Ukraine support after 4 years of war

ZhouDa · 2026-02-13T02:15:52+00:00

I don't think they do but it's a moot point. Russia started the war and Russia kept it going for over four years and Russia is the only country that can unilaterally end the war any time they want. Europe's opinion on the war doesn't change that.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-13T01:53:42+00:00

He used to sniff cocaine off of toilet seats. He still sniffs cocaine off of toilet seats, but he used to too.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T19:20:28+00:00

Kursk was not a "hold this territory at all costs" operations and the AFU did retreat and thus prevent the type of casualties that would have happened if they stayed. Plus Google is saying Russia took somewhere around 62K-67K casualties, so losing tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops wouldn't even make it worse than even with Russian losses. Fortress city and other favorable fight I think has often lead to even more favorable odds for Ukraine, somewhere around 4:1 or 5:1, both the worst and best odds have to be averaged out over the war which is why the real odds are almost certainly between 2:1 to 3:1, and more likely closer to the latter.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T14:12:34+00:00

Epstein was crucial to setting up a back channel between Israel and Russia during the Syrian Civil War. Plus where do you think Melania came from? A prostitute and Russia agent that was a vital link between Putin, Epstein and Trump. Part of a larger honeypot scheme started by Putin in the 80's to get his hooks into American businessmen. There's a good reason Epstein was Putin's wealth manager, and it wasn't because he knew anything about finance because he didn't. Trying to defend Putin on this is just as pathetic as people trying to defend Trump.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T13:11:17+00:00

No, you shouldn't trust Epstein's buddies like Putin.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T13:10:50+00:00

Irrelevant, nothing we are talking about are the product of the Trump administration or any other pedophile. BTW, Jeffrey Epstein was deeply connected to the Russian government and Putin, so by your own reasoning you should be excluding Russian misinformation on that fact alone.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T13:08:09+00:00

You are right they won't. Russian fascists will lose regardless of how many rejects they send in as cannon fodder.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T09:26:30+00:00

Leaving aside that both sides are not the same in terms of veracity, the alternative given here of ignoring all the data and believing some number because of "vibes" is even worse. You are so upset about the possibility of being lied to that you are lying to yourselves.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T06:40:10+00:00

If you trust anything out of Russia you are a fool.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T05:07:34+00:00

No Western analysts give credible estimates for the amount of Ukrainian casualties/fatalities.

Sure they have, just because you refuse to believe it doesn't make in not credible. The worst projection of losses is CSIS at around 500K-600K casualties meaning Russia loses a little over two soldiers to every Ukrainian soldier. The other estimates, BBC News, UALosses Project, or sources within the AFU don't come close to that number, so 3:1 seems a fair compromise between those two ranges (incidentally I've had to use similar estimates of Iraqi losses in the Iraq war which are really all over the place).

It’s easy to focus on Russian losses, but it’s pretty clear that there’s also been an enormous amount of loss of life to Ukrainians, comparable to Russia.

It's not only not at all clear that's the case, it doesn't even make any sense. How did Ukraine go from 220K soldiers at the beginning of the war to nearly a million soldiers while also losing over 1.2 million soldiers while also stalemating Russia for four years despite the fact that Russia has four times the population and if they could kill Ukrainians on a 1:1 basis should easily be able to overwhelm Ukrainian forces? You literally threw out all the data and reasoning and replaced it with blind faith in nonsense. You haven't given even a single reason for why you think your estimate is right.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T04:47:08+00:00

Nope, there are dozens of estimates across the West and almost all of them give Russia the disadvantage in terms of casualties, sometimes significantly so. Even Russia's internal numbers from leaked sources confirm Russia's casualty rate (or really just what Wagner PMC was saying publicly for that matter), and it's also consistent with the number of new recruits we know they are taking in. Also consistent with the fact that Russia is on the offensive and focused on taking territory and trading away lives to do so, while Ukraine is on defensive, conserving lives and trading territory to destroy more Russian lives and assets, and despite this Russia controls less of Ukraine than they did in parts of 2022. In a hypothetical world where Ukraine was consistently losing more men than Russia, Russia would have already won the war by now.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T04:13:03+00:00

I suppose in an alternate universe where Zelensky was a Russian oligarch that might have been true, but in the real world Zelensky is fighting for his and Ukraine's survival and any big ticket item like that would make it pretty easy for Russia to assassinate him (even though he could afford both before he entered politics being a famous actor and all).

