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Kostas K's avatar

There are some serious problems with the article.

First of all, it is plagued with straw man's arguments. Some examples are: "Putin’s reluctance to admit defeat even when his army suffers setbacks." and "We can see a similar mass army mentality displayed by Russia. It has always gone for the numbers, assuming a plentiful supply of troops and armour, sufficient to crush opponents, while adopting an unsentimental attitude to the human costs of war."

Let's do a reality check:

* When the initial 4 axis attack failed, Russia did not opt to reinforce each axis, but rather concentrate forces to more limited goals and territory.

* When the Ukranian offensives at Kherson and Kharkov bared fruit, Russia accepted the lost territory, the new reality and moved to mobilize 300K troops to be able to stay in the game.

* When the state of the troops at Kherson became unbearable, Putin did not order them to fight to the last man but rather moved them at the other side of the river and blew up the bridges.

* During '23, Russia used its military to create defensive lines and train while it mainly used the Wagner prisoners to attack Bahmut. It was not its military that was suffering the major losses at that battle.

Ukraine on the other hand decided again and again to fight to the last man every time a major city was under siege, either Mariupol, Bahmut or other ones. It consumed limited and valuable resources (especially its men) to fight basically hopeless battles instead of retreating to more defensive positions (from which it could inflict heavy casualties to the Russian army).

I really don't see how Russia is the side that is over-stretching its forces, trying to achieve goals for which it does not have the means or does not care for its military. On the contrary, it is Ukraine that has wasted many lives in lost battles.

Regarding the current offensive, the author seems to examine the whole operation as if only ammo and tanks are the things that are expended. On the contrary, what is more important is the men dying and injured in the offensive.

You cannot create an offensive force within months, it takes years of training and experience. What is far easier is to have a large defensive/territorial defense force. What this means is that Ukraine is using up resources it cannot replace. It might be able to mount a sufficient defense, even if its offensive utterly fails, but that does not mean that it only needs to get a few more rounds of ammo and wait for the weather to clear in order to launch its next summer offensive. Military personnel capable of conducting combined arms offensive operations does not grow on trees.

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Martin Hughes's avatar

The Washington Post is playing an important part in all this, as you note. I am a subscriber - it’s a way to keep in touch with the world of my American family. The Post is quietly committed, I think, to a Land for Peace deal as soon as possible and it interprets events in that spirit. What most concerns is that, since they obviously have friends in the highest places, they may be reflecting the real policy preferences of Biden and his government

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