Lethaface

Ok, how?  How is it a “major strategic victory”?  How is Russia’s position better than it was before this war if that is all they gained?  Is it decisive?  Does it create strategic options we cannot counter?
It sucks and we all would like it other wise.  But calling it a “major strategic victory” is hyperbole.  I will even buy operational.  Strategic would be half of Ukraine under Russian control and the other half held by a Vichy-esque puppet.  While NATO starts falling apart.
We got Finland and Sweden.  We got political Will for a decade.  We will get the rest of Ukraine.  Russia got a corridor of land which will secure Crimea better but it cost them far more than that was worth.
That corridor is an arbitrary metric.  Right next to “all of Crimea” and “every inch of pre-2014”.  They have sentimental value but in the hard calculations of geopolitics and military gains they do not mean as much as people think.  The West is not going to fall because this war got stuck where it is.  Ukraine is not going to slide back into Russian control.  Hell Russia doesn’t have the forces to exploit that corridor for a long while yet.  And by the time they do I am sure it will be mined and defended to the hilt.
In war there is what you must do. Want to do. And hope to do.  The trick is really understanding which is which.

If it is same as the first one, RTS. 
I have the first edition, just looked it up and played it for 5.4 hours total. Each to his own but compared to the depth / immersion I get from CM I thought it was like 'meh'. Some interesting features of course, but imo CM was way ahead.
Who knows this one is much better, but I'll surely won't buy it unless reviews/let's play manage to convince me this one is very different.

So what does Russia sell?  What sustains this gold throne?  Oil and gas.  The West ain’t buying it anymore and that is going to continue.  So Russia sells to China or India (Iran has their own).  1) all the infra is going West so know they have an eastward problem.  2) China and India are going to guy Russia and undercut profits 3) A lot of expertise ran away and keeps running away. That brain drain is going to really start hurting.
No, the Russian economy does not get away with this all scot free.  Major market shifts are not painless.  Can Russia still do Grey zone crap and play silly buggers, sure…but we already risked managed that for over a decade.  It is going to cost Russia billions, maybe hundreds of billions to rebuild military power after this war.  Will there be oligarchs?  Yup.  Will Putin stay rich?  Yup.  Will Russia be in a position to do Ukraine War 2.0 in the next 10 years…no freakin way.
None of this is “good” but it ain’t all bad either.  The dance will continue but Russia is boxed up and can only do so much.  Our biggest risk is taking our eyes off this ball as we go all scope eye on China.

The point is that the king still sits on gold even if the peasents starve.
We are also far from that - so what exactly is this "punishment" of economic "isolation" /read this as a trade reduction in russias case, Russia still very happily trades with the rest of the world and vice versa, some companies pulled out, others made great profit there.
All one can argue is that this economic reduction reduces Russias potential to build as many weapons as they could but a) they are maintaining the war good enough, b) judging by North Korea (which is completely isolated vs just the west doing - less trading - not nothing), which still hangs on after half a century and remains a threat to SK and the world.
So how much does this "economic pain" really deter Putin, or other autocrats ? In my view, not at all. 

These clips you keep posting give me some WW2 east front vibes. 

Another drone recollection gathering interrupted by a party pooper ;-). 

Lol nicely put. (Ps we have finally overcome that national tragedy).

The last bits of your post is imo why we don't see real 'learning & improving' on the side of the RA. And also links to what was missing in another post linking to a video about the changing world order which was too limited in its vision, at least imo. The thing the 'West' or rather democracy has going for it is the advantage on the side of learning and improving. We probably owe Napoleon some slack on this account and we are in danger of losing this advantage, corporate culture being one of the biggest threats imo.
 
Ps Napoleon wasn't really democratic, but imo the only durable/sustainable way of enforcing learning & improving is in the dimension of what democratic freedom actually entails. Our democracies are in the risk of losing this, as the 1% gets more and more influence and wealth to the detriment of the 99%.
(Does one actually have the chance to make a difference for the better by giving it all, or does whatever one do not make an iota of difference).

Besides Zalushny's statement has probably more intents outside of what is in the statement, than inside. After all it is coming from a General directly involved in a hot war. He isn't writing op-eds for a career opportunity.

And if you've ever given someone a little push to get over a hill while using a power meter, or been pushed, a few tens of watts can make a huge difference in your fatigue and recovery by keeping you from having to go over AT and recover repeatedly.  

A good amateur cyclist can do 300W sustained per hour. A properly doped up Grand Tour winning cyclist does 500W sustained. A sprinter is doing about 2000W, but over 10-20 seconds only.
Tesla batteries (Panasonic laptop batteries last I checked) are 250WH per kg.
If you can give a soldier for the cost of say 5kg in batteries an extra 50W for 24h, that’s actually a lot of power.

