Prediction Thread: When Will Russia Conquer Ukraine

[N35t0r]

Oh look, the genocide supporter is back for his weekend drunken ramblings.

[Serb]

Be my guest!
You have missed my confession about my meeting with president Reagan.
You can thank Uncle for deleting my reply to PLATO.
A google ranking trouble, seriously, Uncle?!!!
You are a disgrace!

[PLATO]

You have missed my confession about my meeting with president Reagan.

I saw that and thought it was a great story! I met him once at an event in Nashville and got to hear him speak in person. He was truly amazing!

[pchang]

I’m sure everything is proceeding as planned.

[BlackCat]

Interesting analysis of Serb and what it will take for him to get normal

[PLATO]

I think we all thought Russia's victory was inevitable. Of course, it would have been hard to predict the amount of weapons support Ukraine is getting from the West so it may have been somewhat justified. At this point, I think Ukraine has a decent chance if Western aid continues. Still too many variables to really tell at this point. The Ukrainians sure do seem to be fighting harder than the Russians though...

[EPW]

| I think we all thought Russia's victory was inevitable.

I think if you look at the poll at the beginning of this thread you'll see that's not true for 3 of us.

[PLATO]

I stand corrected. Thanks EPW!

[Ming]

Sure they are fighting harder than the Russians... they are defending their home land and trying to protect their people from Russian war crimes.. While the Russians know that what they are doing is evil and don't even want to be there.

[Geronimo]

I would love to see Anders Puck Nielsen debate both of judge Andrew Napolitanos guests.

[Uncle Sparky]

According to Russian state media, Gorbachev is dead. So, he was probably about to condemn Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

[Dauphin]

I think we all thought Russia's victory was inevitable. Of course, it would have been hard to predict the amount of weapons support Ukraine is getting from the West so it may have been somewhat justified. At this point, I think Ukraine has a decent chance if Western aid continues. Still too many variables to really tell at this point. The Ukrainians sure do seem to be fighting harder than the Russians though...

I don't think it was that a military win was inevitable so much as a war goal would be achieved - a forced concession or de facto annexation of captured territory. My recollection from back in February was that most informed observers thought that if Ukraine could survive two weeks, it would survive indefinitely in a slogfest.

I don't think anyone expected Ukraine to take the fight to Russia (see sinking ships, Crimean airfields, etc), or retain/recapture Donbass.

I don't think Russia expected the economic response - the willingness of Europe to forego Russian hydrocarbons. That may not last come winter.....(but I expect it will largely hold the line)

[Geronimo]

I don't think it was that a military win was inevitable so much as a war goal would be achieved - a forced concession or de facto annexation of captured territory. My recollection from back in February was that most informed observers thought that if Ukraine could survive two weeks, it would survive indefinitely in a slogfest.

I don't think anyone expected Ukraine to take the fight to Russia (see sinking ships, Crimean airfields, etc), or retain/recapture Donbass.

I don't think Russia expected the economic response - the willingness of Europe to forego Russian hydrocarbons. That may not last come winter.....(but I expect it will largely hold the line)

The problem for Ukraine and the enormous advantage for Russia that makes a Russian victory continue to seem inevitable is that while Russia can reach out and destroy almost any part of the Ukrainian economy and infrastructure, Ukraine can barely scratch Russia in return. Russia can maintain an entire large economy with a large military sector and keep sending it into Ukraine but Ukraine is almost totally dependent on foreign aid.

If Russia out-waits the foreign aid, Ukraine collapses as a state.

[Dauphin]

That can be re-parsed with one change:

The problem for Vietnam and the enormous advantage for the USA that makes a US victory continue to seem inevitable is that while the US can reach out and destroy almost any part of the Vietnam economy and infrastructure, Vietnam can barely scratch the US in return. The US can maintain an entire large economy with a large military sector and keep sending it into Vietnam but Vietnam is almost totally dependent on foreign aid.

