Marko Perković, aka "Thompson" who just had the biggest concert (by ticket sales) in History here in Croatia.
The guy is basically a war profiteer who bases his whole image on our war + being patriotic + God but also works with the criminals in power here and has had multiple law suits over not paying taxes, you know, like patriots do.
It's funny that Zeo the delusional is giving people shit about news sources (with sprinkled in trendy moronic words like AI slop because he thinks it makes him sound smart) while obviously eating up Russian propaganda how Ukraine is on the verge of collapse, I've read at least 20 headlines over the last year how Pokrovsk is basically conquered from nominally neutral news site in Croatia and it's still not even close.
After 11 years of attempts, 1 year of "full push" for it and tens of thousands of casualties Russians are still unable to take a town of 60k, but people are avoiding to talk about it because of mighty Russian summer offensive.
That's the one, thanks for the correction.
On July 16 2025 00:22 KwarK wrote:
On July 16 2025 00:14 Yurie wrote:
On July 15 2025 17:55 Manit0u wrote:
On July 15 2025 06:43 Yurie wrote: [quote]
Well the war is an interesting stage. It costs Russia a massive amount of money each day and will continue costing when it ends to transition people to other jobs when you scale down the military production. Or they do WW2 again and find another war or dump people somewhere without support.
You can run a war for a long time on poor finances though. Russia is burning a year of future economy per quarter of war, or something similar to that. It keeps getting worse but you can do it for a long time. I honestly don't think the economics will be what breaks the war. Sanctions hurt but many of the worst ones that could be inflicted are not being done thus Russia can limp along in the war.
I honestly don't think Russian economy will crash hard enough to stop war effort in the next 2 years. I think it will actually get more output for the war machine during that time period, at least for drones and other things they have managed to scale up.
The major problem is more on finding volunteers for the army that is in good enough physical shape and with enough training to keep an offensive war going. I think we will see the war slow down even more. Russia launching massive waves of missiles/drones at civilians and at the Ukrainian lines. With fewer and fewer offensives on the ground without leveling things first due to a lack of capacity in that area and a loss of will in taking the losses required for it. Which kind of leads to a stalemate until something gives, most likely the Russian will to continue with limited gains. A frozen conflict.
The problem with the whole Russian war doctrine is that it's unsustainable in the long run. So far they could continue by digging into huge Soviet stockpiles of equipment but this well has almost completely dried out. Despite switching to war economy and scaling up production they're unable to keep up with equipment losses any longer, that's why we see reports of Russian troops utilizing worse and worse equipment as the war goes on. Even if they manage to draft more men it's not of much benefit if they can't equip them or provide them with means of reaching the front lines.
Unless Russia will be able to somehow reshape its whole military and switch to a completely new doctrine (more drone based for example) I don't think they have much gas left in the tank. There were reports coming out last year that showed signs of Russia not planning on prolonging the war past 2025 (they probably won't have enough resources to go past that but only time will tell). This would also align with Putin's latest announcement that they plan to take the Donbas in the next 2 months (highly unlikely), which would let them reach a point where they could potentially consolidate and call it quits with at least something to show for it. Even if they did that though, right now I don't think Ukraine would be interested in doing any form of peace where they have to cede their territory.
Also true. Equipment suitable for frontal assaults is decreasing. Thus fighting at the front will decrease, while bombing keeps up. Doesn't mean Ukraine can push back the lines to where they want them for a forced peace on their terms.
Neither party will likely find acceptable terms and the conflicts freezes, as in the previous 2014 war.
Freezing doesn’t work for Russia, they need it to end one way or another. Ukraine is backed into a corner, they can’t stop resisting and so they will keep resisting. Russia as the aggressor has the disadvantage of choice, they can give up at any time. As prices increase, consumer goods stop being available, losses mount etc. people will ask why they are fighting. For Russia the price of giving up is low, for Ukraine it is everything.
I think stoppinghte war is going to be very hard on the economy. You are going to have to integrate all these people back many that have serious injuries or mental health problems. Also, lots of them are going to have a fair bit of money and not a lot of goods to purchase, well the economy tries to move back to non wartime, or if they are planning more attacks (which seems likely) restocking so no much manpower or production capacity creating a lot of inflation. The skills a lot of people have gained along with questionable morality likely will also lead a lot of these people into organized crime style jobs. I do not know enough to make any specific claims, but it seems like a cluster fuck of problems waiting to happen.
What's the difference between stopping the war now and winning the war down the line for Russia? Same problems with the only difference beeing a victory parade.
If you're losing 50 dollars a day on gambling, what is the difference between stopping now and stopping in 2 years? I'll even throw in a celebration for you
Not sure if that matters when you can print money...
I think Ardias said it a few pages back that there are no troubling consequences yet for the average Russian. They get shells and probably other stuff from NK and the loss of life is minimal right now.
