Asklemmy

Arms dealers.

arms manufacturers

Right now I am hearing ever louder calls of Russia winning

Winning was taking over the county at first. Then it was kherson, and donbass, crimea, and a few others. Now it's just like 3 areas. If you're hearing anything about winning it's because the goal posts are moving.

Youtuber Perun had some good high level takes on the war. It all boils down to Western support will win. As long as support keeps coming from the rest of the world, eventually Russia will run out of material. WW2 was won (not wholly, but in large part) due to the larger economy being on the allies side.

It's mostly a stalemate for now. The dam destruction helped Russia funnel Ukraine counterattack on its biggest fortifications, so not much progress for Ukraine in the south. Russia resumed its offensive in the Dombass and Aavdiivka is starting to look like the new Bhakmut.

It's an attrition war and Russia is losing like 2 or 3 times as much as Ukraine in men or material. But Russia has much more men than Ukraine. Russian morale is very low, but Ukraine support from the west is under big pressure, both from Russian propaganda and conservative/fascist political parties. This last one is the real war happening now.

Next year will be important because of the elections in the US. What happen on the battlefield is still to be seen.

Define "winning".

Ukraine is, slowly and painfully, gaining ground, so by that measure, they are winning.

The US Military Industrial Complex of course.

As others have said, it's a war of attrition. There's no end in sight. As it stands, we can only speculate on who is winning. Russia have so far failed to make any significant gains, and Ukraine have so far failed to push the Russians out.

It's a bit like the stalemates of trench warfare in WW1. Something will have to give eventually.

You probably shouldn't be getting your news from randos on the internet. Literally anyone can post here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iHrZRJR4igQ

The media won't give you "an answer". Is a war like a board game where everyone can see the pieces and count the score according to the rules? What is Russia objective? Idk. Are they meeting it? Sure, to some degree. At what cost? We'll we only have a small sense of the costs.

Is Ukraine "winning"? Well they have lost so much but not everything. Are they meeting their objectives? We'll their state didn't fall. That's good.

And you just want some OP ED at NYT to just sum it up like it's a football game?

Death is the winner of any war

Russia should have had the conventional phase all finished in a couple months, so by that measure Ukraine. Russia has also lost territory the whole way past the battle of Kiev, so by that measure also Ukraine. Neither look set to win any time soon, so by that measure (which is probably the important one) it's a stalemate. The big variables now are Western support and Russian political stability as the conflict drags on. Neither side is close to running out of men.

The claims that Russia was winning the whole time come from basically the geopolitical version of flat earthers, who believe exactly the opposite of what everyone else does. Or actual Russian agents, but as far as I can tell that's rare.

I'd say the only ones winning are those selling stuff to Ukraine and Russia. I also remember a panel some months ago, about how the other EU countries will help rebuild Ukraine once the war is over. To me, it looked like they were already slicing the not even dead body in order to profit off it.

Ukraine as a whole is at a bigger loss, given all the infrastructure damage and population losses, this one counting both deaths and people fleeing the country.

Well, you're going to get different responses, many of which are good points, and depending on the person you asked.

But imo, it is hard to tell. And the best response we can say is: we don't know. Ukraine retook many territories but so has Russia. Both sides suffered many casualties. The problem with analysing the war is the white noise coming from emotional responses on the events of the war happening at the time.

When Ukraine was invaded, everyone thought they will capitulate. They didn't. Kyiv then retook Kharkiv Oblast, everyone thought Russia will surrender. The Ukrainian counteroffensive was hyped, but disappointed many. Prigozhin tried to coup Putin and thought it is the end of Putin, but they're still here.

So, the best response to your question is, we don't know. And that's the most certain answer you could get and that is not a bad thing. For those who tend to forget, we still have the fog of war shrouding our vision. We don't know what will happen in many months to come. Hindsight only tends to be 20/20 after an event.

However, I think the two major considerations for this year is 1. Ukraine had been effective in interdicting Russian logistical lines and sent the Russian Black Sea fleet reeling away from Crimea. Those are Ukrainian strategic gains that are often forgotten and not seen by the mainstream as important, who see ground combat as more important. 2. Though on the other side, the Russian support for Putin is still strong and either they support the war or ambivalent. In this case, Putin won the hearts and minds of Russians to either support or turn a blind eye to the conflict. Propaganda war is as important as military one to convince enough of the public to support it.

It's considered a positional stalemate, and that is politically advantageous for Russia. Both parties have been able to set up considerable defensive positions, making progress extremely costly. Both parties are still fighting for progress nonetheless, where Russia has the most trouble achieving it and Ukrainian forces are making small gains (field by field) on a consistent basis. But knowing that the frontlinie is many miles deep and there is intense trench warfare to make a few yards progress... There will be no swift or decisive victory on either side.

Putin has most of his followers convinced that he is fighting nato backed nazis. So even when Russian war tactics are brutally inefficient and the losses in personell and equipment are enormous, there is little internal political backlash. Internationally the conflict is seen as a regional dispute. Since Ukraine isn't a part of a large international alliance. Western sanctions on Russia aren't as impact full as they could have been.

