Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Russia is importing petrol, calling it the rightful result of the work of the Security Service, the Armed Forces, intelligence and Ukrainian weapons manufacturers.
Quote: "Today, there were also reports on our entirely justified strikes against Russian targets – against their logistics and fuel infrastructure. I am grateful to our warriors for their precision. Russia chooses war, Russia destroys our people’s lives, and must be held accountable – our long-range capabilities will increase.
Ukraine is what the Allies have been in World War 2-- a really fucking competent leadership. It doesn’t matter if the opponent has a bigger stick if he’s too stupid to use it and keep missing the swings. That’s what Russia is. So much for “corrupt Ukraine”. No country is void of corruption, but if Ukraine is as corrupt as Russian propaganda insists they are, they wouldn’t have been able to survive this long and embarrass Russia. Speaking of which, it’s funny I don’t see much Russian bots try to smear Ukraine anymore (maybe Putin is instead focusing on propagandising the Russians). Since Kursk and the deep drone strike campaigns in Russia, it is clear that Russia is losing the propaganda war.
Maybe Ukraine couldn’t retake the areas occupied by Russia, but they could deliver a Pyrrhic blow to Kremlin. Russian international prestige already diminished as soon as they invaded.
This is inaccurate on two fronts.
Well? Where’s your counter-argunent? I’m listening…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ukrainian_counteroffensive
I asked for a counter-argument, not a lazy link that only serves to support the other person’s argument! Come on, man, you can do better than that! Show me what you got!
You get what you pay for. The 2023 counteroffensive was a total flop. It was so bad that Prigozhin’s whole mercenary company walked away from the front lines and marched on Moscow without costing Russia an iota of stolen territory.
You could learn how and why it failed, if you bothered to read the finer details. But you’ve chosen to be a cheerleader for a disastrous management of the world’s fifth largest military instead. Might as well announce you’re a die-hard fan of William McClellan as defend the Ukrainian top brass.
Thank you. I disagree, but I will consider your argument and dig deeper when I get the chance to.
Except this is accurate on all fronts. Compare that to the Axis, who barely coordinated. Hell, Mussolini didn’t even tell Hitler he was going to invade Greece. When that didn’t work out, Hitler had to bail him out. That pushed the German invasion of the Soviet Union by one or two months. Who knows, maybe those two months could have allowed Germany to arrive in Moscow earlier and avoid the freezing winter, and history as we know it may have turned differently. Don’t even get me started the wastefulness of the Holocaust (the brain drain and potential manpower wasted), which Mussolini himself stated long before that the Nazi’s racial obsession is wasteful. This is why I want to smash the myth of efficiency of Nazi war machine, because they never were.
Also read up on Truman committee, who monitored corruption and wastefulness during the war period. They saved about $15 billion.
Broadly speaking, the myth is of “efficient war machine”. These sprawling, ego-driven, blunders of resource mismanagement aren’t specific to any one faction or ideological tenor.
The idea that Ukraine is some kind of model of efficiency is just war propaganda. The Spring Offensive of 2023 was a trainwreck.
Similarly, the mythology of British/American logistical accumen is wildly overinflated. Normandy was only possible because the Eastern Front was sucking up so much of Germany’s material and manpower. The far bigger win for the Allies was simply the Radar + cracking Enigma, blunting Operation Sea Lion.
Oh, and Russia is better? Is that why they are stuck in Ukraine for two years now with the frontlines barely budging at the cost of something like 900,000 Russian casualties? The 2022 Kharkiv counter offensive liberated 200 km2 in just three months? The Black Sea fleet essentially nonexistent? Russia can’t defend itself from deep drone incursions for a country supposedly more powerful? I don’t know what your agenda is, but the results speak for itself. Like I said, it doesn’t matter if the person wields a bigger stick if he can’t use it well and keeps missing. The Ukrainian spring offensive failed in 2023 but the Ukrainians learned; the Russians didn’t.
They are better. The Allies have prepared for a war with Germany. The US alone have been able to mobilise its factories for war production and enlist 600,000 men (if I remember the figures correctly) in just six months after Pearl Harbor, unlike in WWI which took them a better part of one year to do so. The country already produced and sent hundreds of Liberty ships to supply UK and USSR. Germany, on the other hand, by admission of German generals after the war, stated they only had enough men and supplies to last them less than a year at the start of the war, if they don’t defeat the West quickly. Because Hitler did not expect the Allies to declare war on him after invading Poland. Germany was actually on the brink of bankruptcy just before they invaded Poland.
On the Asia Pacific front, Japan also didn’t inform Germany of the plan to bomb Pearl Harbor. Couple of days later, Germany declared war on US unnecessarily. So yes, tell me how efficient this is.
No. They’re also awful, as evidenced Prigovahn’s Leroy Jenkins attack on Moscow.
But the bar for greatness isn’t the clumsiness of your opposition. This war is Pyrrich for both countries. The only winners are the arms dealers.
I am literally Vladimir Putin himself, trying to get you to think badly of the Ukrainian military, because I know your personal opinion is the lynchpin to who wins the war.