If Rubio is to be believed, Russia has suffered 100k KIAs since the beginning of the year. This might still be sustainable, but it certainly isn't cheap.
As usual with these guys, he's correct only in if you are blind and deaf and trust Russia. Those 100k are Russia's own numbers; every recorded deceased name they've released. However the math doesn't math, and we know Russia lies for breakfast.
We know that the casualty numbers have now breached 1 million. Having a fatality to death rate of 1/10 in a peer to peer war is unheard of, especially considering the Russian Zerg fighting doctrine of "Throw bodies on the problem until it goes away". To put it into perspective, in WW2, Russia had a 44% fatality to casualty rate. If we are being generous, and claim 1/4 fatality rate in the current conflict (Which is likely, based on various independent numbers), That's still 250k fatalities for Russia, a long long way from their official number
Yes WE know that but it's so stupidly huge already they just don't realize it that their own downplayed numbers are enough for the argument.
On July 19 2025 06:08 Harris1st wrote: Not sure if that matters when you can print money...
I think Ardias said it a few pages back that there are no troubling consequences yet for the average Russian. They get shells and probably other stuff from NK and the loss of life is minimal right now. So until something drastically changes (like the economic downfall that gets mentioned frequently here) Russia can do this indefinitely
They can't do this indefinitely. Economic issues aside, they are now below the threshold of equipment replacements and they're having manpower issues. Sure, they can do forced conscription and boost their numbers for a bit but that doesn't solve their problem in the long run and even makes it worse. You can't just send your entire population to war, you still need people to be able to do even the most basic jobs. There's also the issue of keeping enough in reserve to not instantly crumble if say China would like to take a bite out of you (which is not out of the question since China is an opportunistic country and there have been border disputes between Russia and China for quite some time now).
Printing money is not an answer either. The more money you print the more you devalue it which can lead to hyperinflation like we've seen before - people taking money in wheelbarrows to do basic groceries, only to find out that by the time they got to the store the prices have doubled...
Edit: Also, the loss of life is not minimal. With the new gamification system for war Ukraine has put in place the losses of Russian troops have skyrocketed.
The downside of having a huge military complex is that you need a lot of people to run it. Logistics, accounting, maintenance, guard duty. Those aren't people you can just send to the front. The fact that Russia is a huge country also means they have a lot of border that needs to be protected, so in reality they can only really utilize a fraction of their military for offensive operations.
On July 19 2025 06:27 maybenexttime wrote: Most of their MBT/IFV production relies on refurbishing old Soviet stock. They have spent most of that stock by now and what they have left is of worse quality. It's getting progressively harder for them to refurbish that junk. They're also running into similar issues with recruitment. They're finding it harder and harder to recruit new meat. The sign-on bonuses have quadrupled (?) in the last two years.
The MBT/IFV is only critical if you want to do large offensive actions. It is yet another straw on the frozen front trend. For Putin the best thing would be to halt all offensives, chill for 6 months while dueling in drone and missile wars to keep Ukraine occupied. See if Trump wants to help more or not in that period via a major tariff war to pull attention away.
So, I guess there are anti-corruption protests aimed at Zelenskyy's government shutting down an agency meant to fight government corruption.
On one hand, it's nice to see the stark difference, Ukraine is, very obviously a functional democracy where people can come out and protest what they think is unjust without fear of consequences from the state, on the other it's worrying that the government is doing this shit unilaterally and even more worrying that the agency in question was in the process of investigating Zelenskyy's allies and their companies.
Personally, I think the guy is a great war time president, he had some blunders, of course, but overall he did an amazing job so far, despite that, I'm not unaware of him being close to some oligarchs and he was mentioned in Panama papers.
I guess I'll reach out to my Ukrainian colleagues to check what they think of this before reaching a final judgement, but my instincts are that since this story is being boosted, a lot, by Russian propaganda that it might be much less alarming then it seems at the first glance.
I've been trying to read up on this, and I'll be honest it's way over my head. On the surface it looks like they're shutting down two anti-corruption agencies (Or at least limiting their power). But on the other hand they are not necessarily all sunshine and rainbows either. First off they are incredibly costly to operate in and of itself, housing thousands of employees, which is a strain in a wartime economy. Secondly, perhaps more importantly, these agencies run pretty much completely without oversight, and seems to be pretty deep into the swamp themselves. There's also rumours that SVR have gotten pretty deep claws into the agencies, which gives those few bad actors a lot of power when there is no oversight.
Now I have no idea what the truth level on any of this is. Maybe it's all excuses for a party that ran on anti-corruption to get away with more corruption themselves. Maybe there's nuggets of truth in there but it's just being handled incredibly poorly. Whatever the case is it has sparked tons of protests across the country, and Zelenskyy seems to have fumbled the ball badly on this one
Meanwhile in Russia, Propagandist are complaining that new laws put in place which forbid anyone to watch "enemy propaganda" that they won't be able to do their job :D
Until now, in Russia, you could still watch all you want, and from now on your can be fined for watching the wrong video.
