Tuukka R

If there will be a serious large-scale attack directly against EU as a whole, the politic will will appear.

True! Then the company that no longer sells fuel to USA will make less profit when selling fuel to USA! What a punishment!

Possibly, but unlikely. There is a more likely scenario:

If the Russia wins in Ukraine and manages to take over the whole country, it will be emboldened and will attack another country quite soon. Maybe we will let the Russia have that country as well, after which the Russia will attack once another country. Each time it will be more experienced and stronger. At some point we’ll decide we have to stop the Russia, and then we’re likely to have WW3.

Putin is a master of bluff. But a funny thing is that that’s the only thing he’s good at. And that’s the only thing he does. Which means that we know that everything he ever claims is always bluff. He is very afraid of taking actual decisions, and any red lines he claims to have are all just bluff. He won’t react to anything.

The only way to escalate with the Russia is to be inactive. The more inactivity you show, the more the Russia feels safe to attack. The more activity you show against the Russia, the less it dares to act.

Thanks!

Is that kind of utterances why he got reelected? 🙃

I don’t think the right-leaning EU citizens recognise this as a problem with the right. It’s too easy to say this is “an America specific problem” and “We’d never vote in a dumbass such as Trump.”

I honestly think this kind of learning will happen here absolutely not at all.

He’s actually went and said that?! Where? 😳

“When they came for me, there was nobody left to help.”

People keep repeating that we were promised the sanctions would have an almost immediate effect. Could someone tell me where that promise was made?

I don’t think that was ever promised, really.

Where does Musk’s money actually come from? How big part of it comes from Tesla? How much from SpaceX and how much from Starlink? What else do Musk’s companies do?

I’m just wondering: How long will he still be the richest person on Earth? And once he’s not, what will Trump think of him?

I use Signal because my workplace decided to default to it.

For the Russia it’s about 1:2½, and getting worse, for Ukraine it is currently around 1:4 or 1:5.

In casualties as in military losses Ukraine is doing quite badly: Ukraine has lost some 300 000 as dead and wounded, while the Russia has lost around 800 000 as dead and wounded. The population difference is 1:3½, and the difference in total military losses is 1:2½. That means, Ukraine is losing a slightly larger share of its population as military casualties than the Russia is.

However… Neither side is going to run out of population anytime soon. Ukrainian soldiers go to the front, eventually maybe get wounded and return home one leg poorer. Their children will not have to live with their father, only without an organic right leg of the father. And for the Russian side, the deaths are a much bigger proportion of the population. There the ratio is around 1:4½, and that one favours Ukraine.

If a person is measuring ground gained in this war, he does not understand the war very much at all. Neither side is trying to gain ground. Both sides are trying to incur as much losses to the enemy as possible. The Russia because they need to keep the gore to the maximum in order to convince the west to stop supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine, because if the Russia’s losses drop under 1000 per month, they will be able to start training their soldiers, which will make a huge difference in their dangerousness. The Russia knows very well that it will never take over Ukraine with the current speed of advancing. Remember, in year 2024 the Russia was gaining ground faster than expected. And in year 2024 they managed to gain 0.7 % of Ukraine’s total territory. Less, if you take the Kursk province’s happenings into account. 0.7 % is strategically meaninglessly little.

Artillery shell production is currently about twice as high in the Russia as it’s in the west. But when you take into account that to hit a specific target, the very inaccurate Russian artillery needs to shoot about ten times as many rounds as western artillery, the numbers start looking different: For military use, you either should divide the Russia’s artillery shell numbers by ten, or alternatively multiply ours by ten. Depth of reserves… Well, here we come back to casualties and motivations.

• As said, the population ratio is 1:3½.
• The total military casualty ratio is 1:2½, favouring the Russia.
• The military death ratio is 1:4½, favouring Ukraine.

Russian soldiers are in it for the money. The Russia will have useful amounts of money to give to the soldiers for another six to fifteen months, about. After that the motive is gone. Typically, it is easier for the defending party to find soldiers for a war than it is for the aggressor. This is the case in this war as well. This means, when interpreting the casualty ratios, you need to add a multiplier for taking into account that the defender can tap into a larger share of the population than the aggressor can.

Remember, Ukrainians are sending to the front less than a fifth of what they could, if we compare with Finland. Finland has a population of 5,6 million and we have about one million soldiers ready to serve within some months of the begin of a hypothetical war. Each one of them has received a top-class military training and each one has a specific place in a specific unit in the army should a war break. Ukraine has about the same size army as that, even though they have over 40 million people. The unwillingness to join the front is a surprising feature, at least from a Finnish perspective, but also a result of a lack of motivation. If the scales were to tip in the favour of the Russia, Ukrainians would get scared and more would be ready to help their country. When looking at the very large difficulties Ukraine has with conscription, you need to take this into account. The problem is of a type that solves itself. It’s extremely unfair towards the soldiers at the front that they never get relieved. And idiotic that people don’t want to join the army because soldiers never get relieved from the front … because there are not enough people ready to go to the front. And, from my experience living in Ukraine, I would say that this won’t change. They will remain understaffed as long as the war will go on, but always precisely at the limit where they can still keep scraping on.

