Trolls & bots fail to understand or accept that Russia is anything but infinite and inevitable - but numbers are numbers. They’ve spent half of their entire Soviet inheritance to steal what they sit on today. The war doesn’t end when they get to zero vehicles. The half they’ve squandered is surely the BETTER half, and they still need an army for territorial defense and internal repression. Ukraine is not about the break, and this is probably the best position Russia is ever going to be in. This is the endgame of this messy, abusive Divorce, and Pootz has to come up with some whopper lies to say it was all worthwhile.
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.
I don’t read much Russian media, but from what I’ve seen of Russian political cartoons and translated TV over the war, the “NATO is attacking us” thing is a theme.
Some of it related to where Russia had made a blunder and had a poor military outcome. My guess is that it’s maybe politically acceptable in Russia to lose a battle against NATO or something, but not against Ukraine, that the latter is a humilliation or something like that. After Ukraine did its Kursk offensive into Russia, I saw a bunch of material like that. Material all about how it must have been the US or UK who planned it. shrugs I was thinking “I’d be more worried about the actual offensive”, but TV was more worried about establishing that Ukraine couldn’t manage something like this.
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.
I keep repeating this, but I’ll repeat it again:
I believe at this point Putin already knows the Russia has lost, but he also understands that what comes after the war is worse for the Russia than anything this war can possibly offer.
90 000 soldiers returning from Afghanistan to USSR with 300 million inhabitants caused the absolute clusterfuck that the 1990’s in the Russia were. Those soldiers, gotten used to violence, were a horror. They are what was the base that gave birth to the internationally famously violent Russian mafia back then.
And now there aren’t going to be 90 000 soldiers returning, but 700 000. And not to a country of 300 million, but to a country of 140 million. That’s a 15-fold problem in comparison to population size compared to the end of 1980’s and the 1990’s. They’re gonna have the 1990’s again, only multiplied by 15. And because the soldiers are now much more cruel yet than the Soviets were in Afghanistan, the multiplier should actually be even higher than “mere” 15.
Putin can get the Russians to stay in the war for another half a year or year by talking NATO NATO NATO blah blah. It’s several months more time before the onset of an absolute mayhem unheard of even in the Russia. Eventually the war will end, the soldiers will return home and, well, streets in all cities will have twelve bandits per hundred metres.
I believe it would still make more sense for almost everybody in the Russia to let the mayhem begin sooner than later, because if they wait more, it will be even crazier. It’s already at the point where the only thing that can be done is for local groups to arise, and basically become independent countries, then denouncing the “heroes” and starting to actively protect their own area from the returning orcs. The Russia cannot do this, but Tatarstan can, and Republic of Sakha can. The earlier they end the war, the less people they will lose, and the more refineries and such they will have left.
Anyway: Putin knows he’s lost the war. He just wants to delay the inevitable as much as possible. If you assume this, the rest actually starts making a lot of sense.
I doubt that China would get directly involved on behalf of Russia. There’s really no profit for them in that scenario. If anything, I think they’d be far more likely to take the opportunity to attack Taiwan.
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.