RE: Economic factors looking up30 Jun 2025 17:38
Wilco_roger, it is is demonstrably untrue that the Russians are using a fraction of their [assuming you mean conventional combat] power to date. Military capability is my passion (much better at that than I am at picking winning AIM stocks) so I'm really happy to discuss this with you - though we'd bore the pants off everyone else, I'm sure. I'll stick to two, no three, key points to illustrate my argument without being too wordy. 1. they've used their best units and stripped out the professional core, 2. They can't actually logistically supply (or deploy) more combat power in the Ukraine theatre, 3. they don't even have air dominance (which is crazy) because they have combat power that they cannot effectively use. The Russian military is not at all a spent force, but it's been neutered by Ukraine.
Ukraine can certainly last with European support now now they have better established their manufacturing and supply chains (a year or two ago this wasn't the case).
Russia cannot conventionally win militarily without total mobilisation (notice Putin's reticence on that), though neither can Ukraine win right now. Since Putin isn't going to call off his war or fully mobilise to win it, then we need proper negotiations to get EUA where we want it to be.