zompist wrote: ↑Wed Sep 30, 2026 5:03 pm
jcb wrote: ↑Wed Sep 30, 2026 8:41 am
Russia will not sit idly by. I expect them to replicate, innovate, and mass produce the technology, just like they've already done with drones.
Of course both sides are trying to make advances. The Ukrainians seem to make them faster, though. And if Russia's oil export capacity is devastated, so is its ability to buy Chinese components.
I know that Western news outlets always present Ukraine as winning, and Russia as about to collapse,
I have the complete opposite impression: the Western news media is always predicting massive Russian breakthroughs, which either don't happen or are stategically meaningless, and consume thousands of troops
per day.
This is confirmed by the fact that you were under the impression that Russia is "slowly gaining ground". In fact it looks like Ukraine reversed a year of Russian gains.
The scale of both Russia and Ukrainian operation is small; please don't take this as a statement that Ukraine is about to kick Russia out of its territory. If only.
(1) I'm watching more stuff on YouTube than from national broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC), so maybe that's why our impressions are different.
(2) Yes, the amount of troops that Russia loses per day is astonishing.
(3) Yes, I've learned that my impression was a few months out of date.
(4) I think that perhaps we're using different definitions of "winning". You're using it on a shorter timescale, and I'm using it on a longer one.
But even if the war stopped (with a ceasefire) right now, I wouldn't say that either side "won". Russia has lost an enormous amount of soldiers, gained a small amount of land compared to its vast holdings in Siberia, has been hit with heavy sanctions that will probably last for the next couple decades, and failed to remove or replace the pro-Western Ukrainian government. Ukraine has lost a large amount of soldiers, lost 20% of its land, has a devastated economy, and has no security guarantee from NATO to prevent this from happening again in the future. Both sides are worse off compared to before the war.
