Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "Ukraine or Russia: Who’s gonna have more troops in 2024?" video.

@LazyDrug-nz1cf Western accounts of what occurred in Syria in the last decade proved extremely inaccurate. It's curious that people don't remember this. I don't know that anybody's numbers can be trusted. Both sides have reasons for cooking the books. I tend to trust the Russian numbers over the Ukrainian numbers, but I also am slightly more sympathetic to the Russian side.
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This was always a choice of least bad options for Russia. NATO had been creeping towards the Russian border since 1989, actually reaching the border in 2003 with the inclusion of the Baltic states. The rubber hit the road in 2014 when Yanukovich was ousted in a coup and Russia's lease on its largest Black Sea port in Sevastopol became at risk of not only being lost to the Russian navy, but becoming an asset for NATO. This made annexation of Crimea a necessity, which Russia executed in that same year. Crimea does not have sufficient fresh water to support its population and agriculture requirements, so when Ukraine threatened to cut Crimea off, Russia moved to secure the region between the Dnieper River and the peninsula. Russia also pursued a more aggressive ambition through the rest of Ukraine that failed because of some misjudgments, previously unexposed corruption, and also because of effective Ukrainian defenses. There does appear to be a movement within the U.S. intelligence community to actively diminish Russian power, and the war in Ukraine is largely a fight against that movement. Unfortunately the people of Ukraine are the pawns in that chess game.
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@RomanianReaver My sources are admittedly sparse, but it looks like tanks aren't doing particularly well in this conflict. It's looking to me like drones are dominating them. But then again, I'm just regurgitating what I'm seeing from my laptop monitor on the other side of the world.
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@nematolvajkergetok5104 We're all biased, and it's very difficult to overcome those biases when it comes to judging alternating statistics and news reports accurately.
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That would require more than a loss for Trump. You'd have to have make sure you had substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. Trump's supporters are beginning to define themselves by opposition to Ukrainian assistance.
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