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The best case scenario (other than a clear Ukrainian victory) would have been a Russian victory in 2023. By then, they would have taken enough damage to dissuade them from further adventures, but hundreds of thousands of men wouldn't have been slaughtered.
The longer this war goes on, the more screwed Ukraine is demographically.
The people who I hate the most are those who view this war as a way to test new drone technology with real live meat puppets, or who put the strategic goal of "weakening Russia" above the lives of real people.
Yes, it's all Russia's fault, but at this point the Ukrainian state is an active impediment to the happiness of the Ukrainian people. Conscription in this forever war is little better than slavery. And the women who fled to Germany are going to find husbands there and never come back. Who is being saved?
France in WWI had a population roughly equivalent to Ukraine in 2022 and suffered 1.3 million military deaths throughout the war compared to 200,000 Ukrainians in a similar amount of time. You can argue that the Ukrainian numbers are underestimates, that the overall demographic picture is different, etc., but that's not going to be anywhere near enough to account for a 6.5x difference. And France was not demographically screwed in the long-term; in fact, they managed to lose a Ukraine war's worth of military deaths a generation later and still turned out no more worse for wear.
Well, 1920 France didn't have a population pyramid like 2020 China (looking at the 18-34 set). Indeed, there were more women than men, because the country just went through some event that killed a bunch of said men.
Ukraine's gender imbalance is worse than China's, and it was normal before. This is not meaningfully distinguishable from genocide.
At this point I'm pretty sure every Ukrainian man, especially those who didn't instantly flee the country on invasion, are just actively suicidal, perhaps even more than the Finns are. No actual organized resistance to being sent to war, nothing awaiting you when you return except for a smoking hole in the ground, and a convenient enemy to kill yourself fighting.
The way the men behave in the drone footage is compatible with this conclusion.
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France had a real population of about 40 million (plus substantial colonies) in WW1. Ukraine had a fake population of 40 million because they claim Crimea and pre-2014 borders as part of Ukraine, whereas some of the soldiers they were fighting came from these parts.
Ukraine has also suffered very high casualties. France or Germany never resorted to roving forcible conscription squads running and chasing after men in the street, there was no equivalent of vanning (except until the end of WW2 with the Volksturm).
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Maybe a majority of the men who died were higher quality leading to the now weak France today
Im not sure the evidence bears this out. You don’t really see a correlation between deaths in the early 20th century wars and, for lack of a better term, nationalism and martial vigor. The Brits and French aren’t meaningfully more nationalistic than Austrians, and both are less nationalistic than most of Eastern Europe who suffered more.
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And a weak Europe more generally. Their neutral nations haven't fared any better, though.
If there are HBD implications of killing everyone who cared enough about the country to
commit ritual suicide by Maximgo to war to defend it, it should be visible here. (And the other half that were smart enough to stay home proceeded to emigrate to the US for the same reasons Ukrainian women left at the start of the war.)More options
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Half of France's population didn't flee to Germany with no intention of return.
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Looks at French demographics... recoils in horror.
It's funny you should mention France because they are the first country to have undergone the demographic transition. Supposedly if, starting in 1700, France and England had the same fertility, there would be 500 million Frenchmen alive today, and we'd all be speaking French.
French people in 1700 composed about 3% of the world's population. Today, it's about 0.7%.
And yes, France really suffered demographically in WWI and didn't recover. There are probably around 50-60 million ethnic French people alive today, not really much more than 1914. And that's despite a baby-boom following WWII where the fertility rate was 3. It helps that they didn't send all their women to a different, better country to wait out the war.
Ukraine's fertility rate is closer to 1. There isn't going to be a baby boom waiting for the brave soldiers when they return. The ones who can will emigrate. Millions of women already have. So the situation in Ukraine is fundamentally different and worse than France's, which is itself quite bad.
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To be fair France is very demographically screwed right now. I'm guessing there will be barely any white frenchmen in a few generations.
To be fair, "right now" is approximately 100 years later than World War I, and the effects of that war on anything in the present have probably almost completely dissolved.
If there's one thing in geopolitics that has compounding effects that increase over time, it's gotta be massive population loss (directly via killing, or indirectly via missed births).
No, massive population loss is relatively easily and quickly overcome by a corresponding baby boom.
If it happens, which doesn't seem to be a given. There doesn't seem to have been much of one in Russia after World War Two, for instance.
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Funny, the people I hate the most are those who started the war.
Although Americans whining about Ukraine not giving up faster as if they cared about the Ukranians, come a close second.
A person who would sacrifice every Ukrainian for the sake of Ukraine is no friend.
Ukrainians: I would like to fight.
Allies: We can support you in that effort
Porkpiehat: EXCUSE ME, isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
My brother, the Ukrainians have, with a massive majority, chosen to fight. The only opposition to Zelensky comes from a position of wanting more efforts to fight, based around those who have other ideas on how to fight. They really, honestly, truly, want to do it, I promise you from personal experience. Zelensky isn't forcing them to against their will, he's riding a tiger and likely to be voted out post war for his failings here. Some have left the country, some will return, but those who remain strongly think the best future for Ukraine is by breaking Russia, and truly think they can.
