Declining population too. They are expected to drop down the list in the next ten years in terms of GDP and that was before this war.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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Declining population too. They are expected to drop down the list in the next ten years in terms of GDP and that was before this war.
Got a bit of a live one here.
Please use the Geopolitics thread for your Iraq discussion.
Are they? By who, you?
Why is it always @Raoul who attracts the weirdest ire 
?
?He's definitely stepped up and is playing the role of motivational war leader perfectly.
Why is it always @Raoul who attracts the weirdest ire
Some of these posters have me longing for the early good old days of this thread when Florida Man said nothing will happen in Ukraine.
A super army that should be respected!!
Sure has been a long three-ish weeks.
By some in this thread who said Putin's attack on Ukraine isn't that bad because 70 years ago, the USA dropped 2 bombs on Japan.
Anyway, i won't engage in this discussion any more, the poster doesn't make sense.
Proceeds to crash plane into Kremlin, roll credits.
Reason enough for me to not identify as GermanAh feck
What the feck is wrong with you? You seem to believe that a free and democratic nation should just roll over and surrender to tyranny and dictatorship. No, they will - and should - fight back. And other free and democratic nations should do everything they can, short of risking a nuclear WWIII, to help them in that fight.
Otherwise it won't end with Ukraine. Moldova would be next.
...because Ukraine is part of nato of course.
Ukranians will fight, but in the end they will fail. It may take weeks, months, even years, but Putin won't stop until he has Ukraine. Everything we've seen in the past from him shows that he hate showing weakness, he hates not getting the outcome he wants and he will do whatever it takes to get there.
The only way to stop that is if the west provides enough to counter Russia's superior military capability, particularly in the skies, but it doesn't look like they'll even provide those jets Poland wanted to send. So in the end Ukraine will fight nobly, Ukraine will fight bloodily, and Ukraine will fall. They will lose a lot for nothing.
At that point you would wonder if it's simply better to just give up and accept your fate instead of all the bloodshed. If the west doesn't want to get involved due to the risk of nuclear warfare then there is no outcome other than Ukraine falling. And other non-Nato European countries will likely be next if Putin lives long enough, Maldova is almost certainly guaranteed, and Finland and Sweden are very feasible targets as Nato wouldn't get involved. The only saving grace is that Putin is already quite old. Had he been 10 years younger you'd almost certainly be looking at further invasions, and the question you'd have to ask is at what point do you intervene to stop the madness. Instead it looks as though Ukraine won't be the Czechoslovakia of WW2, but rather just a sacrificial lamb.
The only way to stop that is if the west provides enough to counter Russia's superior military capability, particularly in the skies, but it doesn't look like they'll even provide those jets Poland wanted to send. So in the end Ukraine will fight nobly, Ukraine will fight bloodily, and Ukraine will fall. They will lose a lot for nothing.
At that point you would wonder if it's simply better to just give up and accept your fate instead of all the bloodshed. If the west doesn't want to get involved due to the risk of nuclear warfare then there is no outcome other than Ukraine falling. And other non-Nato European countries will likely be next if Putin lives long enough, Maldova is almost certainly guaranteed, and Finland and Sweden are very feasible targets as Nato wouldn't get involved. The only saving grace is that Putin is already quite old. Had he been 10 years younger you'd almost certainly be looking at further invasions, and the question you'd have to ask is at what point do you intervene to stop the madness. Instead it looks as though Ukraine won't be the Czechoslovakia of WW2, but rather just a sacrificial lamb.
The Russian economy will collapse soon, which will make it hard for Putin to continue in Ukraine.
Mate, you really should spend more time on research. Most of the things you say or assume are wrong, plain and simple.
Russia in no meaningful way could invade all those countries.
He'd have to do it himself a few weeks down the road. Putin most likely had already lost the war before the first bullet was fired.
Some of you really do have a problem realizing the real strength of Russian military. There's NO way on earth they can at the same time hold Ukraine and invade a bunch of other countries. You're also totally setting aside the impact of the economic sanctions.
Putin might not like showing weakness but at one point he might decide that he can still pretend he fulfilled his mission by "neutralizing" Dombas, that could be something negociators can work with even if it would be terrible for Ukraine. There's absolutely no guarantee that Ukraine will fall, especially if the russian army needs to go further west. The can barely secure convoys to Kyiv, lets see how they do if they have to go all to way to Lviv.
It's like whack-a-mole in here!
Oh man... so many false assumptions in your post.
Currently it looks like Russia isn't able to take Ukraine by force. The amount of anti-tank weapons delivered to Ukraine and still well distributed means that they will be able to still resist. And if they keep on at the current rate, it will take 8 weeks until Russia has no armoured vehicles left. None at all. The Russian government can't allow this, as this would effectively mean that they have no options to fight a conventional war any more. Planes and helicopters don't appear to be lost at the same rate, so are not as critical, but the trend looks similar. Russia loses it's ability to protect what it conquered elsewhere. Japan already makes some noise, Georgia might also fancy retaking it's lost provinces and in the current situation Russia can't resupply their forces in Syria and might finally lose there
Will it be bloody? Yes, it will, the longer it takes, the more Ukrainians will die. But can they win the war and repel the attack? It is quite likely they will be able to.
