Comments by "N Velsen" (@nvelsen1975) on "Three ways Ukraine can win the war" video.

The dictator of Belarus has distanced himself from Putin a bit now and recently crushed an uprising against his regime before the war started; there won't be another so soon. Chechnya has been thoroughly purged with Kadyrov's death camps snuffing out anyone who might resist and his squads of goons (sometimes called the Tiktok Army) roaming the countryside. Chechnya used to have only 3 million people. After the purges and Russian rule probably a lot less. They can't resist through sheer lack of numbers. You might as well expect Prussia to rise up despite the Russians not leaving a single civilised soul alive and living there in 70 years of purges. It would however be quite curious if Japan took a plunge and liberated its northern islands. Or maybe Xi Jinping decides a good way to draw attention away from economic hiccups is to liberate northern Manchuria (even though that is even more thoroughly purged and is basically just wasteland). I mean at this point the Russian army can't even begin to resist the PLA if the two fought.
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@LuminalSpoon The US didn't randomly collapse. Vietnam ground them down gradually fighting a brilliant war of mobility against a juggernaut trying to refight WW2. And it also shows that you don't need to have the upper hand in battles to win the war. Vietnam suffered staggering losses and rarely achieved much in a direct frontal assault. But they didn't need to. They just needed to hold on and keep popping up all over, inflicting losses and demoralisation, and eventually US resolve broke. During the Chechen Wars, there were armed pressgangs at metro stations in Russia to abduct men for conscription if they couldn't prove they had already served, that's how low Russian morale got. Putin correctly identified that if he declares a war and sends in private Conscriptovich who's forced to fight for $ 30 a month, it'll cost him his regime very soon. That's why the 'special military operation was rigged up' and Russia's desperately low on manpower; They can only tap their regulars and paramilitaries and forced-conscription in occupied areas of Ukraine. They can't just conscript half a million random guys and half a year later show up with a big army; it would crush Russian civilian morale.
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