I guess we are about to find out in the next month whether Ukraine had what it takes to really push back the Russians. It feels like it is now or never.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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How do you see the onset of winter affecting each sides' ability to conduct the war?
Shit's going down in Kherson. <3
I’m not any sort of expert, so not sure how much my opinion is worth, but if Ukraine is now briefing about this advance then they will pouring significant resource and effort into this push. You can’t do that very often and fail before morale is sapped and resources are depleted.
I’d imagine in a harsh winter the advantage goes to the sides that truly believes in what they are fighting for, but if the ground gets wet and boggy then advancing becomes more difficult.
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I listened to a very interesting lecture from Italian historian Alessandro Barbero about how the world descended to WW2 from a political perspective. Its staggering how similar the situation was to what we have now.
A-You have a country who had just lost land (Germany-WW1 and Russia-Soviet union) and whose quite nationalist driven
B- You have a complacent Western Europe who is in no mood for war and who needs this rogue nation (ie Nazi Germany/Russia) as a bulwark against communism/because it needs its natural resources
C- Similarly to Hitler, Putin is persuading minorities within foreign countries to cause unrest. Any reaction against them is then used as a casus belli to invade and assimilate those countries.
D- similarly to the Nazi army at the beginning of the war, the Russian army is overrated.
E- Putin has an 'italy' in Belarus aka an ally bound by ideology who is being dragged into a war it simply isn't keen or prepared war
A-You have a country who had just lost land (Germany-WW1 and Russia-Soviet union) and whose quite nationalist driven
B- You have a complacent Western Europe who is in no mood for war and who needs this rogue nation (ie Nazi Germany/Russia) as a bulwark against communism/because it needs its natural resources
C- Similarly to Hitler, Putin is persuading minorities within foreign countries to cause unrest. Any reaction against them is then used as a casus belli to invade and assimilate those countries.
D- similarly to the Nazi army at the beginning of the war, the Russian army is overrated.
E- Putin has an 'italy' in Belarus aka an ally bound by ideology who is being dragged into a war it simply isn't keen or prepared war
A very big omission is that the US is armed to the teeth compared to 1939 when it was largely isolationist and had a token land army (navy was different matter). Also , I don't think the Wermacht was in any point that incompetent compared to what the Russians have demonstrated.
Similarly to WW2 no one is in the mood to be dragged into war. Also the Wermacht was at a different beast at the beginning of the war
No matter what kind of beast it was, they championed the maneuvering warfare tactics which Russians 80 years later couldnt perform. Its night and day really.
But dissimilar to WW2, NATO countries (especially the US) have been providing a lot of weapons to Ukraine so it can defend itself - which it is (fairly) successfully doing. As it stands, Russia is not managing to conquer Ukraine, is therefore unlikely to attack anywhere else, and would be even less likely to do so successfully (since almost everywhere else to its west are NATO countries).
Your comparison is just really far-fetched.
So after the entire discussion had previously, which showed up your point for extremely short-sighted (for starters, Amnesty has criticized Russia many times already; why would shills do that?), you are just going to repeat it verbatim as if nothing happened?
It's certainly the case that Russia will not be wanting to feed and heat an army in a foreign country over a bitterly cold long winter, and with supply lines being constantly hit. I'd think for example, that in the planning for this war there was little to no thought about what would happen beyond the end of winter 2021/2022. It helps the Ukrainians that they have no real choice, and are in a largely friendly environment. I think what WILL help Russia is the inevitable pause /reduction in hostilities so they can recalibrate for a potentially longer war.
Calling Amnesty "paid Russian shills" is just beyond the pale. Unbelievable.
The contrary. The Nazis were sure that the West won't react to the Nazi invasion of Poland. They were so sure that Von Ribbentropp wanted to place a bet with ciano on the matter. The same seem to happen with Putin. He felt that the West won't react on Ukraine.
I'm kinda interested to know the point you are making. Are you saying that you think this conflict has the same likelihood or potential for escalation as the German invasion of Poland had?
Sure - but NATO did react in the case of Ukraine, and has been arming Ukraine so it could successfully defend itself. So while Germany did overrun Poland and while that event was the start of a series of successes for Germany at the start of WW2, Russia failed to overrun Ukraine and currently has no logical reason to attempt any other invasions.
