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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[–] resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Worked great in Korea. And Vietnam. And Afghanistan.

Not sure if I'm being sarcastic.

Didn't work out great for those hosting the cold war pissing contests, anyways.

[–] TwinkleToes@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Have to constantly remind myself - this is not where Russia wanted to be. And that's a good thing, even with all the suffering in mind.

We'd all like to have a movie-style exploding Death Star style ending where a fleet of A-10's and F-35's comes screaming across the horizon to the soundtrack of Rock You Like A Hurricane, and the Russians scurry back to mordor, but that's not realistic.

Russia has effectively been stopped. They are the ones talking peace terms. Their negotiating position went from TOTAL CAPITULATION to 4 ANNEXED REGIONS, DISARMAMENT & NEUTRALITY to 4 ANNEXED REGIONS PLUS CRIMEA to "Let us keep what we have", in about 6 weeks' time. They aren't mobilzing on a wide scale anymore, they are only continuing with terror bombing, and they're taking counterpunches whose effects are impossible to hide even from their flaccid sheep population.

This is the endgame. Which is rarely viscerally satisfying to either side. The fact that Zelensky can reply with a flat "No" to absurd Russian & Trumpian demands to cede territory means that Ukraine is in a better position than Russia. Now, and going forward.