You are too kind, but then again, this site is for Canadians. Keep on keepin’ cool

Understood, thanks. And hopefully there is someone internal who wants to succeed him while there’s still a functional nation state to rule over.

I don’t really buy the “but - but - then someone WORSE will come along!”.

Worse than the genocide, corrosive fuckery and populist poison that’s going on now? A shrill, thrashing mafia butcher who enables death and mayhem across the world, poisons the planet in every way possible and threatens nuclear armageddon like it’s a bodily function, and you’re not willing to see what ‘new leadership’ might look like?

These people, from The Great Goblin himself on down, are pure evil. Best case - he dies, unnaturally and soon - and Russia collapses into fueding ethno corporate fiefdoms too individually weak to maintain a nuclear arsenal, who spend their time fighting each other instead of shitting hot cancerous diarrhea in every direction.

You’ll get no argument here, mate. Their chest-thumping claims of inevitability and bottomlessness is only true if you’re referring to their cruel depravity.

The point i’m trying to make is while normal human beings from the 20th century-onwards mindset are apalled by a willingness to let millions die for nothing but the hubris of a rich old gangster who’s incapable of admitting he’s made a mistake…you kind of have to role-play as a Russian Imperialist to understand what conditions would cause them to change anything.

If you’re a petromafia gangser Russian politican - you live in a nest of snakes, all trying to steal from or kill each other. Death and fear are weapons. The weapons of ancient, and they would say rightly natural order inherited from a cruel history going even way past the Mongols that conqueured them. The organizing principle of Russia is “do as I say, or I’ll kill you”. They might say - that’s how the universe is - the strong abuses the weak, power exists to be used, and ruthlessness is a virtue. Diplomacy is a trick of the weak to keep down the strong, and the feckless pussies who don’t realise this fundamental truth are asking to be exploited.

So - you’ve put your Russian Leader mindset on. Then this statement makes sense:** It is PERFECTLY reasonable to trade idle, useless, and non-ideal ethnic Russian idiots for valuable ukraininan land.** You can replace your worthless lost bodies for ‘close-enough’ good Ukrainian genetic stock after the war. And their deaths don’t matter until you can’t make this formula work. Moving slowly is fine, as long as you manage internal threats and keep your opposition fragmented, or ideally - dead. These are absolute monsters we’re dealing with. Cynical, murderous beasts among the worst 1% of human beings to ever live.

There is no threat to Russia except personal ambition. When Putin dies, then things will go very badly for a while, as the Intellgience Services who REALLY run russia decide who the new Tsar will be. Things haven’t gone well - the Russian soldiers dying today were clearly supposed to be the reserve for taking back the Balkans, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania and eventually Germany. How ever far you could get without REALLY being confronted by anyone. But - the die is cast, there is no unringing the bell. The primary export markets are destroyed, the best of the soviet stockpile inheritance is spent, the finest troops dead or dismembered, the manufacturing primacy deferred to China, the corrosive anti-Western diplomatic blocs are reduced to a shitty alliance of mostly irrelevant goon states who only run on bribes. All that to say - Russia is pot committed, they aren’t going to stop because they reach ANY number of casulaties. This war ONLY stops when Putin dies and the regime collaspes. Even if the war pauses with him still alive - the war continues, in any form they can get away with to destabilize their neighbors and fuck around with their enemies.

How human beings ‘ought’ to be treated is no more relevant than a sparrow’s fart in a hurricane. This death festival continues until Putin dies, full stop. Whatever comes afterwards is the only chance for Russia to create a new direction and it’s neighbors to have any hope of a lasting peace. He is slitting Russia’s throat as surely as he is trying to do the same to Ukraine. But it won’t stop because of casualty figures.

Human beings are the valuable thing, it is the genius, strength and will of living breathing human beings that gives rise to power in this world, and to pretend otherwise is to participate in a delusion that makes you weak to those who treat human life as valuable.

We should treat human beings as human beings because it is the right thing to do, but beyond that it is also the thing that powerful militaries do to their own soldiers. The more a military treats its soldiers as human beings and does not cast their lives away as if the shitty AI war machines they have are more valuable than motivated, professional human beings, the more powerful that military becomes.

