This graphic and title were published by The New York Times in two articles separated by eight days.

Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Made Progress. But It Has Much Farther to Go (2023-09-20)

How the Front Line Has Barely Moved in Ukraine this Year (2023-09-28)

spoiler

This javascript bs sure makes for shitty snapshots, but I refuse to link directly to the NYT.

anyone who thinks Ukraine has a chance at taking that all back is a fool. Also, why would they want it back? So they can keep bombing eastern Ukrainians who are ethnic Russians?

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Ukraine itself is a little stuck though. NATO wants this war to keep going as a way to further encircle Russia. Military expenditures are up. So Ukraine can’t stop because they’re a NATO puppet at this point.

And even if Zelenskyy offered to cede territory he’d get assassinated by one of the Ukrainian Nazi groups and there’d be a subsequent coup. It’s just a huge pointless mess.

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Any economically poor country needs to learn that the USA and NATO will just use them. We only give actual freedom to other empires.

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17 points
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Deleted by creator
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35 points

I wonder if Zelenskyyy could defect to Russia lmao, seems like they’d take anybody

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Yeah something like that would be pouring jet fuel onto Ukraine’s Nazis. They’d be organizing around the idea of the Jewish backstabber Zelenskyy for decades.

I can only imagine those fascist scum barely tolerate him to begin with

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28 points

If I remember correctly he already owns a multi-million dollar mansion in Florida lol

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okay sorry to bust out the calipers, but i’ve seen the phrase “ethnic russians” a lot and i can’t help but suspect that it’s westerners collapsing history into a single racial identity which we understand as separate from designated “minorities,” not unlike the phrase “han chinese.” understanding that all racial and ethnic identities are socially constructed, what exactly is the historical basis for the idea that russians and ukrainians are different peoples?

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6 points

It’s just a bullshit phrase we kinda are stuck with using.

‘Ethnic russians’ sort of implies ‘not really ukrainian’. In my experience ethnic groups is something that people like to bring up more often when talking about non-western countries for like weird balkanization fantasies. Obviously there are and were differences between people who spoke ukrainian and people who spoke russian in ukraine. The biggest observable difference was in politics, you can very clearly see voting patterns between the regions with large amounts of russian speakers and ukranian speakers and I think there is something to the idea that people who speak a common language will become more alike even across borders and how those commonalities affect stuff like politics. But currently it’s just this sort of liberal knife to make weird seperations.

But we wouldn’t really talk about ‘ethnic french’ in a country like canada or the USA you wouldn’t really talk about the ethnic britons in france or the ethnic swabians in germany because well it’s silly even though I’m sure you could make them into an ‘ethnic group’ based on voting patterns and values etc. As far as I’m concerned ethnic xyz is often employed as a dividing tool not as model we can use to understand countries and people.

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72 points

Based on the victory pics I’ve seen, they’re mostly liberating rubble. Which is, like, sad. A tremendous waste of resources fighting a pointless war on a dying planet

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81 points

The horror of war that liberals refuse to talk about. Ukrainians spent the last two years trading high explosives on every last standing piece of public infrastructure. It doesn’t matter who wins this war in the end. The people of Ukraine will have lost unfathomable amounts of working capital, nevermind the entire generation of conscripts that were shoved into free fire zones or sent out to stomp on land mines.

This is the Iran-Iraq War of nightmarish bloody pointless futility.

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This is the Iran-Iraq War of nightmarish bloody pointless futility.

Finally a better comparison of what’s happening…

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When you put it that way, it’s like if a restaurant closes at 7 and the war is being fought at 6:45. Like it’s not going to make a difference and my shift is almost over. Why do I have to work so hard right now?

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How well does the war tip?

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Truly achieving World War 1 levels of movement

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61 points

As well as WWI levels of moral pointlessness.

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41 points

I’m sure Russia could move forward in some places, but they don’t need to. At this point all they need to do is win the war of attrition and keep their defensive positions (which is obviously much easier than attacking). Ukraine will come to them anyway.

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21 points
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For Russia’s sake, I hope not. By year 4 of that war people were dying by the tens of thousands on individual ill-conceived military maneuvers. And unless Poland or Hungary enters the war on the side of Ole Vlad, there’s no Western Front to take the pressure off.

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17 points

movement, not tactics

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I wonder how much of an editorial battle was waged in the NYT offices about whether or not to show the Russian gains alongside the Ukrainian gains

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48 points

I’ve definitely seen a version of this map that only showed Ukrainian gains. So other papers’ editorial battles must have gone differently

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Probably more CIA moles at NYT trying to blunt the Biden admin’s thirst for world war three

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critical support cia moles?

I have seen a lot more negative press coverage of the war lately, the Guardian just published some pretty damning stuff on Zelenskyy’s regime and they have normally been strongly pro-Ukraine. Ukraine apparently asked western governments to do strikes on Iran and Syria to stop drones from being sent to Ukraine and put pressure on Russia elsewhere.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/videos/world-news/ukraine-planned-iran-attack-kyiv-sought-missiles-to-neutralise-kamikaze-drone-threat-details-101695877872989.html

Zelenskyy still trying to start WW3. First it was the no-fly-zone shit, then it was attacking the ZNPP constantly and saying it was Russia, then it was misfiring rockets into Poland and blaming Russia and invoking article 5. Now it’s this. Ukraine is absolutely off the rails, it’s a rabid dog that needs to be put down

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61 points
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looks like a feature on a weather map know as weather fronts, when it has alternating red and blue bumps like that it’s called a “Stationary Front”

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49 points

We’ll have an eighty percent chance of artillery shells tomorrow.

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