As far as how the war is being waged. I've read comparisons to the Iraq/Iran War. No compromise in sight and nonstop drawn out fighting.
I'm not sure what you mean right here. What are saying about the comparisons between this and the Iran/Iraq war?
If you're Ukraine,why should they compromise?
Because they were on the verge of peace last year before Boris Johnson stepped in to squash the deal. So that right there kills the narrative of Zelensky being the one to decide when the conflict ends. Also, again, the reason why the Russians pulled out of Kyiv and the north had nothing to do with this great Ukrainian resistance. As we learned this weekend, the Russians pulled out of those regions in a show of good faith when they had a signed deal in place in Turkiye.
But since last year after Johnson broke the peace deal, he made promises (I'm sort of speculating here) that NATO was going to stand behind him, they were going to arm them to the teeth and that they are going to win the conflict. Well, as it turns out, Ukraine became a dumping ground for old NATO weapons stockpiles and outdated equipment. They (NATO) assumed that Russia didn't have the stamina to sustain a conflict long enough to exhaust the weapons they were sending. They also assumed that the sanctions that had just been put in place was going to collapse the Russian economy, people would take to the streets in Moscow and by the summer of 2022, Zelensky and the Ukrainians would be march on Red Square. Keep in mind that this is in early April and the ruble had crashed to around 150:1 to the dollar, so confidence in their plan was extremely high.
In Russia's case though, really dragging this out after the war started out horrible and terribly planned from the start.
Their original plan on 02/24/2022
1. Enter Donbas to stop the Kyiv regime from attacking the civilians there
2. Establish land corridor to Crimea and restore the water canal/aqueduct that supplies them their water in Zaphorrozhia and Kherson area
3. Send roughly 40k troops to Kyiv and the north to force the Kyiv regime to have to commit resources around the capital and prevent them from running those same resources directly to Donbas
4. Send those 40k troops to Kyiv to also pressure Zelensky into going to the negotiating table. As we know from this weekend, that worked and they got cut a deal.
This is why it was called a "special military operation". It wasn't something where they were planning on having a long drawn out conflict that would have needed to put Russia on a war footing. And Russia didn't go in with a "shock and awe"/bull in a china shop wrecking ball. They went in and didn't destroy many, if any civilian utilities or anything of that nature to inconvenience the average Ukrainian citizen. Hell, that pretty much kept that same strategy until October 2022. But then BoJo came and then the Russia strategy and objectives changed.
1. Secure the Donbas and the other two regions
2. Destroy the NATO army in Ukraine
By September, the Ukrainians had pretty much lost all of the military men and equipment that NATO had given them since 2014. That army was essentially gone. When they started their fall counter offensive, this was the second Ukrainian army. With the escalation of the offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson regions, the bombing of the Kerch bridge and bombing of Nordstream, the Russians changed objectives and strategy again. And with Surovikin taking over in late September/early October, the tempo and ferociousness increased.
1. Hit electrical and communication infrastructure
2. Sustained missile campaign
3. More sustained targeting of Ukrainian air defense systems (keep in mind that even at this point, Ukraine still had a formidable air defense system with their Soviet era S-300s)
4. Continued destruction of the second Ukraine/NATO army
By December/January, the second Ukrainian army had been defeated and so now this is when NATO starts talking about Leopards, Bradleys and the build up for a "spring counteroffensive" with the third iteration of the Ukrainian army. So between the winter and the first of June, NATO struggled to build this army. Germany crossed every redline Olaf Scholz said he wouldn't cross and the rest of NATO members pressured him to send the Leopards. Meanwhile, the nonsense about "Russia is running out of weapons" turned into concerns about NATO running out of weapons. Poland talked about building a 300k army around this time. But as we found out a few days ago, they don't have anywhere close to that right now.
So finally this big counteroffensive gets started in the early part of this month, and 3 weeks later, Ukraine has not even been able to do anything but swap back and forth a few villages and open fields in the gray zone. They haven't gotten to with 10km of the first line of Russian fortifications (supposedly, the Russians had built up 3 lines of fortifications 10km apart from each other or something along those lines between Melitopol and the Sea of Azov).
1. The BBC back in late winter estimated that the Russians had between 12k-24k KIA. I would say that today that number might (might) be closer to 30k right now.
2. On the other hand, Ursula van der Leyen admitted in November 2022 that the Ukrainians had 100k KIA... but then had to walk it back.
3. Around February 2023, I couldn't remember if it was
Valerii Zaluzhnyi or maybe Reznikov, nut there was a (unconfirmed) report that said one of them had told Milley or Austin that Ukraine had 230-250k KIA
and having a angry Russian public at home isn't getting them anywhere.
1. Last March/April, the ruble fell to 150:1 to the USD. By the summer, it had recovered to just hitting around 50:1 for a few days
2. In April 2022, The West had assumed/estimated that the Russian economy would collapse by about 30% in 2022. In reality, it only drew back right around 2%.
3. Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian central bank, had estimated at the beginning of the year that they were going to expect growth to be in a band between .5% and 2%. Well, about a week ago, they projected that growth would be closer to the high end of 2%
4. Also, Nabiullina initially raised interest rates briefly at the start of the sanctions to close to 18-20%. By the time September rolled around, she had cut them to around 8%. So in other words, interest rates and inflation are lowering, while in the NATO countries, the situation is the exact opposite.
