Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "Russia on the offensive again" video.

We do exaggerate Russian weaknesses, but the weaknesses are there and Russia is by no means invincible. We continue to not give Ukraine full support to win this war and eject the Russians. One example is the very slow pace in providing western air capabilities and e.g. ATACAMS, another is that we forbid Ukraine to use our ATACMS and similar to target Russian soil.
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@jabezhane I would say as a taxpayer, we've steadily been getting richer since the industrial revolution began. This war is not a significant cost for the western powers. E.g. for a US that spent 6%-ish of GDP during the cold war to counter and contain Russia, now spending 0.3% to truly grind down the Russian army is mindboggingly cheap.
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@jabezhane the only way for taxpayers to be angry at this is if Russian propaganda convinces them to be angry. It's not a significant cost so taxpayers shouldn't complain about it. Also, it's such a moral and geopolitical slam-dunk to continue supporting Ukraine that people need to be seriously out of touch to vote against it.
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@jabezhane the US has provided approximately $44 billion in military assistance since February 24, 2022. This is over 654 days, giving an average of just 25 billion per year. As you know, the US defense budget is $800 billion. Thus spending 25 billion on Ukraine is extreme value for money, and it's just 0.11% of GDP. Any US president in post-WW2 history, probably even Trump, would do the same, because it's simply a slam-dunk from both a moral and geopolitical perspective. Furthermore, the spending is in equipment that will be replaced by US manufacturing, which is strengthening a too-weak US military industrial base while providing well-paying jobs in the US. Considering money clearly isn't the issue, what is? That you feel loyalty to this "movement" you're talking about? That you've said it's about money so many times that you can't back down?
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@ailinofaolin8897 the Russian blitzkrieg toward Kiev was stopped, and that's why Russia was willing to negotiate and withdraw under the guise of goodwill. The Kharkiv offensive was a rout on the part of the Russian military, including the best units Russia had, and they lost lots of equipment and people while Ukraine lost hardly anything. The only thing you're right about is that it was the least defended part, because Russia had been tricked to spend their resources on Kherson, which they eventually lost anyway. Do you truly believe the Russian propaganda that you're reproducing? If so, I feel a bit sorry for you.
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@jabezhane everyone serious, knowledgeable and responsible say what I say. It's not time to move on, it's time to stop playing politics and support freedom, democracy and US interests. It's time to stop lying about it being expensive. It's time to stop aligning with Russian propaganda. Come back from the dark side. You've spent enough time there.
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@gags730 what was it you didn't understand? Explain.
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@runethorsen8423 the US has basically halved its spending on defense/containing geopolitical threats since the cold war, so the spending is not ridiculous in a historical context. In fact, recent events have shown that the US (and Europe's) spending is way too low. And supporting Ukraine is VERY cheap in relation to overall military spending, yes. There's nothing free about letting the global security order collapse. The idea that the Ukraine war is a "local border dispute" is disingenuous at best. The Ukraine war is Russia crushing the global security order, attempting to collapse NATO and moving 40+ million from the category of European democratic citizens to Russian cannon fodder for the next war. There's nothing "free" about letting a new age of Empires replace Pax Americana that has locked borders since WW2. You say "your entire economy is hinged on military spending abroad". No, it's not. That's why I'm pointing out it's incredibly cheap. Supporting Ukraine is 0.1% of GDP. There's no war economy, and that's evident from how Ukraine is not easily winning. If 1 billion rich people in the west would truly mobilize resources to beat 140 million poor people, then Russia would be quickly evicted. But the US and Europe run complacent peace-time economies. No, 25 billion couldn't be spent better. This is the first thing the US should spend on, not the last.
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@jantzfitzgerald6115 artillery rounds were more important early on. Now drones is the leading killer. How do you know Russia is outproducing Ukraine in drones, and why do you smile at the idea that the fascist aggressor is outperforming the defending democracy?
