I also don't know why they keep saying it's going to be a stalemate, Russia is already taking kilometres on the north which is more than Ukraine managed to take during the whole two months now.
Once the offensive burns itself out, it's almost certain that Russia will start a serious offensive of their own.
Or more accurately, they knew Ukraine would never win, but they could still profit. They didn't care.
I think most or many of these politicians and weapons contractors genuinely believe(d) that the Ukranazis can win, they are still just coping, and it ultimately doesn't matter if Ukraine wins or not to them, but of course they would prefer a victory.
I do wonder now actually. Looking back at the early days of the Iraq war, the yanks seemed to be honestly convinced that their "shock and awe" would win the war in a matter of weeks. That they would face no real opposition and the Iraqi people would just roll over and let them steal their resources.
And in turn with this war, the western narrative has always been "Russia is behaving like the US did in Iraq" when they never did, specifically because they've learned from that conflict and learned what not to do. The US meanwhile doesn't seem to have learned a damn thing.
The thing with the US is that we know the people behind the scenes don't gaf who wins or how long it takes so long as they can sell as many arms as possible in this war and the next one.
But if the generals agreed, that wars don't need to be won, there are better ways of wasting weapons shooting at nothing. And if the politicians agreed, they would still have to try to or give the appearance of winning if they want to be voted in again. (Of course, voter-gullibility is reliable to some extent.) If the public agreed, they wouldn't get so emotional about Darth Potter and the Infinity Avenger.
There are glaring contradictions in the west's war plans. The public, the arms dealers, the military, the politicians, the fossil execs, etc, all have different interests (some slightly different, some very different). But nobody doesn't want victory/almost everyone would be happy with victory.
They might laugh when they lose and still make a killing in profit. But I wouldn't say they set out to lose. At the same time, the exceptionalism runs deep and they massively overestimate their abilities. Every time, even when they have the advantage.
I'm rambling now and no longer sure what I was trying to say. Maybe just that the western military model is riddled with contradictions, which they've managed to keep at bay for a long time. But facing Russia in Ukraine may be too much to deal with.
No it's fine, you're making sense. The US military industrial complex is filled with a lot of different people with different interests. Some only focused on short term profit, some on longer term profit. Losing a war now means greater long term profit for some, and less for others, winning a war flips those two groups. So it seems chaotic and self-contradictory because it isn't a monolith, with lots of different groups vying for power. And of course, they're all human, and make human mistakes, errors and overestimates of their own strength. So there are probably plenty who honestly believed that western weapons would win easily, and those that didn't.
The one thing they do seem to be lacking is anyone who actually understands how dangerously ineffective their "wars for profit" system is, probably because anyone who points that out doesn't end up in the higher echelons of a military production company.
Are the NATO imperialists now denying their previous claims about mass defections from Russia side, logistic problem of Russians, outdated weaponry from Russian military, or the rediculously expensive military supply from the Western European diaspora to Ukraine? At least they admited that Putin had the ability to takeover all of Ukraine, and that Putin's lack of motive to occupy Ukraine and his faithfulness to his claim to protect the rebelling states in Ukraine are the reasons for the stalemate.
Don't be silly! They never said any of that! Ghost of Kiev? Why that was just a metaphor for...uhh...you damn tankies just don't get it! History and reality aren't important, what is really important is that this Star War is fought between the Jedi and the Sith and the Jedi always win, so it doesn't matter how many things we make up about it, good guys always win and we've deemed ourselves the good guys! You're all morons for caring about reality and material conditions!
the Jedi always win
cries in Galactic Republic
The Jedi were a bunch of moralizing libs. Qui-Gon was the only one of them who really got it.
Putin and Russia are now claiming what I saw several people mention as a possibility many months ago, namely that Poland will intervene once the Russian offensive gets started.
The US will probably let them do so because Putin said he's cool with it and it will guarantee they can seize some Ukrainian assets and space to subject to neo-liberal hell to try and pay off all the money they spent.
The claim being that Poland will invade (with or without Zelenski's approval) and annex a part of the the western country that they consider historically theirs (realistically more than that really because why not). They'll probably send in NATO units after a time and basically carve the country in half. The question is, if this happens how soon and will they push to take a larger chunk of the country that might place them in direct conflict with Russian troops just to get that border closer to Russia (NATO's goal or one of them afterall) or will they happily just occupy the western half, militarize it and let Russia have the current eastern annexed territories plus maybe a bit more? And will there still be a Ukraine, like with Kiev and this weird slice of vertical land sandwiched between areas occupied by Russia and Poland/NATO? Or will it entirely be dissolved into new Polish lands (whether they formally do this or claim they're just holding onto it for them while in practice ruling it with no intent to ever give it autonomy)?
Poles are a bit unhinged to be honest in the things they say. The anti-communism reactionary fever they have has made them deranged and I honestly worry they'll try something like invading Belarus or fighting directly with Russia. US doesn't want this as it kiboshed their claims that stray Ukraine air defense missile that landed in Poland was Russian really quick but if Polish troops are eyeball to eyeball with Russian ones or on the border of Belarus they might not be able to stop them. Especially if Wagner decides to go on the offensive (RT recently reported that Lukashenko has said he worries about them) and I still think Wagner is mercenary enough that if someone were to pay them to stage an attack to allow a response that they might do so.
If this plays out, it will be interesting to see how reactionaries talk about NATO annexation after reducing Russia's motive to a land grab. I say interesting. What I mean is, it'll never come up unless an anti-Imperialist brings it up. And then they'll misuse a logical fallacy to avoid admitting that NATO is a fuck.
Oh they'll claim NATO had to do it, that NATO intervened to save the poor Ukrainians, that they now live under glorious Polish/NATO rule instead of evil Putler rule and how much better their lives are and how actually they should have pushed further in and pushed the Russians out entirely.
And then they will get back to mentioning 17.09.1939 with straight face again.
I'm not sure about that, but we are right now in the phase of manufacturing consent for intervention. Not sure exactly how that intervention would look since it's rather unspecified now, but grabbing part of Ukraine is probable. No idea if it will work, up to last year i would say that revanchism for "kresy" is dead and officially opposed by every government since 1945 including the bourgeois ones but here we are again. They can also just go and do it regardless of popular support.
On a side note, Russia recently warned Poland that acts of hostility against Belarus are acts of hostility against Russia, so they might suspect something more?
Courage is definitely a substitute for weapons and training in a modern military.
What they obviously needed was to draft Mel Gibson to give them a rousing speech before sending them into the meat grinder. That would have changed everything.