Livdoc44

It is the fact that the entire thing is seen via UAS that is the game changer.  The UA picked that small armor column up well back, queued any shooters - ATGM or indirect fires (looks like some DPICM at the end - and then provided any corrections and BDA.  That lead Russian tank had a roller on it and of course it was first to go.
Anything short of complete air superiority, and I mean from ground level to freakin space, is not going to solve this easily.  And even then, as we learned in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, a small two man ATGM team is still damned hard to find.  Now they have systems that can reach kms.
Cleansing a minefield for tens of kms behind it is simply not practical right now.

I would be *very* hesitant to imagine that the Russian state will break up in a formal way. Marginal parts of it, such as Chechnya might go but even then, it's far more likely that some sort of unspoken palatinate develops. The Russian state inhabits a number of tough neighborhoods along its extensive borderlands and the folks there are unlikely to prefer being under the tutelage of a Chinese/Kazakh/Turkish/etc local hegemon. If forging out on their own had been viable economically, strategically, militarily, they would likely have done it in 1990 to 1991. 
Russia seems alot more like a mid to late Ottoman state. It will persist in a slow decline.

My wish for Christmas is 'Swan Lake' on Russian TV on repeat.

Kind of combining @Aragorn2002 @Haiduk  @Harmon Rabb and others...
Prayer for Ukraine, not original.
"Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen."
I can thank God I get to be a member of this forum and sit in my clean cloths, freshly showered, dry and warm, belly full, relaxed under a sky free of enemy drones and missiles, with no worry to man my position in a cold muddy trench to hold off the next enemy assault, and take in and share thoughts on the military and political nature of present and future conflicts 
 

This has been an interesting discussion to follow exactly because it fails to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one has managed to make any significant progress across unmined terrain either. Why would we expect advancing along a hypothetical cleared lane in a minefield to go any better than advancing along an actual clear lane?
Last year, some folks on this thread were doing back of the envelope math to show that the front is too wide to be effectively covered by artillery. In this scenario, even if every inch of the front was mined, the solution for an attacker would be to find the gaps and breach there. But it's looking like there are no gaps any more.
Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced? The intuitive solution to this is to bring greater mass to bear. Even 10 guys with ATGMs can't stop 20 tanks. But then the attacker also needs 20 lanes, otherwise the traffic jam will inevitably give the defender's artillery time to target the area. Enter all these wacky ideas for rapidly clearing minefields.
Let's say that the Aerial Winch Kit 2000 is 100% effective. A squadron of AWKs just opened up 20 lanes in a weakly-defended area of the front. 20 tanks are ordered through, 10 of them are immediately destroyed by ATGMs. How long do the survivors have before artillery rains down on their heads? If the answer is "not long enough", then we're back at trying to figure out how to wipe out artillery at ever-greater distances, and the minefield is not the real problem.

What I am not seeing here is how to deal with the fact that if you mass for a breach you will get spotted, then the enemy has time to prepare (by shelling the breaching vehicles and/or fuelling up helicopters). 
It seems to me the jump teams (which can start dispersed) have got to be doing quite a bit of work sanitising the area before you can breach, then you end up breaching slowly because you just can't concentrate valuable equipment before it becomes himars/lancet fodder. Your drone defence will have to be airtight too. 

I'm not personally a fan of the Colorado decision for pragmatic political reasons but I think folks need to relax a bit. First off, Trump's trial in DC is going to provide ample evidence of an attempt to overthrow the election (in other words, the government) and the legal reasoning in Colorado is based at least in part on precedents set by Gorsuch. This is not some radical move...in most other political eras it would be uncontroversial. Indeed...it shouldn't be controversial now given that Trump is literally talking about being a dictator if he wins reelection. I would have preferred that they waited later in the cycle. That's all. 
As to civil war...I've heard talk of it for years, have seen the fascists marching down my streets, threatening my neighbors (in one particular instance on 1/5, they told one with a pride flag on his lawn "We will come back for you later."). What I will tell you is that once they actually went after the state...on 1/6...and were ejected from the Capitol they got the absolute crap beaten out of them and have never returned to DC. I think an actual armed insurgency would be the end of them, quickly and decisively. Fort Sumter's never turn out well.
So...not bring it on exactly but I'm not losing sleep over it. 

