I've heard some reports of Russia having suffered fifty thousand casualties since the invasion began about four months ago. For a force one hundred and ninety thousand strong, that's a goddamn catastrophe. That is multiple corps/half a dozen divisions worth of Russia's best cut to pieces for very little gain, plenty of stalemate, and a few disastrous reversals.
Why are they even still there? Just withdraw you daft cunts. This isn't worth it anymore.
The official data is at around 34k now. The difference could be in the definition of "casualties" or the question of separatists and their mass conscription - the discount North Koreas have really drafted all the military age males who couldn't bullshit or bribe their way out and threw them to the frontlines as cannon fodder with all that shitty equipment that is making rounds on the internet, certainly raising a possibility of massively boosting any casualty numbers on the Russian side, if counted in.
Russia won't collapse, even if things go bad in Ukraine or with demographics, simply because Beijing needs them as a functional vassal to help them control Europe and the Mid-East.
China will prop up Russia just to keep from having to use it's own forces to project power in Europe.
There is another possibility, China is often said to think in decades, even centuries ahead. What if they even encouraged Putin to make his dangerous bet because it is a win-win for them?
Either he wins and hurts the world profile of USA, EU and NATO, aka those China doesn't exactly like at all...
Or he loses, crippling Russian economy for good, leaving it reliant on a life support that China will be able to dole out... or not.
After few years, or even decades, of the life support, talks could begin about Russia really needs to pay properly for it, and on the table there could be some far eastern territories of Russia - after all, it would be nothing unprecedented, Russia sold Alaska to USA after all, and China would have already paid much more than USA did for Alaska, so it's only fair that China's historical claims get some respect in Moscow.
Failing that, China would at that point have the ability to pull the plug on the support, and in turn probably also the government controlling Russia at the time.
www.euronews.com