If the US out-waits the foreign aid, Vietnam collapses as a state.


My point, I think is that Russia has to have the wherewithal to take the losses it is taking. Can Putin afford to let this run for months, years. etc....

[Broken_Erika]

That can also be said about the French vs. Vietnamese, Chinese vs. Vietnamese and Mongols vs. Vietnamese.... Or any war against Afghanistan.

[Dauphin]

Quite. The logic would otherwise imply that any assymetric warfare will lead to victory for the bigger and better armed side.

[Geronimo]

That can be re-parsed with one change:

The problem for Vietnam and the enormous advantage for the USA that makes a US victory continue to seem inevitable is that while the US can reach out and destroy almost any part of the Vietnam economy and infrastructure, Vietnam can barely scratch the US in return. The US can maintain an entire large economy with a large military sector and keep sending it into Vietnam but Vietnam is almost totally dependent on foreign aid.

If the US out-waits the foreign aid, Vietnam collapses as a state.


My point, I think is that Russia has to have the wherewithal to take the losses it is taking. Can Putin afford to let this run for months, years. etc....

If Vietnam had been a neighboring state and the US had leadership that could cling to power like Putin Vietnam would have been screwed. The US was also quite unwilling to conquer or attempt to conquer the north. Russia views all of Ukraine as fair game. If anything the comparisons to Vietnam make Ukraine's situation appear even more severe.

[BeBMan]

I think we all thought Russia's victory was inevitable. Of course, it would have been hard to predict the amount of weapons support Ukraine is getting from the West so it may have been somewhat justified. At this point, I think Ukraine has a decent chance if Western aid continues. Still too many variables to really tell at this point. The Ukrainians sure do seem to be fighting harder than the Russians though...

I certainly thought Russia would make more, and faster progress. How wrong I was

IIRC there were military folks before the war who thought the war would turn into an endless guerilla style thing when Ukraine's regular military had been defeated.

But many also pointed out that the estimated no. of troops Russia had on Ukraine's borders in late Feb would simply not be enough to occupy a country of the size of Ukraine, since the invader would need a large numerical advantage over the defender.

[N35t0r]

The problem for Ukraine and the enormous advantage for Russia that makes a Russian victory continue to seem inevitable is that while Russia can reach out and destroy almost any part of the Ukrainian economy and infrastructure, Ukraine can barely scratch Russia in return. Russia can maintain an entire large economy with a large military sector and keep sending it into Ukraine but Ukraine is almost totally dependent on foreign aid.

If Russia out-waits the foreign aid, Ukraine collapses as a state.

Russia's military industry, even at the beginning of the year, was a shadow of what it was before 2014. And now it's even more degraded. They were supposed to be pumping out T-14s, Su-35s and Su-57s, and they barely have a handful.

Their industry is running on what they have and can produce, and for a lot of things they lack the capacity to replace or repair, their output and ability to produce will start degrading; and while they might prioritize some industries, it will necessarily be at the expense of others.
And they can't really roll back to 1970s or 1980s levels of tech, since the equipment and more critically the people who knew those processes are not there anymore.
It's been barely over 6 months since the heavy sanctions hit, so a lot of the impact isn't being felt yet, but if they keep this up for longer, it will.
Russia is also showing a marked difficulty in striking at Ukrainian logistics - a lot of missile strikes are hitting civilian targets, and the amount of PGMs launched has been going down constantly since the beginning stages of the war. Which makes sense: Russia lacks the required technology to produce a lot of the state-of-the-art parts in modern (and not-so-modern) precision munitions.

Of course Ukraine is completely lost without foreign support, but it doesn't seem like that is going away soon. The White House looks eager to throw a lot of money at it, which compared to the overall military budget is not that much, and the Pentagon seems ecstatic to have their weapons be thoroughly field-tested (and against the military they were designed to fight, to boot). With the increasing evidence of Ukraine not folding, they are even getting more comfortable about sending more advanced weapon systems over.