And at the same time Russia lost it's army, it will also have lost it's economy. The only thing left would be the nuclear option, and that would mean losing everybody's live. Putin needs a way to get out of this quickly while saving his face, or he won't survive this (maybe even literally). He won't get the outcome he wants, and if the rumours about him replacing intelligence agency leaders and generals it looks like he realizes this now.
Even if Ukraine should fall, he might only take on Moldova. Sweden and Finland are protected by EU treaty, going to war with one of them means going to war with the whole EU, and this would potentially be the nuclear war nobody wants.
And overall, when do you stop madness? As early as possible. And you don't bow to terrorists, you fight them
Uncle Vlad’s polonium tea is world famous!
Time is not on his side. The Russian military attrition rate is simply unsustainable and is only likely to accelerate from here on. And there's a limit to how long you can keep troops in the field, in freezing conditions, with inadequate supplies and no rotational replacements. Putin doesn't have those replacements.
If it continues for another month I won't be surprised if Russian commanders in the field simply refuse to follow his orders, pick up sticks and withdraw. At which point Putin's goose is cooked and I don't see how he could remain in office having lost the support of the military.
It won't. The sanctions will make the economy contract, but a collapse is nowhere near. In fact most of the sanctions aren't really that big of a deal, the most damaging ones long-term will be being barred and excluded from all the cultural events. Most estimates of the contraction to the economy is around 7%, and of course in terms of the federal budget a huge % of that comes oil and gas, which even if Europe cuts down own will simply be sold to the rest of the world at slightly lower prices.
All 3 would be easier than Ukraine is.
We shall see. As much as I wish Ukraine could hold them out, I don't see how it's feasible in any way. Mariupol will fall, there's no way it won't. It's already a dead city. Kharkiv will follow, and the Russians will push inland. Holding a city isn't particularly hard once you've conquered it - you replace the police force with your own, the administration etc - there'll be no one left to resist but ordinary people, who won't want to fight against an army for nothing. It may take longer than initially thought but those cities will soon go the way Kherson has. As shown there, once you have the city, there's no more military encounters and you really don't need much man strength to hold the city.
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Either way, the sanctions will cripple the economy to where Putin won't have the resources to fight a foreign war. He's already skint on equipment, morale, and soldiers to where he's having to scramble to import Syrians from the Middle East to make up for a lack of competence of his own military. The sanctions will paralyize Russia from within very soon and that will be that.
And as a lot of much more clued in guys have already pointed out; Russia are not great at fighting local conflicts but mid to long range it will be a different story.
You’re delusional if you think russia could fight a two front war, let alone more. This isn’t CoD.
I don't think things are nearly as bad as has often been portrayed in western media. A couple of thousand soldiers dead, it's nothing really in the grand scheme of things. Having air superiority means you can do pretty much what you want, it's why pretty much every Ukrainian official quoted in the news recently mentions the need for the no fly zone.
A month or two is nothing either, the Russians lost 20 million in WW2 in battles that lasted through cold snowy winters.. The problem is when you control the media, the politicians and pretty much the whole of society, you can control whatever narrative you want. If Russia loses a 100,000 soliders? Another 100,000 will simply be told to defend the motherland against the Ukranian nazi invaders in their place.
At this point I have to wonder what planet you’ve been living on?
Russia has essentially all of its military in Ukraine at the moment and 16 days in still has no control of the country.
The economy is collapsing and when it’s reserves run out it will fall hard to the floor.
Finally there’s been plenty of open descent from state television and influential individuals from within Russia about the conflict and even more mass public protests.
The wheels are slowly falling off this. To suggest they could take and hold Ukraine THEN move on to Finland and other surrounding non NATO countries is utterly ridiculous when looking at the above facts.
For any any cities they take they are going to have to leave men behind to fight insurgents. Insurgents who look like them, can probably speak like them and who can move largely undetected and at will. It will make Vietnam and Afghanistan look like positive military operations.
The Russian army is on a hiding to nothing, much like the Russian economy.
It’s struggling in a one front war that it prepared for months in advance against a non super power.
This is costing millions to finance as it is and is in no way sustainable when you consider the collapse of the Ruble and the economy
Err, the contraction to their economy is not going to be 7%. 7% is the estimated GDP contraction, from a 2% growth expectation earlier so that's a 9 points drop. But most importantly, inflation is expected to rise between 15 and 20%. Those 2 combined are a recipe for economic disaster. And I dont think I need to explain how selling gas to other countries is basically impossible for obvious geographical reasons, except for China but they don't need Russian gas.
While a couple of thousand soldiers might not be a lot for the Russians, their lost equipment is a far bigger problem. We have already seen a wild mix of civilian vehicles and extremely old stuff transported to the Russian border (and therefore most likely to be used), as the Russians have massive logistics problems. They can't sustainably provide their troops with fuel, ammunition and basic stuff like food. And they barely moved into the country, yet are already in massive trouble in that regard.
And Russian air superiority is a myth. While it is surely true that they are stronger in the air, the Ukrainians are still operating, especially their drones. And the Russians still don't dare to use their strategic Tupolev bombers, they are still limited to low altitude attacks with their Suchois.