Russia - threadbanned users in OP

… plus sweden and finland joining NATO.

Plus Russia too weak to control the Armenia Azerbaijan situation when Armenia asked for assistance.

More nonsense.

You've clearly been brainwashed by the propaganda, if you think the western financial contribution to this conflict is not a significant burden. Just take one look at the political tension in the US, and it's obvious that a nation carrying obscene levels of national debt is starting to question what exactly is being accomplished here.

Russia are not going to lose this war. Ukraine is in ruins. None of that is worth the price that's being paid, and the public are starting to wake up to this fact.

We had all the pathetic stuff, about it being better to have the Ukrainians fighting and dying rather than US soldiers. But again, people are waking up to that nonsensical rubbish too because very few people actually believe that Russia are any sort of legitimate threat to Europe or the world. You would really have to be very gullible, to swallow such lazy propaganda efforts. Sadly there are some people still trying to peddle such rubbish, because there are still a few out there deluded enough to buy into it. The numbers are shrinking rapidly though.

PT. You might be jumping the gun here. A war consists of a number of battles . There has been a good number of battles to date - some won by UKR and some lost by it. By the way the war is still going on so if you can hold on until it is all over before you decide who has won. In the mix when making that decision might be:-

(1) has NATO receded back from the Ru border or advanced towards it?

(2) has the NATO border with Ru shortened or lengthened and by how much?

(3) has the number of buffer countries between Ru and NATO increased or decreased?

(4) has Ukr applied to join the EU

(5) has UKr expressed a desire to join NATO

(6) did UKr succeed in joining either of the above?
(7)where will the border between UKr and Ru be when the WAR is over ?

;8) what will be the ‘state’ of the Ru economy when the WAR is over. It probably will be in a very, very, very POOR state but sure the Russians are used to such poverty - especially outside of the major cities and surrounding areas. Ukr will probably get massive overseas aid to build back up its economy.

Of course I am sure that there are other parameters that can be considered but the above are what came to my mind

Ukrainian military figures. So the actual figure is probably a number between what the US estimates and what the Ukrainians give.

Why are Russia struggling to take Ukraine?

Daily updates here https://www.minusrus.com/en

Polish President Andrzej Duda discussed Ukraine and the Middle East with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a meeting in New York at which the former US president said he was 'behind Poland all the way'

Sometimes I wonder is Trump actually the real president at the mo and not Biden .. Note no mention of behind Ukraine.

We don't really know exactly how many Russians have died so far, but even going with the low end BBC estimate of 50,000, that alone would be absolutely staggering within the timeframe, from a western perspective at least. That's nearly as many confirmed KIAs as the US suffered in Vietnam in the decade or so they were involved. That's nearly as many soldiers as were killed on all sides in the Yugoslav wars. Again, this is only the Russian low estimate. It's almost certainly more than 50,000 but maybe not quite as high as 450,000, which I think is what the Ukrainian military are reporting themselves and is on Minusrus. FWIW, Russian sources are reporting they've killed the same figure of Ukrainian soldiers.

The fog of war is thick at the moment and these figures will probably only come into sharp focus whenever this conflict ends and some proper independent verification can happen.

The black swan event ?

Yes, the fog of war. Or another name for it is propaganda.

And it has been really quite unintelligent propaganda from the west.

Western sources: "Russian military is weak, pathetic, useless… comically inept…"

Also western sources: "Ukraine is struggling… I know we've given them eyewatering amounts of military aid, but they need much more to defeat this useless Russian army…"

Also western sources: "Putin and Russia are grave threat to Europe and the world. Putin will reform the soviet union and take back Alaska if we don't stop him now…"

No wonder people in the west are losing interest in this conflict, and particularly the Americans. How could anyone with a smidgen of intelligence believe all these contradictory messages being put out there? It's ridiculous… the west has actually shot itself in the foot with how poorly they've played the information war, despite having almost total control over it. Own goals don't come much bigger.

Most people either don't believe the numbers of dead, or at this point just don't have a clue what to believe.

Not to mention having to scrounge around the world for manpower and weapons…..yeah, things are going well for Putin allright!!! NOT.

The brain drain is a very valid point. Russia still produces top talent, but as with anywhere on earth, few educated and ambitious people chose to remain under a de facto dictatorship where their talents are not appreciated. Putin rewards a small sector of Russian society, none of whom make any meaningful contribution to Russian life, culture of science.

Even as a non-techie I've noticed the number of Russian and Belarussian IT workers drifting westwards over the past 15 years. It seemed as though if you had a tech idea and needed motivated top notch programmers, Russia was the place to look.

When you've lived and rebelled under a genocidal dictatorship, stood up to unrestrained, corrupt, omnipotent power and risked jail for standing in the street with a placard, come back to me and I'll listen to your condemnation of those who suffer in silence for fear of their families being targeted. If anything, its us in the West who enabled the War on Terror and the ongoing abuse of power by successive Israeli governments who should be navel gazing in shame.

Of course there are plenty of ordinary Russians with twisted morals who gladly support any form of military chest thumping on the grounds of nationalism, who were ecstatic at the idea of going to war. Every country and every generation has them. We've had Catholic priests in our own country actively participate in terrorism and the defence of terrorists. But of course every country will defend their own support of murders on the basis of "ah yeah, but our situation was different".