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For those still keeping up with the Ukraine conflict (which has unfortunately faded into the background in light of the latest US-Israeli unprovoked war of aggression in the Middle East), here is some neat data quantifying Russian advances so far this year compared to last year:
(The red dot represents last year's gains by April 30.)
I thought it was important to have this on record because i've seen some uninformed comments on other instances about Russia supposedly being pushed back or not able to advance.
On a localized level there is of course always some back and forth, but the question is: what do you see when you zoom out and look at the net balance over a longer period of time? The picture is fairly clear:
Data compiled by https://xcancel.com/LajosPhd9236 based on mapping by @Suriyakmaps
(Also, keep in mind that this is a war of attrition and territorial advances are not the primary objective.)
I do not get these people saying Ukraine is "destroying Russia" with super dramatic thumbnails and stuff (it is clickbait). It seems like Ukraine might be the bigger loser here based on what you said and showed.
What i find most disgusting and obscene is when they gleefully celebrate Russians dying while claiming to support Ukrainians. Because what that actually means is they celebrate Ukrainians dying. They don't care that for every Russian who dies there are at least five or more Ukrainians who die. To them that is a price worth paying to satisfy their hatred of Russians.
It would be just as disgusting if we were to celebrate Ukrainian soldiers dying, and not only because we feel horrible for those poor people who were violently conscripted and forced to die for the Nazi regime. No one who supports Russia is glad that forcefully conscripted Ukrainians are dying. We find it awful and tragic and incredibly sad, because it's literally a fratricidal war.
And the same applies to all those videos and posts you see gloating about how "Russia is stalled" or "Russia is advancing too slowly", because that also comes at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives. That isn't something to celebrate, it's something to be appalled by. It won't change the eventual outcome, it just drags it out.
It makes absolutely no sense, if you actually want the best for Ukraine, to be glad that the war is being prolonged. Every day that this goes on more of Ukraine is ruined and more of its people die or leave forever. And for what? To hurt Russia and to give a kleptocratic fascist regime more time to personally enrich themselves at the cost of their own people's lives.
Yeah, I just want the Ukrainian fascist problem to be solved and for this whole war to be over for them (because this war is just bad for everyone involved). The pro-Ukraine side is clearly one to gloss over the Ukrainian fascist problem because Russia is the scary country of the East that needs to be taught a lesson (which is a telltale example of how liberals are ignorant of the fact that their actions end up supporting fascists indirectly).
To be clear, I am not super fond of Russia, but the fact of the matter is that NATO is an imperialist organization and expanding to Russia's borders was a legitimate threat (though I do not support the invasion of Ukraine because of the lives lost from it); liberals treat the anti-NATO mindset like it is illogical to believe that the "civilized West" would ever commit acts of imperialism, but they literally are all the time (under the form of modern neoimperialism).
I'm getting the feeling Russia will take a lot of land in the next few months.
Maybe. But maybe not. I still tend to believe that they will continue with what they've been doing so far. If what you're doing is working, why change it? What we don't see here are the relative casualties, but that's really the key to deciding whether this approach is worth it.
It's harder to get reliable data there, but the prisoner and body exchange ratios as well as the (incomplete and usually biased in favor of Ukraine) stats we do have on number of vehicle losses based on visual evidence for each side indicate clearly that Russia is taking considerably less casualties than Ukraine (and that's before you factor in deep strikes on logistics and infrastructure damage, which also works in Russia's favor). If the Russian command is happy with the low casualty rate and want to keep it that way then they may decide that advancing faster is not worth it.
That being said, i also think that as the weather has been unfavorable for advances Russia has been in a bit of a pause over the last couple of months, where they mainly focused on regrouping and dealing with Ukrainian counter-attacks. It could very well be that now the pace will pick back up again. We'll have to wait and see.
Edit: Btw, there's an interesting thing happening for the last month or two where Russia seems to be building up a buffer zone in the Sumy region through incursions over the border in over a dozen different spots. I'm not sure what the deal is with that yet.
I don't think Russia will change tactics. I think ukraine will be forced to because their front lines are so thin and their air defenses are all being rerouted to isisrael.
I'm not sure Ukraine is capable of changing tactics. They are stuck in a gambler's fallacy where they have to continue to double down. Air defenses are not really relevant to the front line. Ukraine's air defenses have been very poor for a very long time, interception rates for Russian missiles are very low and even drones are increasingly making it deep into Ukraine in large numbers, and Russian airpower is constantly bombing the front lines. But they can't afford to adopt a more mobile defense because that would be seen as losing. So they have to dig in and stubbornly fight to the last for every position by flooding in untrained manpower and relying almost entirely on drones. Obviously this has not worked to stop Russia, only slow them down, and has led to very high casualties for Ukraine, but there is nothing else that they can politically afford to do. Everything i'm seeing points to them doubling down on this.