The Kremlin warned that American support for Ukraine could turn into a decade-long folly, urging the U.S. to not oppose its invasion of the country as Congress appears set to pass a $60 billion aid…
Russian officials publicly assure the world that their invasion will only last 1 week due to their overwhelming military superiority.
109 weeks later without a victory, losing twice as many soldiers and equipment, Russian officials swear that the US, not an active combatant, is going to be so embarrassed.
I was watching an analysis on the 2023 progress of the war. The author said that while he acknowledges that Russia seems to have the favour making the war a stalemate and took more strategic, albeit small, locations than Ukraine did; this leads to Catch-22 for Kremlin that the more Ukraine struggles, the more money Ukraine will receive which is not on Russia's favour.
There's also the fact that Russia never really seemed to account for most of its monetary and material taps getting turned off. When you're (ALLEGEDLY) throwing conscripts out there without even a single full magazine of ammo, you're burning through old post-WWII ammo stocks, and constantly having to beg old SSR states "hey can we buy/borrow some of your tanks and APCs please," it doesn't look great.
The Kremlin warned that American support for Ukraine could turn into a decade-long folly, urging the U.S. to not oppose its invasion of the country as Congress appears set to pass a $60 billion aid package.
Buried lede: Russia thinks its "three-day special military operation to de-nazifyremove US biolabsde-NATO Ukraineresurrect the Soviet Union" could take a decade. 😂
Also, they think they might need a decade to defeat a power that has a fifth of its military size, and which has, so far, roundly managed to make a laughingstock out of much of the Russian military.
It's actually kinda incredible for Russia to have not realized that the US is literally just letting Ukraine integrate itself into NATO standards by training on and building up NATO standard equipment as it runs out of the shitty Soviet era alternatives
Meanwhile Moscow is instead developing a dependency on Iranian and Chinese made military hardware, stuff that neither is especially willing to part with given their own war plans.
The US could 1000% just barely provide enough aid to tactically let Russia chew its teeth out trying to break Ukraine, but it's sending what Ukraine needs to win whenever it can because the US sees Ukraine winning as more important than Russia losing at this point.
US is literally just letting Ukraine integrate itself into NATO standards by training on and building up NATO standard equipment as it runs out of the shitty Soviet era alternatives
Not just Ukraine, either! All the NATO Eastern Bloc countries donated their Soviet equipment (and much more) and are actively rearming and retraining their own militaries on NATO standard equipment.
Unfortunately "barely enough" is closer to the mark. Ukraine should've had this funding last year and we should've been close to the next round at this point. If this is actually all America can muster when it is committed to "winning" then then thats a bit sad and scary considering the incompetent broke ass country we are trying to beat while having homecourt advantage.
The only thing that gives me solace is the thought that this is carefully architected to bleed out Russia and not actually a show of real force.
US is literally just letting Ukraine integrate itself into NATO standards by training on and building up NATO standard equipment
Excellent point. Due to the equipment Ukraine now has the west is at a point where they will stand to lose a lot of valuable technology if Russia wins making it necessary for western intervention if things go bad for Ukraine.
At the risk of being jingoistic, this type of opponent is exactly what our military is designed to utterly destroy. If the US was an active participant it would have very quickly wiped the floor with the Russian army and would be dealng with Russian backed insurgents in the east.
Ukraine has been beating them with the stuff we routinely throw away (when the Republicans don't get in the way), I am convinced they have no non nuclear answer to our actual military.
These brainiacs had concerts singing Gruppa Krovi from Kino to recruits early in the war. A literal Afghanistan-era Soviet anti-war anthem. They have no sense of irony.
Here's what stories I remember from USSR-Afghanistan war, told by actual veterans:
They would punish extremist acts by throwing women and children out of a helicopter, Pinochet style. The person who told me that drank ever since he got back from the war and never stopped.
There was one man who left his tent for a midnight leak and came back to his entire tent with their throats slit. Had insane PTSD.
My father-in-law got his legs messed up by machine gun fire, got airlifted to East Germany to get put back together, doesn't talk much, but still drinks a lot.
Oh it's a bit dumber than that. Russia tried to occupy Afghanistan in the 1980s and got fuckin romped worse than the US did and that was with peak Russian power and no near endless supply of Russia surplus for insurgents to use.
USSR went there on the request of their government at the time (unlike America's rampage invasion) and withdrew after the USA heavily armed extremely backwards Muslim extremists who were doing every war crime in the book
It's still a better ending than a 20 year war (u lost lmao)
I always know someone doesn't know anything about Afghanistan and its people when they refer to them as Afghani's.
An Afghan is a person. Afghani is a currency. Anyone who calls them Afghani doesn't even know the right term to call the people. It is a giveaway to how little you know about them when you don't even know what to call them.
Meanwhile all the Chineses and Viet Congs are turning in their graves right next to the Afgani.
Yeah, remember when we told them NOT to make apostasy from Islam illegal?
Oh, wait, we didn't even bother doing that much.
The War in Afghanistan didn't fail because we were Big Bad Westerners Imposing Our Way Of Life, it failed because neither the Coalition nor the post-Ahmad Shah Massoud anti-Taliban forces had anything resembling a united direction they could agree on leading the country in. Post-2003 the Coalition plan was "Don't fail" (Don't fail at what? Now you're asking questions that should have been fucking asked); the post-Ahmad Shah Massoud anti-Taliban forces' plan was "Every warlord for himself".
Turns out absolute shitheads (the Taliban) with a definite plan can overcome a squabbling mass of decent people (everyday Afghanis), opportunists (contractors et co), and shitheads (hi brutal but pro-national government warlords) who are all at odds with each other.
