Vanir Ausf B

"So, Zelensky, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

I searched some LA data of drone attacks and found, but only for Russian side. 
You can see that since August- September Russians rapidly increased usage of FPV drones (I repeat, this is just spotted video confirmations, real number of attacks are much bigger) And November became a champion with 657 FPV spotted strikes. 
From this total number of FPV attacks videos (2508) they give next results (results, alas, don't reflected on the diagram, so I write from the text of LA): 
Targets destroyed - 373
Targets damaged - 385
Successful hits, but result is unknown - 1093
Result of strike unknown - 336
Misses - 184
So low number of misses can be explained, that usually Russian servicemen post a video of successfull strikes (or successful by their opinion), it's strange if you will post 100 % miss. This will reduce your chances to get donations. According to UKR "Magyar birds" unit they manage to supress/destroy about 60-70 % of drones (both FPV and recon Mavics), but they have special unit with special EW equipmnet for this
What Russian FPV operators have been chosing as targets:
Positions - 916
Infantry out of shelters - 353
logistic vehicles - 345
armored vehciles - 257
buildings - 293  
 
 

Russian anti drone modifications to their trenchlines.

UKR servicemen warn that Russians more and more use newest night FPV drones with cheap NV cameras, which allow to operate in dusk or night on 10-15 km behind frontline. For example on Bakhmut direction on the one of frontline section each night there are reports about 1-2 night FPV attacks. But several days ago Russians conducted "NV swarm drone attack" on one of directions and they could take out about dozen our soldiers and four pick-ups. This is very dangerous tendency - we also use night FPVs, but this is mostly Mavics with thermal cameras and they are too expensive for such single usage, when Russia already ordered direrctly in Chima dozen thousands of cheap FPV with NV cameres, much more cheaper, than thermal. And since some time this can cause huge problem for out logistic, because most of movements in close rear is conducting in darkness. So, our soldiers demand from officials immediately to find solution for quick development and mass production of EW assets, capable to supress video channel of drones.
We already have some working models, but not all of them showed itself good, and all of them developed for some particular tasks. ANd both we and Russians already try to pass on new control frequensies, so this race can be endless.
More universal solution will have bigger dimensions and development of suchg things demand many money, qualified developers, IT-specialists etc. But I have met more than once stories like this: "You came to enlistment center - by free-will or being mobilized and say - I xxxx specialist, I know English, I have experience in YYYY, I will be effective in ZZZZZ. Enlistmet officer says, oh, that good. You come to training center and became usual riflelman to assault next tree-plant since a month" 
Here is diagram, from where Russia imports spare parts for own drones production (it's unknown either assembled drones included or not)
China - 54.29 %
Taiwan - 20 %
Honkong - 5.71 %
UK - 4.29 %
Turkey - 4.29 %
USA - 2.86 % (special thanks to NVIDIA for their AI video chips for Lancets)
Canada - 2.86 %
Chili - 1.43 %
Bulgaria - 1.43 %
Uzbekistan - 1.43 %
So, China is a growing monster of drones production and spare parts and I afraid, western countries one time can encounter with painful reality...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/08/ukraine-russia-war-draft-dodgers/
This article seems to be all Zeleban.

Just a nice show of longer range fire from Bradley autocannon:
Saw translation lately of one of posts from Russian milbloggers, it was in roughly this manner: when Ukies storm our trenches riding on Amercian Bradleys, defenders tend to run away immediatelly or fight o the bitter end, nothing between. Fire from their cannons is worse than facing tanks; at least the latter need to raload and leave 10 sec. gap to run/hide, while autocannons sweep everything in the area, not even leaving time to surrender.
It seems Russians captured two Bradleys in working condition, and videos with them are flying everywhere in Mordor TV.
 

Something a little different, POV from Russian squad being harassed by Ukrainian tank.
https://www.reddit.com/r/u_ForMemesHereIAm/comments/17u7b16/ru_pov_a_video_about_a_russian_cossack_with_the/?utm_term=2650774938&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_source=embed&utm_name=&utm_content=header
 

Not bad. But autoloader is critically needed ( 
 

some war stuff about the RU losses around Andiivka.  A summary of things we already know but some nice charts & such.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/3/2209226/-Ukraine-Update-Why-a-lack-of-armored-vehicles-is-stalling-Russia-s-infantry-assault?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_8&pm_medium=web
 

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

"In our war against the Finns we had an opportunity to choose the time and the place. We outnumbered our enemy, and we had all the time in the world to prepare for our operation. Yet even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies' conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay."
-- Nikita Khrushchev

Great quote!
 

I'm not sure about "China wouldn't do a thing with Taiwan because it's economically stupid".
I remember the discussion "Russia isn't going to invade because it would be utterly stupid". I remember how it turned into "I really thought they wouldn't invade, because it really was utterly stupid" which turned into "See? It was utterly stupid" and now that the war is likely over and we're looking at the likely end state, we are talking about how "yes it was stupid for sure but if you assign the 'victory points' certain way, maybe it was not utterly stupid".
We can certainly hope China isn't that stupid and would rather sit on its extended back and make hilarious amounts of money than make war and possibly get that extended back kicked in some way. But as they say, hope is not a strategy.

