> If it were just a slingshot, other countries could pick up what Ukraine is doing in no time, but they can't. Instead, there's an absolutely massive industry behind Ukraine's drone manufacturing, growing at 2x per year, which no other nation can currently match, including Russia.

I'm all for good guys winning, but what are your sources? And why do you think Russia can't match Ukraine in this regard?

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tartoran 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think whatever advantage Russia has (size and resources) is being squandered by corruption and incompetence.

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throwaway85825 19 hours ago | parent [-]

In terms of russias strategic goals Russia lost in month one when they pulled out of kyiv and admitted regime change wasn't going to happen. Everything since then has just been a very expensive face saving exercise and a hope thay somehow Ukraine would collapse.

	▲	tartoran 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's been getting worse and worse lately, they have huge losses, hard to even think about it. With oil output dropped by 40% in the latest Ukrainian attacks on oil infra, it looks like they will probably miss out on the sanctions relief Trump handed them. Yeah, Ukraine is also quite well bruised up but somehow they are more competent to fight. But by the time the war ends, even if they won it'd only be their symbolic liberation victory because economically it won't look to good, also bad for EU, possibly a global crisis.

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epistasis 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's no single source, it's basically all the war reporting. My claims are not contentious. Even Russia's war bloggers are repeating the same now.

Russia could, in theory, use it's greater number of people towards producing drones. But it hasn't. Russia could, in theory, train its new recruits properly before throwing them into hopeless situations. But it hasn't. Russia could, in theory, operate by rewarding production contracts to the most capable teams rather than the ones with the best connections. But it hasn't. And even if Russia does, they'll have to catch up. They could!

Even the US could, in theory, start learning from Ukraine or even following in its footsteps, independently, but it hasn't.

Ukraine is fighting for its life, it's on Death Ground, in the terms of Sun Tzu. In Russia, perhaps only Putin is on Death Ground, and even then, there's many ways Putin could give up on the war and still stay in power. That produces far different results in people. And the cultures of Ukraine and Russia are fundamentally incompatible, which also produces very different results from people.