Was about to say, at least the US withdrawing from Afghanistan isn't literally a cause of the entire country collapsing into 14 smaller new states and also the entire western bloc
Tbf it kinda is, because if the US had gone into Afghanistan with a plan to help Afghani's fix infrastructure, homes, trade routes, etc things would have turned out far better than they did.
The difference is that Vietnam and Afghanistan were civil wars. It's very difficult to win a war when a sizable portion of the citizens are fighting against you. Ukraine seems to be very united against a common enemy: Russia.
if anything, even if Russia were to magically take Kyiv tomorrow, they are going to be fighting heavy insurgencies for decades to come. it'll be the Afghanistan war (the one wot killed the USSR) 2.0 on caffeine.
And they are no where near as economically or militarily strong as they were when the USSR was even at its weakest
Because Russia had so much success against Afghanistan themselves.
Despite nominally being a staunch supporter of George Bush Jr's War on Terror, Afghanistan was one place Putin absolutely refused to give support. You can call it cowardice or wisdom or simply being once-bitten-twice-shy, but the Graveyard of Empires isn't the place you send in troops casually.
Pretty sure they’ve had their asses handed to them in the far east as well.
Do you mean the Russo-Japan War? That was over a century ago.
Russian military leadership is well-blooded and one of the only institutions that wasn't gutted by Perestroika. The folks who were laughing up their sleeves at the "Oversized Gas Station" when the Ukraine fight started may have underestimated the monster that was unleashed.
Russian industry produces 500 or 600 new tanks and maybe a little more than a thousand new fighting vehicles every year. The Russian military loses more than a thousand tanks and close to 2,000 fighting vehicles every year—and the loss rate is increasing.
There’s a gap—one the Kremlin fills by pulling out of long-term storage tanks and fighting vehicles dating back to the 1970s, or even the ’60s or ’50s in some cases. But these old vehicles are a finite resource. Built during the Soviet Union’s industrial heyday, they cannot be replaced with new production.
Ominously for the Russians, the most recent projections anticipate that, as early as mid-2025, there won’t be any more old tanks and fighting vehicles left in storage. “Time is running out for Russia,” wrote Artur Rehi, an Estonian soldier and analyst.
“Time is running out for Russia,” wrote Artur Rehi, an Estonian soldier and analyst.
That's the phrase we hear for years now. It shouldn't be taken into consideration. A country of 140mil and 1\4 of land that won't back off can fight for a very long time until it runs out of resources or people. After two years it sounds like a copium and a reason to just sit and wait, while another country's clocks are ticking faster.
Besides, isn't China already selling ammo to them? I could very well see China selling vehicles to Russia in large quantities, even on loan – and all it will take is Russia to become even more of a Chinese satellite state.
We tried sitting this out and it didn't work. Ukraine's new approach of actively making Russia hurt looks more promising.
Well the other option would be a quick NATO operation against the russkis in Ukraine but for some reason no one want to take this route, so were kind of out of options here. I would favor a direct hit against Russia in Ukraine anytime. It would end this war quick, would cause a devastating blow against Putin and I personally think that Russia wouldn't use any nukes, as they are their life insurance and also their big bluff against the west.
Vietnam is a pretty darn poor example for them to be bringing up. A much poorer country fights for its independence against bigger countries with seemingly insurmountable advantages (first France, and then the USA). And by dint of sheer national sacrifice, sustained over 20+ years of fighting, manages to outlast the enemy. Don't forget also that the Vietnamese started from a vastly poorer and more backward position compared to the Ukrainians.
Also, northern Vietnam had support from greater powers in munitions and training (USSR, China). So, indeed, very analogous situation. Also USSR had its own adventure in Afghanistan. With the same analogy where now US supported … aghmm… Talibans and Al-Qaeda .
The Kremlin warned that American support for Ukraine could turn into a decade-long folly, urging the U.S. to not oppose its invasion of the country as Congress appears set to pass a $60 billion aid package.
The aid deal comes after months of negotiations, with support for Ukraine wavering among American conservatives as the Russian military gains ground after two years of fighting.
The House passed a broad foreign aid spending bill on Saturday that includes funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan for a total of $95 billion.
“With the boost that would come from military assistance‚ both practically and psychologically — Ukrainians are entirely capable of holding their own through 2024 and puncturing Putin’s arrogant view that time is on his side,” Burns said Thursday.
“Without supplemental assistance, this picture is a lot more dire, and there is a very real risk that the Ukrainians could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024,” he continued.
The U.S. and NATO allies have refused to send their own troops to Ukraine, the fundamental difference between the conflict and those in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
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Not to be a pedant but the US (and UK) armed and trained the mujahideen who largely went on to become the Taliban who oppressed their population and allowed al'qaeda to reside, train and plan attacks from within their borders which ultimately lead to the 9/11 attacks which precipitated a lengthy occupation by allied forces in which many more thousands died, and the eventual withdraw of said forces resulting in the Taliban taking back control, oppressing their population and no doubt once again providing a safe haven for terrorists aligned against the west.
I would say that if Ukraine ends up "like afghanistan" it would be a very bad thing indeed for everyone. Russia, the west, Ukraine. Everyone.
true. I just found it funny that they would compare that country given they abandoned it do to them being supplied by the US. Agreed though that it bit us. It was where stinger missiles gained fame.
Russia's right. From us supporting the nazis in Israel and Ukraine and stamping out anti-genocide protests at home nothing good can be in store for the USA in the future.
EDIT: It's sad that the userbase here is just as insane as the world news userbase over on reddit.
In terms of military support, America reduces their support for Ukraine because they need to support Israel more. Now just about time, they need more resources to fight Iran.