We have.
He wants the land he has taken in Ukraine amd gurantee for Ukraine to remain out of NATO.
Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)
- Thread starter ParadiseLost
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He wants the land he has taken in Ukraine amd gurantee for Ukraine to remain out of NATO.
No, you haven't. There's not been actual peace talks. He's just been stating a starting position, so has Ukraine ("we want everything back"). Neither is going to actually happen, so treating those as the end of a conversation instead of starting spots for a negotiation is wrong.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Why do you think it's impossible for Russia to actually be defeated?
Prince Ire
Section XIII
What figures did I site? It's also pretty obvious that those figures don't connect too much to warmaking capacity, seeing as highly placed as Ireland is, a country with almost no heavy industry. But just as an example, the US steel industry's market value was twice that of the Russian steel industry in 2021, despite the fact that the US didn't produce anywhere close to twice the steel.
I never said they did? They're also all pretty important industrial centers.
Russia produces about 10 times as much steel as Britain. Russian steel production has pretty consistently been slightly higher than South Korea's and slightly lower than America's. Of course, nobody produces much steel compared to China.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
The fact that you're arguing about raw tonnage of steel as a more important element to war-making capability than gross GDP does not say good things about your understanding of defense economics.
To be fair to you, how much steel a nation produces is certainly relevant, but it also matters far less than their overall economic clout, unless they're expected to fight cut off from their trade partners and global markets.
Which isn't going to be happening to NATO or the US any time soon.
Still, let's focus in on steel for a little bit, since you don't want to keep things to the simpler, larger scale.
What grades of steel does Russia produce in what quantities?
What is the quality control on those grades of steel?
What proportion of those grades are actually used in military applications?
How does it compare to the US and NATO in that regard?
Do you know the answer to any of these questions...?
...Or did you just look far enough into the issue to see a statistic that aligned with what you wanted to believe was true, and then didn't look any further?
Prince Ire
Section XIII
Nope, don't know the answer to any of those questions. Does @Husky_Khan know the answer to any of those questions, or really any details about the manufacturing and industrial sectors underlying the raw numbers he linked to from the World Bank? Do you, since you thanked him for the link he provided.....? .....Or, to use your words, did the two of you just look far enough into the issue to see a statistic that aligned with what you wanted to believe was true, and then didn't look any further?
That that you think gross GDP is the most important aspect of determining war-making capability does not say good things about your understanding of defense economics. GDP is only relevant insofar as the State directs that GDP towards militarily useful ends. A country with a high GDP will only have a strong defense industry if it consciously chooses to invest in that industry. Or do you think their similar GDPs mean that Israel and Ireland have similar war-making capacity?
There were peace talks in Belarus early war
Heretic! aliens are interested only in molesting japaneese flat schoolgirls and american boobzillas,if they come they would go only to Japan and USA !
And map was captured be soviet heroes from fifthy ukrainian nazis.
Pure fantasy. Russia wants all of Ukraine eventually. Crimea and separatists were hooks meant to help reel it in, not a satisfying conclusion in themselves.
Russia would not just stand idly by and let such a plan conclude, and it has few ways to sabotage it.
Or Russia can have its own Vietnam on crack. I prefer that option.
Before the war Russia wanted to negotiate with NATO, not Ukraine.
Actual peace talks would have to also be that, and the starting position should be "you give all the concessions we and Ukraine want and then some just to make a point, or we will make shit so fucking bad for you that you will be missing the last 2 years as a fucking paradise time."
It is hilarious that even now some people still think eternal peace is just one Ukrainian concession away.
Because they have nukes, so any invasion by Ukraine fails. They don't even need to guard their border, just go full longterm ceasefire. Even if you kick Russia out of Ukraine entirely, that doesn't end the war. Ukraine is limited in how they can attack Russia's mainland.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
I mean it effectively does. The Russians would have had to collapse Germany 1918 style in order for that to happen. Thereupon, if by some miracle Putin’s regime didn’t collapse, they’d be spent.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Russian resiliency in the face of the last two years of losses/setbacks (some of them rather dramatic--the failure to take Kiev in the opening and all the fiasco around that, and Ukraine managing a successful-ish offensive in 2022 that got land back, not to even mention Wagner going rogue temporarily). Also their manpower and equipment pools being deeper than Ukraine (even with Ukraine getting NATO second-hand stuff...open question as to how many armored vehicles or artillery units or whatever Russia can 'afford' to lose in exchange for one Ukrainian piece of equipment).
This is, of course, all based on unknowns that could change tomorrow (a mass-mutiny in Russian armed forces would change the state of things immediately, and maybe they are running out of functional ground equipment and that's the reason for upped airstrikes recently or whatever), but even in that case it would be dramatically surprising for Ukraine to achieve 'roll up to the original borders, including Crimea' levels of victory.