If only there was a good simulation to help work some of this out....
 
It needs mentioning here that "snow" is an extraordinarily variable thing. It is quite possible that 95% of the time the mines work more or less normally, but that there is some combination of thaw, refreeze, and more snow or freezing rain that would disable most mines temporarily. A question I am pondering very hard is could such circumstances be created by carefully controlled flooding somewhere. Find just the right low lying spot, knock down an otherwise inconsequential dyke, and create the conditions for a few kilometer stretch to freeze solid enough. to support at least light vehicles. It would probably have to be timed at warmish moment before a hard freeze. I realize that is a very complicated basis for a plan, but the entire defensive scheme on both sides in Ukraine depends on the assault being slowed enough to let all the supporting fires come to the party. If a couple of brigades of light vehicles could suddenly just floor it right through a section of the defenses things might get very lively.

So as the Chairman exhorts us to 'seek truth from facts', 'learn from the peasants' and 'conduct rigorous self-criticism', I visited a  pro-Russian feed to see what they are showing lately in the way of hohol doom and destruction that has been hidden from we bourgeois dupes and stooges in our echo chamber.
Hilarity ensues (for some definition of hilarity).  Yes, there's also some destroyed equipment but no context (where, when, how much).
1. "Training of Belarusian military personnel with soldiers of the Wagner Group continues."
2. Wot, behind the rabbit?
3. Dumb alligator tricks
4. OK, some beardos talking and walking is the righteous fist of Allah or sumfink?
*****
Zoka got outed and his site was repurposed, but Geroman is still on the job. The footage is not without interest, but hardly supports the claims in the caption (that's true of UKR footage of course at times).
Here too.
Not sure I've ever seen a UA soldier in a steel pot with no helmet liner though, so not clear these hapless hohols aren't Russian or separs.
5.  OK, this does seem to be a UA road column being shot to hell but jump cuts make it hard to tell what's going on. The drone strikes clip is actually more interesting to me:  I know it's very much 'anecdata' and this is a built up (rubbled) battlespace, but do the Rooskies lean toward using SPV drones and Lancets in clusters as ersatz mortars, as opposed to the more curated strikes we see posted by the UA? (no firm conclusion reachable here, just something to look for)
Anyway, for what it's worth.
 

