Prediction Thread: When Will Ukraine Conquer Russia

[Geronimo]

It's great we all agree the BBC is a credible source of news. Look what else I found there:

Russian army officer admits: 'Our troops tortured Ukrainians'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64470092

Site blocked? That makes no sense.

Sadly for almost a year now, the credible reports and forensic evidence of torture have been so appalling that it would take some immensely heinous new crime to make my opinion of the Russian expeditionary forces human rights records any worse than it is.

[BeBMan]

It's great we all agree the BBC is a credible source of news. Look what else I found there:

Russian army officer admits: 'Our troops tortured Ukrainians'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64470092

[PLATO]

Ukrainian success has always been more about Russian incompetence than Ukrainian proficiency.

Hmmmm....not sure I agree with that, I think it is more a combination of both Russian incompetence and Ukrainian proficiency that has led to Ukrainian success.

I do totally agree on your "boil the frog" point though. At this point it is idiotic not to give Ukraine what it needs to win. If Russia escalates, then they have far more to lose in the end...and they know it.

[Geronimo]

These could be the first signs...

Ukrainian success has always been more about Russian incompetence than Ukrainian proficiency. Nothing has changed Russia's overwhelming economic advantage in war production and Ukraine is utterly dependent on donations material to offset this.

So long as Ukraine is under attack everywhere and Russia is largely spared from direct attack, it's only a matter of time before Russian competency is discovered.

I don't understand when, if ever, the Ukrainian allies will realize half of everything they would eventually give would be vastly more effective than twice as much if given ASAP rather than continuing this enormously expensive and wasteful "boil the frog" strategy which definitely confers no benefit...if it ever did.

Russia may win and if it does it will be because of "boil the frog".

[Geronimo]

It's almost like defeating Russia isn't the purpose of NATO.

[BeBMan]

Well the whole tank thing with Germany was so much fun, it looks like we now get to do it again with warplanes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64446937

"No planes for you!"

It makes sense that Germany provides Leo tanks since they're widely available, and as the producer the country will have a key role in delivering, training, maintenance, ammo supply and so on. In the field of jets the situation is totally different. The Luftwaffe could only offer old Tornados (which are useless for air defense) or Eurofighters, which are not available in large numbers, and - even if they sort all the maintenance issues - are actually needed since the beginning of the war for air patrollling the Baltic area, Poland, even Romania, in combined NATO ops.

[Proteus_MST]

The german state now is vastly different from the german state 80 years ago.
Actually it even is vastly differencce from the Weimar Republic which preceded Nazi Germany.

Else we surely wouldn't have been caught pants down, with a Bundeswehr that is only rudimentary functional
due to having been neglected for 3 decades and being put on a shoestring budget.

[Bereta_Eder]

Also let's not compare things that are not comparable

WW2 is not the same as the american civil war or the greek civil war or the russian invasion of ukraine

there are specifics in those conflicts


I realize there is a pn human approach and to that we all subscribe I think but thery are very different beasts (but I do see the call for humanism in all of them)

[Bereta_Eder]

Really I will not watch a german and say NAZI! lol no on the very very contrary



but I wll judge the german external policy
not only me believe me

[Bereta_Eder]

You call Sophie Scholl and her brother a Nazi?

On the average german I have nothing but friendly feelings


on the german state is another matter

[Geronimo]

I've always had a very simplistic, partisan view of the war of Southern secession. I regarded the side that declared in all of the written instruments and declarations of secession that the threat to slavery was the first justification for fighting to secede had to be the "bad guys". Plato's posts remind me that even if, after the fact, we can clearly see that the aims of one side of a conflict were more objectionable than the other, there is never a limit to how much evil can be found on any side of a war.

The US was lucky that a kind of unity was eventually returned to a deeply divided population decades after the guns went silent. The hatred and resentment was slow to cool because the trauma could never really heal, only recede into the past.

If Ukraine was in some places ambivalent about unity with Russia before Feb 2022, Russia has probably managed to replace such ambivalence with hatred of Russia and love of Ukraine nearly everywhere they occupied in Ukraine last year. I don't think hatred will dissipate until this entire generation and their children and grandchildren and every family member who heard the accounts first hand has finally passed away.

[Bereta_Eder]

I like you BE. You seem to be an honest person who stands by their beliefs. That is a rarity in this world.

Some other people seem to share your opinion and trusted me with a huge load of repsonsibility at my work

there is a girl I'm going to share that burden with and sh'e very hot which compicates things

[Geronimo]

25 Million German dead during WW II probably culled most of them, don't you think?

25 million number might be much too high. Most estimates for ll war related German deaths from the war range from 4 to 6 million.

[PLATO]

Anyway...back to Ukraine and Russia:

Is Boris Johnson full of it or is Putin an idiot?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64397745

[PLATO]

I respect beyond words that you shared that story with me.
You know we only know what hollywood tells us, and that is a very different story.

I bow my head and have nothing to say to what you told me


I only ask for a bit lenience because I will say this:
you were the same country. We were invaded by a foreign country

But I do hear what you say

Never shared that with Poly before. I have to say that being raised in the South in the 1960s had a very...let's say tainted...point of view. People sharing detailed knowledge here on Poly brought a lot of clarity and change to many things I grew up being told were fact but actually were distortions. It made me realize that we cannot take all "facts" at face value. We must look deeper into things for ourselves. Tragedy happens and horrors are part of the human condition. It is how we face the future while armed with the knowledge of the past that makes us advance as a people. I will never forgive what was done to my family, but I will look to the future. I will judge people on how they are now...not how their parents or grandparents...or great great grandparents were. I will look for truth and not believe the masses. I will seek what is and what motivations are. I will stand for a brighter future in a world where aggressors are confronted and realize that people can change.

I like you BE. You seem to be an honest person who stands by their beliefs. That is a rarity in this world.