I'm not sure Billy will come back that way.
Let's face it: Russia is illegaly invading a foreign country that is fighting back hard. The only way I see out for Russia to save itself is by sending Putin into exile and blame it all on him.
Putin hoped for weakness in the west re sanctions and weapons. They play hardball and now Putin is failing.
edit: I also believe nuclear is the only war Russia could even think about against the west. The army isn't that strong obviously... It is really a bad situation because NOBODY in the west has thought about attacking Russia at all. It is all in their heads. It's just plain stupid.
I agree with some of your points, but what do you mean by "strong"? Ukraine is not a cake walk, and the most powerful armies in the world could barely contain poor Afghani warlords. This is not easy.
Consider that much of the news of Russian failure is an information op. The Ukrainians are putting up a valiant fight, but the Russians will run them over without support, no doubt about it.
It shows that you cannot support a huge army in such a poor country (GDP/capita). There was a myth to the russian army, but they barely manage to capture cities in which (according to propaganda) most inhabitans support them.
They wanted a Blitzkrieg and it didn't work out at all. Of course they can keep throwing material and bombs at the cities. They have much more material. But how quickly can they do that? Can they cut off supplies from western countries? Can they keep fighting against Javelins and ambushes?
What's the end game at this point? They will be hated by the population they supposedly wanted to free, the cities will be destroyed and they became an international pariah. Their economy will be in shambles.
Russia did think it would be easy ("will be greeted with flowers and bread")!
I'm having trouble reconciling the above sentences. The equipment they have is the equipment they have, it wasn't a mystery to military analysts or the intelligence community, by any means. That doesn't make their military "weak" any more than it makes the American military "weak" for their results in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Reading through the comments in this thread, I wonder how many people think we're getting unbiased analysis of what's happening over there. Do people really think the Russians are completely flailing here? I have a hard time believing it, myself, but I'm no expert.
I guess we'll see, and revisit this comment in the future. Personally, I find it funny that people like yourself don't believe the Russian military is superior to that of the Ukraine after watching a week of YouTube videos.
>heard somewhere of Russia's fearsome military is irresponsible at best.
Irresponsible? Lol get a hold of yourself.
What I fear is a Cuba crisis style standoff where Russia sets an ultimatum demanding the West stop all arms deliveries to Ukrainian forces, threatening any transit countries (such as Poland) with nukes.
They can threat all they want, but Poland is a NATO member. An attack on Poland will trigger a retaliation from NATO. Not sure Russia wishes to go to war with all of NATO.