Ukraine’s army won’t be disappearing anytime soon, the west is effortlessly able to pay all of Ukraine’s budget indefinitely if it so wishes and the Russia is not able to gain any ground. The Russia’s goals are to cause Ukraine to collapse economically or its army to collapse from lack of manpower, and neither of those can happen. At the same time, the Russian economy, and therefore military, have at max one year time left. After that they will have nothing to use for stopping Ukraine from reclaiming its territories.

EDIT: I want to add: While the Ukrainians’ readiness to defend their country is lower than Finns’, that’s mostly because Finland has an exceptionally high readiness for that. If you compare with Germany or France, the Ukrainians look extremely willing to go to the front. What I wanted to say is that although their willingness is very high, there is still a lot of place for improvement!

Since when is mandatory conscription “kidnapping”?

If it’s a year later, then it is. The Russia won’t be able to recruit soldiers after its economy collapses. They are in for salary and death compensation that is defined in Rubles. Once the Ruble compensation loses its value, relatives get less motivated for letting their sons go to the front. And when the 2000$ salary becones a 100 $ salary, nobody goes to war for that money.

Without soldiers the front cannot be kept.

the Russia has been steadily and slowly gaining territory over the last year with a speed of 0.7 % of Ukraine’s territory per year. Which is not strategically relevant. Strategically seen, the Russia has not advanced.

I don’t really see China starting to actively cover the Russian budget. That would jeopardize China’s trade with Europe.

The Russia’s strategy has been to outlast Ukraine’s supporters will to support Ukraine. That will never happen, unless the voices making the fake claims about time being on the Russia’s side are given too much space. Helping Ukraine is so much cheaper than the costs that incur if the Russia takes over Ukraine that there is no logical reason for the EU to end Ukraine’s support ever. Even if some countries were to withdraw their support, enough will retain it to keep Ukraine’s head over water.

The Russian economy will collapse, sooner or later.

Absolutely!

But of course the US leadership understood that this is a consequence of asking EU to refrain from doing that kind of stuff. Would still have been better for USA if Europe would have done much more, so the demands make sense. And I agree that more should have been done!

Yup. And that means the Russia will be losing huge amounts of troops and equipment without gaining anything from it. The Ukrainian economy is very small, I think about the size of Slovakia’s economy. The EU can hold Ukraine’s economy up as long as it wants to. Nobody is doing the same for the Russia.

If the Russia had to switch to defending territory without gaining anything more, how would it push for a victory before its economy collapsing?

How is it a surprise that the Russia has been making gains in the Kursk province? That’s been one of the three most important points in making the incursion.

Most importantly, it was needed as an insurance in case that Trump becomes president. It would have been easy for Putin to get Trump into pushing Ukraine into a “ceasefire” where the frontline would turn into a de-facto international border until the Russia is able to restart its invasion. But, if any part of the front runs inside the Russia, it becomes impossible for Putin to accept that. The Kursk incursion turned the very simple and clear-cut deal into one that is difficult to get done. Putin still needs the front to become a border, but he needs to include the exception that Ukraine will hand some of the territory to the Russia, but the Russia won’t hand anything to Ukraine. It would have been easy to get Trump to help Putin win if all the front was inside Ukraine. Now it’s not.

Then, the second most important reason: even though the Russia is advancing so slowly that the advances have no strategical significance, it is still advancing all the same. And when advancing, the Russia razes all encountered towns to rubble. All the advances the Russia has made in its Kursk province have been away from advancing in Ukraine. It has saved thousands of Ukrainians from suffering that the Russia has been razing its own villages, not Ukraine’s villages. And, we’ve observed that the Russia is much less violent regarding its own villages than with Ukrainian villages. This means, it attacks less with artillery and more with troops. And since Ukraine is primarily not trying to gain/retain land, but destroy as many Russian soldiers and destroy as much of Russia’s equipment as possible, this is a wonderful thing. Advancing in Kursk province, the Russia has suffered very much bigger losses than it would have suffered in Ukraine.

And then, the Russia has had to spread its troops more thin. Because the Russia has a bigger problem with availability of troops and equipment than Ukraine does, each extra metre of front causes more difficulty for the Russian armed forces than it causes for those of Ukraine. Even through Ukrainian army has trouble with those as well, the Russia having more problems with the same means that Ukraine gets a relative advantage from making the front longer. The incursion into Russian territory has done that.

As long as Ukraine holds any part of Russian territory anywhere, its campaign for attacking the Russia has been a huge success. Without the Kursk incursion, there would already have been a ceasefire. And that would have meant Ukraine becoming a part of the Russia, sooner or later. Now that won’t happen.

Ukraine won’t collapse.

The Russia will collapse.

How does that mean the Russia has a chance to win?

Kharkiv? That was in 2022, wasn’t it? And the incursion into the Kursk province has been a better success than expected. What had you thought it would result with? It became the most important part of the front.for Ukraine. I’d say it is a great success, but how is it a counterattack? And how does that show that something big was promised but failed? What had been promised, to your knowledge?