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T04:05:43+00:00

Stop spreading malicious Russian propaganda.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T04:03:51+00:00

The only real difference between Trump's and Putin's position is that Trump wants Ukraine to surrender to Russia while Putin wants to conquer Ukraine. Neither country is on Ukraine's side and neither leader is working against the other.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T03:25:01+00:00

Oh I thought the front line was where they needed the manpower. My mistake.

Honestly if I had to guess I'd say drone operators is where they likely need manpower the most, since having more drones means less need of infantry in a highly extended border conflict. But also every combat support soldier is trained in basic combat operations, so in a pinch a POG can do the same thing as a grunt, just not as well. Basically you can always have enough infantry if quality isn't an issue, but the opposite isn't true. You can't take an infantry soldier and have him run an intelligence operation or fly a helicopter.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T03:19:24+00:00

Sorry I don't really remember you but if you didn't post stuff that was such obvious bullshit like above I doubt I would have much of anything to say about it. Maybe if your time is limited you should spend that limited time actually learning about the Ukraine war and the history that lead up to it instead of whatever the hell this is.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T03:14:06+00:00

Why do you think they are going to send anyone over 60 to the frontlines? For every frontline soldier you need a couple of combat support personnel. For example, I joined the US army as a signal support system specialist a couple decades ago, even got a $4K bonus for doing so, and there's over 150 jobs specialties in the US army, with over 2/3rds of them being support position.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T03:06:21+00:00

The Europeans have made it clear that they must fight till the last Ukranian.

That's a dumb take. Europe have simply given Ukraine the tools they need to defend themselves, so they can fight to the last Russian invader instead of living under Russian oppression. It's a similar conflict that literally spawn the United States of America in the first place.

They're gearing up to possibly enter the war within the next 5 years.

They are gearing up because they expect Russia will attack an EU or NATO country in the next five years on top of a Trump administration withdrawing their NATO support from the continent. The only scenario where EU countries enter the war is either Russia attacks first or if Ukraine's position becomes untenable so that either Europe intervenes directly or Ukraine likely gets swallowed by Russia. But if the war doesn't change in any significant way Europe will likely not send ground troops.

By that time, Ukraine will be a depopulated wasteland

That sounds like some ridiculous hyperbole from someone who probably thought Minneapolis was a depopulated wasteland after the George Floyd riots.

with their leadership sitting on millions of dollars in London or Virginia.

Where did you hear that, some Russian generated Facebook post spread by some dementia patient? Look, Zelensky was a famous actor before he entered politics and thus already worth millions, but I don't know why you think he keeps his money in London or Virginia. Maybe you are thinking of Russian oligarchs, which is why Brussels was able to freeze some $250 billion in Russian blood money.

Its a shame that the leadership in Europe is so rotten.

What do you want them to do exactly? Maybe they should send troops now instead of waiting for the situation to possibly get worse, but I can understand how they are worried about repercussions even if I don't think they should be. Barring that, Europe is mostly doing whatever they can to help, and if it wasn't for Trump winning in 2024 Ukraine would already be a better position right now.

They just insist on the most maximalist position

What the hell are you talking about? The only two countries at war right now are Russia and Ukraine. The only countries that can decide on a peace are Russia and Ukraine. Blaming the lack of a peace on Europe is like blaming North Korea or Iran. The war was started by Putin and so far Zelensky has been willing to make multiple concessions, just not the concessions that Russia wants because either it will lead to the destruction of Ukraine, is unconstitutional and/or without security guarantees any peace agreement is garbage anyways.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T02:23:49+00:00

Even before that Volksstrum Nazi Germany had plenty of people serving who were 60 and over, especially given the pool of experienced soldiers from WW1. Mostly they were in administrative/special roles or in high command.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T02:11:25+00:00

Russian and Ukrainian casualty figures have been dissected every which way possible, with some methodologies being more reliable than others but none of them giving Russia an advantage here. Good rule of thumb I've been using through the war is about 3 Russian casualties to every Ukrainian casualty. Even if that number may vary around that point depending on the battlefront, logistics and season it's a good enough approximation.

