Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Everybody keeps saying how the cards are stacked against Ukraine and they can't win with Russia, but at the same time they appear to have kept Russia from total victory for the last 3 years.  If Russia was so great, couldn't they have won this little war a long time ago?  Same thing with US and Vietnam or even Korea before that. 

You're 100% correct, Russia's military is not so great- and Putin has been in power for 30 years and will likely be dead soon as he's 73 and has already outlived the average life expectancy for males in Russia and has been rumored to be very sick for years- and well the big bad boogeyman Russia hasn't conquered all of Europe much less hardly anything in those 30 years in power- which is why media/politicians trying to hype them up as some grave threat to the world or compare him to Hitler is.....pretty laughable. 

you are comparing apples to oranges however- the jungles of Vietnam half a world away from the United States are not comparable to a Ukraine that is flat and wide open- it's a lot harder to practice guerrilla warfare when there are no dense jungles and mountains to hide in and defend a terrain that foreign invaders from half way around the world do not really know. Ukraine is right next door to Russia- and it's wide open flat land- and Russia knows the territory and can resupply instantly- they don't have to ship troops or supplies half way across the world. Also: US could you know, indefinitely supply arms/fund ourselves. Ukraine well, they can't do that, they are wholly reliant on benefactors for supplies/funds/arms.

Last but not least every war the US has fought since the close of WWII was a war of choice for the United States. None were vital to the national security interests of the United States of America. Not a single one. And well, those are much easier to just up and walk away from when you have suffered enough damage. And well we also have these things called elections: and when the people are fed up with a war they can vote in candidates that promise to end wars. Russia? Hmmm....not so much. And believe it or not, Russia actually has legitimate national security interests and concerns here- Ukraine is important to them- it ain't important to us- which means it's going to be a lot harder for them to just up and walk away. And well then it becomes a battle of the demographics. Ukraine simply put is going to run out of able bodied men of fighting age long before Russia does. Russia doesn't have to try to advance and conquer all of Ukraine- they just have to keep the meat grinder going and Ukraine will run out of bodies before they do. And there's not a damn thing throwing more money at the problem will do- won't change anything. There's not a damn thing the Eurotrash will actually do- they are all talk- they'll keep buying tens of billions of dollars worth of oil & gas from Russia which in turn funds that war machine- and they don't have the military capability to repel Russia either. In short: they are a complete joke.

Short of sending in the US Army, Navy, & Air Force- nothing is reversing tide. And no US Congress would make that declaration of war and no US President would authorize any military action. Most of the people running our government are absolute fucking retards, but they aren't clinically insane.

Russia's armed forces are currently using donkeys and mopeds to get to the field of battle.  Their conventional power is completely shattered.  They are no threat to invade and conquer any nation equipped with modern weaponry.  Poland would absolutely destroy them in a conventional war, at this point.

But they still have nukes.  And while I suspect many of them are in terrible states of disrepair and are probably useless, enough of them probably still work, that they remain a threat.

they also have around 3.5 million troops (active and reserve) and brutal unforgiving winters.

but yeah it's mainly the give or take 6,000 nukes that remains the largest threat. which is why no US Congress or US President would launch an invasion into Russia and risk sacrificing New York or LA to a nuclear attack from Russia- even if that risk was less than 1% that Russia would actually lob nukes in our direction.

Speaking of Poland by the way- the Prime Minister of that country has just reiterated pretty firmly once again (as he did last month in press conferences) that Poland will not be sending troops on the ground in Ukraine under any circumstances.

I think support for Ukraine should be sufficient for them to hold their lines and not risk any future offensive efforts or think they couuld recover their lost territories.  But defensive forces?  Economic aid?  I'm fine with it.  They will have to fight on this line if it takes all summer, and probably will and then some.

Eventually both sides will be exhausted.  Maybe.

The French were exhausted in 1915 and fought on, with mutinies and bad conditions.

Welp, my mortgage has jumped up another $110/mo., mainly due to a reassessment of property taxes. 

I have got to learn how to dispute that. I've heard about people doing it for years and seen people here talk about it, but I know so little about how they get assessed and how to go about doing anything about it that I just sigh and pay it. 