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@sullathehutt7720 you have never listened, or if you did, you didn't learn anything. Go and learn outside your eco chamber, then suggest policy.
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@attilamarics3374 whether right or not, you display the maturity of a typical putinist.
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@runethorsen8423 yes, I said just, and I put the 25 billion in context to show it's incredibly cheap.
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@andzzz2 thanks mate.
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Much of the ammo is fpv drones and hand grenades dropped from drones these days. Very precise and lethal stuff. Spraying bullets and tossing artillery shells over the fence without really looking, and hitting with 1/1000 is becoming last year's war.
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@jimmyc974 please make an argument countering mine. Don't just add immature noise.
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@runethorsen8423 Putin never followed Minsk, and the sham referenda are irrelevant. Ukraine is a democracy, Russia is not.
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@runethorsen8423 you wrote a long and (at least partly) serious reply, so I'm going to do that as well. Hope you'll seriously consider my arguments. The US exports goods and services for around $3 trillion and its military spending is a mere $0.8 trillion. The US doesn't export violence, it exports security. Because of the alliance with the US, security consuming countries like South Korea, Germany and Japan, and many more, can have vastly lower military spending than they would otherwise need, and they don't need their own nukes. With this lower spending, all risks and temptations for war are reduced by a lot, and that's a big reason why the world has enjoyed relative peace since WW2. Also, since the fall of the Soviet Union, despite the "war on terror" and the rise of China, US military spending has roughly halved and the force posture in Europe was drawn down to VERY low levels. We really believed in eternal peace and that Russia would behave well. Germany demilitarized and consciously made itself dependent on Russian gas to prove its good intentions and willingness to trade instead of struggle. The global security order is not the "US empire", it's the basic rule that we don't change borders anymore, and especially we don't change them to expand our territories. The reason is that the UN founders saw that this was the driving force behind WW1 and WW2. (Now you're going to say "Kosovo", and that exception has some merit, but the US didn't annex it, and the genocide that it was saved from was real.) Russia is waging an expansionist war and that's exactly what we've successfully disallowed for 75 years. "Unnecessary wars you started"? Well, they're probably fewer than you think. But I don't claim perfection or purity. I'm claiming that the global security order, and NATO, and US presence overall are stabilizing forces. Russia do interfere in US elections, and in elections in most democracies to undermine, weaken and increase polarization and distrust. Russia was determined to either annex Ukraine (most probably) or make it a vassal state like Belarus. We know this from Russian force deployments and instructions to units. You're right that Russia's 150k deployment toward Kiev was too little for an invasion against a prepared and determined defender, but Russia thought bribed officials, chock and awe effects, assassination squads, air superiority and other technical superiority would make the Ukrainian defense collapse and its government would flee or get assassinated. It also made various logistics mistakes and had some bad luck in e.g. the assault on Hostomel. And Zelensky said "I need ammo, not a ride" and the rest is history. Of course Zelensky is going to have elections. Remember, they want to go into the EU, and you can't do that as a dictatorship. Of course they may postpone elections during war, but so did the UK during WW2. The Russian propaganda that has it that people (including women, old men and kids) are kidnapped in Ukraine to go to the front is just that, Russian propaganda. But lots of Luhansk/Donetsk military age men have now been wasted on the front lines, along with minorities and convicts. You're right that NATO is currently protecting members from Russian aggression and that it's a pity that Ukraine didn't have time to join because it was the only thing that could've prevented Russia's aggression. The west did everything to not provoke Russia, including not giving Ukraine decent weaponry, but Putin just saw that as weakness and as a go-ahead. Perhaps you're not aware of Putin's demands to not attack: Basically a roll-back of NATO to 1992. Part of Russia's plan with this war was to make NATO disintegrate, but it did the opposite. Russia will not take on NATO immediately, obviously, it'll wait for Trump/Ramaswami types that are truly isolationist, and then they will poke NATO, threaten with nukes and see if it works and the US backs off. Letting Ukraine have referendums in every oblast to decide what to belong to is not according to the international security order, which is based on fixed borders. No part of any country can do that, and e.g. Catalonia couldn't break out of Spain. If Russia wants to change this, it should first show the way by letting every Russian province vote on independence at any time. Also, it's unreasonable to first occupy, ethnically cleanse and subject to propaganda and intimidation a province and then force a referendum. I didn't manage to create this "forever war". Russia did. It's the Russian Empire expanding. This war would stop if Russia went back to its internationally recognized borders. It could have spent all the war money on immigration, just telling the Ukrainians: "Anyone who wants to move to Russia and become a Russian citizen, we'll welcome you and give you a great start here." It's not like Russia lacks space.
