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Is Ukraine Winning the War Against Russia?
I have been reading recent posts on social media claiming that Ukraine is recapturing dozens of square miles of territory from Russia, Russian troops are taking heavy casualties, and many Russian troops are cut off from supply lines.
It seems that the western nations are pouring weapons into the Ukraine military, which has outperformed expectations in using these weapons to their advantage. It’s starting to look like Russia’s military is not the second best military in the world, but rather the second best military in Ukraine.
One doesn’t want to read too much into these social media reports of Ukraine’s success. Who knows what is really going on over there? But former General of the US Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, says that Ukraine will recapture Crimea in a year. He seems to have backed off his earlier prediction that Ukraine would retake all of the territory it lost after February 22, 2022, by the end of summer (which would be right about now, it would seem).
Still, I bet that if Putin had known how badly this invasion would go and how unified the liberal-democratic world would be in supporting Ukraine, he would not have ordered the invasion of Ukraine. This shows how wars can start based on miscalculation, the underestimating of the opposition. In any case, we will have to watch over the next month or so to see if Ukraine is able to keep this counter-attack going.
Published in General
***JUST REPORTING***
I didn’t say Ukraine has no corruption problem- but it is better than Russia and is in fact in the lower middle third of the world. In Europe it always stays out of last place b/c of Russia. It ranks about 2/3 the way down the list (lower meaning more corrupt). Russia consistently ranks lower- not exactly something to brag about but better than being more corrupt than Russia.
The vastly improved Ukrainian response to the current Russian invasion (as opposed to 2014) highlights the difference in corruption with Russia.
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021
her is the Wikipedia page on corruption index:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
OK I’m calling this a tie because there are obviously different approaches to measuring corruption. ***I have no idea why this wasn’t brought up the last time everybody argued about it.***
I seriously don’t care about dealing with corrupt countries as long as it doesn’t get in the way of what you are trying to do. I’m just not convinced about what is going on here, and I don’t see how anybody else is.
Really, you are stupid not to get in on whatever the median level of stealing from your fellow citizens is. How many exceptions to this are there? Singapore? What else?
I don’t like this guy, and I never listen to him, but he’s really smart in his semi famous in the libertarian world. fyi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd-YAjFDZqA
Not the main threat but a major source of instability in the world. You have to have bad myopia not to notice it. In the 1930s Japan wasn’t the main threat either-that doesn’t mean we didn’t have to deal with it.
Just for the record I haven’t listened to it. I don’t know if he’s any good at foreign policy. I know I’m not. I don’t know where he’s going to say. That’s just me. If somebody at ricochet wants to listen to it and give their interpretation, that would be great.
Mwah-ha-ha-ha!!
So, since a “famous libertarian” is an obscure eccentric in the real world, “semi-famous libertarian” must be barely distinguishable from a generic anonymous crank.
Snort!
He gets a lot of interviews, but I don’t find him useful on the things I’m interested in. He may or may not be right about this.
In my capacity as a former member of the Libertarian Party – fact check: true.
A bot would say that.
The point is, whether or not Ukraine is winning the ground war, it’s winning the propaganda war.
He’s right. They’re not even hiding it.
Well, the Ukrainians did take a bunch of land near Kharkiv, so they may be turning it around there – for now; apparently the Russians are sending heavy equipment from their Central Military District (around Moscow), so….I don’t know what the next thing will be, though I suspect Russia declaring war may be one of the outcomes.
In the West, but perhaps that’s where it matters.
Yep. We’re the ones sending them billions. God only knows where it ultimately ends up.
They spent enough of it in the right places to push the Russians out of territory that they dug in on.
And those ammo dumps in Crimea aren’t just blowing themselves up …
… on the other hand, those are Russian ammo dumps, so maybe they are just blowing themselves up.
From the Institute for the Study of War, September 10, 2022:
September 9:
Russia has officially announced a withdrawal from all of Kharkiv Oblast. They appear to have successfully broken contact on the northernmost part of the front and are pulling back to the border.
Little news from either side about actions east of the Oskil, or any Ukrainian advance eastward of the locked front from Severodonetsk area down to Donetsk area. Ukraine may have returned to the Lysychansk area, based on an announcement yesterday, but news of entry into Soverodonestsk was either rumor or deliberate misinformation, it appears.
