well if they did that they better win inside a year, it's one thing to lose 10 million farmers that could barely feed themselves, it's another to not have the man power to literary keep the lights on, the roads clear and secure the boarders and non-European oblasts.
Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar
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He doesn't, he wants to take the Eastern areas of Ukraine where the majority of the population speak Russian and create a land bridge to Crimea to secure Russias Black Sea port which is of huge geostrategic importance.
By the way, a better analogy for Putin would be Stalin rather than Hitler. He's clearly a Stalinist.
That's doubtful. They're going to try to raise 200k, raising 10 times that or more would be very difficult or pretty much impossible right now. They'd face serious unrest, large parts of the rest of the economy would grind to a halt. You'd probably see Putin kicked out of office.
He wants the expansion of the Russian empire. But that can only happen by consent. The world is behind those that don’t consent and that’s why Putler will fail.
Ukraine may be much smaller than Russia but it's far more focused on the war. That means it is prepared, and preparing, to mobilise much more of its population than Russia and many more of those it is mobilising actually care about the outcome of the war. That counts for a lot. And, yeah, there is a problem training crews for Western equipment but the West isn't just training soldiers, it's also training trainers who can go back to Ukraine and train more. And the bulk of the forces on both sides are still just men with handheld weapons; Ukraine can train those itself.
This is true, although it is largely ramping up the ability to produce less effective weapons than those it began with and I don't think that is going to change soon.
This morsel, which I see coming from pro Russian sources all the time makes no sense. Almost everyone in Ukraine speaks Russian.
It’s a bit like the UK deciding to take the 3 counties of Ulster that belong to the south because ‘they speak English’, leaving out that so too does 95% of the rest of the country.
Of course even that argument the pro Russian side gives for the annexation of the east of Ukraine falls on its face with the simple fact they tried for the whole
Country.
Soldato
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The majority of Irish speak English but I don't see Rishi Sunak getting the UK's armed forces ready to invade Ireland.
I should say theoretically, and that is something we should be mindful of. People's mindsets are very much as to how it would play out in the West but in Russia it could be different. So far they've been going with the least resistance way of raising man power but if the war is to continue they'll have to start going for the harder options and however that plays out.
The majority of Canada speaks English, not a very good argument is it? The fact that they had to essentially send in thousands of mercenaries and 'definitely not Russian military' to get something approaching rebellion in these areas denies Russia any claim over it.
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In the intermediate term what you are saying is correct but I worry for the longer term - Putin does not seem to give any intention of backing down even if he has to drain the country to do it and it is a huge wildcard how that plays out domestically. People are putting a lot of value on peace time economy concerns which can take on a totally different aspect in a war footing - at least to an extent though they tend to catch up to you in the longer run one way or another unless you win in absolute terms.
I'm kind of curious as to how this would have played out and/or his full intentions - I don't think Putin set out with a conquest of Europe in mind but I'm certain that if he'd simply rolled over Ukraine, gained their man power pool, all the production facilities such as in Kharkiv, etc. and the West just whimpered he'd have continued until stopped by force assuming the West would more likely iteratively sue for peace than confront him.
If he'd taken Ukraine more or less to plan without huge losses, despite some Western support, IMO he'd have turned to places like Moldova next, and building up forces against the Hungarian border with a join us or die kind of threat to bring them into the fold in a similar manner as Belarus is to Russia, eventually turning to the Baltics and possibly trying to replay 2014 to slowly carve off Poland.
EDIT: For clarity these are 2 different scenarios with the first Russia taking a more direct approach against Europe to see how far they could push it.
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Poland would carve off Putins Baltics.
Look at Valdolfs “Federation” and tell me they are held by consent.
The majority of Irish speak English but I don't see Rishi Sunak getting the UK's armed forces ready to invade Ireland.
Cool? I'm stating his motivation, not justifying it.
You keep calling it the West, the West this, the West that... the entire world bar a few countries is what you really mean but cannot bring yourself to say it.
Not really sure of your point - it would be nice if the whole world stepped up. Outside of those countries who make up or identify with the West the situation is much more complex - the likes of India, many parts of South America, quite a few bits of the Middle East, etc. are quite Russian leaning. (One of the ways Russia is getting around sanctions is via fronts in South American countries, who are complicit with them, who are buying stuff from places like Ireland - who are less complicit but probably aren't entirely unaware).
EDIT: My expectations here are of the West to lead the way.
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The majority of Irish speak English but I don't see Rishi Sunak getting the UK's armed forces ready to invade Ireland.
Russia also loves to flood an area with Russians and then claim it is there's.
Poland are all too aware of the realities of Russia's intentions - hence like the Baltics much more proactive about the whole situation.
If everything had gone according to his master plan and he had taken Kiev plus the other main targets in the first week plus killed/arrested Zelensky and the other important figures then that's probably where it would have ended, at least for quite a while. By taking the important people/areas he could then have installed a puppet government, made sure they had adequate backing, and Ukraine would have become Belarus 2.0 thus creating the wanted buffer between the EU/NATO. There would obviously have been insurgency for some time (this is actually exactly how the west originally expected the war to go).
Expanding from there would have been highly unlikely as military expansion would have required expanding into EU or NATO member territory, or Moldova but they're an EU associate on track for full membership so that would have caused a lot of problems for Putin. He would more likely have attempted cloak and shadow techniques against them rather than force due to the countries low value to Russia.
Absorbing Ukraine from there would also have been highly unlikely as that would have completely defeated the point of having a buffer. This is the reason he specifically refused to annex the DPR/LPR for eight years, because he didn't want to absorb any Ukrainian territory (Crimea being the obvious exception due to historical/legacy reasons), only doing so as a last resort in order to try and save face/claim success when his special operation hit the rocks.
Thing is with people of the mentality of those at the top of the Russian regime, it wouldn't just end there if they rolled into Ukraine to plan, and there is a lot more going on than just Ukraine being a buffer territory. As I've said I don't think Putin had any realistic notions of a conquest of Europe/NATO territories but if he'd easily rolled over Ukraine with little more than a whimper from the West he is going to look to replay those cards until met by force.
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It's really not the entire world, you would have that impression based on our media but that simply isn't the case
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