Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

Russian troops killing their own

Russians stealing boots off their comrades

There are a huge number of cases of Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women, for example, in Bucha, Russian soldiers kept women in a basement for 25 days, 9 were reported pregnant, reportedly they were aged 14 to 24 and were "systematically raped".

In terms of doing this to their own, in an incident a few months ago in Mariupol, Russian troops (Kadyrovs) reportedly gang raped a Russian journalist

Russia: 2,136 visually confirmed main battle tanks destroyed, damaged, captured or abandoned

Ukraine: 574 visually confirmed main battle tanks destroyed, damaged, captured or abandoned

It's going swimmingly.

Ah yea those hellhole Yankee vassal states of *checks notes; Japan, Germany, South Korea, Italy and Taiwan. They could sure learn a thing or two on the “fruits of foreign policy” from Russia and China and their blossoming diplomacy with allies like *checks notes North Korea, Belarus, Venezuela, Tajikistan and Syria. Imagine if we could end US hegemony and trusted Russia and China, we too could live in paradises like Pyongyang, Aleppo or Caracas and discard the decadence of Tokyo, Seoul and Berlin.

Reading over some of the earlier pages of the thread, there were claims by one or two posters whose accounts are no longer active that Russia would be victorious within six months, by the May day celebrations etc.

I don't claim to be able to see the future, but have a strange feeling that history might continue to repeat itself in relation to these claims.

It's no surprise, really, considering that in the USA some of the hottest Putinists come from the MAGA (these days, most of it) wing of the Republican party. Some of those characters are liable to wield a version of the ''anti-globalist'', ''anti-neocon'' rhetoric...when they're not agitating for the USA to attack Mexico, that is.

The above is incorrect as I mentioned nothing about passports. I'm referring to how they identify on the Ukrainian census.

It's also worth pointing out that being ethnically Russian in Ukraine does not make you pro-Russian. The argument, which I'm not suggesting that you're making, is largely that either Russian speakers or people who identify as ethnically Russian support this war. It's lazy nonsense.

The moment you realised that poster actually typed out "I think it's going excellently for Russia in this war" you shouldn't have bothered because there isn't any point.

Having an opinion about an uncertain future is fine. Being such a blatant shill as to say the war is going "excellently" for Russia isn't an opinion, it's mindless propaganda.

The parameters for what constitutes badly, good, and excellent vary radically when put in the proper context.

The war has gone disastrously for Russia since day one.

It's gone "well" to "excellent" for Ukraine at a bare minimum in that even before western aid arrived in meaningful quantity, they seriously blunted and stalled Russia's advance in a way no-one thought would be remotely possible.

Because the Ukrainian military was minuscule in comparison to the Russian military. If the Russian armed forces were performing as they should have been - eg not rotten to the core with corruption and ineptitude - it wouldn't even have been a war, just a quick campaign.

It's basically the Winter War repeated, except Ukraine is doing infinitely better than Finland did, and magnified the humiliation of that conflict tenfold.

There in no world in which a claim that the war is going "excellently" for Russia is even vaguely credible. It's humiliating for them. It has laid bare for the entire world the utter rot and corruption present in every faucet of that miserable country.

I am sure many, many "best case scenarios" were landed on desks in NATO countries prior to the invasion that could never have even begun to imagine the possibility of the war playing out as it actually has, mostly because they would never have expected Russian performance to be so atrocious.

You know something Auntie? I was in Grozny, and there were many ethnic Russians there, but guess what? The Russian Army treated them even worse than the Chechens.. ( who treated them very well)...and I often saw them doing it, especially at check points. On one occasion, after an ethnic Russian produced not only his Russian ID, but medals he had received while fighting in the Great War, he was taunted with comments like " You are Russian? How can that be when you are living amongst these savages?" and plenty more in a similar vein, and worse. So would I be surprised to hear of Putin's killers illtreating and even killing ethnic Russians in Donbass? Nope, I would not. And by now, I guess most of these ethnic Donbass Russians have been forced to fight for Putin and are dead. So much for Putin's much acclaimed justification of going into Donbass to protect Ethnic Russians.

All credit goes to the west for keeping them in the fight, and using their unfortunate people as very convenient cannon fodder to feed to the Russians in a completely futile attempt to weaken Russia.

Anyone with their head screwed on at this point, can clearly see that Ukraine do not have either the manpower or the equipment to actually have any chance of winning this war. They never did. And now with Russia having dug in over the winter, with multiple lines of defence, it has essentially become a suicide mission to break through those lines. Ukraine have no chance of achieving their stated objectives in this conflict.

It's perfectly legal for Europe (and world countries) to support Ukraine. To abandon Ukraine was to enable Russia's invasion, unthinkable. Nothing futile about it, it's estimated Putin's lost half his operational tanks and Ukraine have dramatically weakened the largest military threat to Europe.

They've pushed Russia back from Kyiv, all the way across the Dnieper river, liberated Kharkiv and Russia now holds less than 20% of the country (and decreasing)

Ukraine was facing total occupation, the entire country turned into Bucha, now they aren't. Despite the challenges and cost, it's already extraordinarily successful. They haven't stopped because they are making more (gradual) progress. Russia's military is showing cracks and fractures everywhere, their economy is sliding, and the mines won't protect their conscripts and prisoner-soldiers forever.

And the F16's haven't even arrived yet. Nor the ATACMS.

Indeed or Putin could simply turn around now and end all this in an instant. That doesn't occur to these individuals, it's always Ukraine/West to blame