SilverMachine
Member
I have to admit, I'm also not particularly confident about a Ukrainian victory. You can talk about Kursk all you like but it doesn't change the fact that Russia started making pretty major gains in Ukraine once this operation got underway which leads me to suspect that Ukraine diverted a substantial amount of its forces that were defending the country for the invasion of Russia and no longer has enough to hold back the Russian advance.
People also need to remember that Russians generally don't give a crap about their territory. The reason they like having such a big amount of land despite not enough people to populate it and most of it being fairly underdeveloped is because it fits perfectly with the Russian strategy of defense in depth. To put it another way for the US to lose even one state to enemy action, even one as worthless as, say, Oregon would be a major catastrophe. But for Russia Kursk is mostly nothing. It could be a problem if Ukraine pushes deep enough south to flank the Russian forces occupying Ukraine and prevent them from being resupplied but it doesn't seem thus far like they have enough gas to make it happen.
Basically, Ukraine's strategy in Russia has multiple options:
1) Capture territory in the hopes of a stronger negotiating hand against Russia. Not really working all that well and Russia isn't falling for it.
2) Pivot down south in order to cut off Russian reinforcements. Again Russia seems to have anticipated that and this area is their main focus.
3) Attempt to sabotage enough of Russia's mission-critical infrastructure in order to hinder their war effort but as I said before, it doesn't seem like Ukraine has enough fuel in the tank to pull that off.
And to make it worse it doesn't look like even the Ukrainians themselves know what their actual objectives in Russia are. If I had to hazard a guess the initial idea was to prove to the Western powers, particularly the US, that Ukraine can still put up a fight and Russia is cowardly enough that there is no risk of escalation if NATO were to get involved a bit more seriously and provide more weapons and munitions to Ukraine but that didn't work - so now Ukraine is left wondering what now?
I want Ukraine to win from both a moral and self-interested perspective. I just don't see how anymore and I really hope the rest of the ex-USSR nations are paying attention and preparing themselves for the fallout.
This guy gets it.
