And how do you know?
I read just about everything I come across about the war and I honestly have no idea. Everything from “Russia has already lost” to “Russia’s victory is inevitable”, “Ukraine has begun a counter-offensive” to “Ukraine’s counter-offensive has already been defeated”.
The volume of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation is so great I honestly don’t know how anyone can be confident in the outcome.
From just following some objective sources — the Ukrainians seem to have the momentum; the offensive on the Western bank of Dniper stalled out but they made gains in the East, south of Kharkiv/Kharkov.
More importantly, the Russians didn’t seem to have the troop / reserves to handle attacks from multiple fronts at once. If the Ukrainian can keep sustaining the high casualty rates they are suffering; Putin maybe soon forced to make a fateful decision — a partial or full mobilization of Russia for war or withdraw.
TBH, I think the action is maybe switching to the “home front”. The UK announced a $150 billion bailout due to the energy crisis; think where the EU is. Russia’s economy didn’t collapse from sanctions but its not all peaches and cream. I suspect the Ukrainian one is suffering worst of all.
Yes, the Ukrainian economy is definitely suffering.
I continue to believe that we shouldn’t overestimate what Germany and other EU members are willing to do. This link seems fairly up-to-date. Germany is obviously lagging behind.
Are there any objective sources? Much of what the BBC publishes, for example, derives from Ukrainian government sources.
It’s too early to tell – in short, neither side is winning, but neither are they losing.
Well; Ukraine has dealt its biggest defeat since Russia retreated from Kiev in April.
Putin has 3 roads to him;
1) withdraw substantially back to Feb lines or maybe to pre-2014 lines. Essentially admit defeat and face the consequences from therein
2) try to continue the current commitment levels and risk more military defeats until it is same situation as (1).
3) escalate and increase commitment to the war substantially. While it offers a chance of success; it will be a profound risk as well.
Putin has some fateful decisions to make; and not making a decision will be a decision to.
Even the Russian mil-bloggers are showing Ukraine taking back territory. If they can sustain then I guess Russia has to decide if they want to do a mobilization. Given the huge disparity in size between the two countries I think that would be perceived as some kind of wining for Ukraine. I dont think even many of the Russian skeptics expected things to last this long.
I don’t know if an increased Russian commitment (up to full mobilization and formal declaration of war) is a win for anybody.
At that point, I expect Moscow will be all in and treat the issue as existential to the state — and all means and all weapons will be on the table. The world would be at the closest point to a nuclear exchange since 1945.