The more this goes on, the more I’m convinced that Russia is a Third World country that also happens to have a whole lot of nuclear weapons.

I used to work with a Russian girl. God she was a hoot! She hated Putin. Her lack of knowledge of American slang led to many hilarious moments!

Yeah, I seem to remember our idea of Russian women was babushkas (sp?) picking beets in a field in black and white.

Reality is there are some damn fine specimens everywhere. Maybe they didn't want any red blooded American boys getting any funny ideas.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
What about Vietnam, a country half the size of Ukraine?

Or Afghanistan or…

Could be because the best of the Soviet Union and specifically Russia's 'strong' gene pool was lost back in the '40s. People don't like to think about it but the reason we won the war in Europe was mainly because of the 20-30 million soldiers Russia threw at Hitler.

To Bendable's original point - I think Russia isn't winning because Russia didn't do any of the preparation necessary to win.

They didn't mobilize enough people, they didn't preposition any supplies, they didn't appear to do any planning.

It's like they put no more thought into this than you would put into running up to the corner store because you're out of bread.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
If the U.S.A. felt the need to completely capture

Yes, no worries. Though of course our forces are placed inconveniently to do that, and repositioning to do this hypothetical exercise would not be either quick or subtle.

quote:

and over rule a country

No.

Conquering is (relatively) easy - at least, if you have the force and tech advantages we have- but keeping a captive, hostile population under one's thumb is not something in America's bag of tricks.

Which, honestly, is a good thing. We are not in that business, and don't want to be.

The surprise here is that Ukraine is holding up so well, not that Russia is incompetent and leveraging their larger numbers. That's been their calling card since what, at least 1853?

quote:

super power force to be reckoned with

As the Germans found out in 1941, quantity has a quality of its own.

I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but any battle where Ukraine isn't killing Russians 3:1 it's a loss. The Russians are running as they always do with a war of attrition.

I for one am with Trump and RFK Jr and would prefer the end of the killing.