If NATO got involved in this war now I am not so sure we would cut through the RA to be honest.  First off we would not be doing strategic strikes into Russia as we would be bounded by escalation constraints as well.  Second we cannot have this discussion and leave China out of it.  If we threw in on Ukraine, China would be heavily motivated to support Russia more in order to act as strategic spoiler.  Russia sux, but China does not.  We cannot move NATO fast enough for China not to see this coming.
 So if we were fighting in the same box as Ukraine could we fix some things?
- Air superiority.  I have to be honest I really am not sure.  Above 2000 feet we could do SEAD and kill most of those IADS.  But if China started pushing a lot of MANPADs we would be challenged and face stiff loses.  My bet is Russia would go for denial, denial and denial.  We could lose hundreds of very expensive aircraft trying to do SEAD the old fashion way.  All the while long range loitering munitions would be swarming our own airfields along with Deep Strike.
- ISR.  If China supplied C4ISR support, we would also be in trouble.  We can not blind space or operational ISR outside of Ukraine.  And tactical has gone UAS.  We pretty much have all the ISR pointed at this problem so any improvement on the Russian side would be a very bad thing.
- PGM.  Our stuff still blows up.  Chinese HJ-12s are an absolute knock-off of the Javelin.  Not sure how you feel about an ATGM team that can hit at 5 kms, fire and forget, with high accuracy…but it concerns me.  China also has equivalent HIMARs systems etc so get ready for our big fat logistics back end to get mauled.  Hell Russia could hit us from inside Russia itself.
- Unmanned.  China has zero qualms about pushing Russia fully autonomous unmanned systems.  They likely lead the planet on this technology, along with UGVs.  The RA would be getting smart and distributed very quickly.  We have no answer for fully autonomous unmanned systems.  EW does not work. SHORAD does not work.  UGV is a nightmare in the wings.
- Minefields still work.  We would still need to fight through roughly 20km of extremely heavily mined belts facing all that above.  I am betting we would see loses much like the UA did last Jun.  Except entire Bns stopped cold.  
- Manpower.  To your point- NATO direct involvement would take Russian force mobilization off the leash.  We would be facing potentially millions of troops - even hastily trained and ad hoc equipped with left over Russian, Iranian and Chinese equipment.  
- Logistics.  Our logistics is ridiculously large and frankly we have not practiced conventional wartime logistics in about 30 years.  We cut them back and depleted them.  Hell back in 06 Iraqi insurgency managed to cut off operational LOCs coming up from Kuwait…and they did not have a fraction of what we would be facing.
- Willpower.  We would balk at the first real military disaster.  If we lost 1000 in a day we would go into collective political shock.  If the RA could drag this out the public would turn on the whole thing.  How many NATO nations are willing to lose thousands of people over Ukraine?  Russias willingness to take losses is already well established.  I do not think we would take 100k in a year…nor could we sustain it.
So my guess is that we would have to shoot for a quick war but be unable to deliver.  This is not Iraq.  We cannot bomb Russian strategic targets with impunity.  If we went down that road then this is a “would we win WW3 discussion” not a Ukrainian discussion.  China would be heavily invested in dragging this thing out and so would Russia.  Our combined arms and equipment is not somehow immune to being lost…we have seen plenty evidence of this.  
And frankly our doctrine and training is lagging.  We do not have unmannned doctrine and training for what we are seeing in this war.  We would try traditional mech manoeuvre after establishing what we think is air superiority and wind up bogged down by pretty much what ate the RA at the beginning of the war.  Only way this goes differently is if the RA is dumb enough to try to fight the same way we would.
In my estimation, if we had to fight this war with similar constraints as Ukraine we might actually do worse because they have higher experience levels than we do.  We have equipment but not as much as we think.  The US is divide in spending money let alone spilling blood.  
Now if we want to talk about a non-nuclear WW3 scenario things get more interesting.  We likely would not even bother with Ukraine and instead attack along several other fronts/theatres.  Here we could strike deeply into Russia and we might see a more traditional but extremely costly outcome.  Then of course “we broke it we bought it” and we would be trying to manage a broken Russia with China watching and waiting to help us mess that up.

We all know how long "soon" can take in your world, Steve. 😀

Just want to note, chaps, that I talk to a lot of folks and I have yet to hear a clearer take on our tactical and operational conundrum than I do here. 

Really like your thinking @kimbosbread, great questions, what aspects of the defense have to be overcome to allow a breakthrough/restore mobility. Using the WWI/WWII armor analogy our 'Death Swarm' will need to break through the entirety of the defender's forward positions to then overrun the defenders artillery, logistics, and C3, if not C4, to cripple the defender's ability to sustain a cohesive defense.
So let me extend to discussion, play devil's advocate to maybe see how the offensive might reach at least parity with the defensive (defensive as we think we are seeing now in Ukraine)

1. How do we sustain the 'Death Swarm,' once we breakout and are exploiting
2. How do we hold ground once the Death Swarm has broken through to prevent the defender from reoccupying it?
3. What do our 'Anti-Death Swarm' units look like to counter the enemies Death Swarms?
 

