Moscow says it will keep pushing its offensive in Ukraine, though NATO doubts Russia has the resources to make a significant breakthrough.
NATO’s top military officer has said Russia’s armed forces are incapable of any major advance.
“The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli told reporters on Thursday.
“More to the point, they don’t have the skill and the capability to do it; to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage,” the general said.
I really hope this is true. The delay in US funding gave a huge advantage to Russia
They could still hold onto the land and Ukrainian population they’ve taken so far. Anything less than Ukraine regaining Crimea and the rest of its territory will not only be a loss for them, but would tell the Russian government that the West would rather appease them than let allow a conflict to escalate further. Appeasement didn’t work on Hitler, and it won’t work on Putin either.
Considering after two years of a Military Operation that was supposed to last weeks, they are now putting someone in to put them into a “wartime economy footing” I expect them to eventually either lose or have all of Ukraine. There really doesn’t seem to be middle ground for Putin.
Okay not that I’m insinuating that this is the same circumstance, but the last time a certain nation said this, it eventually backfired.
Putin’s plan to capture Ukraine failed miserably, but Russia still has a significant fighting force and time to keep drawing this war out as long as they want.
Ukraine’s former general emphasized their own losses and said it was critical that Ukraine train more troops and acquire supplies quickly.
They can’t afford to stock on latest greatest weapons which is why they’ve been overly reliant on donations of old and surplus tech, especially vehicles.
NATO, ie mostly the USA, has failed to supply Ukraine with any significant stock of modern muntions that would give them an edge against Russia. It’s been two years and they still don’t have base block F-16s which would absolutely have helped during the early stages of the war.
Russia can keep the war machine going, slowly rearm, and try again, which could prove detrimental for Ukraine. They need to be decisively defeated in order for Ukraine to succeed.
For Ukraine’s sake, I really hope someone diposes Putin in a coup, considering how much of a wreck he made.
Both can be true: Russia can lack numbers to make a strategic breakthrough, and Ukraine can simultaneously not be able to field enough materiel to be able to recapture their losses.
IMO the most likely outcome is a stalemate that turns into de jure conquest of the territory Russia has captured and it turns into a cold (or at least cooler) war.
For Ukraine’s sake, I really hope someone diposes Putin in a coup
Yeah you don’t want that, the second biggest party is the communists, but from what I hear they’re not really communists, just boomers nostalgic for the USSR.
The nationalists waiting in the wings to seize power are even more psychotic than Putin.
The liberals are a distant 4th want to bring back the 90s, which created the conditions that got us here.
The communists would maintain the war for the same reasons the Putin does
The nationalists would make it 10x worse
The libs might end the war, but would definitely immiserate all of Russia again so the nationalists have an easier time recruiting.
Great, let the Russians break their backs over this.
I’d like to see their military capabilities in traction for a while.
If the Russians can’t succeed with numbers, will they escalate?
… to what?
Are you suggesting we’re still waiting for the real Russian military to show up?
Or are you suggesting Russian deployment of tactical nuclear weapons?
Or is there another way that Russia could further escalate I can’t think of?
