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..no, front isn't stable.
With the speed russia is advancing they will get in kiev in 2095
Oh yeah, this argument. You of course pretend to know this is .. I dunno, tunnelling, and not a contest between two almost equally matched sides out of which one can replenish its losses and the other cannot.
Do you truly believe the 30 million population of Ukraine can keep sustaining an attritional warfare with Russia ? Note that Russians could basically keep this war going forever, mortality wise- they're losing maybe 70k people a year at worst, meanwhile they have 600k births of boys per year.
I do believe that the frontline has barely changed in the time since the counter offensive. And there are maps to support me. In 30 years we may all be dead or ai slaves, but right here right now the front line is very stable and there doesn't seem to be chance of big swing in either direction in the next few months. So aside from the body bags this is effectively ceasefire as long as the diplomacy of hammering a deal is concerned.
Ukraine may be sacrificing a lot to keep the things stable, but it doesn't looks like there will be depletion of their ability to provide meat for the grinder in next two years.
Ukraine has been falling back slowly but steadily. It's not 'very stable'. They lost ~4500 square kilometers since the counteroffensive, or perhaps even more.
As to body bags, the last exchange had a ratio of 22:1 of course that's skewed bc Russia is advancing.
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I don't think the Russian military is especially competent but that same logic was used by the Axis in WW2 for propaganda posters designed to demoralize the Allies:
https://i.redd.it/teagx5lffh791.jpg
Obviously the Allies reached Berlin a lot faster than 1952, albeit not from the direction of Italy obviously.
It's futile to argue with a dead nazi propagandist, but a map of the whole of europe would show enormous soviet gains from belgorod to lvov in that same original period, sept 43 to may 44. Extrapolating that distance would bring you to berlin in 45, which of course is how it went down.
The WW2 example also had different acceleration dynamics that favored the Soviets.
In WW2, the allied powers got more capable of conducting offenses over time due to the increasing relative manpower and applied logistical throughput (i.e. actually giving manpower the equipment for mechanized warfare) compared to the Axis. This dynamic accelerated due to the relative tool up of the Allied war-economies vis-a-vis the earlier tool-up of the Axis economies that progressively lost access to resources as the war continued. Put in other terms, as the war continued, the Soviet logistical situation got better, and the German logistical situation got worse.
In the Ukraine War, the difference in warfighting capabilities has decreased, not increased, over time. Russia was at its maximum military-economic advantage in the earlier phases of the war, when it had not only the larger standing army but the larger standing stockpiles to match to it. Russia also began its war economy tool-up faster than the Ukraine coalition. However, as the stockpiles degraded and the military-mobilization phase reaches diminishing returns, Russia has gotten less capable of mechanized warfare advances over time. Similarly, the military-economic mechanics have played out Ukraine has gotten more capable of providing sustained resistance over time now that it's no longer limited by things such as a Soviet ammo standard and such.
There are some dynamics that could yet work in the Russian favor- que 'the Ukrainians will collapse any time now'- but there's a reason that last year's 'significant increases' in rate of territory change were still measured in positional rather than maneuver warfare terms.
Historically wars always start bad for Russia. No matter if they are on the offensive or defensive. Afterwards it is a coin flip if they win or lose.
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afaik the shortening of the lines of communication brought on by the german retreat considerably improved german logistics.
You can't shoot an ammunition futures from a canon. At the end of the war Germany was starved for all and any resources.
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Shortening the lines of communication shorted how far the logistics had to travel. Sustained aerial bombardment of industrial centers, naval blockades from receiving foreign materials including oil, and eventual capture of resource-input regions and industrial centers created far worse logistical capacity.
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That part isn’t true though. The initial invasion force had about 180,000 men, about half of what’s on the front line now. In some parts of the line in 2022 Ukrainian forces had a 6-1 numerical advantage. And if you still believe “confirmed vehicle losses” in the middle of a propaganda blizzard surrounding a war where both sides use the same military equipment, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s a reason that Oryx abruptly shut down in October of 2023 when it was just about to become obvious that they were full of shit.
Did you misunderstand the phrase 'military-economic' to mean 'manpower', per chance?
You specifically referred to a larger standing army and larger vehicle stockpiles, that inherently means manpower and equipment.
The key words in that being and equipment, as well as stockpiles, and the other economic factors implied within military-economic.
A rebuttal that focuses merely on the mobilized manpower at the start of the conflict is not a rebuttal of military-economic disparities. Particularly when the non-mobilization of reserves was a policy choice rather than a lack of availability.
Russia may have squandered many of its military-economic advantages at the start of the conflict, but that does not mean it did not have them.
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