Everything here is written from the perspective of a person who actually wants Russian to win, which I do not, but I am capable of writing from that perspective. Plenty of pro-Russian types on Telegram have written similar things to parts of what you will read below. The tl;dr is that Russia has been fighting this war based on foolish political calculations from Putin, not based on honest military calculations from the commanders in the field. This has caused the Russian military to grossly underperform throughout the war, which continues to this day.
Russia will win, whether you like it or not.
Except Russia is losing right now, and it is losing because it has made stupid choices that are unserious about victory every step of the way:
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Russia tried an initial blitz strategy that assumed Ukraine would not seriously resist, when Russian intelligence told Putin Ukraine would resist, but he chose to believe his sycophants instead. The result was a debacle with enormous Russian losses and two embarrassing retreats from the North. My alternative warplan would have guaranteed Russian victory within months by pocketing and capturing the bulk of Ukraine's veteran forces.
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After suffering initial failures and setbacks, the Russians pivoted to "Hearts of Iron artillery-only challenge" in which they burned through decades of artillery ammunition stockpiles in mere months in order to bully the Ukrainians, and only took a tiny amount of territory in exchange for moonscaping large swaths of Ukraine. Then HIMARS showed up and blew up enough ammo caches that this strategy became unsustainable a few months earlier than otherwise since Russians became ammo-constrained.
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Sergey Surovikin was brought in and did the 1 intelligent thing Russia has done the whole war: HE WENT OVER TO THE DEFENSIVE AND STARTED TO REBUILD RUSSIAN STRENGTH. His plan was to build a strong defense, wait for the next Ukrainian offensive, crush it, then go on the counterattack with his eventual manpower advantage from mobilization, likely in late spring to summer 2023.
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Dumbass Putin, impatient and not willing to give Surovikin's plan a chance, stepped in again with fucking Wagner & Yevgeny Prigozhin strutting with a bunch of bullshit marketing claims about how they could win the war. Wager got huge favoritism in resources and was allowed to burn through tons of men's lives in order to grind down the flanks of Bahkmut. When this eventually worked in very small ways, Putin fired Surovikin & replaced him with Valery Gerasimov with marching orders to go back on the offensive.
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The Russian offensive which began in late January to presented, WASTED ALL THE RESOURCES Surovikin had built up, for NOTHING except a little more land around Bakhmut. This offensive was retarded, and wasted the 1 hope Russia had of making major gains, and instead completely reversed the situation so that Russia is wasting all its strength and opening itself up to a Ukrainian counter-attack JUST LIKE IT DID BEFORE AT KHARKIV. Russia should have been setting up for a Kursk type battle, and instead it just wasted whatever benefits it had from the 1st round of mobilization to set itself up for a Case Blue.
If things continue as they are now, and there is every reason to believe they will, Russia will keep exhausting itself until it completely loses offensive potential. Then Ukraine will counter-attack and likely will break through in at least one area. Whether this break through will be successfully exploited will depend on many factors, but the Russians have put themselves in the worst possible position, all because of emotionally driven and politically driven bungling.
Who are the pro-Russian types you follow on Telegram? The ones I follow engage in pretty appalling jingoism, calling their opponents 'Ukrainian pigs' and 'kholkhols'.
Here's my counterpoint:
So far, I'm going with "imperial defeat". In fact, if Russia can keep this up without its economy collapsing or the US dragging Europe into a nuclear exchange, I'd say that this does more damage to the globalist regime than a quick Russian victory would have. The US and EU have no interest in Ukraine beyond their lust for power and empire. But to put all your cards on the table and then still lose to a country with 1/13 the military expenditure of the US is glorious.
Russia cannot lose. It has 4 times the military-aged manpower of Ukraine. It has vastly more industry. And like Obama said, it cares more about Ukraine than the Empire does, so it will always be able to establish escalatory dominance there. Right now, Russia is fighting with both hands tied behind its back. If Russia starts actually losing, it will take out one of those hands and stomp the corrupt non-country. If that doesn't help, the other hand comes out. If that doesn't work, China will send vast amounts of aid. Victory is impossible for the empire.
The question is who many Ukrainians have to die before their puppet regime can not longer coerce the populace into being Biden's cannon fodder. They will feel betrayed when they realize that the corrupt West sent them to their deaths to kill their Russian brothers, when there is no prospect of victory, but only for the corrupt interest of weakening Russia.
Kinda agree without the Taiwan part for one single reason: it's leaders weren't idiots
Taiwan knew the communists would attempt to take Taiwan (in fact Mao tried....he failed spectacularly. Then kept artillery striking an island they owned till Truman literally went 'stop or I'll nuke you') so the island itself is designed as a fortress. Aircraft are stored in bunkers, the motorways have been designed to serve as redundant landing and takeoff strips for jets. Couple this with China wanting to claim the very industry in Taiwan which means they can't just carpet bomb everything means that so long as they hold ground (very easy to do given the geography and amount of viable beachheads for an invasion) then support from nearby JDSF and Americans can arrive in time to drive them back.
It's not a 'China has no way of winning' but there are enough factors that even with a dementia pedo in charge of it's main strategic ally, it has a good chance at halting any invasion and then forcing the Chinese into a humiliating retreat. Just doing that is an extreme risk to Xi's authority.
There is also something to be said for the fact that Taiwan has openly said they will take a "If I cant have it, no one can" attitude to their chip factories. And China doesnt have the tech know-how to run those factories even if they managed to capture them intact.
