NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
The usual suspects in this thread will all say it's Russian propaganda, but that's because they have been brainwashed with constant russophobia spat at them 24/7. And once again, I will say these guys are Americans, they want America to win but they don't delude people on realities on the ground
On November 20 2025 18:19 spets1 wrote: If you want real war analysts that are not Ukraine sided but have more of a neutral view and are American patriots watch
The usual suspects in this thread will all say it's Russian propaganda, but that's because they have been brainwashed with constant russophobia spat at them 24/7. And once again, I will say these guys are Americans, they want America to win but they don't delude people on realities on the ground
No amount of analysis can cover up the fact that Putin meant for this war to be over years ago.
Come back when you're willing to admit that the fact we're still talking about Ukraine as an active warzone means that the Russian military failed and that Putin was wrong.
On November 20 2025 07:15 spets1 wrote: It's funny how it's said here, "We've debunked this and we debunk that" When all you've done is stated your opinion and think that it's fact. No all you've done is shared your opinion, interpretation of the situation and you state it as fact and then the others that have the same propaganda ingrained into your brains parrot the same opinions which serves as your confirmation. So when you do that, ie state your opinion as fact there is no point in me trying to explain other points of views and interpretations
You said that Mearsheimer was right about everything since 2014. They quoted you a bunch of things in his analysis that didn't happen the way he said. Those are not opinions I believe? Either they're right or you are. Based on everything I know about the world, it's probably them who are right. Obviously you've never watched Mearsheimer yourself, but you might want to question the source that you read that told you that he had predicted everything correctly since 2014. Clearly that source has been lying to you.
Which part? They just said nonsense and posted a video that's 2 hrs long in which he got everything right. So tell me what did he get wrong? Let's just start with one thing. And I'll try to address it.
What do you mean which part lol there were some pretty obvious things, probably the most obvious being whether Mearsheimer did or didn't say two weeks before Putin invaded Ukraine that Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine, that would be a big one.
I am not American so I care little about American patriots views - especially given how everyone has their own opinion on who are true American patriots and who are pretenders who will destroy the country.
I am also not interested in discussion about whether it was justified or not, or who is right or wrong in that conflict. It was discussed and argued about thousand times by now, I have my opinion about this, and I believe I understand (more or less) what other people from different sides think about this and why.
But I am interested in what is really happening and - especially - what can happen or is likely to happen next.
This is a better analysis of Russia economy, I have a fair amount of economic history background.
Sanctions are meant to be extremely powerful, and extremely effective. You guys probably forgot or didn't know, George Soros and other Fx traders alone caused the collapsed of multiple Asian currencies and economy to negative growth in 1997 financial crisis.
These slow cracks aren't meant to be slow cracks. Russia could be entering stagflation, but so is Germany.
Economy downturn isn't a crisis. Crisis of faith is how an economy collapses, and like the video said, Russia still got huge amount of tools, being the totalitarian state.
Totalitarian states always collapse when you least expect it. Not a single fall of a dictator has been predictable.
Even Saddam Hussein fell... Much faster than expected. Usually, it's just that regime collapses are feedback loops, so when the parameters are right, the collapse takes days or hours. And it's very different from economic collapse, so being able to maintain a war economy just doesn't save the dictator from this feedback loop, only the perceived risk on the life of those disagreeing does. "Can he kill me or my family before we can stop him" is the only question that matters.
The main difference between Ukraine and Russia, is that Zelensky can visit his troops on the front line and trust them. Putin can't, not because he is a coward (he is...) but because he'd just get murdered by his troops.
On November 20 2025 19:17 ZeroByte13 wrote: I am not American so I care little about American patriots views - especially given how everyone has their own opinion on who are true American patriots and who are pretenders who will destroy the country.
I am also not interested in discussion about whether it was justified or not, or who is right or wrong in that conflict. It was discussed and argued about thousand times by now, I have my opinion about this, and I believe I understand (more or less) what other people from different sides think about this and why.
