WEPR Forum, or armor games forum in general seems like a ghost town. Regardless I'm happy to restart a conversation here.
The war appears to have stalled as of 3/12. I believed the timeline for the Russians to have Kiev was around 2 weeks. We've surpassed that date. There's obvious issues they're trying to correct, but I have some theories. My stance currently is that Ukraine cannot sustain itself, and sanctions will not deter the Russians before victory.
If we take a look at Russia's past conflicts (Georgia, Middle East, etc) they always seem to underperform. They seem to value sending conscripts and older equipment to soften defenses and secure supply lines before sending in newer tech and veteran soldiers. My belief is that we'll see faster progress in the upcoming weeks. I don't believe Ukraine can withstand the constant shelling and pressure on key targets. I also don't believe NATO has an appetite to get involved beyond economic pressure. I don't believe Ukraine will ever join the EU or NATO as the government is far too corrupt and Ukraine has always been seen as a liability.
My prediction is Russia wins the conflict, and the West eventually accepts this and removes sanctions as they did with Crimea. The general populace (US/EU) does not appear to have an appetite for foreign conflict. I welcome further discussion on this topic.
@Somers Annoyingly, I fully expect the West to just accept the outcome whatever it is, Russia is (as usual) threatening retribution if the US gets involved, which is a fancy way of saying "We still have nukes and we're not afraid to use them" and Putin has a reputation of not giving a crap about our sanctions and speeches. Russia's reason for invasion is so weak that the only people who believe them are the Russian citizens who are hammered relentlessly with propaganda, and Russia has been building up to this for years (NATO found tanks on the Ukraine border and Russia literally said they "had no idea where they came from", but the uncomfortable reality is that we are over here and they are over there, and America is likely to do nothing but watch.
Then again I've heard we are sending them anti-tank weaponry and drones, so...that's good.
The only "winner" in the conflict is demonic. Ukraine is obviously scarred for decades if not centuries to come, although if they didn't stand up Putin (my personal arch nemesis btw), Putin would just keep claiming all countries "were never independent countries" until he ran into someone with nuclear weapons willing to use them. Russia is the loser since a). They're losing a lot of their already gender imbalanced young male population for nothing (they've already lost population since the Soviet days) b). they look like incompetent fools militarily c). they've lost any possibility of ever doing a peaceful buyback of the former USSR by their outrages and d). at "best" they'll only get a few roughly big western counties of territory e). they can't even use Hitler's excuse of gaining more "living space". Putin is the loser since a). he refuses to accept the collapse of the USSR even though he was in a relatively powerful position at the time b). if he really wanted to take over Ukraine, he could have just almost paraded in while his puppet was still in charge of the Ukrainian military c). he keeps forgetting how old and sociopathic he is relative to the rest of Russia's and Ukraine's population and d). he's got almost all of Ukraine absolutely furious at him and Russia now by trying to cheap shot Ukraine with absolutely outrageous civilian outrages. Finally, the West (US/EU) is the loser since it looks like a relative toothless pushover.