I wonder whether another factor behind the UA's 'difficult summer' was a kind of doctrinal disorientation suffered by the military leadership?
Ukraine successfully defeated the initial invasion force through more-or-less ad hoc corrosive warfare tactics: distributed light infantry with modern ATGMs, shop-bought Mavics and a hotline to artillery backup.  The tactics used seem to have been largely improvised due to the fact the UA was caught off-balance and massively outnumbered by the invading force.  The forces which achieved such success included a relatively large proportion of TD units which, in theory at least, were not really supposed to be that effective but had done their jobs when the chips were down.
After the first phase was over the UA was still not properly on its feet and so it dug in and kind of leaned into the same tactics; trying to absorb Russian attacks with mostly light infantry and an increasing number of artillery PGMs allowing their gun park to perform effectively despite overall limited ammunition stocks.  In one major instance this undermined Russian operational systems to the point that they totally collapsed around Kharkiv.  Around Kherson, where Russian defence was perhaps a little more deliberate, it sorta kinda worked to the point that the UA reached the Dniepr but I think we all identified at the time that things hadn't gone quite as neatly as may have been expected, given what probably should have been the critically vulnerable nature of Russian logistics across the river.
During the Bakhmut phase it feels like the UA may have lost a little more faith in the 'corrosive warfare' operational method (perhaps the Kherson experience contributed to this?).  I may be misremembering but isn't this about the time we were reading accounts of Ukrainian TD units kicking off and maybe occasionally abandoning frontline positions in protest at their apparent newfound status as line infantry?  I wonder whether that, combined with a degree of horrified awe at the power of Russia's artillery ever since Severodonetsk, may have worked to persuade the UA's leadership that distributed mass had been a successful means to an end but that, given the choice and their own training, soviet-style world-ending application of force was the thing to aim for.
We should also remember that, throughout this period, a very hot topic was Ukraine's repeated and insistent requests for tanks.  Lots of tanks.  As many tanks as allies could spare and especially some of those shiny, modern, western MBTs, please.  Even at the time I remember wondering why.  I think I might even have posted on this thread that 'maybe it's misinformation to scare mobiks and really what they want is drones, shells, SAMs and access to more C4ISR'.  Is this more evidence that, at a senior level, the UA hadn't actually learned all the lessons we were crediting it with having taught us?
In addition to all that, Ukrainian servicemen were being carted across Europe to undergo NATO standard training.  We've heard various accounts of how such training was ignorant of the realities of the war as it was being fought, so this effectively ended up as a third doctrinal flavour (and a flawed one, in the minds of at least some UA soldiers who went through it), somehow operating in parallel with the UA's soviet institutional heritage and its recent, bleeding edge experience.
So then came the summer offensive.  Well before it started there seems to be evidence to suggest that there was overt disagreement between the UA and western advisers with regards to what that offensive should look like both in terms of scale/breadth and tactics used (although I haven't seen any suggestion that either side were advocating a continuation of corrosive warfare tactics - how curious).  In the end it seems like Ukraine implemented western tactics with western equipment and (very) freshly western-trained units until they got a bloody nose and not much longer.  Now, I'm not saying these tactics would have worked if they tried harder but they only tried for, what, a couple of weeks?  Then they reverted very quickly to what looked like an uneasy, almost incongruous marriage of drones/PGMs with regular, more traditionally soviet-style blunt attacks.  At this point they were trying to attack everywhere despite not really having the numbers to be able to do that and properly reinforce success wherever it may be close.  Our very own Haiduk was often telling us of complaints about various levels of UA leadership and their dogmatic adherence to wasteful frontal attacks.  All of the above suggests a horrible lack of unity within the UA in terms of how and where things were being done versus how and where they should be done.
So, the Ukrainian military leadership was caught organising a full-scale offensive while having to consider:
Should they lean hard into western tactics and doctrine, which none of them were trained in and only a few of their (admittedly near best-equipped) tactical units were partly trained in? Should they take advantage of the fact they have caught their balance after the first year, they have secured fresh supplies of ammunition and equipment and the Russians are on the defensive in order to implement a proper, full-blooded soviet-style assault in the way they were always trained to?  Even though such theory isn't really intended to carry the day against an enemy with numerical and potentially materiel superiority? Should they discard both doctrinal frameworks in favour of what has worked so far, even though absolutely no-one is trained in that; they only did it because they couldn't do much else; it might only have worked because the Russians were so over-stretched and disorganised; perhaps they should step away from using TD units and towards 'real' combat units, now; and who's in charge here anyway, comrade General or that mouthy wannabe-NCO who won't stop carping on about reconnaisance and toy planes? Is it any wonder they ended up kind of doing all three at various times and places?

