This is quoted from a fellow Estonian. But I think it fits the topic.

Apex Predator

What is that, a tractor? And it looks like Russia will be feeling the repercussions of this for a long time. According to this article, Russia lost 70,000 tech workers since the invasion of Ukraine because of sanctions. That's going to have a huge long-term impact on the Russian economy, even if the sanctions end up going away... which I'm not sure they will. Not unless Putin steps down, which he seems unlikely to do.

The flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, sunk my Ukraine forces. If some heads don't roll, I will be surprised.

It's almost like having 500 soldiers killed by a single sniper in an attempt to invade Finland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4

I wonder how North-Korea military is handling this. With the javelins and nlaws popping modern russian tanks like candy jars, what use is their world war era tanks going to have should armed conflict occur. With no thermal or nightvision and a javelin that can oneshot from 2km away, not gonna be fun times for the tank crew.

Yea.. North Korea is all about volume. Lots of armor, lots of soldiers... but obviously that's not enough in the modern battlefield. I guess that's why they keep rattling that nuclear saber. Having served in Korea with a PATRIOT battery, I'm not sure the (hopefully) small number of nukes they have could even be used successfully. On the other hand, Seoul is in artillery range of the border, so it may not matter. I really hope that's not something we find out. There's also a lot of eyes on Taiwan being invaded by China. What a world we live in.

I guess the pro-dictatorship countries just have to go through the bad stuff just to have their awakening moment.

So what’s our best guess as to what Russia’s plan is, if any?

Bomb till December, lose a whole lot of soldiers while at it, dispose of the dictator by the military for new year.

By dictator do you mean Putin? Though that would be awesome, I find it unlikely. I expect they'll continue to modify their objectives, declare victory, and pull out without actually accomplishing much besides killing a ton of civilians and pissing off most of the world. But who knows. If nothing else, Russia's shown the world it's not the military behemoth it's been pretending to be all these years.

Yeah it seems clear that their real plans were to topple the Ukrainian government, install a puppet regime and keep a military presence there until, well, forever. What is going in the Donbas and south of Ukraine is clearly plan B, regardless of what Putin and Russia say. It's also the most important part of the plan since that is where most of the resources are and strategic importance (land bridge, access to the black sea) but it definitely isn't all they came for. Like Satis says, most likely scenario is that they keep grinding their way to some sort of victory in the East and South over the summer months, and that eventually there will be a truce with dug in forces on both sides for years and years to come. I don't think Ukraine will ever really accept the loss of territory - at the very least Zelensky can't ever accept it right now - and it's also clear that Russia can never accept coming out of this war with nothing. So Russia will keep its most important gains and Ukraine won't accept it, but perhaps there will be a modicum of "peace" (whatever that means) in the future.

Whatever else happens, Russia already lost this war on almost every other level than maybe resources. They managed to galvanize NATO, pushed even Sweden and Finland to join (something I didn't think was possible), lost a shit load of men and material, hamstrung itself economically and even China is looking at this mess ambivalently, as they don't benefit much from the economic fallout of this either. Considering how much of their army is tied up in Ukraine and has been exposed as weaker than was thought, I think the paranoid mind of a Putin is genuinely worried about some sort of strike from the West against Russia itself. Which won't happen, but it's a genuine worry to have if you really believe the West is going to militarily invade your country.

It won't help the Ukrainians much but at least Russia's antics are now much further away from NATO borders (Poland) so the risk of a stray warhead or plane hitting a target in a NATO country is at least seriously reduced now the war mostly is taking place in the East. It's a small blessing.

@Peltz two questions

- I guess people in Estonia are now going "thank fuck we joined NATO, probably it's the only reason Russia didn't try to mess with us yet"?
- How is the Russian minority in Estonia seeing the war in Ukraine? Do they follow the Russian pov or rather the Western one?

Things not exactly going in the right direction in Ukraine...now Russia has annexed the Eastern regions through fake referendums and warns that it considers any attacks against them as an attack against its territory, which means they would fall under the nuclear retaliation doctrine. And someone blew up the Nordstream pipelines, one of the only reasons most parties were still holding back to some extent.

Although the media seems reluctant to talk about it, the obvious culprit is the US. Take away Russia's main leverage, force the European countries that still had their eye on the gas to go all in, and at the same time make them more likely to buy American gas. I keep reading reports saying "the US clearly didn't do it as it's an ally of the EU". I don't know how people that naive managed to become well paid journalists. Geopolitics is a lot more complex than that. I'm not even hatin', it's just that they are the obvious benificiary of this act by a country mile.

Anyway, all of it is really driving the tensions up. With Ukraine's recent advances and Russia's panicked 'referendums' and the forced mobilisation of many Russian men it's clear this war is turning into a real nightmare scenario for them. They clearly need and want to cut their losses, but so far the West (and obviously Ukraine) does not seem very interested in that. While I do not want to 'reward' the Russians for their aggression against Ukraine, one can wonder if pushing them into an almost existential crisis is really such a good idea.

Actually the 'buying american gas' makes no sense. Its too far and even if one would use all the gas tankers in the world it's still not fast enough. There will be new pipelines to other countries in the east.

"it's clear this war is turning into a real nightmare scenario for them. " We are so far over that point. There is no word to describe this level of epic failure. I think in the future when a country is doing stupid things they are going to refer to it as doing 'Ukraine the russian style.'

That country needs to be driven to total collapse so that all the ethnicities and actual countries held under by the russian oppressions can regain their independence. Common mistake to believe that russia is one big country, it's even more varied than the US with its states immigrants and native americans.

I'm sure you noticed that Ukraine filed the application to join nato but by de-facto they are already in Nato. They train in Nato countries, they use Nato weapons, they use Nato intelligence. So we are already at war, the fact that our boots (well except US and UK) are not on Ukraine soil is mostly irrelevant.