I desperately want to believe this.
Why Can’t the West Admit That Ukraine Is Winning?
America has become too accustomed to thinking of its side as stymied, ineffective, or incompetent.www.theatlantic.com
good read
When the smart thing is to be the first one to pull the trigger in that scenario. Maybe it is more like we each have a button that can blow up a dam directly above each other's little village. Sure you have some dynamite to blow up mine, but as soon as I hear it go off, I have a massive amount of C4 to blow yours up next. We all die, but a bit slower and with time to respond. But either way the dam breaks and everyone is washed away.
Frankly it is garbage. Russia has superior force, they just went into this disorganized with dreams of Russian blitzkriegs dancing in their heads. When they ran into actual staunch defense, it caught them off guard. Now they have but to reorganize and bring a larger force to bear. In a drawn out conflict Ukraine does not have the numbers to withstand long.
When (if) those cities fall, all provisions are seized by the invading Russian forces, the residents gather in town squares to boldly waive Ukrainian flags, shout at the invaders to go home until they are violently dispersed, and the Ukrainian army goes to work attacking entrenched positions around the city in the effort to win it back. When a Ukrainian city falls, there is no reason to believe it won't be exactly like the Russian occupied city of Kherson.
If anywhere in Ukraine will fight to the bitter end, even if there is nothing left but rubble, it will be Mariupol. When Putin claimed this invasion was to de-nazi Ukraine, it was Mariupol he was referring to. Mariupol is being fiercely defended by the Azov Battalion,and they are straight up nationalist, socialist, white supremacist nazis who wear patches from the WWII German SS. Everything around Mariupol is now Russian controlled but Mariupol itself has still not fallen.
I think this is completely and totally wrong. First, it isn't about having superior force but being able to bring superior force to a battle. It is about logistics and Russia doesn't have it. They don't have enough trucks and many of the ones they do have were stuck in a convoy north of Kyiv. Russia relies heavily on rail to transport its military hardware and troops but within hours the Ukrainians blew up all the rail lines leading in to Ukraine. Now saboteurs have started blowing up rail lines in Belarus. Russia can't even fly in troops and supplies because they don't have air superiority over Ukraine. The only area Russia seems able to get any supplies to is the southern area because they still have infrastructure into Crimea. On the other side, the western world is supplying the Ukrainians and there are a lot more Ukrainians than Russians in Ukraine.
If anywhere in Ukraine will fight to the bitter end, even if there is nothing left but rubble, it will be Mariupol. When Putin claimed this invasion was to de-nazi Ukraine, it was Mariupol he was referring to. Mariupol is being fiercely defended by the Azov Battalion,and they are straight up nationalist, socialist, white supremacist nazis who wear patches from the WWII German SS. Everything around Mariupol is now Russian controlled but Mariupol itself has still not fallen.
I agree that they are not the beginning of the 4th Reich but only that they've been fighting Russians to keep Mariupol part of Ukraine since 2014 when Russian-backed separatists took control of the city and the Azov Battalion formed to take the city back. I don't see them giving up the fight for Mariupol. I think they will fight, as you said, until the bitter end. Nazis and Russians don't seem too fond of each other.
I think that is kind of the only hope, that they lose morale. If Putin has his way he will continue to push. Frankly they haven't really engaged with the full force of their military yet, they have about 900k total troops with 2 mill reservists, and they have only deployed 150k-ish in the front and have only engaged maybe 1/5 of their arsenal. As Al stated, logistics is the concern for them now. If they can figure out how to support their troops in the field and can deploy even half of their current enlisted force with 1/2 of their arsenal this will take a different turn. The question comes, at what point is Putin willing to escalate to move long-distance means of attack, including potentially low-yield nuclear attacks. How crazy is he? Remains to be seen, it would appear.