Kind of based. I'm confused by those who can't see that.
They are so massively majority willing to fight that TCC needs 5 or 6 people to drag them into the vans.
There is a draft and obviously some people don't want to. But polling and Ukrainian politics show high support for the war. Armies which actually don't want to fight tend to disintegrate. See Afghanistan.
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Probably the people being packed off to die by a nation that is wholly incapable of offering them a viable future even if they win. I'm familiar with the WW1 literature that explains this in great detail.
I don't give a damn about "how the people of that nation voted" for that reason; you rule well, and the treasure's good enough, maybe I'll consider it. If you bring war to my door without those things...
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You're confused because you're not living in reality.
The generally accepted number is that 75% of Ukraine's soldiers are conscripts, although we'll never know the exact number because it's a state secret.
Pork, I know Ukrainians, I have relatives fighting, and the poem "The beginnings" applies to all of them. I'm British but the force of the Ukrainian's fury would impress Kipling, and I would not want to be a Russian over the next few decades after their sowing of the wind.
As per reality, I can strongly predict reality based upon all of what I posted, for example the pro/anti war/Russia direction of Zelensky's future challenger. Would you make a prediction there?
The UK had a similar level of conscription in WW2, what does that prove? Did you think that after Coventry and London that we wanted peace? Gently, where is any of what you are saying coming from other than vibes?
Trust me bro!
Polling suggests otherwise
The most recent data does show Ukrainians have largely given up on outright military victory and want a negotiated end, but they overwhelmingly reject terms that amount to capitulation. The dominant position is a third option: freeze the war on roughly the current line, without legally giving up territory or disarming, still fighting. All of those require fighting Russia to a standstill, and are based on the assumption that is the correct thing for Ukraine. I am perfectly aware of the polls, they match my descriptions above, and Zelensky's challengers are attacking him from that position, there is no popular capitulation position. What's your "trust me bro" information I'm missing?
You claimed to have special insight. I was being perhaps too snarky.
In any event, freezing the lines today means de facto you are giving up territory as opposed to de jure. That is, it would be capitulation.
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So basically, it cost a few million lives for Russia to annex the part of Ukraine [that observably were unconcerned with who governed them] just because some old decrepit dulce-bag halfway across the country couldn't fucking let it go.
The complete and utter lack of unionist-on-separatist violence in the areas currently occupied isn't helping my assessment; lots of rooftops, lots of angles, lots of opportunity for novel autonomous weapons systems placed in book suppositories. They had nearly a decade and not once did "devise a way for a Kiev-friendly operative to deniably deliver an explosive device straight up a separatist's ass, or buy that from a sympathetic nation" cross their minds? Kind of painting a picture there- they're not a serious country either, but at least they'll have fun playing with the West's cool toys that we were just about to send to the boneyard.
Who knew that World War III was mostly going to be a non-nuclear redux of trench warfare, just with loitering mortar shells? I sure didn't have that on my
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Where do you get that number from? I have never heard it before.
Ukrainian National News
https://unn.ua/en/news/the-ratio-of-volunteers-to-mobilized-servicemen-in-the-army-is-13-defense-ministry
Thanks! While 2 years old, it is definitely food for thought.
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I’m fine with saying I don’t care that much about Ukraine as a country. It’s not in our strategic interest to care about Ukraine and frankly a lot of other countries like them.
It’s a matter of practicality. We cannot and should not twist ourselves in knots and waste lives and treasure unless it’s good for the West in general. We don’t have the capacity to intervene everywhere and even if we did, the results would be perpetual warfare that serves no one. What serves the cause of peace and global security is a predictable globe in which there are no wars. Prolonging a war because you don’t want one side or the other to win is not merciful, it’s cruel. More people die and even if you get to a stalemate, that’s just rearming for the next war.
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Again, Galicia is going to be fine demographically- as a region they're a viable contender for the highest fertility rate in Europe- and that's who's going to be ruling over what's left of Ukraine after the war. The rest of ukraine was basically a giant nursing home anyways.
I didn't know that. I was only able to find numbers suggesting fertility around 1.1, comparable to the rest of Ukraine.
Those numbers are from 2021. I suppose that fewer men could lead to a higher birth rate, but that would require women. Are the women in Galicia also not taking the opportunity to leave?
I'm wondering where you're getting this information. It's interesting and I'd like to know more.
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The people who I hate the most are those who view this war as a way to test new drone technology with real live meat puppets, or who put the strategic goal of "weakening Russia" above the lives of real people.
I have seen this goal be poorly worded enough, mentioning wiping out demographics, that it becomes genocidal. It is not something you should be setting as a war aim.
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I would say it’s mostly Russias fault since they were the ones who decided to make this a lot more kinetic. But of course, the low key war that was happening for years before it turning the heat up had problems on both sides.
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