• psychothumbs@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s a bit of a disingenuous read when what they’re getting at is that Ukraine is obviously not going to conquer Russia.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      It’s really not given what we plainly see happening. Ukraine is entirely dependent on the west at this point, and this support will run dry eventually.

      • psychothumbs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        See it seems like you’re arguing that Ukraine is going to be defeated militarily, which isn’t a crazy thing to argue necessarily, it’s just not the claim the article was making.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          While the article indulges the common tropes about Russian army not being able to dominate Ukraine, it is ultimately advocating for freezing the conflict. If RAND believed that Russia would not win a long conflict against the west, then they would be advocating the opposite. The whole point of the proxy war as RAND explained in this article in 2014, was to weaken Russia. So, if that goal was being accomplished through attrition in Ukraine, then why would RAND all of a sudden advocate looking for an offramp?

          • psychothumbs@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You are doing some elaborate theorizing about why their article that doesn’t support your view or the title you gave it actually does indicate RAND supports your view.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              1 year ago

              I notice you haven’t answered my question there. The title RAND gave it is “An Unwinnable War, Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine”. So, you tell me why US needs an endgame in Ukraine if the proxy war is going as planned.

              • psychothumbs@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Well if you read the article you’d see they’re saying that neither Ukraine nor Russia are going to be able to knock the other out of the war, and that therefore we need to think about what a negotiated settlement will ultimately look like.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Again, if the goal is to weaken Russia then a protracted war is precisely what US would be interested in. It’s also a fallacy to frame this as a war between Ukraine and Russia given that all of NATO is propping up Ukraine.

  • stanleytweedle@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Fifteen months of fighting has made clear that neither side has the capacity — even with external help — to achieve a decisive military victory over the other. Regardless of how much territory Ukrainian forces can liberate,

    Interesting take. My take is that Russia has permanently isolated itself from any nation that isn’t either a puppet or lining up for its natural resources while Ukraine effectively implements ‘external support’ to crush Russia’s invasion.

    • Redex@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, that isn’t mutually exclusive with the quote. Both are true. It will be extremely hard for Ukraine to retake all of its territory, and it probably wouldn’t make sense either. But at the same time, this war was extremely costly for Russia and has turned it into a pariah state.

      • stanleytweedle@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It will depend on sustained western support but Russia’s capaity to maintain the war effort is already breaking while the west is still holding back full support. Russia is on an inevitable downward trajectory and Ukraine is very effectively utilizing a well of military support that is only limited by public sentiment.

        • Skooby1@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Russia is holding a great deal of their reserves back from this conflict. Ukraine is literally forcing people to join their military while Russia has thousands volunteering every week now. Support for the war increased dramatically after shells hit Russian soil. Russia’s increasing military industrial capacity has reinvigorated their economy to the point that Bretton Woods institutions are projecting higher growth for them than most of the countries sanctioning them.

          On top of that the Ukrainian counter-offensive has gone so terribly for them that Putin is now able to sell the success of this “special military operation” to the people while having the luxury of considering alternative outcomes depending on what kind of losses they want to take after this recent Ukrainian effort is over.

        • Redex@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The problem is Russia can be a pariah state and survive. They have natural resources which is all you really need to survive. They also inherited the Soviet Union’s military industry, thought not in it’s full capacity. The West might tire of of supporting Ukraine, it might not, but Russia doesn’t depend on others’ support, they can produce their own weapons. Not in sufficient quantities to conquer the whole of Ukraine, but in sufficient quantities to bog down the war for years to come.

          • stanleytweedle@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Russia absolutely depends on the support to produce anything more sophisticated than a grenade and their access to advanced technology is increasingly limited to smuggling. Their military-industrial complex is suffering unprecedented brain-drain alongside a demographic collapse. If the west maintains anything like their current level of military support for Ukraine over the next few years Russia will have no choice but to withdraw.

      • Skooby1@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Russia seems to have only turned into a pariah state for the Western world. The opposite for the rest.

    • redditors_re_racist@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      lmao, russia has not isolated itself from anyone but white nations. the “international community” is just white nations plus the asian places america occupies

  • DevCat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is really the only statement in the article that still needs to addressed:

    Regardless of how much territory Ukrainian forces can liberate, Russia will maintain the capability to pose a permanent threat to Ukraine.

    Short of invading the internationally recognized territory of Russia, Russia will continue to be a threat into the foreseeable future. The only way to deal with this, is by supporting independence minded groups within Russia. Before their latest incursion into Ukraine, such a statement would have been laughed at, and rightfully so. But, as we have seen in recent weeks, there is at least one group bordering Ukraine that is making it clear that Putin does not control all of Russia.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      There are far more internal political tensions in every western country right now than there are in Russia. It’s far more likely that western countries end up looking at regime changes in the near future than any kind of breakup in Russia. Anybody who thinks that Russia can be balkanized by the west is absolutely delusional.

    • lntl@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I don’t like Russia and breaking it up would be a disaster. Think of all of the regional power vacuums that would develop. Think of the wars that would break out between these groups for control of the gas fields, for the nickel mines, for port access. Super bad idea atm.

  • Redex@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Well, that depends on how you define win. If to win is to retake all of the pre-2014 Ukrainian territories, then yes, the war is most probably unwinnable, but if to win is to stop the war and to get back the pre-2022 borders, then that could also be considered a victory.

      • Redex@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean first off, I did read it. Secondly, the article itself even states that the war can be won if you consider wining being Ukraine’s prosperity (last paragraph).

        Also, you never know, it’s always possible that Ukraine makes a breakthrough and the Russian frontline collapses, allowing them to retake the South. Even if that doesn’t happen, if they inflict enough damage and Russia sees political upheaval, it’s possible that Putin gets forced to concede defeat and give back Ukraine its territory. That most probably wouldn’t include Crimea, and the Donbas could probably be made a independent state, but if that ends the bloodshed then that’s a win.