Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

PETER ZEIHAN
https://youtu.be/dUs1igVWeUQ

VIDEO EXCERPT: Keep in mind the Russians have 8 million men in their 20s, or at least that's what they started the war with. If they've lost a half a million now, and a million have fled, that still leaves them with six and a half million bodies to throw at this problem.

And to be perfectly blunt, the Russians have yet to fully mobilize most of the people that they've brought in through their draft system. Most have been ethnic minorities from economically disadvantage areas.

They haven't really gotten into the core of what the country is capable of. That's still ahead of us, but at this rate there's no way the Russians can keep this up for another eight years.

And I know that sounds like a long time, it is. But remember two things: 

Number one, the Russians never fight short wars -- they do short intimidations. Their wars are always long because they're always about human waves.

Number two, if they do, this is their last war. Because there aren't enough Russians under age 20 to theoretically repopulate the system. So when this is done one way or another,  Russia is done...

Inside Russia's failing war machine: The truth revealed.

One problem with opinions like this is that they always seem to accept Ukrainian estimates of Russian losses as fact. But are they accurate, or are they being exaggerated for propaganda purposes?

Another problem is that they never talk about Ukrainian losses. Ukraine is their authoritative source and Ukrainian losses are a Ukrainian state secret. What we do know, is that they are worse than Kyiv wants to admit. If anyone wants to, they can get some idea from many anecdotal things said by Ukrainian soldiers at the front, about how they are rarely rotated out of combat and on the rare occasions they receive replacements and reinforcements the new arrivals are only minimally trained and often physically out of shape. There are all the stories of conscription agents physically kidnapping young males off the street, and about the hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian males in other European countries to escape the draft at home.

This has become a war of attrition and the question is which country can keep it up longer. And Russia is a much larger country.

I don't think that there's any doubt that the war has revealed the large and vaunted Russian conventional military to have been much weaker than expected. And every month that the war continues, it gets weaker. Of course the Ukrainians are getting weaker too, and probably at a faster rate.

That observation directly contradicts the argument that we often hear that if the United States doesn't support Ukraine to a final Ukrainian victory (whatever that looks like), then Russia will sweep across Europe. But if Russia has been fought to a standstill by smaller Ukraine, how could it possibly sweep westward?

Assuming that Russia even wanted to, which I don't think it does.

Let’s substitute one despot for another and then we won’t have to worry about cannon fodder should the following scenario play out….

Quote: Private Jackson: Well, what I mean by that, sir, is... if you was to put me and this here sniper rifle anywhere up to and including one mile of a certain bad guy with a clear line of sight, sir... pack your bags, fellas, war's over. Amen.

My dad always used the ‘clear line of sight’ line if there was some a-hole about. I knew what he meant and I knew he wouldn’t, but it was funny just the same.