tl;dr: is there a case to be made that, rather than the fact the tactics were imperfect (and who could blame them for that in the current environment?), it was the fundamental uncertainty and consequent indecision in the minds of UA leadership itself which shaved those critical percentage points of speed and effectiveness away such that the offensive appears to have stretched the RA but did not break it?
P.S. I promise I will work on structuring my thoughts more succinctly in future, when I have time.

Much worse. Many new Ukrainian officers are so-called "jackets" - this is the name regular Soviet officers gave to reserve officers - ordinary citizens who graduated from a civilian higher educational institution with a military department at that university. For example, at the law school where my friend studied there may be an artillery department that trained artillery platoon commanders. The preparation was very minimal (a friend told me that they had an 85 mm D-44 cannon as a training tool).
Before the war, institutes with a military department were super popular, because they made it possible to avoid conscription. You calmly graduated from university, after which you automatically became a junior lieutenant in the reserves. Then no one thought that war would happen and that he would have to become a real officer.
The disparaging nickname “jackets” was given to these people by real regular officers of the Soviet army. Because these so-called officers came to military training in civilian clothes. They didn't even have military uniforms. Due to their extremely poor training and virtual uselessness, the attitude towards such officers was very dismissive (we are not members of the same family).
Today, such officers command platoons and even companies in the Ukrainian (and also in Russian) army. To be fair, I can say that not all “jackets” are bad officers. Just like not all regular officers are “good” officers. Everything depends heavily on a person’s motivation and desire for self-development.

Sorry, just trying to synthesize/wrap my head around what everyone has said above in the last ~6 hours, through Zeleban at 07:50 EST, about the UA counter offensive and why it failed. I think I hear everyone saying what follows. I am confident all of you will point out what I missed or got wrong:
1. UA early war experience and successful practices were either not applicable or not applied to the UA 2023 offensive.
2. The UA pause in late 2022 offensive operations to receive and train on a piddling hodgepodge of different complex western mechanized systems gave RU time to consolidate and prepare defenses in depth.
3. When UA did attack, they did not concentrate their effort according to western doctrine, quickly took losses UA judged to be unsustainable, transitioned to trying to find ways to breakthrough with most emphasis on how to breach very high density RU minefields, and to date have not found operational practices that would allow them to penetrate to the depth of the RU defenses
4. Both sides have leveraged the ubiquitous presence of cheap drones to reveal maneuver to enable effective counters.   
5. The ubiquitous presence both ISR and attack drones, given the length of the front and density of forces, has resulted in stalemate significantly favoring the defender.
6. RU defensive practices have included low manpower density coverage, 'waves' of defenders being sent forward to replenish losses and high casualty local counter attacks.
7. UA has been able to convert RU tactics into high RU losses.
8. RU has much greater manpower resources than UA and given RU social and military cultures will win a protracted war of attrition.
Put all this together I get an uneasy feeling it's appearing more likely RU maybe left in place to consolidate what they have taken, reconstitute their forces, and resume their aggression in the next year, or two, or three, with the loss of Western political will being a, if not the, deciding factor.

I am a military expert.  I have never even posted all my bonafides because Steve is right, it should not matter.  And I have no idea how this thing is going to go.  In fact the longer this war goes on the more questions I have.  Almost every credible military analyst I have read is in the same boat…just trying to figure it out.
So anyone who says “it is absolutely this!”  They have no idea what they are talking about.  Or they have some sort of agenda.  Or both.  A lot of what this guys says echoes Macgregor, who has been discredited by most in the profession.  
 