European army is a impossible idea unless EU turns into USA.
The raison d'être for French armed forces is to manage post-colonies in Africa, in Balkans the point is being ready if **** starts again, in Greece it's defence from Turkey, in the east it's about defence from Russia and its puppets, and elsewhere it is some mix of jobs program, subsidy for domestic weapon manufacturers and "it's tradition I guess" / "we need to have have at least something useful since we're in alliance".
You can't bring those completely distinct objectives into a coherent force. Poland is not going want its soldiers chasing coups in West Africa, while France has no interest in KFOR and Ostalgic Germany unlikely to explicitly arm up to fight Russia. And I'm not even going to talk of Hungary and Austria and Slovakia.
Ain't gonna work from a command angle, because we can't even align on what the mission would be.
What could work - and this is Perun's idea, I'm not that smart - is to at least create shared procurement and research and some other strategic capability alignment, since that is currently quite a mess.

Not sure what "air advantage" means anymore to be honest.  Let alone if we could build it in the Ukraine.  I if was going to spend a few billion on it, I would likely double down on small, longer range unmanned systems and deep fires.  I mean all an aircraft really does is carry the "boom", suck up data and try to deny the same to the enemy.  If you can do that other ways cheaper and faster that might create what they are referring to.
I think the idea of "more, better expensive western kit" is fundamentally flawed.  First we cannot produce that equipment in the numbers this war would need.  Second, Ukraine could not field it for years - eg a full SEAD suite.  Third, Ukraine would be challenged to sustain it.  Fourth, it still might not work.  I mean keep pushing what we have, sure.  Better than nothing.  But we get into the "one more Abrams" trap.  We need to start thinking about hacking this war from a Ukrainian perspective and stop projecting "how we would do it" onto them.

Another war this war kind of reminds me is the Winter war. In the minds of a lot of people because a much smaller state like Finland still remained independent after it it won the war, but the truth is it also had to give up some territory in the east to the USSR. To this day I see memes related to that war.
Anyway, the part of your post I quoted I agree with and it is what really concerns me, I think we can agree that militarily this war was a disaster for Russia but internally it will be seen as a great victory. This concerns me because while Russia will not be invading anyone anytime soon after this, eventually they can rebuilt. Unlike Perun I'm no expert in military procurement so I don't know how long that will take. If the lesson Russians get from this is they can take territory by force what is to stop them from trying to do this again somewhere else, I'm thinking one of the former USSR central Asian republics where due to geography we will not be able to help them like we helped Ukraine.  Hopefully by that time we will do the right think and accept Moldova and Ukraine into NATO and close Europe to Russia. Don't think Putin or whoever may replace him in the future will try to "finish the job" if Ukraine is under the NATO flag.
To close this post up I will share my favorite Finnish meme, just to lighten this post up a little. 🙂
 
 

Well technically speaking the cold war did have some hot fronts.  One could make the argument that Vietnam and Korea were both part of the cold war.

It's not really zero-sum though. Russia not-winning doesn't mean Ukraine isn't losing (and ... my apologies for asking you to parse through multiple negatives there)
In any negotiation there is win-win, win-loss, lose-win, and lose-lose. Right now we seem to be firmly in lose-lose territory, and the ongoing negotiation (all war is negotiation, remember) is over who loses least.
Losing least can easily be framed as a kind of success by way of "yeah that hurt, but you should see the other guy!"
 
Edit: I'm typing on my phone, which sucks. On each axis there's a spectrum which runs from 'win bigly' to 'lose like a republican voter'. The four quadrants - ww lw wl ll - above are just a convenient shorthand for a complex rainbow of possible outcomes.

So we have to admit there is a strategic/political wall in this fight.  It will do us no good if we try and pretend it does not exist.  That wall appears to be strategic level campaigning.  Russia can't seem to do it in Ukraine, although we see weak starts.  But Russia cannot take this war to Ukraine's strategic supply chain without starting WW3.
And we are in the same boat.  We all really want Ukraine to win and dammit if the little guy did not simply amaze (and shame us to an extent) on what humans can do if they simply unite and stand up - I think we forgot some of this over the last 30 years or so.  But, and it is one big @ss "But", Ukraine is not worth WW3.  WW3, even if it stayed conventional would quickly escalate to total.  It would result in a requirement for the total defeat of Russia as a nation state.  We could do this, likely at enormous cost, but then we would have to live with the aftermath.  The cost and effort to 1) defeat Russia, and 2) keep the post-war situation from completely deteriorating would cost so much that I suspect we would be very stretched to try and counter the rise of China.  In fact, worst case, it could break us.  I suspect China already knows this and by keeping Russia as a strategic spoiler they may be able to sustain some options they want to.
A defeated post-war Russia would very likely shatter completely into its loose federations.  We would have a 6000 nuclear weapon problem to deal with, along with a humanitarian crisis that makes Gaza look like a "minor boo-boo".  And this is all making the huge assumption that the whole thing does not go nuclear, which it very likely would as we start bombing Moscow.  It would not start with a full scale attack, more likely a single release in Ukraine as a warning shot. So maybe Kharkiv or Kherson.  We would likely see battlefield use even before that.
So any campaigning in Russia would have to be under the waterlines.  Cyber (to a point), SOF and internal resistance.  If people think sanctions take time, these sorts of strategic campaigns can take years to set up and see gains from.  They can also go sideways very quickly and get way out of hand...see WW3.  So, no, I do not think that strategic disruption or dislocation is really an option for us anymore than it is for Russia.  We have a high intensity conventional war in a box (thank God).  We are just going to have to live with it.

