Oh that's what the AK stands for in your username! I just thought you were

RUS / UKR: UKR close to cracking - Last chance for negotiated peace?

RememberTheDanny · 2025-08-14T17:15:57.311Z

To preempt the chimps who cry out ‘agent of Putin’ to anyone who dares to post anything on TNet that isn’t ’Ukraine needs to keep fighting until Russia backs away and goes home,’ reasoned perspectives on the trajectory of the UKR / RUS war shouldn’t be dismissed because the chimps don’t like the information. Sober minds on TNet have long opined that Zelenskyy’s handlers in the EU are not helping Ukraine by their insistence that Ukraine keep fighting. (There are still many people in positions of power in America who mistakenly still endorse continued fighting. (?) Is Marco Rubio quietly among them?) When Russia grinds out a few more battlefield victories, then it may be too late for Ukraine to wiggle in a ‘negotiated’ settlement that entails anything other than Ukraine giving up their four eastern-most oblasts -&- renouncing any future claims to Crimea. (It may already be too late, but there’s still a chance for a negotiated settlement in which Ukraine’s territorial losses would be ~ limited to those territories which Russia ends up occupying as if the day that the peace deal gets executed.) https://bigserge.substack.com/p/scraping-the-barrel-attrition-and

RememberTheDanny

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Re: Great. Great stuff. A few questions:

Aug 14, 2025, 6:29 PM [ in reply to Great. Great stuff. A few questions: ]

Among those changes in Russian control of Ukrainian territories, as per the various maps that you’ve shared, the two of relevance are the Nov 2022 and July 2025 maps. Prior to Nov 2022, the war had not yet finished evolving from a war of movement to a war of position. Along with the end of that period of ‘war of movement’ came the factor that is driving the gradually increasing motivation for a peace agreement as opposed to a ‘total victory’ outcome: the war of attrition.

Ukraine has been losing the war of attrition ever since the failure of the much vaunted ‘summer counteroffensive of 2023.’ Back then, Ukraine loaded up for an all out assault on what had become (as of summer 2023) Russia’s highly developed, modern technology (yes, use of the term ‘modern technology’ sounds absurd in this context) fixed position defenses. These ‘fixed position’ defenses included the basic framework of ancient defensive warfare impediments to the attacking forces such as trenches (no longer just simple ditches with the dug-up earth piled in front of the ditches for shielding the musket wielding defenders as dug by babushka wearing Russian women, but rather several-yards-deep underground tunnels … with walls and ceilings reinforced with engineered grades of concrete), extensive subterranean interconnectivity paths, with those trench systems dug in considerable depth, and with those trenches being large enough to move up to medium-scale rocket launchers, antitank guns, and large scale machine guns. All possessing modern communications capabilities so that the Russian could coordinate their defensive fire and move soldiers back and forth according to locations where Ukraine had massed their offensive efforts. Ukrainian drone weaponry was neutralized to some degree by the Russian fixed position defenses, whereas the Ukrainian attackers were out in the wide open air, and thus highly vulnerable to not just Russian drones, but also to Russian artillery. For those Ukrainian soldiers who survived the Russian drones & artillery, they then faced the task of rooting out the Russian soldiers from their underground network of tunnels.

Despite heroic efforts (which everyone had hoped would succeed, but for which sober observers placed low odds of success), Ukraine’s summer of 2023 counteroffensive … despite recapturing limited amounts of their territory … was a strategic failure. Strategic success would have entailed Ukraine truly breaking through the entirety of Russia’s several-kilometers-deep fixed position defenses and subsequently capturing the significant number of behind-the-front-lines large highways and road junctions upon which Russia depended for military logistical purposes (i.e., to move their defensive weaponry and soldiers to the front lines).

Even with the best in weaponry, tactics, and motivated soldiers, offensive operations usually are more casualty intensive than defensive operations. Even though Ukraine, despite the ‘casualty risk’ of their offensive (purportedly) being less bloody than expected and with Russia’s defensive being (again, purportedly) being higher than expected, it was not sustainable for ‘small population’ Ukraine to endure losses of 50% the level of Russian losses. Russia has ~ 5x the manpower pool from which to get soldiers than Ukraine.

The above was a bloody event (a failure because the Ukrainian’s strategic objective was not attained), from which Ukraine has been unable to recover. Unfortunately for the EU and America … but far worse for Ukraine … was the ego-driven refusal to admit that Russia had beaten the Ukrainian counteroffensive and that the EU + American leaders were facing the political embarrassment of the failure. Instead of making adjustments based upon the facts in the ground, the EU + Biden Admin kicked the can down the road and started toying around with the idea of escalating the type of (airborne) weaponry in hopes of overcoming the stalemate on the ground. Instead of it being ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned,’ it was ‘Biden Admin + EU deluded themselves with hopes of victory while Ukraine bled out.’

