Ukrainian War Developments

lapain said:

You are not seeing the bigger picture here. Russia is fighting the proxy war against the bigger NATO in Ukraine.

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The moment Russia enter the conflict directly, it stopped being a 'proxy' war, and became a direct involvement. Do you know what a proxy war means?

lapain said:

Gearing up a large military rather than a large economy wasn't necessarily Russia's choice to begin with.

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Hence the "weak declining power who is boxed into a corner" message. Russia had little choice, because it was boxed in a corner. Doesn't make it a "Genius move", because direct involvement is the last resort in a 'proxy conflict'. What exactly are you disagree with?

ZeEa5KPul said:

I owe Indians an apology. I thought they were the the biggest liars in the world after the Galwan thing, but they're nowhere near. Ukrainians are by far the most prolific liars on the planet.

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This is war. Morale is one of the most important aspects of obtaining victory, so no side will tell the absolute truth. Even if the territory of Ukraine shrinks to the size of the Diaoyu islands, they will still proclaim that they inflicted numerous casualties upon the Russians. This also applies to Russia.

I would love 8% CD rate.

Maikeru said:

Well they would and are but Twitter censors them. Try Telegram if you're into that sort of thing.

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Nah pure propaganda, for morale boosting.

Both sides have released numbers of their own casulties once. The Ukrainians did after the first day of targeted strikes, the Russians did about a week ago. Ukrainians said they lost 115 soldiers. The Russians stated they lost around 500.

The most accurate number given in conflicts is typically the numbers of POW taken as they need to be reported to international bodies. Ukrainians haven't released any numbers publically, but the Russians announced around 500 Ukrainian POW had been captured last week.

Comparing the ratio between kills/POW to other wars gives a rough idea of how many actual deaths there are. On another forum I worked it out to be around 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers. Again, that's a very rough estimate.

Phead128 said:

The moment Russia got involved directly, it stopped being a 'proxy' war, and became a direct conflict. Do you know what a proxy war means?

Hence the "weak declining power who is boxed into a corner" message. Russia had little choice, because it was boxed in a corner. Doesn't make it a "Genius move", because direct involvement is the last resort in a 'proxy conflict'. What exactly are you disagree with?

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Vietnam, Soviet Afghan war and the Korean War are categorized as proxy wars right? Ukraine isn't exactly in NATO, but certainly is instrumentalized by it, the writing is on the wall on that one.

Russia has been building a large army since the early 2000s as a direct reaction to NATO's encroaching. An Ukrainian entrance to NATO would lay bare the entire Western border and force the Russian Federation into even more ruinous military spending.

Better kill the beast before it grows further, sort of like France and Britain should have done in 1936. Wouldn't call this a boxed in situation at all.

Phead128 said:

Yes, when you are a weak declining power who is boxed into a corner, then lashing out against a smaller power is a "genius move" if your remaining limited advantages is strong military might and not much else.

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You totally missed my point. If the above is what you think I meant, I would have contradicted myself because it would mean that Putin should have done it in 2014 when Ukrainian military was in a much worse position to defend themselves.

I meant precisely what I said. Go back to read what I said.
Putin's moves is genius because his vision is not as narrow short sighted as you. His eyes were NOT on Ukraine ONLY. He was waiting for his opportunities. Right now is the best time, because the the US is in ever dire need for an aggressive quantitative tightening. The rampant inflation will be massively exasperated by sanction on Russia. This put even higher pressure for aggressive interest rate hike. And if global capital (mainly those from Europe) do NOT return back to the US after Fed start a train of rate hikes, it would crash the US economy. This is what Putin is banking on.

Maikeru said:

Except the figures are from NATO, not Ukraine. That's the NATO that has dozens of spy-planes, UAVs, satellites and other assets monitoring the whole area 24/7. And your assets are? Cope harder.

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that wont give an accurate picture of causalities. If we count for destruction half of the Ukrainian army is death. I don't want to be pessimist but is definitely propaganda for morale boosting.

Maikeru said:

Self-perceived strong military might. I don't thnk the RUssian armed forces are scaring anyone other than innocent civilians now. They would be lucky to last 5 minutes against NATO troops, even with a 5 to 1 advantage.

Geelong:

Well based on the competence they've displayed so far...

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If Twitter had existed in 1945, all these "experts" would have been commending the Fuhrer on how much the Red Army is failing on its advance to Berlin.

The US estimates in the media were something like 2000-4000 dead a day ago and now they doubled.
There's a bunch of other 'US Officials' waiting to give their estimates too.

Why is 5-6 thousand suddenly more credible than the previous numbers? Who gave them?
It really doesn't mean much.