There are always evacuations offered by the russians but there's also always plenty of civilians that do not leave. Either due to age, inability or stubbornness "this is my home". My understanding is that the Ukrainian side tends not to do this, and has some pretty bad habits of camping out near local civilian populations as a method of deterring missile/artillery fire against their armour. Major civilian buildings like schools and rec centres usually get turned into small bases or supply centres since they're not being used for anything else when on the front line of a war.

If the rumours are true that Ukraine only has 1 line of defence here then things will move very quickly following a breakthrough like this. But I don't think anyone really has reliable information on what the trench/defensive lines look like for Ukraine. The Russian defensive lines being 3 layers with shark teeth in between on the other hand is very well understood.

I don't think size is an issue. You need to think of the war as Ukraine supplying the bodies and the entirety of nato supplying the combined weapons, funding, manufacturing, strategy, intelligence and planning. Ukraine has the bodies necessary to make numerical advantages moot.

I suspect that negotiations won't come until after this christmas, going into the string of upcoming elections.

The sooner the decision-makers realise that and negotiate for peace, the better.

To decision makers it's not though, this is the problem. They're all perfectly happy to sacrifice all these lives, the US warmongers are happy to sacrifice any foreign lives against their adversaries while the Ukrainian bourgeoisie have used the war as cover for some of the most brutal right wing crackdowns I've ever seen, complete banning of all left parties, shutdown of media, and the complete and total rollback of 100% of workers rights. They have created a state that allows for absolute maximum exploitation of the people with no left opposition. The ruling class see this as a great win for them, the true-believers of the ideological fascists probably genuinely care about the borders of the nation but the bourgeoisie couldn't give a fuck. So this leaves it up to the US really when to end the war by allowing negotiations, since its only the west propping up Ukraine that allows it to continue it will always lie in their hands to decide. I suspect that will come with a combination of elections (both US, Ukraine and several in Europe) and them wanting to switch their attention to China.

Can’t say that would enjoy walking into that kind of maelstrom.

It's an easy way to make progress slow. Just cover the land in deadly munitions. Nevermind the fact that for the next 50 years 98% of the deaths they cause will be civilians :/

Another

https://youtu.be/OAoYZ850cg0

Fair warning Mercouris is a tory fuckhead. However I suspect that will appeal to a neoliberal like yourself. He's also a london barrister working in constitutional law and human rights.

The effectiveness of the armour entirely depends on how many Javelins Ukraine have left in my opinion. These were causing the bulk of Russian losses. The way this has been dragged on and delayed and delayed and delayed could imply that the Russians have been aiming to deplete the supplies and munitions that the Ukrainians have in order to make an offensive viable. The west doesn't really have much left of this shit to give them either without taking it literally out of the hands of active units. Western manufacturing is not keeping up with the rate at which things are getting used.

I'm not ruling out that their offensive will go as badly as the Ukrainian one. It really depends on what they have left, how many weapons supply dumps the Russians have been managing to destroy with those regular missile attacks, etc etc.