But I am interested in what is really happening and - especially - what can happen or is likely to happen next.
What's happening cannot really be discussed, like I don't see why we would start listing all the infrastructure going in flame in Russia, when the only argument we get in response is that it has no impact and that the war economy is secretly so strong that the tanks could drive without petrol.
We see a reality of a quite fast changing situation, we get a wave of whataboutism from 3 persons that seems to think having elections and getting rid of Zelensky seems like the best way to go forward with the war for Ukrainians. So the most anti-Ukrainian pro-russian people are trying to give Ukrainians tips on how to win, fishy isn't it.
Well, I will give a honest tip for pro-putin russians, hide your tracks, because after a regime collapse, the witch hunt is real. Anti-Putin Russians have been forced to silence by violence, don't expect kisses in return.
On November 20 2025 07:15 spets1 wrote: It's funny how it's said here, "We've debunked this and we debunk that" When all you've done is stated your opinion and think that it's fact. No all you've done is shared your opinion, interpretation of the situation and you state it as fact and then the others that have the same propaganda ingrained into your brains parrot the same opinions which serves as your confirmation. So when you do that, ie state your opinion as fact there is no point in me trying to explain other points of views and interpretations
You said that Mearsheimer was right about everything since 2014. They quoted you a bunch of things in his analysis that didn't happen the way he said. Those are not opinions I believe? Either they're right or you are. Based on everything I know about the world, it's probably them who are right. Obviously you've never watched Mearsheimer yourself, but you might want to question the source that you read that told you that he had predicted everything correctly since 2014. Clearly that source has been lying to you.
Which part? They just said nonsense and posted a video that's 2 hrs long in which he got everything right. So tell me what did he get wrong? Let's just start with one thing. And I'll try to address it.
What do you mean which part lol there were some pretty obvious things, probably the most obvious being whether Mearsheimer did or didn't say two weeks before Putin invaded Ukraine that Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine, that would be a big one.
Ok I concede that he was wrong on that one. You were right about that one Mersheimer did get it completely wrong
On November 20 2025 19:17 ZeroByte13 wrote: I am not American so I care little about American patriots views - especially given how everyone has their own opinion on who are true American patriots and who are pretenders who will destroy the country.
I am also not interested in discussion about whether it was justified or not, or who is right or wrong in that conflict. It was discussed and argued about thousand times by now, I have my opinion about this, and I believe I understand (more or less) what other people from different sides think about this and why.
But I am interested in what is really happening and - especially - what can happen or is likely to happen next.
That same channel imo is doing a good job at showing whats happening and what's likely next. Latest example is the coverage of pokrovsk battles. They predicted that pokrovsk will fall to Russians and it did. There is another channel that I watch by a guy from Canada, he is also pretty objective but here he will be called a Russian asset
And just a side note I dislike Putin but I look at the conflict through strategic eyes, so i get bashed by both sides as being a realist I get bashed by Putin bots and I get bashed by nafo bots
On November 20 2025 17:24 spets1 wrote: He does not "maintain that Putin's goal is not regime change". Wtf you on about. If he ever said that it was put out of context.
"Regarding regime change, Mearsheimer states that Putin sought a shift in Ukraine's leadership away from the post-2014 government, which he viewed as hostile and Western-installed. He describes this as a limited goal: replacing the regime in Kyiv with one more neutral or pro-Russian to neutralize the NATO threat, without intending full occupation or territorial conquest. For instance, he notes that no Russian leader would tolerate a Western-aligned government in Ukraine, as it would threaten Russia's strategic buffer zone, and that Putin's pushback was a direct reaction to the West "installing" such a regime after the Euromaidan events."
He even recently said, like couple days ago that Putin wants a regime change but he won't get it the current way things are looking.
So can we put that argument to bed? Can you accept that you were wrong? Or is that impossible for you?
So anything else he is wrong about?
