We were promised a victory many times thanks to the overwhelming power and sophistication western weapons repeatedly. Not "hold off Russia for 2-3 years, not fight to a standstill". Victory and a return to 1991 borders after first severing the land bridge to Crimea. It was a very specific prediction.
To say that they havent lived up to their promise is an understatement given how abysmally they performed in the summer offensive. Vehicles failed especially badly, but the whole ensemble failed categorically for all the world to see.
I dont see how this can be spun as a stalemate or a win and I dont see the demo winning western arms manufacturers any new customers. It also looks like previously intimidated US opponents like the Houthis and Venezuela are also suddenly a lot less intimidated.
If you can find an article from may 2023 that accurately predicts that ukraine could end the offensive with less land than it started off with Id like to see it.
There's more doom and gloom now of course. The failure is hard to ignore.
> an article from may 2023 that accurately predicts that ukraine could end the offensive with less land than it started off with
Everyone I read made predictions conditional on aid, specifically, long-range strike capability and air defence.
Here is Phillips O’Brien on 28 May: “Ukraine has had to fight this war under a series of great handicaps. Its aid has been often technologically limited and always politically limited by NATO countries, primarily the US, with the goal of preventing Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil. By compelling Ukraine to fight almost exclusively on its own soil, Russia has been handled a major asymetric advantage…Ukraine has has to fight this war with one hand tied behind its back while Russia has been given a major advantage in not having to use many resources to defend its own border with Ukraine.”
Which makes sense. That is the operating variable. We didn’t provide that aid in time. So Ukraine mostly held ground. (Breaching the Dnipr and pushing Russia so far back from Sevastopol that its blockade enforcement is now poorer than the Houthis’ should not be understated.)
If you’re seriously following this issue, stay clear of Yahoo! News and ad-funded sources. They’re mostly mouthpieces for influencing domestic aid deliberations. At any given time, you can find sources confidently predicting imminent success and imminent defeat.
>Everyone I read made predictions conditional on aid
Ok and once the aid numbers were published how many of them predicted that Ukraine would end the offensive with less land than it started?
>If you’re seriously following this issue, stay clear of Yahoo! News and ad-funded sources. They’re mostly mouthpieces
Im obviously talking about what the mouthpieces said - what the average person on hacker news will have read and believed.
My sources nailed it. They made fairly specific predictions, most of which came true with a smallish margin of error. They've been predicting a Ukrainian collapse some time between mid 2024 - beginning of 2025 for the last several months.
> We were promised a victory many times thanks to the overwhelming power and sophistication western weapons repeatedly.
You will always be promised victory. I’ve yet to find the first general that preaches defeat.
Anyhow, for the fact that they have to do with a mishmash of whatever they can scrounge up from the allied nations and then use equipment they’re unfamiliar with and barely trained in, I’m kind of happy with the results?
Of course it’s a far cry from a win, but that was always kind of unreasonable to expect.
This things take time. If Churchill would have been rushed to "have a victory in two years in WWII or we'll quit", everybody in Europe would be a nazi today.
