Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
congress is set to approve another 40 billion in aid to Ukraine...they're going to have the equipment they need, they'll have plenty of medical supplies, they're receiving training on all the systems we and the E.U. members are giving them...putin can drag this out, but i don't think he can win. russia is a big country with a long border, and a lot of enemies. they have to maintain border guards. they have to maintain a presence in Armenia, Belarus, Azerbijan, Georgia, Khazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Tajikistan...they're already short of the number of men they would need as an occupying force to just keep what they hold in Ukraine. putin might be able to stretch this out for another year, possibly two...if his own people don't openly revolt. some of them have to be catching on that something isn't right, that someone has been lying to them. i realize that many of them have bought into his shit whole heartedly, but have all of them? if so, who has been setting all those fires? sabotaging rail lines?So ultimately the question of the war resides in Putin. If he is in power it most likely will be fought for some time. From all indications Putin is not going anywhere, especially since he is calling the special operation as necessary to save Russia.
after about another year, during which he will conscript as many appropriately aged men as he can, he will have an army of poorly trained, poorly motivated, poorly equipped people who will die quickly. they'll take a fair number of Ukrainians with them, but i doubt it will be more than a small fraction of what they would need to kill to even be able to claim a weak, Pyrrhic victory. all putin is doing is wasting more Ukrainian and russian lives in a war he has already lost, while continuing to damage russia's economy and world reputation.