The culprit of all wars(lemmy.ml)

Regardless of morals, Ukraine is being demillitarized, and Donetsk and Luhansk are being folded into Russian territory. These are 2 explicit goals of Russia’s that are hard to deny at this point. What matters more for Russia isn’t necessarily the total number of NATO countries, but their relative proximity and millitary power. Much of NATO is de-industrialized and doesn’t actually have much of a long-standing fighting force except the US. Russia is now less encircled than before, but the NATO-aligned and non-NATO aligned countries are at a higher split than before.

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SkyezOpen@lemmy.world

4 points

9 days ago

Ukraine is being demillitarized

I guess they’re trying, but at what cost and to what end? If the idea is that they’re afraid NATO is going to encircle and then invade them, they kind of overplayed their hand. Everyone now factually knows Russia is a paper tiger, and they’ve squandered a significant portion of their Soviet stockpiles and hundreds of thousands of killed and wounded for a few km of land. If NATO wanted to invade, they could get to Moscow in no time. I assume putin is keeping his best reserves near Moscow, but we’ve seen from the kursk offensive that russian capabilities behind the front lines are severely lacking.

Also the bit about reducing NATO military power… The US made bank selling HIMARS to Russia’s neighbors after seeing how effective they were. They’re stockpiling to protect against Russia.

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Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml

1 point

9 days ago

That’s not really materially accurate. Russia is an industrialized country and has been producing vast amounts of missiles and weaponry, and moreover the reveal of an ICBM with a conventional warhead, Oreshnik, fundamentally changes the landscape of war until another country reveals they have even 1 of them. You cannot defend against that, and the devastation is similar to that of a tactical nuke without triggering MAD. HIMARS can’t defend against such a weapon, and Russia has the industrial capacity to manufacture more.

Russia can’t really be considered a paper tiger here, they are the only ones that can afford a war of attrition and bleed NATO dry, and many of the weapons sent by the US are damaged, old, or otherwise unusable, something Zelensky has repeatedly complained about. It will be interesting to analyze after the war is complete, where Ukraine went wrong and what they should have done, etc.

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