> It's pushing toward a stalement, far short of its initial invasion goals and at vastly heavier cost than intended.
The momentum is in Russia's direction, and it feels like Ukraine is teetering in the brink due to manpower and resource issues, and that's even without Trump.
If Russia pays the price, it won. Winning is winning, even if it's Pyrrhic.
Which is why Russia's economy is collapsing with devalued rubles, high inflation, high interest rates, closed banks, they are calling up NK soldiers, lost territory in Russia, are losing 1500-2000 soldiers a day?
They are losing like 100,000 soldier per 10 miles of ground they gain. Talk about unsustainable.
And now Russian staging, logistics, weapons depots, artillery, airfields can be targeted with ATACMS.
Absolutely nobody has any momentum in this. If anything, Russian meat wave tactics lend themselves to spectacular collapse if morale and logistics break. So they grind soldiers for months to gain 30 kilometers, and suddenly get overrun by a swift counterattack if the line falters.
It's hard to get info on the actual kill ratios, but I would guess meat wave tactics are resulting in 5:1 kill ratios by Ukraine, if not better. We'll see what winter does to Russian troops, they aren't typically well supported or supplied even in summer.
Afaik Russia isn't losing its own army, all those soldiers lost are foreign mercenaries which only costs them money. Kill ratios might be because they're sending in untrained Indians and not professional soldiers. As I understand it Putin is doing this to not turn his own country against him
"Teetering [on] the brink" is overdrawn. I'm not aware of any analysis that suggests that the Ukrainian side is on the verge of collapse.
My own sense is tha the conflict is long past the point where it can be meaningfully won by either side. The best either can hope for is an outcome that can be presented internally as "not losing". Any attempt to portray the outcome as substantially stronger than that will be a matter of spin and rhetoric.
It's pushing toward a stalement, far short of its initial invasion goals and at vastly heavier cost than intended.
No need for cockiness on either side.