BTW, the Ukrainian offensive to the north (towards the Russian city of Kursk) was a Hail Mary surprise offensive that was initiated for political optics. Similar to Hitler’s foolish ‘Battle of the Bulge’ against American forces in France (Dec.1944), the Ukrainian forces expended much of their scarce remaining manpower in hopes that NATO would jump into the fray. This also failed (to achieve its political objective); the meanupingful result was the loss of excessive Ukrainian blood for no useful pure-military purpose.

Back to the territory maps.

The small increases in new Russian territorial gains as evidenced by comparing Nov.2022 vs July.2025 maps were virtually all acquired since Summer 2024. These territorial gains are still relatively small, but, for a war that had devolved into a war of static position & attrition, these territorial gains for Russia reveal the gradual collapse of Ukraine’s ability to keep on conducting defensive warfare.

Ukraine will be losing territory at an increasingly rapid rate. This stinks, but this is the state of Ukrainian forces vs Russian forces as we approach Autumn 2025. Every day the negotiating strength of Ukraine gets weaker and Russia’s negotiating stength gets stronger. If Biden Admin had actively pursued peace starting Winter 2024 … when Ukraine’s hand was still not too weak … the war might have been stopped with (at that time, lesser amount of captured Ukrainian territory as the baseline) a smaller loss of net Ukrainian territory. As if August 2025, that horse had long ago left the barn. Now, Ukraine’s best outcome will be to not lose the entirety of four oblasts that Russia wants, and for Russia to settle for that territory which they currently occupy.

The alternative for our side is for more self-delusion.

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There's no way you got to this point in the discussion and decided to spend multiple paragraphs talking about the Ukrainian offensive of 2023. Honestly, it reads like Russian propaganda - vague references to broader, unverifiable concepts leading to very specific conclusions that Ukraine, therefore, cannot win the war.

A few comments:
1) Yes, the only reason I posted that picture was to reference the bottom two pictures. Three years of war for virtually no gains with massive losses.
2) Everything you said about Ukrainian offensive in 2023 reads like Russian propaganda. I don't think I've read anywhere that said that that offensive was considered a success by anyone supporting Ukraine. But to extrapolate from that that the Ukrainians have never recovered...two years later...in a war that has seen no major breakthrough since...that's silly.
3) The rhetoric that Ukraine is at the end of its rope and out of manpower and about to crumble is Russian propaganda. And that doesn't mean it's not true. It just means that you have no idea. Similarly, it is difficult to find anything about the Russian economy that says anything other than it is falling to pieces. Right now...it's holding up. Just like Ukraine is holding up. You believe any minute Ukraine will crumble. I believe any minute Russia's economy will crumble. If the war continues, we shall see.

"The small increases in new Russian territorial gains as evidenced by comparing Nov.2022 vs July.2025 maps were virtually all acquired since Summer 2024."

This is true, but doesn't change the fact that it is still a significantly small percentage of the country. Even taking the gains seen from the Summer (June) of 2024 to today, Russia is on pace to take the whole country in 60 years (this is statistical...I understand that this isn't how wars work).

I trust that the Ukrainian leadership understands better than any of us if his military can hold. I lament that we lack true leadership, for two administrations now, that could recognize the moment and the risks of this war and taken true advantage of an opportunity to truly decimate Russia as a threat AND tighten a relationship with the largest country in Europe for years to come, all for the rock-bottom price of money and military equipment and no American lives.

One thing I think we can agree on...today will be an interesting day.

RUS / UKR: UKR close to cracking - Last chance for negotiated peace?

Re: RUS / UKR: UKR close to cracking - Last chance for negotiated peace?

The one and only thing that I learned from this post

We even have some fools in AK...

Re: We even have some fools in AK...

Re: We even have some fools in AK...

Re: We even have some fools in AK...

Re: We even have some fools in AK...

Perhaps they're protesting the collaboration of two dictators...

Re: Perhaps they're protesting the collaboration of two dictators...

Re: Oh that's what the AK stands for in your username! I just thought you were

No one is protesting "Peace". They're protesting a negotiated surrender by

Re: No one is protesting "Peace". They're protesting a negotiated surrender by

Re: No one is protesting "Peace". They're protesting a negotiated surrender by

"Whatever nuclear program that puppet state had was handled just like Iran's"

Re: We even have some fools in AK...

Re: The one and only thing that I learned from this response is - - -

Not to worry, Trump is art of the dealing access to Alaska.***

Great. Great stuff. A few questions:

Re: Great. Great stuff. A few questions:

What makes you think that?***

Re: What makes you think that?***

Re: Great. Great stuff. A few questions:

No way you wrote all that in response. Is that a C&P?

Re: RUS / UKR: UKR close to cracking - Last chance for negotiated peace?

Re: RUS / UKR: UKR close to cracking - Last chance for negotiated peace?

I thought the fighting ended day 1?***

Once again, if a bunch of gang members walks into your house and says they

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