Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I don't agree with you on that prediction. I'm sure you are a great authority on how geopoliotics works but the russians have shown themselves to be such evil invaders and occupiers with their actions that no politician with the exception of Donald Trump and a couple of e** ts from Ireland would feel comfortable showing themselves as being on putin's side.

putin is already in a corner. I assume the obvious reasons you say he shouldn't be there is the threat he keeps wheeling out about nuclear war but to appease him will simply see him continue to use these threats and with a failing economy and the real prospect of the russian federation falling apart sending weapons to Ukraine until russia is no longer occupying all of its territories is the best route for the US to weaken the russian military and decreasing the chance of russia continuing to build putin's empire.

Currently it's suspected the Ukrainians used some sort of boat or marine drone to carry this attack out, which likely was their own tech.

These are the neutral estimates, from academia and think tanks like the Royal United Services Institute. I mean, yes, they are all based in the West, but you'd hardly except honesty or free expression of bad news from Moscow.

Look, when you're lied to, badly trained, badly equipped and supplied, badly led, cold, hungry and receive a hostile reception from a populace who you were promised would greet you as liberators - your motivation and morale are going to be through the floor and when it is, soldiers die in big numbers.

Honestly, 5:1 could be a significant underestimate.

Evidence of Ukrainian Genocide by Russian forces are uncovered whenever a town is liberated.

There was a stage where the border between Ukraine and Russia was just seen as a formality and people from both populations moved between countries for work, marriage, vacation, trade etc. The question then is how did this start? Within Russia there is an active nationalist faction, that has it's own imperialist ambitions and wants to recreate the Soviet Union, you are talking about a country where Stalin is popular among a majority of the population. Politically the nationalists have been very active and it is something the Russian ruling class i.e. the Siloviki has been willing to use. Within Ukraine there is also an extreme nationalist faction, mostly originating in the Western Ukraine. Before all this the economic power in Ukraine is split between Kiev, Dnipro and Donetsk. The Ukrainian oligarchs fell out among themselves and used politics to advance their business. The fate of the Russian speaking populations in "near Russia", has an impact on Russian domestic politics that would cost Putin if he ignored it. The power struggles in Ukraine opened the door for the Russian invasion.

On the US ending or reducing support for Ukraine in the winter...What's this "domestic leftist violence"? [Ant-eee-fah?]

How is Biden a lame duck? I thought he was doing okay given the constraints of the creaking US political system and fact that the opposing party/"loyal" opposition has left the reservation for good & don't seem to believe in maintaining democracy any longer when they don't win the votes.

edit: On a "lack of (US public) support for the war" (presume you mean a lack of support for US assistance to Ukraine) I got impression it was quite a popular policy, even in the Republican base. The efforts of some Republican "thought leaders" to push pro Russia/pro Putin messages, spread various conspiracy theories and undermine legitimacy of US support for Ukraine doesn't seem to have worked so well.

Who are the Republican "war hawks"? The only war hawks on Ukraine are of course the Russians and Putin...US is just following the standard post-WW1 onwards policy in Europe of supplying (selling or giving) military support + weapons to countries coming under threat from revisionist, aggressive dictatorships with designs on conquering lands and peoples that do not belong to them and don't want to be ruled over by them. Nothing very hawkish there IMO.

The ones trying to break the existing US foreign policy mould are some of the US Republicans who would happily leave Ukraine and Europe to swing in the wind + like you seem to have a bit of admiration for Vladimir Putin.

A source I found with google for your image was a Russian UN rep. on Twitter, https://twitter.com/dpol_un. This account was retweeting someone else who said they got it from (what looks like) another pro-Russia/pro-Putin disinfo account. Account linked has also "retweeted" our own Mick Wallace! You're really doing the lord's work posting it up here to correct a "narrative"!

Occam's razor: They received still classified drone/autonomous surface vessels from the US around May.

For sure they have underperformed, their logistics is terrible. The regular Russian army has not yet folded in Kherson, despite being in a crap situation they have held, this demonstrates they can fight. I would not could them out yet, and history shows they have colossal f!ckups before and have been able to come back with reforms and sheer numbers. This is what they will attempt to do between January and April. The expected order is that Ukraine makes as much gains as it can before mud season bogs them down, there is a long pause before the Winter war.

Ah, well that's different. Got a link? Wouldn't happen to be one of those paid traitors, by any chance?

I can't see there being the obvious high morale among the Ukrainian military if they were suffering such losses. They are positively ebullient.

Big explosion and fire reported near Yevpatoriya

Surely if Russia held territory, then tactically retreated to a position so that they could kill 5 times as many Ukrainian soldiers as they themselves take as casualties, then it would be relatively trivial for them to advance against the decimated Ukrainians and retake the territory they just retreated from?