Lost in the awfulness of this entire pointless genocidal vanity revenge project is just how historically badly it is going for Russia. From an initial goal of total conquest, in a month their truce startping point has slid from 1) Total Capitulation to 2) All 4 'annexed' regions plus Crimea, disarmament & constitutional neutrality to 3) Give us Donbas, and maybe our stooges in the U.N. can run Ukraine to 4) Please freeze the lines and give us something, and stop hitting our gas facilities. Trump, as always, overplayed his hand with leverage he doesn't actually have, and now has nearly no sway over Ukraine - Zelensky is tellin him flat 'No'. European and domestic support is probably enough to keep Russia from any meaningful strategic wins at this point against a severaly degraded and over rated Russian army.

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[–] TwinkleToes@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Just how bad things are for Russia is nearly impossible to grasp in the short term. They can't advance in any meaningful way. That is, after having:

Squandered the soviet hardware stockpile inheritance
Destroyed the primary oil & gas market
Pissed away the 30 year war chest
Shown their army and it's equipment to be hot garbage.
Become junior vassal to China in the anti-west alliance of authoritarian shitholes
Lost Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran got smoked by Israel in all-out missile exchanges.
Lost power projection into the Black Sea and thus Mediterranean
Lost influence over the Central Asian republics to China.
Can refuse no demand China makes going forward
Lost significant potion of the strategic bomber fleet. And the Black Sea Fleet.
Lost any political credibility going forward
Have assembled a shitty coalition of corrupt ally countries that only run on bribes
Their entire Quantity > Quality Horde War philosophy is shown to be untrue, whether about men or machines.

The USSR used to have idelogical allies. Useful idiots in the west who would sell secrets to them for anti-capitalist sentiment. These days, it's plain to see they are simply a debauched, corrupt mafia. That's enough for some people, but maybe(?) less useful as a tool for finding new agents to do their bidding when money is the only motivator.

It's not all bad for them - they control the U.S. Emperor and his party - just imagine the kompromat they have on the entire GOP going forward. And they are ultimately best at corrosive disinformation, and are having great success farting up democracies with their right wing populist franchises across the West. That's probably where they will focus their energy going forward after having wasted their army in Ukraine.