(08-17-2025, 02:54 PM)RickyD Wrote: And Ukraine kidnapping people off the streets to fight with maybe 2 weeks training is gonna do anything. Most of the troops they have are looking gor the first opportunity to escape. Meanwhile Russia still has volunteer soldiers mostly. A lot of the Russians enlisting do so for the money and know what they are getting into for that money.
The whole point of attritional war is to burn out the enemies manpower...which is happening before our eyes. Things move slow...until a breaking point is reached...then it all starts cascade failing and the winner just steamrolls it all. If peace isn't reached Russia will end up with all of Ukraine...and I don't think anyone wants to see that.
That take is kinda skewed.
Ukraine isn't just "kidnapping" random people, like every country at war, they use conscription.
And as far as im aware a significant proportion of their army is actually volunteers, or at least what's left standing.
The Russians are doing exactly the same thing.
Two weeks of training is an exaggeration, plenty of troops have been trained abroad for months, Russia does not have that luxary aside from fielding 1500 NK troops.
And desertion exists on both sides.
Lots of Russians have dodged mobilisation or fled the country to the tune of nearly a million men.
Russia's losses are also massive, just like Ukraine's, probably worse, given the fact that they are the attacking side.
Ukraine's still holding key ground with NATO support, so it's far from a guaranteed Russian steamroll.
If that was the case, the nation would have folded in 3 days, it did not, and still they stand.
"Yet so it is, we see the illiterate bulk of mankind that walk the high-road of plain common sense, and are governed by the dictates of nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing that is familiar appears unaccountable or difficult to comprehend."