re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

You haven't refuted anything I've posted with any actual evidence. I'm not some economic savant, but I obviously know more than you.

Granted, low bar there.

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"I'm Not Ruling Anything Out" - Macron Says Troops for Ukraine Possible if Russia Breaks Front Lines

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Macron is a windbag like 3-4 posters on here. He likes to make statements to get his 30 minutes of press but he never comes through on anything he says. He is almost as weak as Scholz but with a bigger ego and mouth.

Sadly for Ukraine they have hitched their wagon to Western European countries, the US and Canada whose leaders have the spine of a caterpillar and in one case a dementia patient.

Putin knew who he was up against when he started this.

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Putin knew who he was up against when he started this.

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Yet ten years after he started the war and two years after his “special operation”, he can not vanquish Ukraine. In fact he isn’t that much better off than he was before the SO began.

People ridicule Zelensky but in my opinion he has out performed Putin, Biden, Johnson, Macron, and all the others.

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People ridicule Zelensky but in my opinion he has out performed Putin, Biden, Johnson, Macron, and all the others.

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I am shocked that this is your opinion

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How much longer does everyone think before Russia gets a break through in the lines?
I think it is getting worse by the day. At some point Ukraine is going to crack. It may not be over run but I think they will give up some big areas.
Ukraine is being smart by reacting to Russian attacks but it will only take one mistake and Russia will exploit it. Not enough men on the lines for Ukraine.

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I am starting to wonder if Russia's advances are more just moving the lines to include certain towns/villages rather than really trying to gain much ground.

Once they take some of these contested towns there is a lot of open ground between them and the next town..... it doesn't really make strategic sense to push too far and end up sitting out in the open.

Given Russia's tactics historically haven't always been exactly "stand up" in a moral sense, I could see them just taking the nearby towns and using the people still in them as human shields, i.e. Gaza. If there are even many residents left... I don't know which areas have been totally evacuated, if any.

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Yes,,but Putin has an objective

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Yes to conquer Ukraine.

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He has actually doubled down

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Because he lost his first bet and then decided he couldn’t accept defeat.

quote] He knew all he had to do is hang on[/quote] Actually he learned the hard way, the only way he could win was to wear Ukrsine down.

By every measure Putin has fallen short to date. He began having a major advantage, and two years after his two year special operation is over he has been reduced to grinding Ukraine down.

He is certainly not a military genius, he just is the dictator of a large nation trying to impose his will on a much smaller and having a hard time doing it.

You start at 1985 not 1980 when interest rates were close to 20% Those rates matter a lot. All you have to do is look around and see all the toys and gadgets people have today compared to even 1990 to see even hood rats are better off materially. The housing market took off around 2001 when the Fed dropped rates from 6% to under 2% in just over a year.

Industrial sales for me (the company I own) were good in 2022 because interest rates were near ZERO so cost of money was cheap for manufacturers. They were able to modernize and expand as a result. Now the biggest problem with fabrication for refining and chemical processing in the USA has been the boomers retirement party. It's been looming since 2000. There are definite labor shortages where blue collar skills are needed. Fabrication yards have about 50% of the labor they need to build everything they could take orders for and be profitable. Industrial contractors have had to offer guaranteed overtime, travel expense (per diem) to locals, just to get enough workers and at double the base pay from 2000.

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They are still.out producing or obtaining more than the west has provided. Plus their enormous stock piles left over from the cold war.

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The west can FAR out produce Russia if we choose to buckle down and do it. The problem for the US specifically is how defense contracts work... its way more expensive for us to produce equivalent stuff.

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The west can FAR out produce Russia if we choose to buckle down and do it.

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Yes, but have they done it?

Germany has completely shutdown Taurus production. What about the EU and those million shells that they promised to produce?

In truth the capability is not there and won't be for a long time. The Europeans hollowed out their militaries and military production and spent it on social welfare while hiding under the protection.of the US taxpayer.