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Russia Has Already Lost the War
Right-wing apologists for Putin have been saying that Russia will eventually win the war in Ukraine. �They argue that Russia will prevail because they have a larger population, economy, and military ...
www.dailykos.com
Right-wing apologists for Putin have been saying that Russia will eventually win the war in Ukraine. They argue that Russia will prevail because they have a larger population, economy, and military than Ukraine. That may all be true, but what is also true is that the Ukraine war has turned into an unmitigated disaster for Russia.
Putin’s vanity project of trying to seize Ukraine in three days failed miserably. Instead of admitting defeat, Putin doubled down and essentially committed the Russian military to fight an attritional campaign against Ukraine.
Putin has only succeeded in attritting the Russian military. Their losses have been nothing short of catastrophic. Undermanned and outgunned, the Ukrainian military has managed (if the numbers are to be believed) to kill or wounded over 560,000 soldiers, destroyed over 15,000 artillery systems, 8,000 tanks, 15,000 armored personnel vehicles, as well more than 22,000 pieces of other ground-based equipment. This totals over 60,000 pieces of equipment lost. The Russians also lost 28 ships to a country with no Navy. In addition, Russia has lost 361 aircraft and 326 helicopters in the bargain. Even if these numbers have been inflated, cutting the estimates of losses in half still would yield staggering results.
The Russian military has only made minimal advances across the front and is no closer to a breakthrough. The Russians have resorted to using vengeance weapons of rockets, glide bombs, and drones against Ukrainian civilians to break their spirit. Any student of military history will tell you that vengeance weapons only steel the population's resolve.
Putin and his people claim that Russia will not stop fighting until they conquer all of Ukraine. But this goal is totally unrealistic. They don’t have the money or the troops to secure a country of over 37 million people that will be very hostile to a Russian occupation.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Russia sends over a thousand soldiers to be wounded or killed and loses well over a hundred pieces of equipment every single day. For their effort, the Russians seize a bombed-out non-strategic hamlet or town if they make any advances at all; ergo, the Russian army can’t make major advances, and Putin won’t retreat because he can’t admit defeat.