From what I've read, Avdevka was the most heavily fortified position Ukraine had in Donbass. Now that it's fallen there's no comparable position to fall back to. So, we might end up seeing significant Russian advances in the near future.
I'm a little more conservative in my expectations, at least for the time being, but i do think that the fighting capacity of the AFU has become even more degraded as a result of this battle. Every time they go through a meat grinder like this they lose a big chunk of their best soldiers and equipment which they cannot replace.
Imo more important than the loss of one fortified area is that this will have a similar effect as Bakhmut did, to weaken their capabilities overall. Now increasingly we see them struggle to defend the entire line of contact. They will pull resources from one place to defend another and inevitably the Russians will break through somewhere.
It is reasonable to expect that eventually a tipping point of collapse will be reached but it is impossible to predict when that is.
My question is, do Russia even want to take big advances? They never do it even when opportunity arise.
I think Russia invaded to keep Ukraine out of NATO, protect ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, and probably at least a bit because a short, victorious war is usually good for those in power.
If these were their goals, they probably want a rump Ukraine with a friendly government instead of directly ruling a bunch of hostile people in the western part of the country.
Fair enough, i also think they won't annex entire Ukraine, but for example Kharkov and Odessa and coast up to Moldova is also full of the Russian speaking population that protested against Maidan and always voted nearly same as Donbas - and annexation of those parts would be sensible for strategic, economic and political reasons.
Hope not, the longer this war goes on the weaker US hegemony gets.
My brother in Christ, look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what it means to be a communist.
While it should include a desire to see the melting away of the state, the goal is emancipation from the terror, death, and destruction the state imposes.
Jesus, dude. We shall make no excuses for the terror is supposed to be reserved for the capitalists and imperialists, not for the proles, which are the ones doing a lot of the dying in this conflict propagated by the West.
"We shall make no excuses for the terror" is a memorable turn of phase but not an actual principle of communism, as evidenced by the fact that the immediate context of the quote makes an excuse for the terror:
When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.
It's saying revolutionary violence directed at overturning oppressive conditions is justified by the violence of oppression (see also Mark Twain's "two reigns of terror" quote). It is not saying "we'll be as violent as we want against whoever we want with no need to justify our actions."
It's borderline just sadism to hope that more Ukrainians die for the sake of taking up more US money. The US being forced to concede on Ukraine is better for the world and for the non-Nazi survivors of this stupid war.
Not borderline, it's just full on sadism. It's not as if he's going to go fight in the war himself if he cares so much about ending US hegemony.
Honestly, I kind of get it. The Ukrainians had been using Avdiivka as a base to shell civilians since 2014. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, and the fleeing Ukrops are caught (according to some reports) in a highway of death type situation, it's tempting to cheer and hope that all the people who supported the junta get the same treatment.
But indulging that kind of feeling is unworthy of a communist.
I don't really see the psychological attraction you're referring to either, tbh; it mainly strikes me as a form of self-indulgent sadism one can only engage in when the war is a highly abstracted team sport being viewed from the comfort of an armchair in another part of the world.
The average Ukrainian soldier is a prole who is drafted into the war and doesn't want to be there. You might think they hold reactionary opinions (and many of them undoubtedly do), but that's no basis for any ethically or politically coherent position when it comes to how to deal with the issue. It's the obligation of communists to educate their fellow working class members in order to deal with those reactionary tendencies.
This of course doesn't apply as much to the openly and explicity fascist and neonazi presences in the Ukrainian military and the fascist and oligarchic forces controlling the state. They don't really deserve much time or mercy.
Agreed, and it's much better to let the fascists face an orderly reprisal for their crimes rather than keep fighting and be given the opportunity to kill more soldiers.
Do you realize how many wars the US have lost since the last century?
The entire point of the Ukraine war is to destroy Europe, and they have done it.
Although it might have been good to destroy Russia at the same time as well, a Russia-China alliance is nowhere near as scary to the America capital as a Europe-Russia-China alliance against the US alone. The US was doing what it needed to position itself strategically at a level that it feels confident enough to take on China.
In all fairness, the USA has severely reduced its spending in keeping the UKR meat shields marching towards their doom (at least the last I've heard). Any continuation of the conflict isn't going to hurt the USA any more than it already has.
Is it weaker though? The US seems to be using this as a pretense to give money to the MIC and scale up production, there's a desert of already paid for equipment they're not sending.
It's weaker because it pushed Russia out of the petrodollar and allowed other countries to trade in other currencies. Maintaining the petrodollar is the only way the US can afford it's military. Sure, they can print infinite money anyway, but at some point the emptiness of those dollars will become clearer and clearer. It'll take decades to ramp up military production to match Russia, not to mention China. All the while, it's allies are fast losing access to affordable energy. The MIC might get bigger in the meantime but a lot of that will be inflated prices rather than material growth.
You are correct in a sense. US has weakened itself beyond anyone could have imagined in 19-20th century.
What was the point of trying to hold it for ten days after they lost control of the roads in and out, and after the head of the armed forces was fired for trying to retreat. Was the ability to shell civilians in Donetsk really worth that?
Shit, the "stabbed in the back" myth is practically going to write itself when this is all over.
Was the ability to shell civilians in Donetsk really worth that?
I wouldn't be surprised if that would really be the reason, the attacks continued through entire war, using even the most precious and scarce weapons which could be used against military targets with better outcome instead, so i assume they were very high priority.
What happened to all the Azov fighters that were deployed there? Retreated or captured?
A lot of the ones sent to try and stop the collapse apparently refused to follow orders and didn't even go in once they saw how bad the situation was. (Once again showing that Nazis are cowards who are only "brave" when they can brutalize and murder the defenseless with impunity.) Of the ones who were already in the city some managed to retreat but a lot didn't make it since the retreat routes were under heavy Russian fire. By all accounts Ukraine experienced the highest losses in a single day of the entire war, worse than even Bakhmut. Virtually all of the wounded were left behind along with most of the equipment.
I guess the institutional memory of going into Avdiivka to kill helpless civilians for years on end bit them in the ass when they faced real opposition. No sympathy for that paramilitary group specifically no matter what happens to them.
It's not a paramilitary group anymore, it's an official part of the Ukrainian armed forces. There is little difference anymore between Azov and the rest of the AFU. Their ideology has become widely adopted in the entire army while at the same time these units once considered elite lost most of their best trained and most experienced core of soldiers in Mariupol and Bakhmut.
For all intents and purposes Azov is now indistinguishable from any other formation in the AFU.
I knew that they got incorporated into the regular military to receive further weaponry, funding, and personnel, but I thought they maintained their distinct "identity."
It's hard to get news in English so I didn't know that they're basically just another brigade of the AFU at this point. Mariupol really was the end of them huh.
Last I saw, they've repeated their performance in Mariupol by hiding in a basement of the coke plant. 😂
What does this mean for Russia, Ukraine, the war, and the world at large?