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@concernedrabbit9075 insufficient surveillance, it seems, so they didn't know. I think it's a sign of weakness for Russia to mine that much. If Russia is going to take Odessa and all of Donbass in short order, as Russian propagandists would like us to believe, why have they mined like mad behind the front lines?
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@jamesgornall5731 the Ukrainian side has honest reporting of Russian attrition.
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Anders did re-examine his underlying assumptions. Perhaps you should re-examine yours? Russia has usually had more artillery but less precise and with shorter range. Russia has a meat wave attack tactic and worse leadership. Ukraine's summer offensive wasn't suicidal. They tried one approach, got bogged down in minefields and quickly adapted their tactics to make progress with favorable attrition.
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@andzzz2 Ukraine made little progress in the summer offensive but I have no indication that the attrition was unfavorable since they switched tactics early on. If you haven't seen Russia using meat wave attacks since Bakhmut, you haven't been paying much attention, especially not to the carnage around Avdiivka. You would say Russia has been in general better at conserving its forces? Well, then you're trusting Russian propaganda. I'm sorry, but it's as simple as that. Nowadays it's not the artillery that's the main killer, but the drones, on both sides. Your idea regarding mobilization of old, young and female is typical Russian propaganda. What real-world statistics do you have on the demography of Ukrainian soldiers?
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@andzzz2 "Two differences are they are doing in at a time they judge their opponents to be at breaking point and are encircling the defenders instead of themselves." The main difference I see is in culture. From what I hear, the Russian military command really, really doesn't value its storm troopers, while Ukraine values its front-line soldiers. This produces predictable results. Ukraine presses carefully where it finds good opportunities and withdraws when necessary. Russia just presses regardless. "I haven't seen massive Russian war cemeteries or the military-aged violently abducted off the streets in Russia." Russia seems to have a policy of hiding deaths in multiple ways, including not recovering them. Russian propaganda also features vids of Ukrainian arrests that they simply claim are mobilization events with no evidence. Some people accept that, thinking that since they've seen video, whatever was claimed about the video is true. "I have heard Western experts, otherwise trustworthy, say the average age of the Ukrainian army is 43." Wouldn't it be the case that in a high-morale environment that lots of old men would enlist, especially in rear supporting positions? I'm 49 and I would definitely help if my country was attacked. I wouldn't be the best choice for storm/infantry duty, but I could do a lot of other things that'd be useful. "pictures and video of both women and very old men on the Ukraininian lines would support that." If you happen to watch the wrong channels, you'd get fed with visuals of such volunteers, and you'd believe something very rare is common fare, wouldn't you? So are you sure you really have support for the conclusion? For a 1 million man army, how many cherry-picked images of old men and women would be needed to establish a good sense of the actual proportions? "The idea of the Russians conserving their forces is supported by their numbers increasing without mass mobilisation." No, not really. They just need to add more than 30k per month and then their numbers increase without conserving their forces. "Their strategy of not doing stupid shit after their initial blunders." Again, the meat waves in Avdiivka are real. It's not a blunder, it may or may not be stupid, but it gives horribly negative attrition. "making tactical withdrawals like in Kherson and Kharkiv" Kharkiv wasn't a tactical withdrawal, it was a rout after Russia being outplayed and surprised. It took a very long time for them to withdraw from Kherson, and it was a major defeat considering they want Kherson and Odessa. "As I said, when they are on the offensive they tend to outflank rather than dig themselves into a salient." Well, or the outflanking consists of two surrounded salients and Ukrainian drones come at each pincher from three sides.
