The way they are fighting today, yes. But if they bring to bear all their capabilities, then no. If you haven't noticed already, Ukraine is still functioning as a country even after 3 weeks of fighting. A real war would have seen the complete destruction of Ukraine's civilian infrastructure within the first 2-3 days.
See, that's the thing.
What, besides the Ukrainian's unexpected reluctance to get folded back into the Russian world, is the Russian army's main problem in its Ukrainian campaign right now?
Logistics. Their logistics suck. The reasons are well known, with corruption and incompetence, but mostly it's due to a difficult terrain. Everyone by now has learned the lovely word "rasputitsa"... Note how, in the South, where the soil is firmer, they have been able to advance a lot more.
Now picture in the result of applying "complete destruction of civilian infrastructure" as a solution when the problem is "terrible logistics".
But there's another thing. This was supposed to be a quick war of conquest. Come in, kill the leadership, gobble up all of Eastern and Southern Ukraine so as to link with Transnistria (and perhaps gobble up Moldavia too, if things have gone well so far, why stop?), and leave behind at most a rump state centered around Lviv where you can expel all the malcontents. If you destroy stuff that you conquer, then you have to rebuild it. That shit's expensive, and you've got no money -- Putin knew that the economic war and sanctions would intensify after he made his move, so his plan also required to limit the damage so as to limit the reparation bill.
Destroying Ukraine fully would also mean that either he gets an unproductive drain on his resources until he can get it rebuilt; or he has to forget about annexing the best parts because there are no best parts anymore; he can abandon the mess he has created but that will not let him achieve the goals he had set for himself. It's at best damage control (as in, control through damage), but not actual control.
You can say that a war is being fought because Zelensky isn't a seasoned politician. If he was, he would have recognised the West's duplicity long ago. He wouldn't be stupidly asking for a no-fly zone or NATO involvement this deep into the war. But to more seasoned minds, he has been looking like a sociopathic fool since the beginning.
Zelensky is trying to escalate the conflict because getting NATO in the fray seems like the best way to get Russia to back down. However, MAD still works. America is not willing to fight Russia directly; just like Russia is not willing to fight America directly. The key to great power warfare is to go through proxies, it's how it's been fought in Korea and Vietnam (with the USSR and China providing not-that-discreet support to the proxy that was fighting America) and how it's been fought in Afghanistan (with America providing not-that-discreet support to the proxy that was fighting the USSR).
This is a song and dance we've had before. People who advocate for Zelensky to back down and surrender would have asked the same of Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung and Ahmad Shah Massoud...
It certainly sucks when
you get to be the proxy. Why do you think France wanted to have its own independent nuclear deterrence?
The way they are fighting today, yes. But if they bring to bear all their capabilities, then no. If you haven't noticed already, Ukraine is still functioning as a country even after 3 weeks of fighting. A real war would have seen the complete destruction of Ukraine's civilian infrastructure within the first 2-3 days.
See, that's the thing.
What, besides the Ukrainian's unexpected reluctance to get folded back into the Russian world, is the Russian army's main problem in its Ukrainian campaign right now?
Logistics. Their logistics suck. The reasons are well known, with corruption and incompetence, but mostly it's due to a difficult terrain. Everyone by now has learned the lovely word "rasputitsa"... Note how, in the South, where the soil is firmer, they have been able to advance a lot more.
Now picture in the result of applying "complete destruction of civilian infrastructure" as a solution when the problem is "terrible logistics".
But there's another thing. This was supposed to be a quick war of conquest. Come in, kill the leadership, gobble up all of Eastern and Southern Ukraine so as to link with Transnistria (and perhaps gobble up Moldavia too, if things have gone well so far, why stop?), and leave behind at most a rump state centered around Lviv where you can expel all the malcontents. If you destroy stuff that you conquer, then you have to rebuild it. That shit's expensive, and you've got no money -- Putin knew that the economic war and sanctions would intensify after he made his move, so his plan also required to limit the damage so as to limit the reparation bill.
Destroying Ukraine fully would also mean that either he gets an unproductive drain on his resources until he can get it rebuilt; or he has to forget about annexing the best parts because there are no best parts anymore; he can abandon the mess he has created but that will not let him achieve the goals he had set for himself. It's at best damage control (as in, control through damage), but not actual control.
You can say that a war is being fought because Zelensky isn't a seasoned politician. If he was, he would have recognised the West's duplicity long ago. He wouldn't be stupidly asking for a no-fly zone or NATO involvement this deep into the war. But to more seasoned minds, he has been looking like a sociopathic fool since the beginning.
Zelensky is trying to escalate the conflict because getting NATO in the fray seems like the best way to get Russia to back down. However, MAD still works. America is not willing to fight Russia directly; just like Russia is not willing to fight America directly. The key to great power warfare is to go through proxies, it's how it's been fought in Korea and Vietnam (with the USSR and China providing not-that-discreet support to the proxy that was fighting America) and how it's been fought in Afghanistan (with America providing not-that-discreet support to the proxy that was fighting the USSR).
This is a song and dance we've had before. People who advocate for Zelensky to back down and surrender would have asked the same of Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung and Ahmad Shah Massoud...
It certainly sucks when
you get to be the proxy. Why do you think France wanted to have its own independent nuclear deterrence?
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