3. That is, it is mainly infantry who fight, mostly with “legs”, the bulk of the equipment is in the tactical rear. The fact that from time to time a couple of tanks and an armored fighting vehicle goes to the front line to “carefully work” will not pass the point. The bloody carousel continues - infantry + mortars and artillery. This is a format that plays into the hands of our enemy, who significantly surpasses us in human resources, which he, moreover, treats precisely as a resource, and not as valuable to his own citizens.
Obviously, figuratively speaking. “stop a little” and think about what to do about it. It is clear that the enemy will not stop “voluntarily”; he must be forced to do so. This can only be done in one way - if the volume and number of losses in the same human resource on which he is now relying increases multiple times. That is, the enemy’s rate of “consumption” must exceed the rate of its recovery.
Technologically, we cannot do this yet (because there is no advantage in the entire range of weapons so significant that it would lead to real “devastation” in the ranks of the enemy, neither quantitative nor qualitative). Moreover, our ammunition capabilities, let’s say, are also quite limited.
And General Zaluzhny, despite all the hate that stupid “strategists” gave him, in his assessments and conclusions regarding the current development of the situation, he was not only 100% right, but I would even say 150%. Either technology or a positional dead end.
However, the reality is that we are not yet able to independently increase our own technological “capabilities” on the battlefield - neither resource-wise, nor financially, nor even through organizational and administrative means. Relying solely on the help of the allies in this matter is, of course, possible, but this is a rather unreliable matter.
Therefore, it remains to look for a way, directly, figuratively speaking, “on the battlefield itself.” In my opinion, from the entire price list of possible solutions and taking into account the currently superior format of organizing and conducting combat operations, we can only provide our own infantry with a “new quality” so that it is certainly superior to the enemy infantry in this format of combat clashes (for now, unfortunately, we have to think exactly about such a “consumable” method).
Or, it is very important to work quantitatively and qualitatively on the artillery component of our army. There are certain problems with the latter. We are very dependent in this matter on our allies, who, in turn, do not have bottomless supplies of art and ammunition for it for us.
Therefore, at this stage, we should thoughtfully and seriously engage, first of all, with the infantry, with constant and persistent attention to our artillery.
Its “new quality” should consist of significant improvements in three main areas - training (I mean the whole complex, from moral and psychological training to special tactical and fire), weapons + equipment (they should be in the infantry in SUFFICIENT QUANTITIES, and not only to dominate the enemy’s analogues in terms of their “performance characteristics”, and this should apply to the entire complex, from tactical drones, mortars, communications equipment, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, ending with “spores”, protective equipment, thermal imaging and all-weather sights and the standard weapons of the shooter), and the tactical level command link: from the squad commander (assault group), to the brigade commander and regiment commander must not only be READY to organize and control infantry combat in a variety of conditions, but also BE ABLE to do so do.
We must finally understand that the enemy will strive every now and then to repeat the “fortresses” of Bakhmut, Avdievka, etc., in which our infantry will come into contact at a high rate (even with a comparable, or even slightly lower, rate of infantry grinding down ) the enemy himself). This plays into his hands; in the mobilization tension he outplays us, because he has a much greater mobilization resource.
The fact that to this day the Kremlin regime, due to the internal political peculiarities of the “current moment,” has so far reduced the pace of mobilization, do not mislead you. As soon as it discharges (and this, obviously, will happen one way or another), these rates will begin to increase significantly. Moreover, during this time the enemy can significantly improve and increase the capabilities of its system of mobilization deployment of troops.
Stopping this, or better said, radically changing it, is only possible when, figuratively speaking, the enemy begins to realize the fact that in order to kill one Ukrainian infantryman at the front, he must spend his 15-20 "TulovyCh" in any situation and under any circumstances. It is then that the mobilization race, which the Kremlin has obviously chosen as one of the main elements of its war strategy, will lose its meaning for it.
In the meantime, in the current conditions, it is quite profitable for him to organize some next “meat grinder” over and over again - today it is Bakhmut and Avdeevka, tomorrow it could be Seversk, Ugledar or Kupyansk with Liman. At the same time, the result is not so important to him as the process itself.
 
 

how quickly we forget.  Remember before the Russian invasion how the US intelligence community handled releasing info to box Russia in and make it clear that they really did intend to invade?  Not exactly the work of idiots.