If you are in the west, then it is more attractive of course to believe that the Russians are losing the war. Actually the same experts that claim that Russia is losing the war today also claimed that Taliban was losing the war in Afghanistan only months ago.

Given the facts on the ground though, it is a different story, so before you get too upset, let’s think about this logically. If you believe that Russia is losing, then that’s probably because you have two preset perceptions:

1- Russia is in a hurry and if the war has not yet ended, then they must be losing. This is not true because the Russians know that the sanctions against them will stay for a long time, so they are not motivated to end the war fast. Also, life in Ukraine has practically stopped, so the longer the war stays, the weaker Ukraine will be and not Russia. In addition, Russia’s strategy also seems to be paying off, because as they keep the fire on in Europe the oil and gas prices will continue to go up. On Friday 4/1/22 for example, Bloomberg issued a report (source: Putin May Collect $321 Billion Windfall If Oil and Gas Keep Flowing) stating that Russia will reap an estimated $321 billion in energy exports in 2022, an increase of more than a third from 2021. So Russia is basically financing the war with that extra profit. In addition, the Russians are clearly aiming at getting back at NATO and Europe, and the longer the war goes on, the higher the economic cost that Europe has to pay which creates cracks not only in Europe, but also in NATO. Just think of how the record inflation is already causing tensions within Europe today and imagine how bad it will be if the energy prices continue to go up together with shortages in grain, metals, and other Russian exports. Unlike Europe, Russia has all the oil, gas, grain, fertilizers, steel, Aluminum, Nickel, coal, cooking oil that it will ever need and so while Europe will get hit badly as the prices of these things go up, Russia will be smiling happily on the other side of the border.

2- Russia needs to take Kiev and other large cities to win the war. The problem with this is that the West is basically setting Russia’s goals and then measuring its progress against those goals, instead of measuring against Russia’s own goals, which you have to agree is kind of twisted logic. To start with, the Russians never stated that they wanted a regime change, on the contrary, they said on day 1 that they are not trying to topple the current Ukrainian government. This is quite smart because they need a popular regime to agree to the painful concessions they intend to get to stop the war. If the Russians really wanted to take Kiev (a city of 3 million people), they should have attacked with all their forces instead of using only about 40,000 soldiers which is a figure much smaller than the Ukrainian forces defending Kiev. Wasn’t this Hitler’s mistake when he attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 (instead of attacking Moscow with all his might, he sent his invading army fighting on three fronts at the same time)? Knowing that Russians read and know history, one can argue that they know too well that if they needed to occupy Kiev and dispose of the current regime, they would have had to hit it with all their might. So basically the Russians were distracting the Ukrainians into thinking this is where their main strike was, but clearly it was not. The Russians kept a 40 km military column next to Kiev just to keep everybody focused on Kiev while they were destroying the Ukrainian military and defense industry elsewhere. In short, the Russians’ actions on the ground and their words indicate that they never really wanted to occupy Kiev, but for some reason, the West seems to know better than the Russians what the Russians really wanted. This goes for all the other major cities that the Russians are encircling. It is clear that they really have no intention of breaking into them, except of course for the ones that they intend to keep (keep in mind that there are more Russian forces fighting in Mariupol for example than the ones that surrounded Kiev which tells you basically where Russia’s focus really was).

In Short, Russia’s military strategy seems to be to try to pull fighting forces out of cities, track them and destroy them while methodically destroying every piece of military infrastructure out there. We could see this in the destruction of the mall in Kiev on March 22nd (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pt0NEMuNMk) where instead of the Russians destroying the rocket launcher on the field, they tracked it to where it was hiding with other launchers and ammunition and destroyed everything. Again, this is consistent with what the Russians declared that they are distracting the Ukrainians on multiple fronts so they cannot fight like a cohesive army and that’s precisely what we see on the ground. Basically, army units hiding in the cities with no coordination or help or support from other fighting units in other cities.

Now let’s look at the actual results of the war so far keeping in mind that Russia’s primary targets were to de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine:

• The Ukrainian defense industry: on March 31st, Reuters reported the Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych stated “They have practically destroyed our defense industry". (Source: Russia has destroyed most of Ukraine's defence industry - presidential adviser). So, how big is that industry? According to Wikipedia (source: Defense industry of Ukraine - Wikipedia) Ukraine occupied the 12th spot among global arms exporters in 2019, and this industry employed about 1 million people (down from 2.7 million in 1991). This is something we never hear about in western media, but that is significant because if that is the only result of the war, then clearly Russia won.