…so in my opinion, it is a tragedy, but let Putin continue to see no value in the lives of his soldiers, it will only doom his war effort faster.

Have to constantly remind myself - this is not where Russia wanted to be. And that’s a good thing, even with all the suffering in mind.

We’d all like to have a movie-style exploding Death Star style ending where a fleet of A-10’s and F-35’s comes screaming across the horizon to the soundtrack of Rock You Like A Hurricane, and the Russians scurry back to mordor, but that’s not realistic.

Russia has effectively been stopped. They are the ones talking peace terms. Their negotiating position went from TOTAL CAPITULATION to 4 ANNEXED REGIONS, DISARMAMENT & NEUTRALITY to 4 ANNEXED REGIONS PLUS CRIMEA to “Let us keep what we have”, in about 6 weeks’ time. They aren’t mobilzing on a wide scale anymore, they are only continuing with terror bombing, and they’re taking counterpunches whose effects are impossible to hide even from their flaccid sheep population.

This is the endgame. Which is rarely viscerally satisfying to either side. The fact that Zelensky can reply with a flat “No” to absurd Russian & Trumpian demands to cede territory means that Ukraine is in a better position than Russia. Now, and going forward.

He made many blunders. Broadly, I think the biggest ones were adopting a ‘salami slice’ strategy to bleed Russia long term to try and leverage their hubris about continuing this bloody war long after it was obvious it wasn’t going to go the way russia wanted it.

Incremental escalation of weapons systems to keep Russia expending it’s irreplaceable army hardware, so that they are neutered in the long run. As opposed to a quick, overwhelming NATO response where Russia retreats, gets the propaganda ‘win’ that they were indeed fighting all of NATO, and that their decision for restraint was to preserve global peace, and their defeat to an inferior ‘little brother’ race was not proof of their actual corrupt weakness. This isn’t a bad strategy at all - if it works. But that leads to the REAL blunder - never planning a successor when it was clear he would be a one-termer, and assuming that Putin’s cock-holster Trump could never win again. The classic Boomer problem, staying too long and failing to make plans for the next generation.

No-Fly zones are logistically significant, but not undoable. Totally agree with you, a no-fly zone is the end of the war. And Putin was not going to use nukes or attack anyone else, we can clearly see that now. Biden fell for escalation bluffs, but I also think his strategy was always going to be ‘let’s make them bleed themselves out’, but again, under the bad assumption that his party wouldn’t lose the next election to a brazen Russian asset.

Just how bad things are for Russia is nearly impossible to grasp in the short term. They can’t advance in any meaningful way. That is, after having:

1. Squandered the soviet hardware stockpile inheritance
2. Destroyed the primary oil & gas market
3. Pissed away the 30 year war chest
4. Shown their army and it’s equipment to be hot garbage.
5. Become junior vassal to China in the anti-west alliance of authoritarian shitholes
6. Lost Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran got smoked by Israel in all-out missile exchanges.
7. Lost power projection into the Black Sea and thus Mediterranean
8. Lost influence over the Central Asian republics to China.
9. Can refuse no demand China makes going forward
10. Lost significant potion of the strategic bomber fleet. And the Black Sea Fleet.
11. Lost any political credibility going forward
12. Have assembled a shitty coalition of corrupt ally countries that only run on bribes
13. Their entire Quantity > Quality Horde War philosophy is shown to be untrue, whether about men or machines.

The USSR used to have idelogical allies. Useful idiots in the west who would sell secrets to them for anti-capitalist sentiment. These days, it’s plain to see they are simply a debauched, corrupt mafia. That’s enough for some people, but maybe(?) less useful as a tool for finding new agents to do their bidding when money is the only motivator.

It’s not all bad for them - they control the U.S. Emperor and his party - just imagine the kompromat they have on the entire GOP going forward. And they are ultimately best at corrosive disinformation, and are having great success farting up democracies with their right wing populist franchises across the West. That’s probably where they will focus their energy going forward after having wasted their army in Ukraine.

