Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Russia is importing petrol, calling it the rightful result of the work of the Security Service, the Armed Forces, intelligence and Ukrainian weapons manufacturers.
Quote: "Today, there were also reports on our entirely justified strikes against Russian targets – against their logistics and fuel infrastructure. I am grateful to our warriors for their precision. Russia chooses war, Russia destroys our people’s lives, and must be held accountable – our long-range capabilities will increase.
It seems to be similar to the Vietnam War (besides the distances ofc). The US lost that because none of the soldiers actually cared about going to fight in Vietnam, nobody cared about winning. It might be a similar story with Russia. What stakes do the Russian people face if they lose? What does Ukraine have to lose?
That was an unwinnable war. China supported North Vietnam, with which it shared a long border. The US was fighting thousands of miles from its borders, with all the logistical problems that entailed, and was not willing or able to engage China directly in the fighting-- they had recently tried that in the Korean war and barely managed to achieve a stalemate at a high cost in lives. The South Vietnamese government was a former French colonial puppet regime that was rotten to the core, the South Vietnamese soldiers knew that and had no desire to die for those parasites or for the US’s obscure objectives. The North Vietnamese soldiers had to either fight and win or be massacred by either the US or their own government. So they cared about winning, since for them it was an existential imperative. American draftees had more options than that.
But I agree that your analysis that the cost of failure to the sides in that war was massively asymmetric is indeed also applicable to Russia and Ukraine.
It’s a bit different as Russian indifference is also what made this war be possible in the first place.
I mean, back in '22 Russian opposition mostly had to flee abroad, but broadcasted news of Russian war crimes, commenting that Russian citizens should know the truth.
Now we know they know. It’s just that nobody cares until it affects them personally.
it is not even the first generation of russian opposition that failed at that. They played dumb when Transnistria situation happened, they didn’t gave a shit when russia started a proxy war with Georgia by fueling the separatist movements, they couldn’t be bothered with Karabakh thing, lots of them openly supported military invasion of Ichkeria that tried to secede according to international law only to be laughed at, they played the “it’s very ambiguous” during the August 8 invasion even there was nothing ambiguous. russian opposition was politically irrelevant long before that and their fate as absolutely inadequate play-pretend clownshow was cemented when most of them decided to feign ignorance and sit on the fence over Crimea annexation and then their leaders started speculating over that with sandwich rhetoric which was deeply idiotic and counterproductive.
True