EDIT: This obviously implies 100% efficiency, but even at 50% this is not an insignificant benefit.

You are no doubt correct…but he is contained.   Pragmatically the West political calculus is that this is a problem that cannot be solved.  If we destroy Putin/Russia we have a whole other set of more dangerous possibilities.  If we let him get away with murder (literally) we set ourselves up for worse.  Russia just took “the 2nd most powerful land army” on the planet and smashed it to a pulp in Ukraine. Putin might not care about convicts and country rubes, but he does care very much about nearly 3000 tanks and a submarine.  It will take the RA decades to come back from this mess.  However, they still need to be enough of a threat to justify NATO spending targets and positioning.  Conveniently a stalemate outcome supports this.
A lot of you in Ukraine/Eastern Europe think we in the West “don’t get it”.  We actually do, very well.  What you do not understand is that our level of investment has a different end-state.  We never wanted to see the complete and utter defeat of Russia as a state.  The hazards of a nuclear power in complete free fall are simply too high.  Putin can lie to himself and his people all he wants, but he knows that any hopes of Russian imperial expansion died North of Kyiv…he did that and everyone knows it.  Will Russia be back?  Sure.  Or maybe we will get lucky and when Putin dies we get a more moderate jerk we can do business with.  But for now, the US and Canada sell more oil and gas to Europe.  We sell more weapons to Europe. And we contain Russia, just enough.  Act 2: China.  
Would it have been nice to drive home the “point” a little further?  Sure.  But now Ukraine can support an insurgency in the occupied territories for a decade instead of Russia doing other way around.  We know Putin doesn’t care and will continue to play his game.  But the outcome of this war, even if it stops today, made want Putin “wants” irrelevant.  He shattered is military means to achieve it.  He also broke his Diplomatic and Economic means in the bargain.
So we fall back on Plan Korea.  We can live with that.  Optimal?  Definitely not.  But when I said back last May that if the UA offensive goes nowhere over the summer and fall that “there would be difficult conversations”…well this is that conversation.
I personally don’t actually think we are done yet to be honest.  Let’s see where winter takes us.  But the UA CHOD basically admitting we are at “positional warfare” - which is just code for slow grinding attritional warfare - then it is clear we can see those hard conversations coming.  Next will be to see if there is any political movement on either side.

More views of Oct. 10 Avdiivka assault:
 

Besides Zalushny's statement has probably more intents outside of what is in the statement, than inside. After all it is coming from a General directly involved in a hot war. He isn't writing op-eds for a career opportunity.

I don’t think it is nearly as cut and dry as the average person thinks.  There are upsides to a stalemate at this point.  To be totally brutal an endstate where both sides can claim victory (and defeat) often makes for the best outcome.  Ukraine is still a free nation, our support ensured they stood up against an illegal invasion and largely repelled it when there should have been no chance of that success.  
Russia and Putin can claim victory as they took an additional 7% of Ukraine at an eye-watering cost.  But this will likely keep ol Flat Face in power for a few more years before Time does its thing for us all.  This avoids a Russian free fall experience, and we get the added bonus of Europe buying our oil and gas (or alternatives) while we righteously continue to isolate Russia -this is why it won’t matter who is in the White House post-war. 
A lose-lose starts to look like a win-win.  US administration can point to all the upsides going into ‘24, plus we are looking at Armageddon in the Middle East which keeps the Bible Belt focused elsewhere.  We hopefully do a whole bunch of reconstruction in Ukraine and go all South Korea on the place.  Russia continues as downward spiral but slowly enough they don’t start WW3.  And we can all focus on China as the next big threat worthy of trillions in defence spending on bloated military capabilities that probably won’t work.
So you see, a stalemate is not the end of the world.  In fact I would not be surprised if in some circles they are kinda pushing for it.  The total and utter crushing of Russia has some serious risks.  This outcome sidesteps a lot of them.  Now everyone is both happy and unhappy.  Sometimes no decision is the best decision.
I for one am not convinced we are there yet, but we definitely can see it from here.

Problem is this works both ways though as Ukraine isn't going win either. As the taps of western support start being turned off doubt we're going to see a resolution with clearly defined borders in Ukraine's (and the west's) favour. Not that they appeared to of made a difference in assisting an effective counter attack... donated Leopards are great but they can't be everywhere at once.
This whole affair I guess will continue to be talked about in defence and foreign affairs policy circles for a while yet about how the west can intervene without boots on the ground and get a favourable outcome. The idea of "21st Century Lend Lease" rather than directly intervening really hasn't worked if they expected the support to lead to a clear victory. Unless stalemate was the goal of Washington, Brussels and others... which I highly doubt.
Poses problems for strategy when the next move happens between the powers involving clear national military forces on both sides. China -> Taiwan? Are we really going to repeat the sending of equipment routine and harsh language in front of the cameras in that instance and hope for the best? We also know that sanctions really haven't altered the status quo inside Russia either as not all countries are adhering to them and forming their own blocks to challenge the West and it's institutions.