Okay, so he changed his mind after a few years? That hardly exonerates him. It was the stated goal from the very beginning. Also, toppling the government, installing a puppet (Viktor Medvedchuk), controlling Ukraine's internal and foreign policy (the laws, size of the military, alliances) are not "a limited goal". It's complete domination.
I'm still waiting for you to address my counterarguments regarding the NATO threat nonsense.
On November 20 2025 17:24 spets1 wrote: He does not "maintain that Putin's goal is not regime change". Wtf you on about. If he ever said that it was put out of context.
"Regarding regime change, Mearsheimer states that Putin sought a shift in Ukraine's leadership away from the post-2014 government, which he viewed as hostile and Western-installed. He describes this as a limited goal: replacing the regime in Kyiv with one more neutral or pro-Russian to neutralize the NATO threat, without intending full occupation or territorial conquest. For instance, he notes that no Russian leader would tolerate a Western-aligned government in Ukraine, as it would threaten Russia's strategic buffer zone, and that Putin's pushback was a direct reaction to the West "installing" such a regime after the Euromaidan events."
He even recently said, like couple days ago that Putin wants a regime change but he won't get it the current way things are looking.
So can we put that argument to bed? Can you accept that you were wrong? Or is that impossible for you?
So anything else he is wrong about?
Okay, so he changed his mind after a few years? That hardly exonerates him. It was the stated goal from the very beginning. Also, toppling the government, installing a puppet (Viktor Medvedchuk), controlling Ukraine's internal and foreign policy (the laws, size of the military, alliances) are not "a limited goal". It's complete domination.
I'm still waiting for you to address my counterarguments regarding the NATO threat nonsense.
Sooo, just what NATO countries did to Ukraine with the Maidan coup? Maybe you are just projecting
On November 20 2025 17:24 spets1 wrote: He does not "maintain that Putin's goal is not regime change". Wtf you on about. If he ever said that it was put out of context.
"Regarding regime change, Mearsheimer states that Putin sought a shift in Ukraine's leadership away from the post-2014 government, which he viewed as hostile and Western-installed. He describes this as a limited goal: replacing the regime in Kyiv with one more neutral or pro-Russian to neutralize the NATO threat, without intending full occupation or territorial conquest. For instance, he notes that no Russian leader would tolerate a Western-aligned government in Ukraine, as it would threaten Russia's strategic buffer zone, and that Putin's pushback was a direct reaction to the West "installing" such a regime after the Euromaidan events."
He even recently said, like couple days ago that Putin wants a regime change but he won't get it the current way things are looking.
So can we put that argument to bed? Can you accept that you were wrong? Or is that impossible for you?
So anything else he is wrong about?
Okay, so he changed his mind after a few years? That hardly exonerates him. It was the stated goal from the very beginning. Also, toppling the government, installing a puppet (Viktor Medvedchuk), controlling Ukraine's internal and foreign policy (the laws, size of the military, alliances) are not "a limited goal". It's complete domination.
I'm still waiting for you to address my counterarguments regarding the NATO threat nonsense.
Sooo, just what NATO countries did to Ukraine with the Maidan coup? Maybe you are just projecting
Someone doesn't understand how popular uprisings work.
Hardly surprising given that the instinctive Serbian response to a popular uprising is violence.
On November 20 2025 14:55 ETisME wrote: https://youtu.be/YRuYb3H3mvA This is a better analysis of Russia economy, I have a fair amount of economic history background.
Sanctions are meant to be extremely powerful, and extremely effective. You guys probably forgot or didn't know, George Soros and other Fx traders alone caused the collapsed of multiple Asian currencies and economy to negative growth in 1997 financial crisis.
These slow cracks aren't meant to be slow cracks. Russia could be entering stagflation, but so is Germany.
Economy downturn isn't a crisis. Crisis of faith is how an economy collapses, and like the video said, Russia still got huge amount of tools, being the totalitarian state.