• With regards to military infrastructure and weaponry, the Russian ministry of Defense on 4/3/22 reported: "In all, since the beginning of the special military operation, 125 warplanes and 88 helicopters, and 383 unmanned aerial vehicles, 221 surface-to-air missile systems, 1,903 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 207 multiple-launch rocket systems, 805 field artillery armaments and mortars, as well as 1,781 units of special military automotive equipment have been eliminated." Source: https://tass.com/defense/1431655. This is in addition to the thousands of military sites, barracks, airports, fuel depots destroyed during this war. If half of those figures are correct, then Ukraine’s military capabilities are all but destroyed. The question here is, should we believe the Russians? To start with, the Ukrainians never disputed those figures as far as I know and never provided their own casualty figures, so why shouldn’t we believe the Russians? In addition, we know for a fact that the Russians certainly have the capability to deliver strikes with pinpoint accuracy and they have proven many times what they claim by showing us videos of those strikes, so we clearly need to take those figures seriously. By using simply math, and assuming a few Ukrainian casualties for every military piece of infrastructure destroyed, one would easily calculate that the Ukrainians have lost between 15,000 and 20,000 casualties (very close to Russia’s estimate of Ukrainian fatalities) in addition to the estimated 15,000-20,000 fighting in Mariupol who are practically lost. That puts the Ukrainian losses to at about 30,000 - 40,000 dead soldiers in addition to the wounded and captured and basically that tells you the whole story.

• For Ukraine though, the worst is yet to come because the bulk of the Ukrainian army (between 60,000 and 120,000 soldiers) is dug in in the Donbas area and is cutoff from the outside world. So if the Russians close the noose around from all sides and start shelling and bombarding them, then it will only be a matter of time before they surrender or get completely annihilated.

• Ukraine is currently blocked from the Black and Azov seas. They will certainly lose the Azov Sea forever and most probably the Black sea as well. The results of course will be a much weaker Ukraine both economically and militarily.

• Around 3-4 million women and children left Ukraine to Europe and Russia and will soon be followed by their men when the war ends, and one can only guess that most of them will not come back, so that would be a mortal hit to Ukraine’s economy going forward. Not only will this weaken Ukraine, but also Europe and so Russia seems to have been able to achieve two targets with one strike.

So when one looks at the whole picture, it is extremely difficult to conclude anything but that Russia is winning. I agree of course that if you are following the media and you are currently bombarded with a one-sided view that Russia is losing, you might be tempted to believe that. Basically in Western media there is only one argument and the second side is completely absent, but we are still expected to believe the single argument they keep shoving down our throats. Doesn’t this remind of you of anything? Let me give you a few hints: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.


Written by Ossama Elhadary, Associate Professor at City University of New York

I have said it, Putin isn't acting like the despot the west portrays him as , he knows his mission and following it duly . He's has nuclear weapons in his arsenal and he maintains that it will only be used in defense. Same nuclear bomb that the saint USA used during the world War to decimate 2 cities .

Russia and allies control Ukraine's sea ports. Ukraine industrial zones, grain storages, mining zones, coal mining factories, major nuclear energy reactors, etc are under the Russian occupied areas.
Basically, their economic, agriculture and ports powers are behind Russia's lines. So, I don't understand how the MSM want to twist that to fit their narrative of Ukraine pulling muscle at Russia.
You've pulled over 700k soldiers, excluding specialists, instructors and special forces from NATO, including billions of dollars, extreme sanctions(stealing), extensive and intensive intelligence(SIGNIT,HUMINT,ELINT,OSINT) from US/NATO and using NATO standard armoury to fight just over 120k Russia troops from groups O, Z and V.
YET, we know who is suffering those sanctions more and who is heavily paying for puppetism and war mongering.

Russia is winning the war with ease..

When ever you hear so so number of Russia died that is actually the number of Ukraine military men dieing.

It is the code that Zelensky uses to inform his western supporters that Ukraine is dieing.

They twist the news about their casualties.
God bless mother Russia.

Realist12:
I have said it, Putin isn't acting like the despot the west portrays him as , he knows his mission and following it duly . He's has nuclear weapons in his arsenal and he maintains that it will only be used in defense. Same nuclear bomb that the saint USA used during the world War to decimate 2 cities .

Unprovoked

Nancy2020:
Russia is winning the war with ease..

When ever you hear so so number of Russia died that is actually the number of Ukraine military men dieing.

It is the code that Zelensky uses to inform his western supporters that Ukraine is dieing.

They twist the news about their casualties.
God bless mother Russia.

God doesn’t bless war.