They famously were not prepared which lead to France collapsing as Germany outflanked the Maginot Line for the second time in two World Wars.
Belgium wasn’t prepared either. It was flattened in months.
Poland wasn’t prepared. Ukraine wasn’t prepared. Russia was barely prepared. North Africa was run straight through.
The US was backstopping the UK, Russia, and China for three full years (closer to ten, if you count the Japanese invasion of the Chinese mainland).
They didn’t need six months to mobilize. They just needed an excuse to ramp up military spending in a recession.
The joke of this was that the US was helping them out, too! At least at the outset. American industry was instrumental in gassing up German tanks and tabulating head count for concentration camps.
Even at the late stage of the war, American spies and diplomats were eager to make peace with Berlin and pivot the Nazis back Eastward. The only thing that saved Hitler from the DC anti-Communist rubber chicken speaking circuit was Russian tanks beating Americans to the capital.
The US was half in bed with the Germans, but fully in bed with the British. The only way they were going to escape War with the US was somehow getting Edward VIII to bump off Churchill.
The Maginot Line did work as intended. The Germans did go around as intended after all. The Allies just didn’t expect the German’ main blow through the Ardennes.
Ukraine knew what was coming after the intelligence reports started coming of possible Russian attack. They’ve been at proxy war with Russia after all for eight years before the full scale invasion.
The Russians weren’t even prepared at all. You’re conveniently forgetting that Russian troops were told they were going on a military exercise but surprised to find they are in Ukraine. They were also given outdated maps. They quickly rushed through Ukraine without their supply lines being protected. Meanwhile, Ukraine know how to protect their supply lines.
Roosevelt and Churchill knew they will come to blows with the Axis sooner or later. Roosevelt made a speech about the US being arsenal of democracy long before US entered the war.
Gradually showing the true colours, are we? Invoking the usual “only the arms manufacturers benefit” to try to smear a justified self-defense that Kremlin push.
Do you have a source? Or is this voodoo historical distortionism? The Nazis tried to make overtures to the West many times in their self-delusion that the Allies will be convinced to fight the Soviets (which was the Nazi belief from the start of the war), but the Allies refused many times. You are forgetting the Allied and Soviet meetings throughout the war discussing war plans and their vision of post-war world. The Allies can’t reneg on the deal and so are the Soviets. So, it doesn’t make sense for the Allies to capture Berlin, since Berlin was agreed upon to be under Soviet influence after the war, and it’s a waste of time and needless deaths for the Allies.
US ships were already in skirmish with German u-boats for well over a year before Pearl Harbor.
Oh the right, useful idiots for Kremlin.
They have delivered a pyrrhic victory.
Russia thought they could take Kyiv (Ukraine?) on 3 days.
The fact that Ukraine has resisted so hard, have redefined the modern battlefield, have conducted huge deep strikes…
Ukraine is winning.
The reason Ukraine may not be “winning” is because the Russian war machine is huge. Like really really big.
The reason that Ukraine is “winning” is because the Russian war machine is outdated and corrupt.
The western opinion of Russia has been devastated. Russia tested themselves, and failed.
Russia is holding on by their nukes.
Didn’t they lose 30 percent of thier land?
20%, but most of it was already occupied since 2014 and the ongoing skirmishes in the east
They might if they keep flying drones into NATO airspace.
Or maybe Putin decided the bot farmers were needed at the front lines as drone fodder.
I’m just concerned about what happens if things start to go really badly for the Russians. Nothing good can come of a nuclear superpower that feels threatened and backed into a corner, either by the enemy or their own populace.
They were ground to a standstill in Afghanistan too, and the apocalypse failed to materialize.
Some geriatic leaders were shown to be incompetent, so they were replaced by other elderly drunks.
The USA does business with Vietnam but not Cuba. Strategically the countries are not the same.
This is an interesting point, but what are you saying? Sorry, I’m a bit dense.
Afghanistan was strategically as important to the USSR as Vietnam was to the USA. So going nuclear was not worth it.
For no missiles on Cuba, the US risked everything, and they still embargo Cuba for leaving their fold.
Ukraine is even more important for Russia. So assuming that nothing will happen because nothing happened for the loss in Afghanistan is careless.
I see, thanks for spelling it out for me!
Eh, the people around Putin know that they have better odds of maintaining their lives and fortune when no nukes fly.
competence does not in any way indicate an absence of corruption
One of the symptoms of corruption is diversion of critical resources to private pockets.
Yeah, OK, all systems have some level of corruption, but setting binary thinking aside, in Ukraine, it can’t be of great magnitude or they couldn’t fight.
Cool story
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68120973
Not sure what they’re on about.
[Argument]
[Counter argument]
“Uhhhh I don’t care”
Your baseless speculation does not in any way constitute a counter-argument, it is pure wishful thinking to avoid confronting the very real possibility that the US is about to lose another proxy war
Oh that wasn’t me, I just noticed you chickening out of addressing their valid counter-argument.
Like I said, not a counter-argument, wishful thinking, cope
I coped by summarizing for anyone else skimming the discussion