This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The entire European inventory of air defence would sustain Ukraine for.. a few months. Maybe a year if they were purposefully ignoring all the Geran drones and staying off the front lines, exclusively defending the rear.
There's maybe 200 modern self-propelled guns left to give. What should they give ? Tanks? Storm Shadows aren't coming. There's the 500 Taurus missiles, which are air launched (so can't salvo), I'm not even sure how many launch platforms Ukraine has and which Russia can likely pick off using their few AWACS planes. And in addition, they don't range far enough either, just about capable of hitting Moscow.
Ukrainians have suffered drastically higher casualties than Russians (because they have less artillery(src, Syrski) and fewer drones(src: Sukharevsky interview in Economist)) for the last two years at least, have lost strategic initiative and are now falling back at an ever increasing pace? Putin, ever the reptile, cares more to end the way predictably and with maximum loss of life for Ukrainian fighting men, as that's going to make the occupation of everything east of the Dniepr less of a problem.
You seem to take ISW and Ukrainian numbers (we kill 1500 Russians a day) at face value. It's not like that. The article you posted is typical. Ukraine's mediazona count got only to 120k, not 250k. Maybe it goes up to 180k if you count in the prisoners.
Meanwhile, the growth in cemeteries in Ukraine indicates war deaths of well north of 500k. Data on amputees, until they stopped publishing it likewise - north of 300k dead, easily.
Even though looking at satellite photos of cemeteries is quite simple, no one seems motivated to perform this calculation when it comes to Ukraine. They did so for Russia, but strangely, they neglected top apply the same methodology for Ukraine. Why? I mean, if they were sure Ukrainian government was telling the truth, or even just bending it by 2x, so ~100k dead, that's less than 0.3% of Ukrainian population. In short, there shouldn't be that many new graves.
You should read this article by retired US officer, not some 'international relations' pukes. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-battlefield/
So, in your view, the war has actually been going way better this whole time for Russia than Ukraine in terms of efficiency/losses?
Why then has Russia not made significant territorial gains in so long? I don't understand why the Ukrainians haven't collapsed already if it's so lopsided against them, even when they have a defender's advantage tactically.
Your allegation is that ISW is making it up? How does all this square with identifiable vehicle losses? Why can't Russia establish air superiority?
How many more months need to go on before you think the CSIS analysis is more correct than "Responsible Statecraft's" about the present state of affairs? What is "deteriorating fast" here?
Funny, that's how I feel about an establishment that employs Trita Parsi at all, let alone as management.
It's not to their advantage to take land that's going to require serious policing for a decade and will be full of terrorists / freedom fighters. Taking those big cities they need to take (Dnipro, Kharkiv) requires completely non-functional enemy armed forces. What better way to make the armed forces non-functional than to destroy them utterly ? If they go slowly, nationalistic, actually brave Ukrainians will feed themselves to the grinder till there's no one left. A sudden collapse caused by a major offensive would result in far more troublesome people later.
Also, more importantly, right now, numerically the forces are at about parity. If Russia wanted a big arrow offensive, it'd have to mobilize a lot of additional people, empty the rest of Russia of reserve formations. This isn't politically optimal. Russians mostly don't care about the war that much, and though there are enough volunteers, if they wanted another half a million troops, there'd be a shortage of equipment too.
'identifiable vehicle losses' can be gamed if your criteria are loose enough. ISW are not serious people.
At the very least, air defense situation. They're not even pretending they're shooting down all the Gerans like they used to. Since there's not enough good enough point defenses, everything vaguely army related is blowing up all over Ukraine.
The guy who wrote it served as a combat arms officer for a few decades. It wasn't written by Parsi.
Go read their older reports. These people are not total idiots - they carefully avoid making predictions. Here's a '23 report from them. https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukrainian-innovation-war-attrition
It's slop. Says 'Ukraine keeps fighting because it innovates' (more ISR through drones) but Russians did all the same things. 'Human wave attacks'. I don't think there was even one, and non-journalist westerners who were actually there there call bullshit on that too.. Mind you, same volunteer here directly contradicts CSIS because he says he believes Russians have better ISR and use their drones more. (but yawn, what does he know? He's just a dumb military animal)
Quoting that 'report'
Oh yeah, that's something what Russians only figured out in 2025.(facepalm)
Well at least you're conceding that Ukrainians do not want to be Russians. Is your take that Putin does not want to conquer Ukraine entirely (whether in the immediate term, or mid-term). Did he ever want to? Grinding the Ukrainians down is time-consuming and expensive just to take a few provinces.
I don't think that's nearly enough evidence to establish that claim.
I meant more of a "in terms of timeline" sense. "Fast" implies we should see things shift "soon." If the air defense situation is deteriorating for Ukraine, then that is evidence in that direction.
I am aware. But I trust this one guy's analysis a bit less than the consensus by default; particularly if he works for an outfit with a clearly identified agenda with some moron like Parsi in senior management. I'm not a Russia/Ukraine specialist. I am an Iran specialist. And I know Parsi is a moron.
Well, that isn't true overall, so long as the Western powers are supporting Ukraine on that front.
You seem to be denying that Ukraine is doing better on anything, even with the typical defender's advantage. But, again, if the Russians are consistently outclassing the Ukrainians in artillery, aircraft, missiles, drones, ISR, manpower, equipment, tactics, loss ratios, etc. then why is the war dragging on like this? This is some Iran-Iraq War shit with more drones and fewer prayers.
Based on initial expectations, Russia's performance has been very embarrassing ever since the initial ham-fisted offensive. I definitely thought Ukraine wasn't going to last long without immense, immediate support from the West.
We're at nearly 3.5 years now. What will things look like at the 4-year mark? I'd guess much the same by default, because I don't know either side's breaking point, or if a ceasefire will be established, or just how much support the West will give Ukraine. The defense-advantaged nature of the battle makes it unlikely either side will make a sustainable major offensive breakthrough at any given point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If Russia’s goal has been to take the secessionist regions, as was their initial claim, the lack of further territorial advances would be expected.
(There are, of course, other possible explanations.)
That was very much NOT their initial claim and ignores that whole "drive to take Kiev" campaign debacle.
It's steelclowning to retrocon that "Russia didn't even want to take the whole country in a rapid victory anyway so this is all fine actually."
Russia, even if they're winning and on track to achieve more limited goals, has not been easily winning. If Russia had been consistently inflicting significantly disproportionate losses on Ukraine this whole time the war would have already ended.
Russian military performance has been embarrassing. Their economic performance has not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link