Oddbean

nobody needs robot dogs. flying drones is all anybody needs. they already exist. but first the west needs to finish offloading WW2 era tech ( tanks ) which are little more than coffins on track. also Ukraine already has the weapons to win, but isn't allowed to use them on Russian territory. it is ridiculous of course that Russia can strike anywhere but Ukraine can only strike what is its own territory - but it's understandable that the west doesn't want to get involved directly in the war, which would be unavoidable if Ukraine used western weapons on Russian territory. the real question is whether the west actually wants to defeat Russia or not. my guess not. if we wanted to beat Russia we would have beaten them by now. what do we want ? who the fuck knows. we spent how many decades in afghanistan only to pull out and leave $40 billion of weapons there. we will do something equally idiotic in Ukraine.

The US pushed Ukraine into a war with Russia hoping to bring economic ruin, discontent and regime change. It's all in black and white: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html Problem is, it completely backfired and Russia is getting stronger while the EU is suffering. As it is, I see two potental outcomes militarily - 1) Russia wins 2) we all die in a nuclear war. Some ppl think that nobody will be stupid enough to use nukes. I think that is an extremely risky bet with everything at stake.

No, I just know what happened to the up till then unstoppable German army when it invaded the USSR, and I'm aware of the US track record vs far weaker militaries than the Russian. Ultimately, the whole discussion is irrelevant though as a war between Russia and the US is guaranteed to destroy the world as we know it and make everyone a loser. Either country attacking the other is a suicidal move.

when i say "beat Russia" i don't mean "take moscow" or even "kick them out of donbass" but simply end the war on such terms that Ukrainians can return to pre-war level quality of life. personally, even as somebody born in Ukraine, i don't think Ukraine needs territories in the East that are 90% ethnically Russian. those are liabilities, not assets, even if they have natural resources. if i was leading Ukraine i would work out an agreement where Russia keeps ethnically Russian territories in exchange for rebuilding everything they destroyed and providing financial support for children they have orphaned until they turn 18. the remaining part of Ukraine would have to join NATO and EU as part of same agreement. i actually don't think either Ukrainians or Putin would accept those terms but this is what needs to happen. even when i lived in Kiev it was always understood that east and west are different countries. as a Russian speaker i knew never to travel to the west of Ukraine or i would be beaten senseless for being a foreigner.

You're being fed synthetic discussions to keep the appearance that your leaders are in control of the situation and all they'd need to do is to "unchain" their proxies with a pen stroke. To rationalize you come up with conspiratorial tales of your leaders actually not wanting to destroy Russia but in secret having other obscure "plans". Your ego is tied to the ability of your nation state being able to impose its will on other people and and it's doing everything to avoid an existential crisis. The architects of this conflict are fully aware of this and they are using it to keep you at bay. Keep trusting the plan.

tell me son, if US wanted to win - why are they sending money and weapons now instead of when the war started ? what was the point of waiting until the last moment to send help ? or do you also believe that Biden really "forgot" $40 billion of weapons in Afghanistan and it wasn't deliberately left there ?

in addition, Putin is ALSO not trying to win the war. he is trying to pressure Ukraine to accept his terms at negotiating table. your idea that the objective of a war is to "win" comes from watching too much football. unplug your TV.

What Putin is doing is that he's waiting for the collapse of the AFU so that he can walk through Ukraine without bombing the cities. That's the point of attritional warfare. When the Russians talk about "being open for negotiations" they mean unconditional surrender of their counterpart.

well i agree with you on one thing - Putin is certainly not willing to take Kiev by force - he had multiple opportunities to do that - but he doesn't want to go down in history for doing to Kiev what Netanyahu is doing to Gaza because Netanyahu will simply get his Jews to re-write history, while Putin doesn't quite have the power to do that

What are you talking about? The state department was sending arms, intelligence and money for more than ten years. They've also been training their troops fot at least as long. They've just started doing it overtly after the war began. The entire frontline has become a graveyard for western tech. You have to come to terms with the fact that your country is simply being run by imbeciles.