"Feng presented four major factors that he believes will "make Russia's eventual defeat inevitable."

First on the list is the "level of resistance and national unity shown by Ukrainians, which has until now been extraordinary."

The second factor is the international support for Kyiv, which the academic said "remains broad," though he acknowledged the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky finds it wanting.

The third factor at play is the "nature of modern warfare," according to Feng, who described this as a combination of "industrial might and command, control, communications and intelligence systems."

Russia's war machine is at a disadvantage here, Feng said, because the country never fully recovered from the "dramatic deindustrialization" that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia's fourth critical deficit is a lack of information among Kremlin decision-makers at the highest levels, Feng said. Trapped inside an "information cocoon," Putin and his national security advisers don't have ready access to accurate intelligence, limiting their capacity to fix mistakes.

Feng contrasted this with Ukraine's "more flexible and effective" government."

"Feng also said "shrewd observers" have seen Beijing's approach to Moscow transition from a "no-limits partnership," which was declared by Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping just before the invasion, to China's standard position of nonalignment.

"China's relations with Russia are not fixed, and they have been affected by the events of the past two years," he wrote."

"In early 2014, the Euromaidan protests led to the Revolution of Dignity and the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Shortly after, pro-Russian unrest erupted in eastern and southern Ukraine, while unmarked Russian troops occupied Crimea.

Russia soon annexed Crimea after a highly disputed referendum.

In April 2014, Russian-backed militants seized towns in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) as independent states, starting the Donbas war.

The separatists received considerable but covert support from Russia, and Ukrainian attempts to fully retake separatist-held areas failed.

Although Russia denied involvement, Russian troops took part in the fighting.

In February 2015, Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk II agreements to end the conflict, but they were never fully implemented in the years that followed.

The Donbas war settled into a violent but static conflict between Ukraine and the Russian and separatist forces, with many brief ceasefires but no lasting peace and few changes in territorial control."

Besides which, the thread article is about China not being the same kind of trusted ally that Russia has in, oh say, North Korea or Syria, lmao.

I mean, you can tell a lot about a country by their, "friends".

11

So... have you put your name into the hat for Republican Speaker of the House?

'Cause you and them are best buddies on surrendering Ukraine to an invading force.

But hey, "partition Ukraine" may be your best Neville Chamberlain imitation yet.

"Vladimir Putin's false war claims

Shortly before launching a full-scale war on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin outlined his reasons for the attack. Russia, he said, must "defend itself" and "denazify" Ukraine.

Much of this is false.

Putin's statement is a propaganda narrative that lacks any basis.

Putin uses the term denazification, which refers to the Allies' policy for Nazi Germany after World War II. They wanted to rid the country of Nazi influences and remove incriminated individuals from their posts.

However, the comparison with Ukraine is wrong, Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), told DW:

"This talk of Nazism in Ukraine is completely out of place," he said.

"The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a Russian-speaking Jew who won the last presidential election by a huge margin against a non-Jewish Ukrainian candidate."

While there are far-right groups in Ukraine, Umland said, they are relatively weak compared to those in many European countries.

"We had a united front of all radical right-wing parties in the last parliamentary elections in 2019 where they won 2.15% of the vote."

Ulrich Schmid, professor for Russian culture and society at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, describes Putin's claim as "a perfidious insinuation."

It is true that there were individual far-right groups during the Euromaidan protests in 2013 and 2014. Today, however, they play a subordinate role, said Schmid, who researches nationalism in Eastern Europe.

"They exist, but in Russia itself there are at least as many far-right groups as in Ukraine."

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