We might be hitting the point where the AFU simply doesn't have enough experienced and motivated troops to hold things together. It's hard to maintain unit cohesion when large chunks of the army consist of people kidnapped off the street with no training.
Perhaps. But i wouldn't bet on a collapse any time soon. I think the pace of Russia's advances will simply accelerate. The German Nazi armies remained more or less cohesive and capable of fighting until they were pushed all the way back to Berlin. And they were in even more dire manpower crisis than Ukraine is today.
Or course there are some differences, one of them being that Ukraine isn't yet willing or capable of mobilizing to the same degree as Nazi Germany was. They are not quite at Volkssturm levels. At the same time they are just as unwilling or unable to negotiate as the German Nazi regime was, so this will probably go on until a similar inevitable conclusion.
I hope i'm wrong though and this ends quicker. But every time i've said that i've been disappointed.
I also think Ukraine is still capable of amassing troops and launching brief, localized counter-offensives just like late war Nazi Germany was. It would not be a good idea to do so because the result of these will only be to speed up the depletion of their fighting forces, as we saw in Kursk, but they won't be able to help themselves. Their psychology as well as their internal and external political pressures compel them to do these self-defeating things. So yeah, my prediction is that we will see at least one more attempt from Ukraine to do a surprise offensive.
You're right, it's hard to say how much further they can push it. I do think there is also psychological factor of the conscripts to consider as well. People who wanted to fight signed up at the start of the war. These people are now exhausted and demoralized, and new people did not want to fight in the first place. There needs to be a motivated core to hold discipline, and eventually there comes an inflection point where there are just not enough people who are willing to keep fighting. The big question is when that point comes.
This was an interesting listen by the way. Martyanov suggests that the main reason Russian army is holding back is because they do not want to deal with hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, so instead they're just choosing to do attrition.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I agree and feel that at this point the west just wants to buy time for the humiliation and the Ukrainians themselves are Nazi-loving and imitating fanatics and Zelensky is personally done once the war ends because of the disaster he led his people to so like Netanyahu he's desperate to keep the war burning.
Feel bad for the non-Nazi Ukrainians who are being thrown into the meat grinder. Also badly for Russian troops who are dying grinding them down until we get a fall of Berlin moment and wondering just how bad things will get.
With enough time sadly comes hubris and all kinds of fanciful lies. The west was beaten in Vietnam but it took long enough that they made up all kinds of cope and their populations didn't receive the shock of a sudden dramatic defeat and reversal but rather a slow decline which left them appearing stronger than they were even in defeat and I think this is the point. The west cannot inflict a strategic defeat on Russia but they want their own defeat to be very costly, very hard-won, and take so long that it doesn't look so bad and by the end people have forgotten all the propaganda lies about how Russia would be defeated quickly.
A boxer who goes down in overtime doesn't look nearly as badly as one who goes down at the end of the first round.
For posting news about NATO's wars in Ukraine, Serbia, Kosovo, and The Middle East, including anywhere else NATO is currently engaged in hostile actions. As well as anything that relates to it.
Rules:
Follow Site Rules
No support nor defence of Western-backed governments, NATO or Western Imperialism