Consider that they are rational and greedy. Like gangster barbarians, which they pretty much are, the only difference being they traded fur pelts for tailored suits. The smartest among them realizes that the project has failed, and that only hubris is keeping them going, hoping for something - anything - to change. But if having practical control over the obese, octogenarian U.S. president isn’t enough to extract a favorable peace, then it’s hard to see what else could possibly create a strategic win for Russia.

Why would they not fight to the last man, tank and artillery piece?

Because even now, life is worth living for the perverted gangster ghouls in charge. They haven’t really lost anything personally significant. There is no opposition, and they can still live comfortably by Russian oligarch standards. Their biggest fear is each other.

You still need an army for token territorial defense and internal oppression. Russia is run by their intelligence services, after all. They’re not fighting to the last man. They are already in negotiations with a position growing weaker by the day.

Said this a few weeks ago. The degree to which Russia has fucked itself is hard to comprehend on a day to day basis. This is an absolutely historic self-own unparalleled since the Persians decided to go teach that upstart Alexander a lesson about who the big dog was. Obviously the goal was complete and total conquest, and yet in the last month, Pootz’ demands have slid from a) TOTAL SURRENDER AND DISARMAMENT to b) ALL 4 ANNEXED REGIONS, CRIMEA, CONSTITUTIONAL NEUTRALITY, DISARMAMENT AND NEVER NATO to c) Please give us Donetsk and Luhansk to d) Maybe Ukrakine can exist, but how about via my stooge UN appointee? And please give me something…

In the meantime, nothing strategically relevant has changed on the battlefield, nor is Russia even gearing up beyond their regular conscription runs. If you need troops and equipment today, you needed to mobilize them 6-12 months ago and be doing non-stop training since then. They’re not even doing that. This is the endgame.

It’s your observable track record that makes it easy. When contemplating an argument with strangers, it’s helpful to know if it’s worthwhile. That there’s a person who would say something interesting.

It’s also painfully cringe to read garden variety snark like “hurr durr, russia is about to implode, guys! I swear”. Great. Never see those high value responses.

Exactly. Xi must be absolutely laughing himself to sleep every day. He has solved all of China’s oil, mineral, grain and fresh water supply problems for the next half century. They have unquestioned top dog influence over the Central Asian republics now, a weaker rival for bribable global anti-western allies, and can demand anything from Russia that can’t be refused going forward. Including access to the North Pacific, which China has never, ever had.

All without expending a single soldier or loss of a single piece of hardware.

that’s not the only win condition. If they can’t win new territory because their army’s effectiveness has been so degraded, then Ukraine wins.

Mind you - your Comments history is a never endthing thread of bilious haikus and snarky limericks, so - you be you. Changing your tone would be like throwing ice cubes at the sun.

Which would assure their complete and total destruction. Of course nukes are a big thing. They’re the LAST thing.

Honestly - I think that’s probably what anyone would say to a Mad King. They honestly probably thought that life is too good to screw it up - that he wouldn’t actually invade and ruin the whole damn party. The intelligence services and siloviki (baron merchant oligarchs) were all fat, rich and controlled a huge, fairly rich country life a mafia. Why screw it all up? For the vanity of a wicked old perverted gangster ghoul.

sure. but I don’t think Ukraine is much in a negotiating mood to give away things that Russia can’t even hold. That’s not even the laws of war. You get what you can hold. If you can’t hold it, then you never really had it.

That chauvanism makes a lot of sense, that it is unacceptable to admit even a stalemate versus a presumed “little brother” inferior race. But - what are your options? Are they willing to lose ALL face AND remaining military might in an actual, sustainted battle with NATO? With what objective? To get your ass kicked just enough to say that it’s okay you lost to the full weight of NATO, versus admitting you put your dick in a woodchipper in Ukraine?

The thing they’re actually best at is corrosive lies. Lies are the very language of Russia - if they stopped fighting today and simply claimed glorious triumph over the combined forces of NATO, the population would on the whole accept it and be thankful the whole damn thing is if not over - at least paused. I don’t think it suits them to ACTUALLY fight NATO, if all you’re looking to gain is an excuse for losing.

