Russia doesnt have to make progress. They already reached their targets:
1. Keep Crimea
2. Annex the Donbass
3. Keep the pressure at the West and empty their stockpiles
The Soviet Union was a massive communist production state without unemployment.
They produced almost more weaponry than than the world combined. They have the longest breath in this game. The Russian people wont protest or march to the Kremlin.
Its not the same in the West. The Ukrainian war creates a big financial crisis in the West. The EU sends billions and billions and billions that they could use for their own housing, inflation and immigration crisis.
Everyone who thinks Russia bleeds more than the EU needs to wake up.
This is the biggest cope I've ever heard and it shouldn't even be engaged with, but I'll indulge his lunacy.
Russia's goals at the outset of war were the following.
1. The fall of Kyiv and the sacking of the Ukrainian government, making Ukraine a vasal state of Russia, similar to Belarus.
Result: failed miserably. Kyiv is not in any form of jeopardy, and the population is firmly against the idea of falling under Russian influence. EU and Allied funding is ensuring that Ukraine's Government has plentiful funding for the foreseeable future.
2. Complete control of the Donbas.
Result: they're going to have to settle for partial control. The Ukrainian fortresses of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are not even close to falling.
3. Fracturing NATO and isolating countries in Europe.
Result: Epic failure, with NATO standing firmly together and actually expanding their strength with the addition of two wealthy, militarily capable nations in Finland and Sweden that are geographically significant on Russia's border.
Here are the actual facts...
1. Russia occupies 18% of Ukrainian held territory at the beginning of the war.
2. Russia has suffered a 90+% casualty rate to the land army they invaded with.
3. Russia's vast Soviet stockpile is being burned through at an alarming pace and the land army they counted on sweeping over Ukraine has been plagued by issues ranging from professional capability, logistics, capability gaps, low morale and insubordination.
4. 20% of the "vaunted" Black Sea Fleet has fled to distant ports where it is stuck hiding from a country that doesn't even possess a convential Navy.
5. Not only has Europe been able keep Russia at bay by sending old, outdated equipment, they're also now starting to take the overhaul of their own military might seriously, at the same time that Russia's land army is being shredded for a generation. Germany
, for example, committed to spending more than 100 Billion Euros to greatly revamp their land forces, buying modern, capable equipment. Poland
is developing aruguably the steongest land army in Europe. Slovakia
, Czech Reuplic
, Romania
, Lithuania
, Britain, Sweden
Finland
France
Norway
, etc, etc are doing the same. At the end of this conflict Europe will be much more militarily powerful and Russia will have lost an enormous amount of the Soviet stockpile that it resorted to in order to project power.
Russia
is getting clowned by a country a fraction it's size, using equipment that is largely old Soviet crap and a small percentage of Western hand-me-downs.