Either way, I dont really fear China going after Taiwan. Because when they ran a wargame recently on the subject (which are designed from the ground up to favor REDFOR and hamper BLUEFOR, even if it means ignoring actual, real life physics), and it saw REDFOR get their ass spanked, which isnt how that is supposed to work. So I can only imagine how much worse it would actually be for them.
US pols are getting a lot of mileage out of an invasion of Taiwan that doesn't seem to be in China's interest. As usual, "it's not the Chinese."
Denying those fabs to the west would be more than enough long term gain to justify an invasion. TSMC presently makes up the bulk of chip output for the planet.
That is starting to go away though, since TSMC is teaming up with some US companies to build new factories in the US itself (in Arizona, Ohio, and Texas).
I've been seeing certain voices on the Right pushing this obvious lie hard lately. Seeing you pushing it makes me suspect the word went out from the russian state to push this talking point. Suspicious.
The obvious counter to that nonsense point is that there is 0 political will to give any military aid to Taiwan in Congress or from Biden, so Ukraine isn't robbing from Taiwan. It's Ukraine or nothing, not Ukraine or Taiwan. In addition, Ukraine is forcing the US defense industrial base to grow and expand in order to produce enough munitions, which directly benefits the US and allies in any future China war scenario.
You sound like a parody of a paranoid 1950s Cold Warrior.
Not only has Biden stated on multiple occasions that Biden would defend Taiwan (not just send aid), it also actually has strategic value (unlike Ukraine), so even a non-imperialist realist like John Mearsheimer supports it.
I think it's madness, because it might lead to nuclear war, but you can't trust the US to be rational.
Is that the propaganda that the regime is pushing to pro-Taiwan GOP?
The stuff I hear is pretty incredible, that it will take years to restock. Just how atrophied is military production in the US? Same for Russia, which was bragging about how it will produce 1500 tanks in one year. That's 10% of the number of T-34s that were produced each year in the 1940s. Pretty pathetic.
How atrophied? Worse than you think. Non combat units have been pencil whipping their range quals for a year because they can't get bullets. RPG training has almost completely ceased.
And sustainment is worse than the 70s. The ground military is in shambles. We're leaning heavily on our elite units and air power, and keeping fighting small and isolated because we cannot deploy for a large scale fight anymore.
If we have two combat ready divisions I'd be shocked.
He DID! And then his minders in the White House walked it back and said that Biden misspoke.
Show me the bill before congress calling for Taiwan defense aid. It does not exist. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody feels any urgency over Taiwan except for a tiny number of people in think tanks, and those people are solely using it as an argument to defund Ukraine, so nobody takes them seriously.
The Biden admin will not even approve arms sales to Taiwan if it thinks doing so might anger China. Republicans in congress recently published proof that the CCP has been making payments to the Biden family of over $1 million, and who knows how much else that was not found.
Biden is not going to do anything to help Taiwan. Taiwan's only hope will be President DeSantis in 2025.
For munitions? Very. Munitions are not needed in peace time. Large stockpiles are seen as unsexy and wasteful. DoD wants platforms, not ammo. DoD thinks when war breaks out, it can scream WE ONLY HAVE ENOUGH AMMO FOR A TWO WEEK WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and the whole United States will leap into action and magically fix the problem for them overnight.
DoD would rather have 500 shiny new fighters and no ammo for them, than 480 shiny new fighters and effectively unlimited ammo. These are the games that political appointee grassfuckers play in order to game the budgeting system.
to make it plain: the DoD intentionally underfunds munitions and ammunition because it expects the taxpayer to fix the problem with massive new emergency spending if and when a crisis breaks out. This way the DoD gets to make more room in its budget for personnel spending and new toys. This is a great strategy for budget maximization purposes, but a very poor strategy for actual readiness purposes.
AFAIK the USMC spends far more on ammo than the other services proportional to its size. The USMC is spending $1.2B versus the navy $3B. USMC total budget is $50B versus Navy $180B. So Navy is 3.5x bigger but only spends about twice as much on ammo. The USMC should probably spend more, but it is far more budget constrained than the other services and can barely afford to get the platforms it needs.
He said it twice. And then his 'minders' returned the US to strategic ambiguity, which is quite smart. You think this means that the US will not only not intervene militarily, but literally do nothing? That is pretty crazy. Taiwan is far more strategically important than the shithole you are defending now.
US Taiwan policy is literally controlled by Taiwanese lobbyists.
Incorrect. In my experience, people who hyperventilate about Taiwan are generally neocons who want wars everywhere, all the time. Mearsheimer is an exception, and I cited him because he's the only one with an intellect worth respecting.
And you know why that is? Because arming Taiwan right now will make it more likely that China will attack sooner rather than later. States attack when the balance of forces is moving against them, like Germany attacking Russia in 1914 and 1941, Russia attacking Ukraine last year.
You might make an argument that it's better for the US if China attacked this year rather than 10 years from now, but if you don't want an attack to come sooner, don't arm Taiwan (or at least keep the arms shipments at the same level).
And yet he's been tougher on China than Trump. American presidents do what the elites tell them to do. Same reason why Trump started sending lethal weapons to that shithole you love so much.
This is quite smart if you regard it from the perspective of the department. The DoD is not interested in defense or military readiness, it is interested in maximizing its budget and personnel - just like every other government organization. It's the age-old Bureau Paradox.