As Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his first visit to North Korea in more than two decades this week, his focus is widely seen to be on securing ongoing support from the hermit nation for his grinding war in Ukraine.
The other comments explain it enough I think, I’d just like to add that I think there is a natural reaction to underestimate the North Koreans even among leftists, but imho I think the DPRK would do better in a war against the US in Korea than even the Russians in Ukraine. Just for comparison sake the Russians have been practicing the war in Ukraine for 30 years pretty much, but the DPRK has been practicing since the 1950’s.
They keep claiming they have what they need to destroy Russia, but 2 years into the conflict, it still hasn't shown up, and Russia is even stronger. NATO doesn't have anything else they can part with.
UK admitted they have ammo for 3 weeks of warfare. German military is in shambles. French and Polish disarmed some of their units to send arms to Ukraine. US is not in such a great condition too, eating L after L from barely armed people like Taliban or Ansar Allah.
Sure, they may be well armed but for usual aerial terror campaigns (because not even for naval now), but absolutely not for land warfare.
If the United States had the capacity to make enough ammunition and ordnance to fight multiple wars at the same time, there would be enough people employed by these companies that you would probably personally know at least 1 of them.
All those places together do not even employ 400,000 people. I work in manufacturing and I don’t know a single person who works at these places. What I’m saying is so many new jobs would be created that MILLIONS of people would from that point on be in the defense sector making bombs and bullets. It’s not even comparable.
Walmart is a big employer. Can they supply war munitions? Being a big employer is genuinely irrelevant unless the bulk of those employees are making munitions
Look I'm not trying to be a dick here but are you being serious? The US can deliver some special, expensive wundermunitions via aircraft, if they have absolute air superiority. They only get that against shepherds. We're talking about enemies in 2024 who have more than just sheep maintenance capacity, so...
The US Navy is currently extremely overextended. They are currently losing what Navy officers have described as the largest naval battle the US has been in since WW2 against a nation whose navy consists of speedboats.
On the subject of supply or logistics, the US military basically lacks any of the transport/airlift capacity they had 25 years ago. That, to my mind, qualifies as a supply or logistics failure, given that such a capacity would be a basic necessity for any actual Army engagement in a conflict.
It really isn’t. For nato to be well armed they would have to dump massive amounts of money into manufacturing and even then it would take years to get up to speed. We have every indication that the US has given from their own stockpiles. Not all of it, but there really isn’t old stock to speak of.
The slow progress is very much intentional. Less casualties for Russia, more for Ukraine.
The digging in also was intentional, Ukraine was very open about its planned counter offensive. Russia dug in and let them come.
Don't get me wrong, there have been russian fuck ups, like, after the peace negotiation broke down, not taking into consideration that many contract soldiers might not renew their contracts.
It looks to me (I am not a reliable source) like Russia won the war immediately. There will never be a stable, western aligned government in Ukraine again. But there will be a huge buffer zone that keeps NATO far from anything Russia considers dangerous.
There will never be a stable, western-aligned government again. There's never gonna be a stable, eastern-aligned government either. The rightwing coups will never end. Ukraine is destroyed for the working class. The bourgeoisie might have one last chance to sell out and move to the US.
How you propose to reverse or even avoid this? Keel up before nazis and allow for genocide in Donbas and another yeltsinisation of Russia? This time maybe terminal since west seem helbent on balkanization of Russia.
Maybe or maybe not, if AFU really does break at some point the occupation process might not be as hard as you think, and afterwards - we also heard it about Chechenya that Russians will be drowned in blood there but nothing of sorts happened.
The other comments explain it enough I think, I’d just like to add that I think there is a natural reaction to underestimate the North Koreans even among leftists, but imho I think the DPRK would do better in a war against the US in Korea than even the Russians in Ukraine. Just for comparison sake the Russians have been practicing the war in Ukraine for 30 years pretty much, but the DPRK has been practicing since the 1950’s.
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Russia is doing extremely well. Victory has nothing to do with how much of an area you occupy.
you are measuring by territory, but attrition war suits their goal of demilitarizing the Ukraine more than holding land
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This may be true in several years, but if I'm not mistaken, all sources indicate that NATO's already been bled dry.
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They keep claiming they have what they need to destroy Russia, but 2 years into the conflict, it still hasn't shown up, and Russia is even stronger. NATO doesn't have anything else they can part with.
UK admitted they have ammo for 3 weeks of warfare. German military is in shambles. French and Polish disarmed some of their units to send arms to Ukraine. US is not in such a great condition too, eating L after L from barely armed people like Taliban or Ansar Allah.
Sure, they may be well armed but for usual aerial terror campaigns (because not even for naval now), but absolutely not for land warfare.
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If the United States had the capacity to make enough ammunition and ordnance to fight multiple wars at the same time, there would be enough people employed by these companies that you would probably personally know at least 1 of them.
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All those places together do not even employ 400,000 people. I work in manufacturing and I don’t know a single person who works at these places. What I’m saying is so many new jobs would be created that MILLIONS of people would from that point on be in the defense sector making bombs and bullets. It’s not even comparable.
Walmart is a big employer. Can they supply war munitions? Being a big employer is genuinely irrelevant unless the bulk of those employees are making munitions
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Look I'm not trying to be a dick here but are you being serious? The US can deliver some special, expensive wundermunitions via aircraft, if they have absolute air superiority. They only get that against shepherds. We're talking about enemies in 2024 who have more than just sheep maintenance capacity, so...
And yet they are currently already overextended.
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The US Navy is currently extremely overextended. They are currently losing what Navy officers have described as the largest naval battle the US has been in since WW2 against a nation whose navy consists of speedboats.
On the subject of supply or logistics, the US military basically lacks any of the transport/airlift capacity they had 25 years ago. That, to my mind, qualifies as a supply or logistics failure, given that such a capacity would be a basic necessity for any actual Army engagement in a conflict.
Just gonna add here that yes, the US military does have trouble with the basic requirements of a military. This does not help your argument.
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There's no question about that. The US military can do massacres, but it can't achieve military goals unless they're just "air based massacres".
It really isn’t. For nato to be well armed they would have to dump massive amounts of money into manufacturing and even then it would take years to get up to speed. We have every indication that the US has given from their own stockpiles. Not all of it, but there really isn’t old stock to speak of.
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That supply has long since started to dry up. All they get is below the rate at which they lose it. And they get less and less.
The slow progress is very much intentional. Less casualties for Russia, more for Ukraine. The digging in also was intentional, Ukraine was very open about its planned counter offensive. Russia dug in and let them come.
Don't get me wrong, there have been russian fuck ups, like, after the peace negotiation broke down, not taking into consideration that many contract soldiers might not renew their contracts.
It looks to me (I am not a reliable source) like Russia won the war immediately. There will never be a stable, western aligned government in Ukraine again. But there will be a huge buffer zone that keeps NATO far from anything Russia considers dangerous.
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There will never be a stable, western-aligned government again. There's never gonna be a stable, eastern-aligned government either. The rightwing coups will never end. Ukraine is destroyed for the working class. The bourgeoisie might have one last chance to sell out and move to the US.
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How you propose to reverse or even avoid this? Keel up before nazis and allow for genocide in Donbas and another yeltsinisation of Russia? This time maybe terminal since west seem helbent on balkanization of Russia.
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I'm more and more convinced least bad option is to just annex everything and try Chechenya method.
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Maybe or maybe not, if AFU really does break at some point the occupation process might not be as hard as you think, and afterwards - we also heard it about Chechenya that Russians will be drowned in blood there but nothing of sorts happened.