Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Ultimately NATO subjugated and did not hold that country either and spent a lot more resources before timing out. You can't draw too much from that other than the Russian economy in parallel was failing (inherent contradictions of central planned economy) and they needed to reform, plus the mothers of the soldiers being injured and killed were not happy and started writing letters to everyone in the party they could (every letter has to be responded to or the party apparatchik loses promotion in their end of year performance review.).

An important defeat I left out was the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war, where Japan sunk the Russian navy, that partly spurred the 1905 revolution.

Russian soldiers are not happy with defeat, the nationalists will want to avenge that and organise the economy accordingly, there is no significant political opposition within the Russian federation, though they may sense an opportunity, they always have to compromise with the system.

• Most of that landmass is sparsely populated tundra that the Russians managed to grab because very few people live there. Their population is dwarfed by Western Europe, with most living within the Western population centers
• The Russian economy was tied into the international supply chain and was driven heavily by the sale of fuel. Both have effectively been denied to them and their actions are driving an earlier adoption of renewable alternatives, so you have the Russians effectively shooting themselves in the foot in the long term. What's more, those resources are worthless unless you can maintain the equipment to extract them, which will get increasingly more difficult for them as time goes on.
• Supporting Ukraine is likely boosting Biden ahead of the mid-terms and may be helping undo the damage of the Kabul withdrawal. Politically, he will be investing in keeping this going to hopefully an eventual win.
• Mobilizing a million more poorly trained & armed conscripts and then pouring them into Ukraine would make Pickett's Charge look like a silly playground run-about. Numbers won't help them unless they have a solution for the quality of their armed forces.
• The T-13 Armata...of which I believe there are / were 12 working examples, of which at least one needed tractor assistance to complete a parade? The tank that now can't be produced in numbers because it needs parts from countries that santion Russian? That T-13 Armata?

The Russians have limited resources, people, money and above all time. They'll run out of one or several of these and will be physically unable to wage any kind of warfare for much longer. That is how the world works.

,🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Another Comedian the gas pipe will be turned on within weeks

Sometimes, rather than argue directly against a point you disagree with (aka 'banging your head against a wall'), it can be more effective to take those points and present them as your own in an exaggerated form, in order to highlight the ridiculousness of the counter proposition. There's probably a formal English term for it, but I didn't pay that much attention in class 🙂

If Russia wants revenge, they'd be fools to seek it militarily. It's not as if Russia were to retreat from Ukraine that the Ukrainians would high five each other and then sit on their hands until Russia tried to invade again - Ukraine would obviously use that time to complete the modernisation of its military with help from NATO, to build defences against invasion, or possibly even just join NATO altogether. The time to invade Ukraine would have been 2014, when it had little on the military capability it currently enjoys.

Ah my bad, thank you for the correction. But yes, I was referring to that particular Russian marvel of ingenuity :P

,,,

Talking of rummaging for Soviet stuff, it seems the recently fleeing Russian army left behind stockpiles of munitions and lots of military vehicles. We can be sure they'll be put to good use, if they're any good.

Ukraine is a country ruled by kleptocrats since the fall of the Soviet Union. A modern military requires money and resources, are Ukraine's debts going to be written off? Is this the same culture as either Japan or Germany, who adopted substantial reforms and rebuilt after world war II? That kleptocracy is the primary reason they are weak and it pervades the country.

I'll give an example, a Russian I used to work with from Visaginas in Lithuania, his surname indicates Ukrainian heritage. His family moved from the Odessa region during the Soviet era to build and operate the nuclear plant there. They have relatives in Ukraine (Russian speaking & Ukraine nationalist, The mother called them in 2014 to see if they were ok and got an anti-Russian diatribe from their mad uncle), anyway his mother went to visit, she is elderly and has a medical condition that is stabilised with medication. While there, she went to a chemist to get the medication, except they put any old pills in the bottle and she nearly died as a result of not getting the correct medication, she had to be hospitalised. Corruption is endemic. They had the same problem in Russia with fake medication and the government addressed it.

I see Marshal plans being discussed in the context of Ukraine, unless there is a significant mindset change across Ukrainian society, then the kleptocrats benefit, the country remains poor, but this time potentially with an army that has territorial expansion ambitions of its own that goes about antagonising its neighbour.

Crimea was treated as a backwater when Ukraine ran it, the standard of living went up under Russian subsidies, albeit at a cost to the Russian exchequer. Lets suppose that Ukraine takes it, the population is actually mostly Russian. A Ukrainian government is not going to put much resources in there and that in itself is going to create instability or like what happened in Lithuania the Russians migrate abroad to find work.

Defeat of Russia, does not automatically mean Ukraine will become an upstanding member to the EU and net contributor. A more likely scenario is that it is a resource economy that ships raw materials out without adding any value and has to, to pay off its debts. Adding it to the EU, more likely means it has more in common with the Visegrád Group, which changes the dynamics of the EU. Ukrainians entry is not a given certainty, it may still end up as a buffer zone.

"And don't forget OUR Islanders and the T-13 Armadas and all those hypersonic missiles that WE can use to level Kiev. The West will be terrified we'll use our nukes and they'll blink."

Our/we???

Come on