World News

2294 readers

27 users here now

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Ukraine Battles to Contain Russian Advances Across the Front (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

https://archive.ph/YbPOz

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (3 children)

A lot of people (or Russian bots) seem to have forgotten a basic fact of war: It is much easier to defend than to attack. To successfully attack, you need to be better trained than your enemy and even then, you can expect to lose soldiers and material at a three to one ratio. Russia has not yet regained 10% of the land it lost in Ukraine after the initial sweep to the doorstep of Kiev. Ukraine is fighting for survival. Russia will not have the same staying power. Furthermore, it is good to keep things in proportion. For example, the GDP of Russia is the same as that of Spain. It is global economic minnow. Russia is desperately weak and only its nuclear weapons make it worthy of note, like its ally North Korea. Finally, the will to survive matters: Look at Afghanistan, which had a quarter of the population and one tenth the GDP of Ukraine. It beat Russia (and then the US). Or Georgia, that Russia could not defeat later. Or the Russian statelet of Transneister that was never able to sufficiently destabilize Moldova, a particularly vulnerable state with practically no army. Even if Trump, who kisses Putin's ring, becomes president, Russia will not win.

This is the level of copium liberals are still on? Damn. Although it is nice to see that even in the NYT comments section, there are more "pro-russia" (or really, not NATO bootlicking) comments.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

ONE MAN ON THE WALL IS WORTH 10 MEN BELOW!!! Silly tankies don't know basic tactics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Silly liberals, dudes on walls went out of fashion when the cannons became mainstream jajaja.

Speaking of cannons what's the artillery ratio between the two sides again?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

what's the artillery ratio between the two sides again?

At least 5 to 1, which is also around the same ratio we see in the casualty numbers. This is completely unsurprising as artillery has always been responsible for most of the casualties in a war of this kind. And on top of that Russia is using a huge amount of glide bombs and cruise/ballistic missiles that Ukraine doesn't even have. So they can break any fortified position and target logistics and C&C nodes pretty much at will. Hence why the "attacker always suffers more casualties than the defender" cliché does not apply here.

Not to mention that it's not even that cut and dry who is attacking and who is defending. The Ukrainians take a lot of losses in counter-attacks because they are very unwilling to give up ground (the Kiev regime is very dependent on optics for whenever it goes begging for money and weapons, it has to appear like it's holding on and that it still has a chance to regain lost territories) and they will often send wave after wave of men trying to regain lost positions even after they have been taken and the Russians have entrenched themselves there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Speaking of cannons

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

It's really funny how all the reports from the world bank, IMF, and other western institutions are saying Russia's economy is now growing faster than the west, and that standard of living is rising across the board. Meanwhile, we have all the western media telling us how Russia on the verge of collapse, and if we just pump a bit more money into Ukraine that will surely make the difference.

It's absolutely amazing to see how utterly incapable mainstream libs are of any sort of critical analysis. The peak western support for Ukraine was when the fabled summer offensive happened last year. It was an utter disaster, and that was basically when the west gave Ukraine all the weapons it could, and Ukraine had motivated NATO trained troops. Since then, the support has massively declined and AFU has been decimated. Meanwhile, everybody now admits that Russian industry is outpacing the west, and Russian army is stronger than ever. What exactly are these people expecting is going to happen going forward.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is Mearsheimer without any of the nous.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nous?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Colloquially, common sense:

1 Reason and knowledge as opposed to sense perception.
2 The rational part of the individual human soul.
3 The principle of the cosmic mind or soul responsible for the rational order of the cosmos.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition