There was plenty of evidence that this was the likely outcome of this offensive months before it even started. Why tf did they go ahead with it anyway?
I remember discussing the Russian advantage on reddit back in January, including them building defensive lines and the general imbalance in equipment, especially artillery and ammo, as well as the fact that Russia had caught up in troop numbers by that point. I had western sources for these numbers.
You wouldn't believe the level of hate and name-calling I received for pointing this out and saying they should negotiate. But apparently I was the one spewing propaganda.
Negotiate surrender to a serial invader? I agree that Ukrainians are in poor position but allowing Russia to keep taking more land isn't healthy for world stability.
Russia or China having to only look after itself, it's population, it's secessionist regions was much better for the colllective west. The current goal is to have them do that again. Even if it means manufacturing an economic crisis the west will suffer from too, it's still better that getting our collective ass kicked out of african or southeast asian countries. And if someone must get through suffering, it might as well be Ukrainians rather than germans or poles, so just enough material to have a stable front.
Not my thought but pretty sure it's the one coming up in confidential assessments, and I can't totally fault them if you take out the humanity from considerations.
I mean at this point it doesn't look like Russia wants to give anything back, but who knows. They need to start with a ceasefire and maybe over time they can figure out the rest.
They should have taken the deal from April last year, where Russia had reportedly agreed to go back to the pre-Feb-22 borders. And before that, they should have implemented Minsk actually. The most important things Russia wanted was for Ukraine to be neutral, and to stop attacking the Donbas.
Ukraine's negotiating position just keeps getting worse.
You wouldn't believe the level of hate and name-calling I received for pointing this out and saying they should negotiate.
This has been going on since 2014. Since last year Russia stepped up with genocide. I think it's not so nice you're pretending you were downvoted for two things, while ignoring that negotiation is pretty stupid. Look in the past, Russia often though messed up their initial attack only then to finally become wiser after regrouping.
He’s a tankie, he keeps telling tales about poor Russia being forced into war and that we should make peace with them. Just ignore the white noise, typical German cosplay tankie.
I read/heard an interesting conspiracy theory the other day: The west didn't want to fully topple the Putin regime in case the power vacuum brought out something worse (Prighozin and his Nazi's armed with nukes).
Perhaps they held back just to grind down the Russian army at the expense of the UA.