[dragonwriter]

> If Russia is pushed back into its borders, it will take a couple of years to ramp up weapons production and will retry

Or the current regime will collapse. That often happens with large scale defeats, especially without a democratic outlet for internal change within the system.

[pmontra]

I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.)

The worst it will happen to Putin is that he'll be locked in into Russia and have to kill more and more Russian people.

[dragonwriter]

> I saw very few regime collapses unless an army steps into the capital. That's not going to happen to Russia (Mutual Assured Destruction.)

The reference to MAD makes sense only in the context of foreign armies (and with the M only those of major nuclear powers), but if you look at the two immediate predecessors of the modern Russian Federation (the USSR and the Russian Empire), both fell without a foreign army entering the capital, and are hardly unique in history in doing so. And to the extent status as a major nuclear power is relevant to that, the USSR had it just as much as the Russian Federation does.

[lotusmars]

Why even discuss MAD or nuclear when Putin gets what he wants without it?

Germans finance his war efforts with billions of euros and drag their feet on arming Ukraine.

Europeans generally pressure Ukraine to surrender.

Why risk it? Just wait, time is on his side.

[prox]

The army of Russia has explicitly been kept underpowered just for that reason and generals get rotated around a lot. A strong army is a threat to Putin. Source : CSIS.

[lotusmars]

Why should Putin’s regime collapse? Ruble is strong, people got +20% instant raise because of sanctions. Germany pours billions into Russian economy.

Save for Netflix not working anymore, life in Moscow is even better than pre-war.

[deepsun]

People in Russia can swallow poverty, injustice, corruption no problem. But they cannot swallow war defeat. This tsar is weak, need a better tsar who wins.

[lotusmars]

Judging by weak arms supplies by Europeans who don’t want to anger their gas supplier - Putin is far from defeat.

[_kbh_]

Theirs nothing weak about HIMARS and 500 T72 tanks, this myth of weak arm supplies is nothing more then that, a myth.

Ukraine is getting heaps of weapons and decimating Russian logistics and command and control with it. Enough that even the Russian propaganda is complaining about it.

[dragonwriter]

> Judging by weak arms supplies by Europeans who don’t want to anger their gas supplier - Putin is far from defeat.

The subthread was discussing what would happen in the event Russia was forced to abandon the invasion, if you want to object to discussing that possibility as reasonable, the place is several posts upthread.

(Also, Western aid delivered since the major escalation by Russia this year has been several multiples of Ukraine’s annual defense spending and a sizable fraction of Russia’s annual defense spending. It is not “weak” arms supplies by any reasonable standard.)

[norwalkbear]

Alot of people simply can't imagine other countries might have a fundamentally different way of thinking.

Same hubris that lead to defeat in Afghanistan

[dragonwriter]

> Why should Putin’s regime collapse?

Historically—not universally, of course, but frequently enough to be noteworthy—people have been observed to be displeased with leadership that unproductively transforms large numbers of their youth into corpses.

[lotusmars]

Listen to recordings of calls to Russian soldiers’s mothers. The families fully support invasion. They are glued to TV and Telegram which explain that Ukrainians bomb themselves and Russian soldiers are brave liberators fighting against gay Nazi Americans.

Besides that soldiers send a lot of stolen goods back home. There was an infamous video from the office of a transport company with dozens of soldiers sending loot like washing machines.

[legulere]

Alcohol consumption increased from an already elevated baseline caused by covid. It does not seem like life is better than before.

[lotusmars]

Most of the country was miserable, malnourished and in poverty for years anyway. It’s not like Putin’s elites care. It’s basically a serfdom. As long as people obey, and Putin’s clique can build palaces, it can go on for decades.

[oneoff786]

Russian gdp forecasted to fall 8-10%.

[legulere]

11.2% according to the world bank: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/infographics/impact-sanct...

[oneoff786]

8 is their internal forecast. The world bank figure is likely more reliable.