Totalitarian states always collapse when you least expect it. Not a single fall of a dictator has been predictable.
Even Saddam Hussein fell... Much faster than expected. Usually, it's just that regime collapses are feedback loops, so when the parameters are right, the collapse takes days or hours. And it's very different from economic collapse, so being able to maintain a war economy just doesn't save the dictator from this feedback loop, only the perceived risk on the life of those disagreeing does. "Can he kill me or my family before we can stop him" is the only question that matters.
The main difference between Ukraine and Russia, is that Zelensky can visit his troops on the front line and trust them. Putin can't, not because he is a coward (he is...) but because he'd just get murdered by his troops.
Not always, and plenty are long enduring and even evolve into something else. See NK, China for example. Even Taiwan was under an extremely fascist era for quite a long time. An economics collapse would have likely lead to a regime change, even then it's not guaranteed.
On November 20 2025 17:24 spets1 wrote: He does not "maintain that Putin's goal is not regime change". Wtf you on about. If he ever said that it was put out of context.
"Regarding regime change, Mearsheimer states that Putin sought a shift in Ukraine's leadership away from the post-2014 government, which he viewed as hostile and Western-installed. He describes this as a limited goal: replacing the regime in Kyiv with one more neutral or pro-Russian to neutralize the NATO threat, without intending full occupation or territorial conquest. For instance, he notes that no Russian leader would tolerate a Western-aligned government in Ukraine, as it would threaten Russia's strategic buffer zone, and that Putin's pushback was a direct reaction to the West "installing" such a regime after the Euromaidan events."
He even recently said, like couple days ago that Putin wants a regime change but he won't get it the current way things are looking.
So can we put that argument to bed? Can you accept that you were wrong? Or is that impossible for you?
So anything else he is wrong about?
So, we should invade Belarus because it's a dictatorship that's hostile to the West and pro-Russian and replace their government with people who are more neutral or pro-West to neutralize the Russian threat? No European leader would tolerate a Russian-aligned government on our borders as it would threaten Europe's strategic buffer zone. Such action would be a direct reaction to Russia "installing" such regime in ex-Soviet republics.
It's these... let's call them state-approved talking points that keep popping up. From NATO expansion to root causes to the thrust towards Kyiv was just a distraction to now Zelensky's legitimacy. We'll see new versions being trotted out every once in a while, and some of them even try to stick around.
And whenever the nonsense they're peddling is debunked they always avoid addressing the rebuttals. Then after a few weeks or months they come back are are pushing the same crap, pretending it hadn't been already debunked.
That's the most frustrating part. They come in here and shit all over the thread, disappears for without addressing anything substantial, then returns a month later to vomit some more of their dear leader's talking points. It's just consistent bad faith arguments and trolling
Imo this is because there like 10 people in this thread stoking each other non stop. And won't listen to any arguments. No matter what is said you guys live in a parallel universe where the facts are the same but you interpret them completely opposite. Some of us a smart enough not to engage cos there's no point. Let bigons be bigots
You are the one living in some parallel universe.
We do listen to argument. You just ignore the counterarguments. Feel free to address my rebuttal to the NATO threat nonsense.
As an avid ukraine supporter, I 100% have checked out of engaging much in discussions in this thread because I often felt like the people on my side are as worth engaging with as zeo is. Its a "us vs them" by now, so no shot at any fruitful discussion and I realised that I started to show a little of the same tendencies so I dipped out.
Now I just check up every now and then when there is a new development to see if maybe someone posted some interesting source, but any kind of discussion quickly has me cringe at everyone involved and I move on.
Well, this.
Pretty sure you are not an Ukraine supporter...