I mean, ok we got it:  Ukraine is going to lose and you told us so.  Russia ain’t so bad and we should give em a chance.  I am sure your guy will solve it all in a weekend, just like he did last time.  Whatever.  Now explain to me how mass doesn’t work.  AirPower doesn’t work above 2000 feet.  Heavy doesn’t work.  Combined arms doesn’t seem to work.  Troop densities are just nuts.  How do we do offence anymore.  (Actually don’t even try…I am not listening anyway).  Of course the answer is: “surrender immediately” and then the guy can say “I told you so” all over again.

Please tell me I am not the only one that thought Snuffleupagus joined the dark side!

I seriously wonder about the tone of the NYT.
There is reporting, and there is opinion shaping. I think this stuff is very much in the latter. Just the language being used and purposefully repeated through the article is very much not objective.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/world/europe/ukraine-kherson-river-russia.html
Their next article is called "people snatchers"
No mentioning of russia, their conditions, the 300 vehicles they burnt through this month, if UA did that, oh how many sob stories would they write?
Also it irks me they call it "russia-Ukraine war" instead of invasion, or russias war on Ukraine. But Im sure thats just coincidence

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/18k0reh/full_video_ukrainian_t64_destroys_disabled/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_body&embed_host_url=https://community.battlefront.com/index.php
 

Nature or nurture?  On the DNA level we are all pretty much Homo Sapiens Sapiens, so we are talking mostly nurture.  Russian culture today is the culmination of a 1000 plus years of contorted growth, influenced by a nasty climate, oppressive rulers, and shortages as a way of life.
I can't imagine anybody here in Netherlands rushing off to war with intent to rape the women and children and loot a refrigerator.  Perhaps it is different where you live.
 

Apologies if a repeat, did not find a duplicate reference, so...2021 JFQ paper on defense again becoming dominant in warfare, all domain and inter-domain discourse to include space, cyber and EM, global economic and military implications, multi-domain warfighting, the difficulty of synchronizing cross domain attacks, acknowledgement no one really knows what new technologies are capable of until they are employed, implications for the US/west success in resisting Chinese and Russian armed aggression.
Also this, in the EM discussion, which was new to me, possibly not to others here, 'At the tactical level, the United States has demonstrated a drone that can create an EMP directed at specific targets.'
The paper reinforces the opinion expressed here the world is seeing the emergence of defense as the current dominant form of warfare.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-103/jfq-103_10-17_Hammes.pdf?ver=OMgkzdhCeQLSxaHs_SvOdw%3D%3D
Defense becomes dominant again JFQ 103 Q4 2021.pdf

