idk how the west will respond to this
The reservists in Russia he is calling up are mostly 40-60 year olds who have been out of the military for decades. I would wager more than half of them wouldn't pass any sort of physical. Without a full mobilization by Russia that draws up on younger recruits and the time to train them this is just feeding the quagmire. Putin is too scared to do that so he is now going to send grandfathers to die.
Those referendum are going to be used by the West to increase the type of weapon systems they give Ukraine. F-16s and M1 Abrams are going to be next - the US has 1000's of both in long term storage.
The F-16s in particular are only as good as the pilots. I don't think there is enough time to get Ukraine up to speed in that aircraft and its systems and be any use in the air.
M1 Abrams are also ~1.5-2x the weight of Russian tanks. Made for fighting and defending in Western Europe not storming into Eastern Europe.
In Eastern Europe those M1s are as likely as a vampire to survive crossing significant amounts of water.
Without a full mobilization by Russia that draws up on younger recruits and the time to train them this is just feeding the quagmire.
Oddly enough Gennedy Zyuganov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, is calling for full mobilization. Which is significantly more hawkish on the Ukraine question than what Putin wants. While younger CPRF members were against this war, Zyuganov was not, and his position seems to be, "if we're gonna do this, we can't half-ass it."
https://www.moonofalabama.org/ is one I've seen recommended here.
I find interviews with Ukrainian Civilians in the East to be pretty reliable, since they are the biggest victims and getting caught in the crossfire of both armies. They have been targeted for their Russian language between 2014-2022, and have been shelled, and most of them voted for Zelensky, yet many of them want independence. They live in the theater of the war. Patrick Lancaster did a lot of interviews with Donbass civilians, especially in Mariupol after all the fighting back in April, but people in the west dismiss him as a Russian shill. Still the people in the interviews seem sincere, and the editing in the interviews is significantly less than what you get from Russian or American mainstream media.
as for who is "winning" the war? Obviously only the people who profit from it.
Defense politics Asia does a good job of being fairly neutral. He gets called pro-Russian by pro-Ukrainians but that is just because reality is biased towards the Russia.
best case it's like the crimean one where western polling agencies will confirm the popular sentiment, if not the literal vote, and :brainworms: people will move goalposts or try to gaslight with arguments that you can turn around and apply to hawaii and puerto rico etc.
Yeah probably. Who would let a war be lost by a vote? That would be stupid.