So - why keep fighting? <free shrugs>, other than the old chestnut of sunk cost fallacy. No wars are infinite, especially at this intensity in terms of resource and human life consumtpion. Russia seems to figure there is still something to gain from slugging on. Whatever that is, who knows. They’re putting a LOOOOOOOOT of resources into fueling right wing populists across the globe and it does appear to be working well enough to continue. Whether that matters on the battlefield of Ukraine in a time scale that aligns with Putin’s remaining life span is a whole other question.

What I’d close with re: “why keep fighting” is this: Russia knows that their campaign of terror bombing civilians and pushing small infiltration teams forward isn’t a great long term strategy for territorial occupation. Pootz said recently “wherever we put a russian boot is OURS!”. That is a childish and absurd thing to say, but - he is a big boy who said it for a reason. In that clumsy attempt to redfine what it takes to legitimize spoils of war, it maybe reveals that they know that their current strategy does not achieve their objectives. Fine - you can push small groups of men into farm fields and abandoned villages very slowly. But what good is that if Ukraine can almost certainly kill them all EVENTUALLY with drones, artillery, snipers, etc. Infiltration isn’t a great occupation strategy.

So - keep fighting, until…something else happens. That’s always been the russian way. Keep dying, in massive numbers, until something else happens. The problem with their history is that that ‘something’ is often a revolution that overthrows the current government.

If this were a board game, now is precisely the time that China would push into Siberia all the way to the Western edge of the Urals, and there’s not much Russia could do about it short of nukes.

Yeah, probably, and those two concepts are clearly related. The obvious quid pro quo would have been a quick decisive takeover of Ukraine would have led to a short, bloody invasion of Taiwan and the fickle pussies in the west would just have to shrug their shoulders and accept the realpolitik. China and Russia would financially support each other through the inevitable heavy sanctions of both invasions - but that plan depends on both engagements being short and decisive. Russia’s phase 1 Blyatzkrieg has been neither, and that probably throws a wrench in Xi’s plans for Taiwan. But - de factor senior leadership in the Russia-China alliance and effective control of Russia’s resources without giving up ANYTHING is a pretty damn fine silver medal.

Whether they have run ‘out’ is moot. They’ve squandered their BEST, at any rate, and aren’t bothering to use what remains, and that’s kind of the point. Saying that it’s ‘half gone’ is the same as saying it’s ALL gone in the context of trying to conquer ukraine. You have to keep a fleet available for credible border defense, future offensive operations (which are now probably off the books) and internal oppression of your own population. And as you say - both in terms of armor and artillery - even if you have remaining stockpiles, you can’t sustain this burn rate, and each piece you move forward is less effective that the one it replaced, both in terms of age, utility and the caliber of who’s left operating it.

Capabilties degrade when you piss away your army in a sunk cost fallacy revenge project.

No doubt. Wihout expending a single soldier’s life or piece of equipment, they got promoted to undisputed master of the axis of authoritarian nightmare shitholes, can demand ANYTHING from russia going forward and won’t be refused. They solved all their water, resource and mineral needs for a century or more, have gained strategic access to the North Pacific, which China has n-e-v-e-r ever had in history. Russia has become the junior vassal resource yard for China’s next century of growth. Now they have to solve their demographic problems, or it won’t matter much.

Putin will end up being the worst russian in history, which is REALLY an accomplishment. The man who gave the country away to China, pissed away the entire inheritance of the USSR, destroyed their primary export markets for a vanity revenge project.

Could be. The recent, obvious strategy of flying drones and jets blatantly into NATO airspace has some purpose behind it. It seems foolhardy to invite NATO to attack Russia, but in that case, you’d probably see a much more explicit level of support from China, including direct military support/aid or even Chinese military intervention. On balance, I think the probing nature of those recent incidents is just to test the political response of NATO, see if they’re really willing to take action over transgressions in Poland, Romania & the Baltics.