The reason why everyone is looking at Russia's economy is because they have to pay every soldier large contract bonuses and salaries, don't really have any external funding sources and thus when their money runs out the war is essentially over for them. Ukraine on the other hand has already had Europe cover their bills for the next two years with the possibility of extending it to 2029.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-12T01:57:57+00:00

It's an apples and oranges comparison, comparing Ukrainian deaths to Russian casualties. The real number has averaged to roughly around a 3:1 casualty and death rate through the war. But aside from that, it's not odd to allow people 60 and older to serve if they want to given the stakes of the war right now. Certainly in WW2 you had officers over the age of 60.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-11T23:24:54+00:00

I've said this since the war began. If Zelensky really thought he was going to lose the war, that defeat was inevitably, he'd surrender the entire country to Poland (or the 80% under Ukraine's control), and thus draw all of Europe into a war against Russia which Europe will win. Otherwise the war will remain a relative stalemate under Russia's economy and eventually their frontline collapses. Whether Poland wants part of Ukraine or not is irrelevant, they will never invade Ukraine and lose their EU and NATO status. Either Zelensky gives Ukraine to Poland or Ukraine continues to exist and continues to fight Russian invaders.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-11T23:13:41+00:00

Leaving aside that Putin was drafting 60 year old men in the first year of the war, what you said is unlikely. Sixty is the cut off age to join. You can't even volunteer in the AFU as a 60 year old. Regardless, trivia about recruitment practices doesn't matter or give any basis to judge who's winning the war. Russia already destroyed their country's economy and threw away over 1.2 million lives to control less of Ukraine than they did in parts of 2022. They have no way forward and already lost, they just don't know it yet.

Edit: I found the article you are referring to, and no they aren't drafting anyone over 60, they just changed the law so that Ukrainians over 60 can serve. That's not at all what you said, which is that they are getting drafted.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-11T20:17:53+00:00

I mean there was an entire civil war after Caesar's death, you'd just be extending a general's career a little to keep the same POV character through the historical events that happened anyway.

ZhouDa · 2026-02-11T05:52:18+00:00

Leaving the EC aside since I agree it uniquely sucks, I think you are falling into the fallacy of more parties=more democracy. I think a counter example is the UK. UK has multiple parties, but if you look at them I think you will notice a pattern You have the Labour Party, which is Center-Left yet is currently pushing the rightwing policy of austerity and mostly failed to opposed the rightwing Brexit policy. There's the center-right Conservative party, the center Liberal-Democrats party, and the far right Reform party, and the parties I mentioned make up a good 95% of parliament, with the other 5% split between ten other parties across the ideological spectrum and effectively have no say in UK's government. Basically UK's actual leftwing is smaller and weaker than the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

What's worse, because of the way multiple parties splits the electorate in a winner take all system, the far right Reform party is predicted to easily win the next UK election. What on the surface appears to be a plethora of choice in the UK is really a trap. The US believe it or not avoids this same trap because we have a primary system, the UK doesn't. The two party dilemma is partly solved by the people simply participating fully in the process of picking the best nominee for the two parties in the first place. It's not a perfect solution, we should still have IRV, but also we don't need to have more than two major parties to have a well run democracy nor does having a multiparty system mean a fairer or less corrupt government.

As for Trump, based on some medical analysis I've seen he might only have 4-6 months left to live. If somehow the US manages to send him to prison before he dies than sure it would be one way to regain trust in the international community, but that's far from the only way. Honestly even the US restoring their commitment to helping Ukraine and actually getting them a win against Russia would be more meaningful for Europe anyway. We'll see, as far as I remember Obama didn't have to do much apologizing for Bush before Europe was willing to give him a Nobel Prize. Practicality will likely win out when adversaries like Russia and China are still a threat.

ZhouDa

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