#the one most honest thing Joe Biden ever said was his off-script moment when he said “For God's sake this man[Putin] cannot remain in power

[generallemarc]

A question to any Ukrainians who might somehow be reading this

Is it to Ukraine's benefit for the war to continue? I'm no military expert, but from all I'm seeing, with how much the defender is advantaged no matter which side takes that role, combined with Russia's inarguable manpower advantage and the beginnings of discontent about the extended draft in Ukraine(which would only be partly solved by drafting women, something that doesn't even appear to have been brought up by the government), there's not much chance to take back significant amounts of territory anymore. I'm not saying no territory could be taken back, but I don't really see, say, the total liberation of Kherson or Zaporizhia by force as being on the table anymore. If that's the case, then would it not be better to end the war with a "border drawn where the front is" peace deal that maybe sees a trade of Russia's bits of Kharkiv for Ukraine's bits of Kursk and Belgorod and spare the lives of the civilians dying every day in drone and missile strikes? Obviously fuck Russia, obviously they deserve none of the territory of Ukraine they currently control, but under a peace deal it would actually be easier for the Ukrainians living on the wrong side of the front to leave, since even if there wasn't border normalization there at least wouldn't be an active warzone in the way. Right now, to me, and again this is just my foreigner's perspective without access to native-language news sources, it seems like America is the main benefactor of this war continuing, not Ukraine. Because every day it goes on is another day Russia continues to run up debt when before it had a budget surplus, continues to burn through the Soviet stockpile inheritance, continues to have its refineries drone struck and its young male population degraded, continues to jail productive members of society for daring to dissent while letting murderers and rapists back onto the streets to harm society once more because they did their tour with Wagner. This is the new Afghanistan, a war which we rather (in)famously worked to drag out as long as possible to bleed the Soviets as much as we could. Only this time we're aiding a democratic society instead of literal jihadis, thus my uncertainty about whether continuing is a good thing for the country in question.