I did this successfully for quite sometime with pictures of many dated things that either needed repaired or replaced. Of course after I systematically trimmed the list down - every 3 years I still sent the old pictures 🤐 .Still have to overhaul the upstairs batheroom, anyway one time some snot from the county called me threatening stopping to reappraise my numbers. I said fine let me know ahead of time I'll be here with my appraisal specialist and when he rules on my side we'll record this and not this have it notarized then have readjustment implemented promptly. She called me back late the next day saying "we're good"

 However  about 4-5 years ago when property values inexplicably climbed and kept climbing in a stale economy said friend stated it's time to re-up my numbers. He knew I wasn't moving but said with all the trees around the structure and/or a fire breaks out all of the low balling coud come back and bite me in the arse if i need to submit a legt claim. So my tax bill has been on a steady incline also. I might get a reassessment from the Ins Company to make sure i have full replacement coverage.So find something you want to overhaul and keep/record the evidence you can trim their numbers

Ukraine has any number of major issues.  And maybe Russia will persist and overrun all of Ukraine.  I'd view that outcome as being negative for US interests.

Russia has some pretty significant challenges as well.  Keeping them tied down in Ukraine rather limits their ability to be adventurous elsewhere.

At times in life, one has to choose between several not great choices, and hopefully one chooses the least worst.  The worst consequence, to me, is Russia overruns Ukrain, installs their own guy at the top, and turns it into Belarus (aside from the really worst like open conflict with NATO).  Less worse, I think, is providing defensive weaponry like AA missiles to Ukraine so they can hang on.

100%. Sometimes all you have is bad choices to make- and you can only try to make the least bad choice. Such is life.

The truth of the matter is there were fruitful negotiations that were leading towards a possible peace deal right near the outset of this war- one which had Ukraine tried to hammer and flesh out and not walked away from would've left them far better off than where they currently are right now. But we are where we are- and they really only have nothing but bad or worse choices to make at this point.

And I put a lot of the blame for that on the West- as it was then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who at the behest of the Biden administration- flew to Kyiv unannounced in April of 2022 and heavily encouraged if not outright pressured Zelensky to walk away from peace talks by telling him the West would not recognize any peace deal with Russia- that the Russians were weaker than the West had originally thought and that Ukraine could and would defeat the Russians- and he urged Zelensky to keep fighting and to defeat the Russians and that Zelensky would have the full-stop backing of the US/UK might to the bitter end.

According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages. The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.

And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.
Johnson’s position was that the collective West, which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to "press him."

Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end".

-https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/

The Prime Minister updated on his visit to Kyiv last month and shared his conviction that Ukraine would win, supported with the right level of defensive military assistance. He urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin’s false narrative for the invasion, but stressed that this was a decision for the Ukrainian government.  https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-call-with-president-macron-6-may-2022

Furthermore she acknowledges that there was a deal on the table and that Western powers didn’t like conditions that would have limited Ukraine's military arsenal, lending credence to the theory that Ukraine’s supporters had a hand in ultimately scuttling it.

In an interview on September 3, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland lent credence to reports that Western powers pressured Kyiv to reject a deal during the Ukraine-Russia peace process in April 2022 that would have ended the Russian invasion.

“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” said Nuland, pointing to the requirement that Ukraine’s military be subject to hard caps on personnel and weaponry.

We know this by all the reporting done from various sources: just little taste...

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-russia-2669196351/
https://mronline.org/2023/02/07/former-israeli-pm-bennett-says-u-s-blocked-his-attempts-at-a-russia-ukraine-peace-deal/
https://www.axios.com/2022/03/08/israel-russia-ukraine-ceasefire-critical-point
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine
https://jacobin.com/2023/02/ukraine-russia-war-naftali-bennett-negotiations-peace

And we know from insiders who were party to the Istanbul peace talks speaking out- including former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett- who confirmed as much in a 5 hour interview on a podcast (starts on 2 hr and 20 min mark- have to put on CC as it's in Hebrew) he did in which he stated it was the US under the Biden administration that stalled and blocked peace negotiation efforts- and it was Boris Johnson who fly out to Kyiv to put the squash on peace deal talks.

It seems to me that Russia is willing to go to the negotiating table- and it's Zelensky which outright refuses to- Zelensky has actually signed a legal decree in Ukraine banning all negotiations with the Russians. And honestly big part of me doesn't blame Zelensky- I am sure he hates Putin with the fury of a thousand suns and more than anyone on this planet possibly can- and with good reason- but we make peace with our enemies- not our friends- otherwise it wouldn't really be called peace now would it?

Russia doesn't want "peace" they just want to stop the bleeding and regroup.  Any deal made with dickface putin is just a delaying tactic on his part.  He won't abide by it.  Anyone that thinks he seriously wants real lasting peace is about the dumbest fucker on the planet.

If he wanted real lasting peace the solution is obvious and immediate-- withdraw from Ukraine and end the war.  It's completely within his power to do so.