Reading your post again, I suppose you are simply drawing parallels between the starts of both events and not trying to predict next events or outcomes. But even those parallels are quite far-fetched: (A) it is quite common that countries that start a war have a strong nationalistic streak and that (B) not everyone is in a mood for war (especially post-19th century); (C) played no role in Hitler's conquests towards the west and I think not much for the Poland invasion either; (D) I am not sure how the German army was overrated, and it certainly featured no major embarrassments or disappointments early in the war (unlike Russia); and (E) Belarus is entirely incomparable to 1930s/40s Italy in terms of geopolitical influence/power or military strength.
On a very high level, I can see the similarities, but if you consider each point properly, I think there is very little of substance to it.
It’s strange to say the least to compare as equal the Russian army‘s early performance with the Third Reich’s given the latter’s incredible advances early in that war. It alone almost nullifies the credibility of the argument. But I won’t delve into it more as we might be veering off-topic.
Exactly. I have been watching Netflix documentaries about WW2 recently, and they never mention that Germany's army was overrated. They seem to have overrated the power of their airforce, but for the most part, their losses (or disappointments; see Dunkirk) were due to tactical errors and the simply much larger capacity of the US and Russia in terms of manpower and weaponry.
Yeah - but then this has been a geopolitics discussion since @devilish's first post, so I suppose it'll all be moved over to that thread soon anyway.
The time for such comparisons, if there ever was any, is long gone. Even the fact that the WW2 had actually happened means that the current situation won’t be able to go exactly the same way, it’s existence in our past obviously affects our decisions drastically.
Not to say that the parallels between Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia are very far fetched though.
As for the more relevant news — it looks like the shit is finally going down… hopefully we’ll hear good news tomorrow, the Ukrainians are understandably not telling much and listening to Russian sources (they’ve already said that the counter-offensive has failed) is simply pointless.
Not to say that the parallels between Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia are very far fetched though.
As for the more relevant news — it looks like the shit is finally going down… hopefully we’ll hear good news tomorrow, the Ukrainians are understandably not telling much and listening to Russian sources (they’ve already said that the counter-offensive has failed) is simply pointless.
My initial point was to highlight the comparisons between the political scene during that time which lead to WW2 and the current situation. However I find myself thinking that there's more to that. Putin loves history. Its said that when he was a government official he had Peter the Great's photo on his desk. This passion was evident when he spoke about Ukraine and its role in the Russian empire. I believe that the guy's political strategy is influenced in some way to Hitler's successful (though tragic) 1938-1939 strategy which saw Germany seizing land while a complacent West looked the other way. Even now despite NATO showing some teeth he is still banking that Europe-US would lack the resolve to keep supporting Ukraine in the long term.
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According to Barbero, the Nazi army was so unprepared in entering Austria that 70% of its military vehicles broke down before they entered in Vienna.
Its at 12.00. Apologies but its in Italian.
That's an excellent comparison, as the Wehrmacht didn't really have to fight in Austria. This scenario looks a lot like what Putin hoped for in Ukraine, and maybe if Austria had fought back the outcome would have been similar to what is happening now.
As @stefan92 said, there was no fighting in Austria. What does it matter what kind of equipment they sent there? In Poland and in the west, they clearly didn't have such issues when they were actually doing a military in invasion.
This is exactly the history that Putin loves
The one that isn't able to withstand any real scrutiny. Peter the Great predates photography but roughly a century. I know that you didn't mean that but it was so fitting.So yeah, seriously, I wouldn't try to explain his actions by using actual history, considering that his biggest adviser on history is Vladimir Medinsky. I'm too lazy to properly explain this but they did spend the past 20 years rewriting history to fit their narrative.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/29/chris-hedges-ukraine-and-the-politics-of-permanent-war/
part of a lengthier article which has much less to do with ukraine than it does with the concept of permanent war, something the author has a long history of writing about from a critical viewpoint. of interest here is the above. apparently some of the equipment will take months, or much longer, to reach ukraine. added to everything else we know about the war so far and the idea that ukraine is a counter attack away from beating russia back or that the sanctions will sort it all out in a few weeks, which is said by some every few weeks, becomes ridiculous. we're in for a long war of attrition, which most probably already know. also not really a secret as many, high up on the american side, made it known they wanted this to be russia's afghanistan which is increasingly where things seem to be.
Russia's Afghanistan was Afghanistan.
soviets though wasn't it. but yeah, they mean it's russia's turn to bleed, after america's recent war there.