Baldrick,

You must be talking about a different Avdiivka. The one I am watching is where Russians are being slaughtered in the 1000s and the fields are full of rotting Russians, burnt-out tanks APVs and 8 Su25s. The front line hasn't moved more than a few meters in the last week while Russians are losing up to 1000 soldiers killed a day.

If this is winning then Russia will run out of soldiers and equipment before it gets much further.

As for the Russian economy, it is getting thrashed. Oil and gas revenues are about 1/2 of what it was last year, and 40% of the budget is going to the war effort and Russia is running a huge budget deficit. Real inflation is skyrocketing and real wages of most Russians is about 1/2 of what is was prior to Russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion.

Russia is losing this war.

"In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.

As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.

“There’s no f-- ‘dying the death of the brave’ here,” one soldier told his brother from the front in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “You just die like a f-- earthworm.”

The prospect of another wave of mobilization lingers, even as Moscow has been trying to lure people into signing contracts with the military. Russia’s annual autumn conscription draft kicked off in October, pulling in some 130,000 fresh young men. Though Moscow says conscripts won’t be sent to Ukraine, after a year of service they automatically become reservists — prime candidates for mobilization."

So soldiers are using code 'apples' 'oranges' and 'bananas' to mean dead, wounded and refuse to fight.
Ukrainians are dying, getting wounded and refusing to fight.
And you got this info from where - the same people who gave us the 'ghost of Kiev'?
- And Russia is planning an army of 1.5 million after NATO expansion.

Your comment's a nothingburger charter boat.

Baldrick,

And where did you get the gem that Ukraine is losing Avdivvka? Did you pull it out of your arse?

The reality is that the lines around Avdivvka have barely moved in nearly 2 months and that the ground around the city is littered with 1000s of Russian corpses and hundreds of destroyed Russian tanks, APVs and artillery.

Russia is losing this war badly.

Republicans aren't giving money for Ukraine without a deal on the southern border.
- No one got a deal on the border in decades.
Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, no one got a deal done.

Will Ukraine face political collapse before military collapse?
Or will the fighting pregnant women save the day?

Either way, Ukraine is running out of weapons, money and men.
No money to run the government, no money for hospitals or pensions.
Game over Ukraine.

I told you they'd get cut loose in December.
I think Joe would like to keep the human meat waves coming for at least a few more months, it don't look good for his re-election.
The blame game has begun, political strife in Ukraine is evidence of it.

Baldrick,

You are grasping at straws. The issue in the US is temporary. The EU has just given Ukraine 15bn euro and the flow of arms to Ukraine will continue.

What hasn't stopped is the slaughter of Russians and the destruction of their tanks, APVs aircraft and warehouses at record rates with little to no progress for the Russians.

And while the coffins stream back to Russia, the Ukrainian special services are blowing up Russian infrastructure left right and centre. The two rail routes to China are badly damaged, the tank engine factory burnt down, an explosive factory blew up and fires are starting all over Russia.

Russia's domestic aviation is collapsing:

"A passenger plane carrying 182 passengers and six crew members from Kazan to Moscow made an emergency landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport after the stabilization control system failed, The Moscow Times reported on Dec. 5. This is the sixth Russian plane to experience a mid-air breakdown in a week.

An Aeroflot Airbus A321 flying from St. Petersburg to Moscow requested an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo Airport on Dec. 2. The decision to make an emergency landing was made due to the failure of the left engine.

Breakdowns of Russian civilian aircraft have become more frequent after sanctions imposed over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine cut Russia off from aircraft maintenance and the supply of original spare parts.

Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, issued aircraft manufacturers' certificates to airlines to keep the planes in service. This allowed the airlines to make repairs themselves, after which they began cannibalizing some planes for components to service the rest of their fleet.

Since spring 2022, airlines have required their staff not to record equipment defects in their logbooks, which often resulted in planes being rendered inoperable."

Russia is losing the war.