Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The Russians have natural resources to sell, but critically they had a European market to sell to and delivery infrastructure geared specifically to go that way. Much of Europe is now restricted or closed entirely to them, leaving them to sell to other nations who know that they can get away with paying the Russians bottom-dollar for their wares, with the additional pain / cost of not having optimal delivery methods.

They have to resort to the grey market for parts, but there again the suppliers know that Moscow can’t go around shopping for better deals. They can fleece the Russians and offer them sub-par / crap equipment for their trouble. That’s not a great situation to find yourself in when your army are up against high-standard NATO kit operated by an opponent who has essentially all of Western Europe to its back supplying it.

I just see the Russian economy adapting and muddling through, its better to view the war on the assumption that russia is a strong opponent and judge Ukraine's chances based on what is in their domain, weapons available and men. I guess one of the worst assumptions to make in global politics is to assume people around the world think like your average yank or European taxpayer. Afghanistan has thought all the powers and they dont think like westerners and that their concerns are not in the same order, Russians dont either by all accounts

So has the war in Ukraine then become a proxy war between North and South Korea?

Essentially yes

The article you posted however is still horsesh**t as it implies putin can take advantage of mineral wealth to build some success in Ukraine when he has destroyed the fighting machine that you think he can continue to feed into a meat grinder without consequences. In world war two soviet russia had millions of Ukrainians to fight on their side and vast resources shipped into their country from the west to help them fight off invasion from hitler and it still cost them millions of people dead to finish that war. They have continued to fight regular wars since then and lost vast numbers of additional young people to currently stand as the largest land area country in the world with just 9 people per square kilometer with its close neighbour Finland having almost double this number. I posted something about the past which was one days losses of putin's forces in Ukraine and the reason for that is that the past can be used to predict the future and those figures I posted look very similar to the following days losses that I post below. My point is that each day putin sends his war machine into so much destruction the chances of his country using any of their vast natural resources for anything positive dwindle. Even if putin could keep manufacturing shells that they need to keep occupying Ukraine they may not have sufficient artillery pieces left to fire them when Ukraine does see a chance to drive them out of their country. I fail to understand how you can't see the logic of my response.

But you fully believe the horsesh**t article you posted yesterday about alleged ammunition production data which is always going to be made public knowledge in 100% accuracy because telling your enemy what weapons you can and cannot produce is such a logical thing to do?

"I could take a view of whether they passed the smell test because there was likely to be a narrative/disinformation element to it."

Not sure what you mean by smell test but it is clear from the media that is coming from putin's side in this war that he makes very little effort to be believable and is more aiming to spread distrust and confusion across all media sources. Cherry picking the articles you post to just include one that gives a glint of positivity in the outlook for putin's forces in Ukraine speaks volumes of what you would like to see happen in the war there. putin won't even call his invasion of Ukraine a war.

I personally did not have any set expectations of the forces of Ukraine in their efforts to free themselves from putin's aggression and all evidence I have seen points to them making huge progress in destroying russia as a military force. It made sense for them to try break the land bridge to Crimea that puin's forces had established by reaching the sea of Azov, but it was known to be well defended and I see the talk of a beach party in Crimea last summer by Ukraine as more likely to be an effort to draw more of putin's forces into range to be liquidated. Look at the media outcry last week when putin's forces were shown to have actually hit a military target and kill 19 Ukrainian troops and contrast that with the regular updates of much larger numbers of moskovytes and their equipment being eliminated.

is this real?

I'll have to google this little pub quiz question.

That was a hard watch, but I felt like I had to. I do feel sorry for the mobniks that are getting mowed down like this. That’s not to say I don’t blame the AFU for having to do it, or that or that they are wrong for fighting back (which they must).

But I do feel that many of the Russian dead are also victims. Although it might have been an AFU shell or bullet that killed them, it was ultimately Putin who made certain that they died. Many of them don't want to be there, I suspect many also realise to their own horror that they are destined to be cannon fodder, and live out their find days in terror. Forced into battle by a side that will shoot them for retreating and against a foe who are motivated to shoot anyone in thier uniform. I want the Russians to lose, but I also pity those mobniks who probably didn’t want any of this.

I wonder if one day we’ll see a repeat of De-Stalinisation. A sort of De-Putinisation of Russia. That man has personally destroyed countless families across Russia. I wonder if they will try to forget him (and likely fail)

the smell test in relation to the Summer offensive was , I could see the Russian defences, their blanket use of mines, the fact they had drone and other coverage of the battlefield, the battlefield itsself was frighteningly flat and exposed, no airforce, so while the Ukranians had the advantage of attacking anywhere along a 1000km front while the Russians had to man everywhere, 2 weeks in Ukr hadnt cracked the defenses, at that stage everyone's cards were on the table, it was clear to me it wanst going anywhere yet the pro offensive articles continued for a couple of months but being subject to more and more criticism

Obviously the full story wont come out for 10 years as to who knew what and what the Americans and the West were dictating to Kyiv, I am prejudiced that the yanks see Ukrainians as dispensable so would have wanted the Ukrainians to attack against their wishes, the alternative to the summer offensive would have been to replicate the russians by building their own lines and make it very painful for the russians to advance another inch, keep the Ukr army intact and force a stalemate. Now the 2 potential states appear to be, stalemate or a war of attrition which the Russians by virtue of their size are more likely to win.