Just don't bother.  This crowd have exactly two gimmicks and they build everything on top of that:
When not in power - Do the opposite, no matter what.  Had Biden said "nope" and held back at the Polish border, they would be howling for blood because he failed to defend the global order.  It doesn't matter context or facts (just make up your own) whatever the issue take the diametrically opposite side of "them".  Build an entire framework - even if it makes no sense - around that.
When in power - Blame everyone, anyone for not getting a damn thing done.  It is "the system", the swamp, the democratic process.  No matter what never be accountable for your own decisions or inaction, blame, blame, blame.  And if you manage to be like a broken clock and get something right - make like it was a shining defining moment in the history of humanity.
This is not even new.  Despots and autocrats have used this same scheme forever.  Fascism did it.  Communism did it.  And now various far-right political groups are doing it - this is not a solely US based phenomenon.
This strategy is particularly focused on two main groups:
- The mob.  They do not really have any idea of how things actually work nor do they want to.  They want easy solutions and binary lenses.  First clue on whoever this guy is was "simple math".  I recall during the previous US presidential administration when aluminum tariffs were being imposed on Canadian trade on "national security grounds".  CBC went down south and interviewed an aluminum can factory owner, and then guy on the shop floor.  Owner was very concerned that he was going to have to lay people off because all tariffs is pass cost increases onto him, the manufacturer.  They then cut to the guy working the floor, "Damn straight!  We gotta show those Canadians they cannot take advantaged of the USA."  That is what we are dealing with.
- The elites.  There is a small minority of people with a lot of power who know exactly what they are doing.  They understand the risks and damage but do not care as the gains far outweigh them.  They are supporting all this to grab more power (never enough). 
If anyone is thinking "I recognize this", well you probably do - it is exactly how Russia is working right now.  It is how other autocrats are working.  China has a similar system.  The major failing of democracy is that it expects the voter - the one with decision power - to actually care enough to stay informed enough to make sound decisions.  The reality is very different.  Autocracy is beautiful in its simplicity: "Don't worry about all that uncertainty.  I will give you certainty and take care of it.  Just give me all the power."
The rest is just noise and soundbites from talking heads who string together datapoints to "prove their point".   Or transparent tactics that a 7 year old would recognize - pretend to have empathy and point out the "humanity".  I could see this from the start and likely why my reaction was visceral.  Any one who can come on this board and arrogantly claim with authority that "WW1 was simple" clearly has no idea what they are talking about and is rolling in on an agenda.
If the past is any indication, Steve will put up with it for awhile and boot the guy.  Or he will slink back into the shadows before coming to that point and we can do this all over again in 6 months. 

Ok, lets put all the rest of that uncited nonsense to the side.  I mean your theory of us "pushing" Ukraine into this war is frankly breathtakingly obtuse and directly from the red-hat camp.  I mean after this you can go back to whatever conspiracy websites you call home.
But let's just pull on this one singular thread.  So for once, I am calling on you...the kevinkin replacement we seem to get in various versions on this forum to actually prove your point beyond your own keyboard.  You state opinion like it was fact and frankly are spewing pro-Putin lines as though they are gospel.
"How is Ukraine losing this war?"  "How is Russia winning it?"  Feel free cite MacGregor.  Your position is that Ukraine has somehow "lost" by not achieving goals set out in the Summer '23 offensive.  What were those goals?  How do those goals determine the outcome of the war?
The Ukrainian military has already won this war.  Unlike whatever HBO/Hollywood narratives you subscribe to, wars rarely end in totals.  Victory parades and Johnny marching home.  The end somewhere in the middle.  In this case we have outlined repeatedly how Russia totally failed to achieve both their stated strategic objectives, and their most likely true ones.  Ukraine has achieved it major strategic objective...it still exists and is able to resist.  It retook roughly the same area of land as the size of freakin Ireland from what was supposed to be the second largest army in the world.
The Russian military is in tatters.  Blown all to hell.  They are still twitching but until I see an actual RA offensive that does not look like glorified leg humping, they are basically only good for holding the line.  NATO got Finland and will get Sweden.  Ukraine is in talks to join the EU.
So basically the Macgregor crowd - of which I am placing you - are now crowing because the UA was unable to re-take back those last few acres of the strategic corridor.  That is not only incredibly sh#tty given the loses they took in that effort, it is desperately trying to rejuvenate a broken narrative.  This war could freeze right where it is.  Ukraine could become like Korea, split.  And history will judge this a major Ukrainian victory.  
Actually, change that.  Don't even bother to try and prove your point because I already know what you are going to say- I have heard it a dozen times over now.  "Ukraine lost (yay!), we were right all along about US isolationism and the world will be such a better place if we stayed out of it altogether.  Oh and look who is blocking funding to Ukraine to keep them in the fight and then blaming everyone else because 'they are losing the war'"
Ok, we are done here...ignore.  

Frogfoot having a brown pants moment:
https://www.dumpert.nl/item/100079415_aa2ca275
Apologies if this was already posted. I haven't seen it before in my usual feeds but Dumpert is rarely among the first to post this sort of stuff. So I may very well have missed it in the usual places, including this thread.