PureIsle wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 11:58 pm
@CelticRambler
How do you see the Ukrainian conflict ending?
Will get to that in a minute, but first:
PureIsle wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 11:41 am
I came across the below this morning. If it is true, or anywhere close to true, there was a terrible loss of life in and around Bakhmut, and for what I wonder?
...
Where did you come across that list, attributed to Prigozhin? Because I cannot find a single reference to it that isn't the same copy-and-paste that you've posted, with not a single link to Prigohzin actually saying any of it. On the face of it, and scratching below the surface, those figures are literally plucked out of thin air and being re-circulated without any foundation whatsoever.
On the other hand, Prigozhin himself gave an on-the-record interview a couple of days ago in which he acknowledged that the Ukrainian Army is probably the toughest army his men have ever faced, and (read his lips) far stronger, far more innovative, far more agile and reactive than the Russian Army. He specifically stated that his people found no Nazis to remove, and that the effect of trying to "demilitarise" Ukraine has resulted in the most militarised country on the continent.
With Prigozhin's rants and interviews being increasingly critical of the current "Happy Grandpa" regime, and following the series of recent incursions into Russia by Free Russia forces of various denomnations - incidentally showing how pathetically useless are the passive defences recently built at a cost of billions of rubles - how I see the Ukrainian conflict ending is with a fragmentation of the current leadership structure in Russia and one faction or another (probably the one that includes Prigozhin) deciding that there's more money to be made/stolen by leaving Ukraine alone and concentrating on raping and pillaging Africa before the Chinese take it all.
In Belgorod, yet another massive bomb was found, another one that inexplicably fell off a Russian plane and never crossed the border. Bearing in mind that the people of this region are closer to Kiyv than Moscow, and that their socio-economic arrangements were quite entangled with those of the other side of the border, you don't have to think too far outside the box to imagine that they might decide that maybe they
would be better off being liberated by pro-Ukrainian freedom fighters.
I'm fairly sure the catalyst for some or all of this will be another humiliating rout of Russian/pseuod-Russian forces from a large chunk of Ukrainian territory. I'm not convinced that there'll be a movie-worthy storming of Crimea, but it's entirely feasible that Ukraine will eventually be able to control all points of access to the peninsula - including the port/navy base at Sevastopol - and with no ready supply of water for drinking or irrigation, the place will become a barren wasteland. At least until the dehydrated Russians self-evacuate and let the Ukrainians walk in and restore the territory to something like it was before.