No, I'm not, but I would sign under every word from Russian side as well. Current discussion in general is a hateful shit throwing from both sides, which denies any possibility of good faith conversation, and at some point I felt like totally wasting my time writing those walls of text with dozen of carefully picked sources (due to total dismissal of any pro-Russian info here, which I tried to abide to) as I used to, which were taking me hours to do. Hence, while periodically checking the thread for common Westerner perspective (local established community gives better representation than random Reddit sub), in the last couple of years I've posted there only when I was beered and bored late in the evening, which isn't often.
Artesimo is actually a person heavily missed from the thread, since even though we had different stances in general, I enjoyed our discussions on different matters of this war, where it felt that even we don't agree on something, we both are being heard at least. Which is why, probably, our feeling on the thread is mutual, despite being on opposite sides.
While it's generally very much apparent that you (and some others on tl) support the Russian side of this war, it's not something thats normally spelled out this clear. So just to be clear you are supporting and essentially saying that Russia invading and starting a war with Ukraine is/was justified ?
On November 20 2025 14:55 ETisME wrote: https://youtu.be/YRuYb3H3mvA This is a better analysis of Russia economy, I have a fair amount of economic history background.
Sanctions are meant to be extremely powerful, and extremely effective. You guys probably forgot or didn't know, George Soros and other Fx traders alone caused the collapsed of multiple Asian currencies and economy to negative growth in 1997 financial crisis.
These slow cracks aren't meant to be slow cracks. Russia could be entering stagflation, but so is Germany.
Economy downturn isn't a crisis. Crisis of faith is how an economy collapses, and like the video said, Russia still got huge amount of tools, being the totalitarian state.
Totalitarian states always collapse when you least expect it. Not a single fall of a dictator has been predictable.
Even Saddam Hussein fell... Much faster than expected. Usually, it's just that regime collapses are feedback loops, so when the parameters are right, the collapse takes days or hours. And it's very different from economic collapse, so being able to maintain a war economy just doesn't save the dictator from this feedback loop, only the perceived risk on the life of those disagreeing does. "Can he kill me or my family before we can stop him" is the only question that matters.
The main difference between Ukraine and Russia, is that Zelensky can visit his troops on the front line and trust them. Putin can't, not because he is a coward (he is...) but because he'd just get murdered by his troops.
Not always, and plenty are long enduring and even evolve into something else. See NK, China for example. Even Taiwan was under an extremely fascist era for quite a long time. An economics collapse would have likely lead to a regime change, even then it's not guaranteed.
True, but this is based on the survival bias, those are exceptions rather than the rule. The list of toppled dictatorships in the last 70 years is very long and they had all in common that they looked just as strongly installed as Putin is today. NK is its own world. Russians do have plenty of freedom today compared to soviet time as well. China also managed to juggle between freedom and total control.
The play is usually on the security vs freedom. If you don't have a threat, it's hard to convince the population to let freedom go. Hence NATO has to be a threat for Russia.
The question for us europeans is not if and when Putin falls, but rather once he falls, is he replaced by the next dictator or does Russians chose at that point to deal with corruption
The November exchange of bodies between Kiev and Moscow took place today
KYIV, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Ukraine and Russia have carried out a new exchange of bodies of dead soldiers, Ukrainian officials and Russian state media said on Thursday. Ukraine said it received 1,000 bodies and Russian state news agency TASS quoted an unidentified source as saying Moscow got back 30.
On November 20 2025 23:37 zeo wrote: The November exchange of bodies between Kiev and Moscow took place today
KYIV, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Ukraine and Russia have carried out a new exchange of bodies of dead soldiers, Ukrainian officials and Russian state media said on Thursday. Ukraine said it received 1,000 bodies and Russian state news agency TASS quoted an unidentified source as saying Moscow got back 30.
15.367 bodies of UKR soldiers exchanged for 473 bodies of RUS soldiers over the last year at a ratio of 32,48 to 1
Did you get a chance to read about fascism? Are you now pro fascist? Or was there something about Putins regime that you think doesn’t fit the definition?
Also, what are the advantages of joining Russias sphere of influence over the eu? Why would you rather be Belarus than Poland?