On July 23 2025 20:45 Jankisa wrote: So, I guess there are anti-corruption protests aimed at Zelenskyy's government shutting down an agency meant to fight government corruption.
On one hand, it's nice to see the stark difference, Ukraine is, very obviously a functional democracy where people can come out and protest what they think is unjust without fear of consequences from the state, on the other it's worrying that the government is doing this shit unilaterally and even more worrying that the agency in question was in the process of investigating Zelenskyy's allies and their companies.
Personally, I think the guy is a great war time president, he had some blunders, of course, but overall he did an amazing job so far, despite that, I'm not unaware of him being close to some oligarchs and he was mentioned in Panama papers.
I guess I'll reach out to my Ukrainian colleagues to check what they think of this before reaching a final judgement, but my instincts are that since this story is being boosted, a lot, by Russian propaganda that it might be much less alarming then it seems at the first glance.
Ukraine is a very unique country and their government's institutions are a reflection of that. As you can imagine, its basically impossible to find reasonable, neutral information about this right now. But here's what seems to be accurate:
1: Ukraine's extreme corruption problems from long ago led to some very potent anti-corruption institutions.
2: There are no examples other than Ukraine of this kind of oversight operating during actual wartime
Here is the question I am having a hard time answering: Is this institution a net positive or negative? If corruption ends up harming resources being spent appropriately, removing this institution could harm Ukraine. If this institution prevents the Ukrainian military from operating with logistical/legal agility, removing this institution could help Ukraine.
I genuinely don't think anyone who isn't high up in a major world government knows the answer to this. But I am optimistic this could be a good change because so many nations are so intimately involved with Ukraine, I have a feeling it would be difficult for Ukraine to suddenly start siphoning funds and whatnot. I imagine most nations providing aid are verifying proper use and whatnot behind the scenes.
To try to answer this question, I have to go back to my own experience of living in a Slavic country with relatively recent war experience.
There was a lot of corruption during the war, there was even more in the post war period when the post-communist spoils were being divvied up, I believe the same thing happened to post Soviet Ukraine that did in post Yugoslavia Croatia, people close to the people in power received control of the biggest public and other companies which held immense amounts of wealth in the form of Factories, mines, land etc.
It's kind of ingrained in to Slavic mentality, it might sound self racist but I think anyone living in similar countries (and I talked to people all across them) would agree, hell, I think maybe Zelenskyy described it best in his show:
It's systemic corruption, you learn it from very early on and the whole system is set up to do nothing to change your mind.
Now, in Croatia's case, we, like many other EU developing countries have EPPO, the EU's prosecutor gets assigned to a country to try to work on corruption, but only corruption that has to do with EU funds.
And that goes well for a while, they bring down a few ministers, prosecute a bunch of cases, but, after some time, it gets poison pilled. The EPPO of today is very quiet, the main Croatian prosecutor is a chick who is basically a fixer for our corrupt government, it took them a while but they (our criminals in charge) placed their people in the right places and the body got neutered.
I'm not a blind Zelenskyy supporter, but my main, best case scenario for this is that he's trying to purge these agencies of people who are in them to make them ineffective.
The other scenario, worse one, is that he is and has been the corrupt yokel he described in the video all along and he's trying to neuter the people who are on his tail.
If Zelensky was as corrupt as some people seem to try to say, he would have just taken Putins money and handed Ukraine over to Russia. I'll wait with condemnations of corruption until the war is over. If Ukraine loses... well it doesn't matter because the new regime under Putin will be absurdely corrupt just like Russia is. If Russia falls apart and Ukraine is finally free then we can start putting pressure on them to fight corruption and become more like the west.
Btw, not saying corruption doesn't exist in the west, it's just a different ball game compared to countries like Russia.
On July 25 2025 21:16 Ser Galachad wrote: If Zelensky was as corrupt as some people seem to try to say, he would have just taken Putins money and handed Ukraine over to Russia. I'll wait with condemnations of corruption until the war is over. If Ukraine loses... well it doesn't matter because the new regime under Putin will be absurdely corrupt just like Russia is. If Russia falls apart and Ukraine is finally free then we can start putting pressure on them to fight corruption and become more like the west.
Btw, not saying corruption doesn't exist in the west, it's just a different ball game compared to countries like Russia.
You're not wrong. But I think the reason why this upset a lot of people is because these anti-corruption agencies were a mandated requirement to join EU. I think reasonably, if there were problems with them, there's no real issue in retracting them for now, and then opening the agencies back up when the war is over. It's not like Ukraine will be joining before the end of the war in any case. But simultaneously I can see why this could upset a lot of people who are strung up on emotions due to the war, and really just wants to get away from Russia as much as they can.
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