Beyond that...for Russia to be defeated to Ukraine's satisfaction, as Ukraine's current objectives stand, it requires that level of victory pushing Russia back to the old borders. Russian victory to their own stated objectives is achieved by just having the conflict keep going since it's a big preventative to Ukrainian NATO membership and gives them excuse/reason to fortify eastern/northern Ukraine and Crimea. They might prefer/dream of dramatic victory that lets them conquer all of Eastern Ukraine, or even overthrow the Ukrainian government and install a puppet, but those aren't necessary for their goals--just keeping the war going fulfills their goals.
How long they can keep that up could be argued. Currently it *seems* like that answer is indefinitely?
Welp, NATO can theoretically send a lot of second hand stuff that's cold war surplus from the 80's, while Russia is digging into reserves from the 50's already, while struggling to restore the newer, more complicated stuff.
Any kind of diplomatic deal Russia will agree to will be structured in such a way as to make sabotaging Ukraine's NATO membership feasible and serve Russia's goals even beyond that.
Considering Russia's willingness and ability to play "hybrid warfare" games, game and break treaties when beneficial, and play dirty politics, Ukraine is better off with a Korea style continuous war, in which everyone know where things stand, rather than a "peace" where Russia still tries to fuck over the other side, but various political camps in NATO and Ukraine itself are confused about whether there's still a war, back to business as usual, a cold war, or whatever the fuck it is.
Unlikely to pan out. Russian economy is being cannibalized slowly to support the war and soak sanctions, something will break eventually. "Until Putin's death" is a more limited ambition.
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All ot takes to end the war is retake all of Ukrainian territory and then Ukraine join NATO.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
I think the likeliest explanation is that Russia is aware that Ukraine is in an unusually weak position due to the logjam in American aid and is going the extra mile in trying to take advantage of it while the opportunity lasts. As usual the gains are very costly for them but this is arguably the best chance they are going to get in the foreseeable future.
Prince Ire
Section XIII
I should clarify that also that I am of the opinion that either the US or the EU on their own could definitely outproduce Russia if push came to shove, though I do question the willingness of the West to make the civilian economy sacrifices necessary for high military production. They could of course prove me wrong, but we'll see if any of the declarations of great increases in shell production for 2025 actually manifest.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Overall GDP strongly correlates to potential war-making capacity.
Israel, for fairly obvious reasons, has strong incentive to tap that potential for war-making capacity, and so it does. Ireland does not, so it doesn't.
When you mobilize for war, your priorities drastically change from a peace-time economy, and your nation starts to show how competently it can change potential into actuality.
One of the dangers, of course, is what happens if someone else is manifesting applied war-making potential when you are not prepared for it, and beats the tar out of you before you can make the transition. This is the great lesson of the Franco-Prussian war.
Russia is on a partial war footing. It has tapped a significant amount of its potential for applied war-making capability.
Ukraine is on a complete war footing. They're throwing together everything they can, plus everything they can beg and borrow from NATO, to fight the Russians off.
Comparing these economies to the almost completely peacetime economies of NATO, you need to be keeping in mind 'current capacity' versus 'potential full capacity.' If NATO actually converted to a full wartime economy, Russia would get absolutely buried..
As it is, the major NATO economies are trying to give enough to tip the scales without overly-exerting themselves, and a few additional munitions factories are being set up here and there, while extra shifts are worked at some of the existing ones.
Sure, if you want to get into the weeds of different sectors of the economy, Russia is producing greater amounts of Steel than you'd expect given their relative economic weight. But that doesn't change their total war-making potential, and unless Ireland, or Germany, or Japan, get into a war where someone else can cut off their access to international trade, or trade with enough of the big players that they just can't get key industrial inputs, the specific economic strengths and weaknesses of a given nation are a lot less important.
Not irrelevant, but less important. The fact that Russia was a major producer of military hardware before the war started certainly mattered, but at the same time, the fact that Russia was apparently pretty dependent on imports for a lot of key inputs also matters.
In the end, as the war has gone on, Russia's total war-fighting potential has been declining, while the war-fighting potential of the West has been feeding Ukraine. If western nations completely pull all support, Ukraine is in serious trouble, but given how invested the nations that have been under the Russian heel before are, that's incredibly unlikely.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Counterpoint 1: Ukrainian aid in 2022 was notably diverted to corrupt ends--thus Zelensky's whole anti-corruption push and sacking of generals and officials through 2023 (besides the hope it would engender more aid).
Counterpoint 2: Ukrainian aid isn't meant to win them the war, it's meant to prolong the war such that the maximum degree of damage is done to Russia's military, domestic economy, and international standing without overmuch effort required on the part of NATO countries. A short, victorious war fails that, an extended quagmire provides (on top of being ripe opportunity for foreign investment into the area at its most depressed state...Or, for that matter, domestic investment and expansion--Russia is hardly the only one in the Russia-Ukraine conflict infamous for oligarchs).
Prince Ire
Section XIII
Yes, obviously. That was my point.
Again, yes, this is all obvious and doesn't contradict my point.
The problem is that the population of most NATO countries is not nearly dedicated enough to the war for that to be feasible, so it is irrelevant. Barring a large change in circumstances, no NATO country of military-industrial significance is going to enter a war economy footing to help Ukraine.