It's looking likely that the war in Ukraine is going to last a very long time. With guerilla attacks on Russian territory becoming more likely and higher in frequency. Russia doesn't have the equipment left for large scale invasions, doesn't have the money to create meaningful reserves. And the kremlin needs defensive power in other places along its border.

European and western sentiment is that Putin will not stop until the old ussr borders are back under his control. And being securely and unquestionably positioned as world superpower.

I’ve been following along daily, have an army background so take from that what you will.

I think Russia is winning the war, strategically. They are losing a small amount of ground, but there’s no breakthrough and every day that goes by in the current state is a day closer to a fragile peace deal that secures Russia’s winnings. I think anything beyond Krim is just buffer zone. This is fundamentally about securing access to ocean - Russia is extremely constricted in getting its navy to sea.

With a frozen war Ukraine won’t be admitted to NATO - in that way, I think Russia is content to have a frozen conflict, because it creates a weak buffer state between Russia and NATO.

So in terms of securing its desired outcomes, Russia is winning.

It's not a stalemate, but it's close. Ukraine keeps gaining ground, but it's essentially ww1 style trench warfare.

Russia has reportedly been losing as much as 900 soldiers per day which is staggering.

The Russians mined everything like crazy when retreating so and forward progress is going to be quite measured.

the Capitalism

Tbf the guy that said arms dealers is 100% correct.

My opinion is that Ukraine has a light-moderate advantage right now.

It mainly comes down to American and EU politics. If both aid packages pass, then Ukraine is in a good position to build up over the winter and continue slowly pushing to cut off Crimea, which is the biggest prize. Steadily growing air power is going to make a significant difference, we already saw recently how helpful Russia's re-emerging air power was in grinding down the push across the Dnieper.

As an American I'm fairly confident our aid package will eventually pass. Tying it to Israeli aid is a punch below-the-belt, the repubs can't back away from that. They're in negotiations currently, probably stalling. Israel could really use that aid though...

My understanding of the EU aid is Hungary is being a pain, but there's other tricks available in a big bureaucracy, so we'll see. Maybe a European can fill that part in better.

Militarily the Russians are slowly and steadily pushing in the east. There's nothing terribly important over there, but land is land, towns are towns. Their troop losses are high but they also have a high intake supposedly, so it's possible they can keep this up for awhile. War materiel is continuously exhausting though, people may have noticed they are not shooting nearly as much artillery as they were in the initial parts of the war. But, you don't actually need tanks and heavy equipment and shit per se, so, it's a grinder. Their war support is starting to crack, but is still strong. They might have more mines than Ukraine does Ukrainians, so that's annoying too.

The Ukrainians are digging in. Or at least that's how it seems, they can be a little tricksey sometimes. They're still ramping up though, building more forces. They have plenty of will and soldiers and grain, but need more money and materiel. The capture of the Russian side of the Dnieper was impressive though, that probably shouldn't have happened. If they get the resources, they can probably win.

Oh, and the railroad between China and Russia blew up. No idea how that might've happened... Was the only one though.

Unlike everyone here, I have no idea.

From what I've heard, Ukraine is very slowly taking back strategic locations. At the moment, they're better equipped than the invaders, but that could change if Russia secures a weapons deal with China or NK. Ukraine also has a wide support (monetary, humanitarian, and military) from western nations. Ukraine has the advantage in the quality of their warfare, Russia in the quantity of meat sacks they can throw at the front.

In my opinion, even if Russia somehow occupies all of Ukraine (which I find unlikely), they will be a pariah nation for many decades. A significant part of their economy is energy export (fossil and nuclear) and the EU is already trying to separate itself from that energy dependence.

It's mostly a war of attrition now, whoever can hold the stalemate longer than the other before everything unravels will win.

Seems like a stalemate at the moment but it could really go either way from what I can tell. It depends upon if the west will lose interest and cut back on support or if public opinion in Russia wanes towards wanting an end to the war. At the moment it seems neither side is willing to accept the current status quo.

did the west miscalculate the situation by allowing diplomacy to take a backseat and allowing Ukraine to a large plethora of military resources?

a large plethora of military resources

No. The West failed to provide Ukraine with sufficient military resources. While the monetary value of military aid may seem substantial when compared to your bank account, the reality is that Russia possesses greater resources and capabilities.

It's stalemate at the moment. It's a waiting game for Western support of Ukraine to drop or for something domestically in Russia to fail.

I don't think either side will be able to decisively beat the other, but that's not how these things usually end anyway.

Actually, I think it's pretty funny in a sad sort of way that Americans don't get how this is going to go. It's really obvious that Ukraine doesn't need to win, they just need to keep fighting until Russia goes home. Western aid isn't even really making much of a difference in the eventual outcome of the war, it's just reducing the damage that Russia is doing to Ukraine and bring that inevitable end closer faster. We've seen over, and over, and over again that once a group of people actually make up their minds to resist, there is nothing that can stop them. Even if the aggressor can bring overwhelming military superiority they will eventually give up and go home, and Russia can't even do that.

The question isn't who will win. The question is how many war crimes will Putin commit before admitting he lost this war in the second week.