A couple Russian sources suggesting that Ukrainian is gathering another striking force positioned to attack towards Mariupol, but no battlefield news or Ukraine announcements to support that.
I think this is a key item to keep track of. I saw a report that Germany may loose 6 million jobs in the next 6 months due to collapse of industrial sector from lack of energy. It is hard to know how people will react. You know the saying, “a recession is when your neighbor loses their job and a depression is when you lose yours.” Also, yikes with the Greens. They want people to suffer.
I wonder if Chip Roy would be saying something different, if those defense industry contractors where in his district.
A couple of thoughts.
[1] What if that “report” you saw turns out to be wrong? As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s dangerous to make predictions, especially about the future.”
[2] What if Germany loses 6 million jobs in the next 6 months, but the nations of North America and Europe and also Australia continue to provide Ukraine with weapons and training?
It seems that as long as Ukraine continues to be supplied with weapons with which to attack Russia’s military, Russia’s military is going to cut and run as it has in the last 10 days or so.
This is one of the things they are talking about on the things I was listening to this morning.
It’s going to be a trick to manage this. In like two years or some thing, a whole bunch of LNG comes on line. But then another guy is saying the path downward is more permanent. There is just too much inflation and not enough production.
Supposedly part of our leverage is Putin is in desperate need of technical parts for technical things.
One guy was saying that Angela Merkel’s politics created this. She doesn’t have a constituency. She’s sort of an at large politician. She could push anything anyway just so she could have more power and that’s all she did. She didn’t give a crap about the environment it just got her more votes and destroyed other politicians. She sounds like a real sicko.
People in Europe need to survive and pay for their excessive government. The next two years have a lot of risk of a human and financial catastrophe. One of the guys was saying that they are just screwed no matter what. That much chaos over there is not going to be good for us.
You have to realize that some predictions of catastrophe don’t always happen on the timetable predicted.
Sure, it’s possible that these “experts” are correct and that Europe’s economies will collapse and Ukraine will be starved of new weapons.
But it’s also possible, perhaps even likely, that the weapons will continue to flow to Ukraine and Ukraine will continue to kick Russian butts out of more territory.
He mentions a “human and financial catastrophe” and you’re talking about weapons.
You can’t eat weapons. Well, a starving man might “eat a shotgun,” it’s true.
First of all spare me the quotation marks with experts. They are. These guys are highly compensated investment people. Even the guy that was in your camp more, even said he doesn’t give a you know what about anybody in Europe, it was just cold analysis. Also, you aren’t one of the top analysts on ricochet about anything except this, possibly. Not even close.
I was listening to four different guys over three hours. None of it was shallow or bumper sticker. I chose my words carefully.
Say Ukraine wins. Like I said Putin needs to retaliate and the economies are very over a barrel. Arguably it’s a Mexican standoff that nobody understands what is going to happen.
One guy was really pessimistic about the path forward. If he’s right, it’s going to be the Federal Reserve paying for Ukraine rebuilding.
Exactly. There are a lot of balls in the air right now. Let it play out.
No doubt in my mind. We’ll be rebuilding Ukraine for decades, while our own people struggle to keep the lights on. Want a sure-fire way to create more anger from citizens against the U.S. government? This is how you do it.
And most of it will be laundered through NGOs and back to the personal coffers of international oligarchs.
This is what I was listening to. You can get parts of it on iTunes. Grant Williams podcast. Otherwise it’s $120 a year. He has 5000 subscribers. The other one that I would probably recommend more for an audience that doesn’t have finance expertise, is hidden forces. That guy gives away half of his show every time on iTunes. Really good.
https://www.grant-williams.com/podcast/this-week-in-doom-9-whats-next-for-europe/
https://www.grant-williams.com/podcast/steven-wilkinson/
People need to realize something. All of the west problems have been shifted to the government. Now they are trying to shift them to the central banks. There is no Central Bank on Mars for our central bank. Then on top of that we are behind on capital expenditure on probably every single commodity. Supposedly oil is seven years behind.
Socialism, finance, debt growth, and money printing was fun while it lasted.