Nice.  "no one specified dead or alive".  Little gaps like that lead to - great movies

I've seen that many armoured vehicles stacked up in CM only when I'm playing the AI, have lots of drones, and on top of that know what route the AI will take because I've done the scenario before.
We keep talking about the RA learning.  It's certainly learning some tactically (Lancets, drone ISR, artillery and supply chain dispersal, etc. ), but it remains stone-cold stupid in other ways.  At least from what we see and how we assign value and the definition of success.  It may well be that funnelling all that juicy armour through one spot secured a senior officer's promotion for being aggressive, or prevented his humiliating dismissal for lack of aggression / obedience to plan.  In which case it was very successful for said officer even while being obviously not for the RA - kind of like big corporations where staff optimize their personal outcomes at the expense of the bigger picture.
In modern war, artillery arrives in near-real time, and you can't even drive out of it because it adjusts in real-time.  The C4ISR or overall OODA loop is that tight, as described in more detail by Haiduk a few days back.

And of course the CONOPS of all armour - essentially that significant threats will come from the front, so tactical and operational doctrine is designed to see that they do - is completely broken by real-time artillery and/or smart and/or area-effect artillery, copious and rapidly re-laid mines (wait until they have legs), long-range man-portable top-attack AT missiles, and drones.

PS: the Charge of the Light Brigade was a problem of communications, not tactics.  "The charge was the result of a misunderstood order from the commander in chief, Lord Raglan, who had intended the Light Brigade to attack a different objective for which light cavalry was better suited, to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions. " - Charge of the Light Brigade - Wikipedia
 

... and now I'm imaging a terminator-like robot tying to load a tangle of snakes into a trebuchet in an attempt to knock down F-35s 🤣

A bit more complicated but the sentiment is not entirely off.  We did an exercise about 10 years back trying to figure out all the components of military value.  In the end it looked like the Drake Equation, which was scary enough and then some egghead pointed out that some components were non-linear over time.  Over all military value is a pretty complex beast with all sorts of tangible and intangible elements.
So when considering something like a new platform one has to try and consider its value as a delta V to an overall system.  How is X giving an entire system an advantage to an opponents comparative opposing system.  So infantry in battle suits is not simply “how much does the suit cost versus the things that can kill it” it is “how does the system create effects advantage”.  Cost becomes an attritional factor but is offset by advantage.  
So beating up on the poor tank.  It isn’t the fact that cheap ATGMs or UAS can kill them that is driving their value down.  It is the fact that ATGMs and UAS are killing them before the tank can deliver its military value on the battlefield.  If tanks could survive long enough to create operational tempo and manoeuvre then we would not be having this conversation, even if we were looking at the same loss rates.  It is the fact we are seeing the loss rates without the tank being able to deliver value.  That is what is killing the tank.  Making it worse is the cost factor and those tanks being eliminated by incredibly cheap systems compared to the cost of the tank.
So if armoured infantry in battle suits can live long enough to create effect, force decision and sustain options then they have value that far outweighs strips cost.  Of course there is a threshold for this, we see that in WW2 Germany.  The Tiger was brilliant but far too costly to sustain even with the effects it could deliver.  The Tiger 2 is like modern tanks.  The damn things were very expensive and most could not even get to the start line.
So is a military capability below a cost sustainment threshold?  And does it deliver value for that costs?  When and where that value happens is also incredibly important.  In reality it is very complex - let alone when you factor in historical and cultural value.  There is a Perun video (if he hasn’t already done one, that guy has to be in FD somewhere).

Soldiers aren't cost effective compared to a 5.56mm round. Tanks arent cost effective compared to an APFSDS. Planes arent cost effective compared to a sidewinder. Ships arent cost effective compared to a harpoon.
And yet, here we are.

Dollar expensive, and likely time expensive, but probably not blood expensive. It'll suck for the guys doing the mechshuffle, but there wont be very many of them out there in total.

'This operation would make the charge of the light brigade look like a sensible military exercise.'
 

Well they already haul massive loads, especially the SF type of forces, with obvious consequences later on in life if not already during operations. But yeah probably only human organic power is too limited. But with the use of tech, engineering, tension and lever effects I'd say there is more to be gained from the human basic strength. Especially if you add 'hybrid' power. 

More Avdiivka insanity (Oct. 10):