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@jantzfitzgerald6115 "Because the Ukrainian's tell us the Russians have more" So could they benefit from saying that? "How many soldiers are on half a field?" Usually zero. Rumor has it that Russia at one point in the war fired 60k shells a day. You do the math.
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@jantzfitzgerald6115 if you don't understand the point, you've lost track of the discussion and should reread.
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@tomk3732 "Ukraine has no people left due to huge losses and has no ammo or equipment even for these troops they have." Haven't you captives of Russian propaganda said that for a year or more? Yet Russia desperately created extremely large minefields in order to survive the summer.
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@tomk3732 ah, since two months back, Russia could've just start taking Ukrainian territory with hardly any resistance, since Ukraine have no people nor any ammo? Ok, sweet. Russian command has been kindof dumb for not trying that. They could've started assaulting, say, Avdiivka, and just taken it from the Ukrainians and then proceeded from there. (Donbass Doug and Ritter the Diddler have promised Odessa any day now for more than a year, so that's why I thought you were on that train of thought. My mistake.)
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@jantzfitzgerald6115 you again display your maturity level.
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@upsguppy520 why? Because you trust Russian propagandists who have been saying for two years now that Russia will take Odessa next month?
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@zallyzally2698 since NATO isn't interested in Russian territory, a war between NATO and Russia would from NATO's side be about beating back Russian aggression. Thus it's not about survival. NATO will just pound Russian military assets a bit to make Russia stop and withdraw.
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Your comment is fairly reasonably worded. The problem is that it's making tons of statements that are perfectly in line with Russian propaganda, which makes you seem quite gullible tbh. The little we can verify, like the gain of 20%+ of territory, is false. Currently occupied territories is 18%, and only 10.6% has been occupied since February last year.
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@jabezhane no, you're not old-fashioned at all. As I said, old-fashioned is spending 6% of GDP containing Russia in peace time and always standing up for democracy. When you say 0.3% is too much for a major active war waged by Russia and suggests we should give up on European democracy, it's not old-fashioned, it's the opposite. It's a new brand of irresponsible, clueless, populist and Russian-propaganda-infested political activism. Reagan turns in his grave at your nonsense, if you're a real person and not a bot.
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@mike_oe that's wrong, I absolutely argued for it and he didn't.
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@jabezhane are you stupid, evil or bot?
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You should reevaluate your sources of info, my friend. You've reproducing Russian propaganda.
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Only people who are truly captive of Russian propaganda thinks this is a defensive war for Russia. That said, yes, of course Russia has pulled huge resources from the rest of Russia to Ukraine, and basically left its flanks undefended.
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The US isn't busy, it's just politically gridlocked. Continued support to Ukraine it can easily do while doing whatever else it wants to do.
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@tlmoller yes, the vacuousness and ugly, short-sighted selfishness is concerning. But I think Washington will in the end go for continued support because it's so clearly in the US' interests.
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@attilamarics3374 putinists think normal people are lying, and proceed to perform these attempted humiliations. It doesn't really work, you're only humiliating yourselves.
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Russian propaganda has a habit of claiming that videos of arrests in Ukraine are mobilization events. However, they're more probably arrests traitors of e.g. people sending Russia info on valuable targets for missile strikes. I happen to trust the Ukrainian MoDs figures of Russian losses. I've seen no reason to doubt them during this war. The visibly confirmed equipment losses checks out (compared to e.g. Oryx) and all losses including personnel losses ebbs and flows with offensives, changed capabilities and even weather.
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@dr.jonas.skeppstedt families won't rejoice by occupation and the follow-up Russian killings, rapes and torture.
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