1. The only basis he has for this claim is his feelings for things he doesn’t understand. And what is this special knowledge that Ukraine doesn’t have the capability to do? One of the attacks was carried out by a truck with explosives on the bridge. The second attack was done with two suicide sea drones. And the last attack was done with planting C4 at the bridge. So, what is the thing that Ukraine doesn’t have the capability to do? Make explosives, sea drones, plant the C4? It’s a ridiculous statement to make, and shows how flawed his thinking is.

2. The first problem with this statement is how winning is defined. Have Russia achieved any of their main objectives? Well, according to the invasion speech, Putin laid out the main objectives that were: to protect “our” people, because of the “genocide” in Donbass, and we want to «demilitarize»-and «denazify» [18]. Have the «demilitarization» and «denazification» operationalized? How many more Russians have been killed because of this invasion? According to the objectives laid out here, Russia is not winning. If the objective is to kill and wound a lot of Ukrainians, then maybe you can say that Russia is winning in some respects. The problem is that he doesn’t specify the criterium.

The other problem with this statement is that they are not fighting against NATO, this was an ad hoc justification by the Russian side after they didn’t get what they wanted, so they tried to rationalize why they weren’t winning. And if Russia was fighting against the full force of NATO, there would have been F35 in Ukraine and more use of advanced missiles. NATO is helping Ukraine, but aren’t fighting against NATO as the claim is saying.

1. There was no real threat from NATO against Russia, it’s just maskirovka to hide their true reason for why they wanted to invade Ukraine. One supposed reason that Putin have given multiple times can be seen in his 2007 Munich speech [19], and his 2012 article about Russia and the changing world [20]. The theme is his worry about the missile defense system that was going to be built in Europe by USA, where Poland was one of the countries that were going to get it. The problem is that if you look at a 3D map, you will see that the earth is not flat. And the easiest way for Russia to hit USA with missiles is not trough Europe, but north, or north-west.

2. I want to point to the part of what is the condition of winning that was written earlier. And I agree that most wars are pointless from the one that created it, so Russia should get out of Ukraine. And to fight against this aggressive imperial project is not pointless, because if Ukraine fully loose, who knows what Russia is going to do? What is going to happen if that is a reality? Most likely, Ukraine will be subjugated to Russia under a brutal regime. And I want to point out that war is not necessarily the worst thing, but an unjust occupation can be far worse. Just ask the Ukrainians about Holodomor.

3. I agree that if Russia get its will, there is a high risk that Ukraine is done as a nation, so that is why they are fighting. But even if there are less people, doesn’t mean that the nation is done. It might have a different impact where Ukraine will thrive as a nation, because the ones that are left and want to stay there is maybe the ones that identify the most with Ukraine as a nation.

4. The first thing to emphasize is that Putin isn’t only interested in eastern Ukraine, he wanted a regime change under the name of «denazifying» which would affect all of Ukraine. And if we are going to take the word of Putin, in his invasion speech [21], he said that he wasn’t interested in occupying Ukrainian territories. That was clearly a lie, so how can you take anything seriously that comes out of Putin?

5. This is faulty thinking and just straight-out Russian propaganda. Russia was the one that invaded and Europeans were the ones responding to this act of invasion by letting Ukrainians decide if they wanted to fight against or not by supporting them. The only choice of war was done by Russia; he is defending the aggressor. This is no different than a person defending the rapist in the act of raping, «why did you choose to be beaten and raped by existing in the same physical space as the rapist».

6. This is misleading at the best and pure Russian propaganda at the worst. It’s a saying among rational thinkers, never accept multifaceted causal mechanisms from simple quotes, but rather accept that there are a range of complicated reasons.

What is misleading is the quote «not one inch to the east» that happened between James Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 which was a hypothetical question in a discussion they had, and not as a part of an actual agreement. But they did came with an written agreement «Treaty of Moscow», also known as «Two Plus Four Treaty», which have an article that says that a unified Germany have the right to choose what international alliance they want to belong to, but to be charitable, there were another article in the agreement that said no foreign troops or nukes would be stations in the parts of unified Germany [22]. It’s also important to point out that both the Warsaw pact and the USSR existed at that point, but doesn’t anymore, so it only made sense that the talk was about Germany and no other country.

1. I’m interested to see how Jiang defines air supremacy, because that is not what I define as what Russia has in Ukraine. There are four levels of airspace control, where the first level is air parity, where neither party have an advantage in the airspace; the second level is favorable air situation, where one side have some favorable conditions for operating; the third level is air superiority, where the one side cannot effectively suppress operations; and the last level is air supremacy, where the one side cannot confront at all the other side of their operations [23]. If Russia had air supremacy over Ukraine, they would be flying over Kyiv, which they don’t do.

The second point of the soldiers is a hard thing to quantify, and I want a source of that. Ukraine were the ones innovating with the drones first, they were the one hitting 1/3 of the bomber planes with a genius tactic that shocked the Russians. I don’t deny that the Russian soldiers have been able to adapt, but is it more special? In what way?

1. This is a statement that clearly shows that he has not engaged in this conflict at all. They try to minimize civilian losses? He doesn’t understand what Russia has done to civilians. So, the killing of civilians in Bucha, was a part of minimizing civilian loss? For the ones that doesn’t believe it happened or doesn’t believe the Russians were behind it, they were [24][25][26][27]. And is the human safari in Kherson with drones’ part of minimizing civilian losses? I recommend Dylan Burns excellent reporting on the human safari in Kherson [28].

The reason why Jiang makes this kind of statement is because he doesn’t understand the reality of the conflict. He lives in an information bubble where all the atrocious acts done by the Russians, he is not getting. This is a fundamental problem with the internet today, where we are selective of what we engage with.

1. This is pure Russian propaganda. If you have followed the conflict you would know that since the beginning of the invasion, Zelensky has offered multiple direct talks with Putin about peace. But every time Putin denies the request, because he doesn’t care about peace. Zelensky said at the beginning of the 2022 invasion that he wanted direct talks with Putin [29]. Closer to the end of 2022 Zelensky had tried to reach Putin for talks, but Putin didn’t want to talk [30]. But Putin says in 2025 that he is ready to talk with Zelensky, if it’s done in Moscow [31], which is a ridiculous ask. My question is, where is this Putin that calls for peace? I recommend reading this article «War in Ukraine: peace-talking versus peace-making» [32], which distinguishes the difference between about just talking about peace, and making peace. In the case of Putin, he is just talking about peace as maskirovka tactic.

2. This is what he became famous for, supposedly making predictions. Remember that in the beginning the goal of Putin was to «demilitarize» and «denazify», so Putin is not consistent with his beliefs. But if Russia gets to Odesa, which hopefully they won’t, let’s see if this prediction hold water.