It took 25 days to take Baghdad:

Everyone is saying Ukraine is winning the war simply for surviving 7 days.  They're saying it's a 'fierce resistance' and 'Russia is losing' and all this crap.  News flash -- it took America 25 days to take Baghdad in Gulf War II.  It took Nazi Germany 6 weeks to take the 'surrender monkey' France in a 'blitzkrieg, i.e., 'lightning war.'  War takes time.  Every war takes time, even the cakewalks.  There's no such thing as instant victory when you're talking about a country as big as France and almost as populous.

They're also saying Russia is taking massive losses that are politically untenable and soon Putin will be overthrown by his own upset populace.  It's all such nonsense.  According to Russia they've lost 500 people.  That's chump change.  Chicago loses more.  According to Ukraine they've lost 6,000 or something.  Okay, let it be 6,000.  Who cares?  Russia lost 20 million people in World War II and kept fighting to the very end.  Do you think 10,000 dead can deter them?  100,000?  1,000,000?  Russians don't give up no matter the cost when it comes to protecting their soil from invaders.  And Ukraine is the invader of Russian territory -- they are claiming Crimea which is a part of the sovereign nation of Russia just the same as Moscow or St. Petersburg.  They will never give it up.  They fought an entire war for Crimea, called the Crimean War, against the united strength of Europe.  Guess how many Russians died for Crimea back then?  140,000-450,000.

Then they fought tooth and nail in Crimea during World War II.  They held it for a year after all the surrounding territory had fallen.  They must have lost millions defending that territory.  Crimea is layered in Russian blood.  And you think 500 dead Russians is enough to convince them to give up?  Russians aren't weak like Americans.  They don't turn tail and run at the first sign of enemy resistance or the first casualty.  They haven't lost the last ten wars like America has.  They won against Georgia, they won against Chechnya, they won in Syria, and they will win in Ukraine, because when Russians fight a war they mean it.

Russia understands that this war isn't just about Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk.  It's about the credibility of Russia's word.  When they say they won't accept something, or a red line has been crossed, now the world understands they mean it.  If they back down, then the world will alternatively understand that you can do anything to Russia and get away with it.  You could dismember the whole country, nuke it, assassinate their leaders, do whatever you want because Russia won't fight and can't fight.  That's what losing this war means -- that from here on Russia will be bullied into submission about anything and everything, no matter how vital an interest to Russia it might be.  Victory is the only acceptable conclusion, anything short of that and Russia as a country will cease to exist.  Without a credible deterrent, a credible show of willingness and ability to fight, no nation survives.  They're all swallowed up by the more warlike cultures on their borders.  It is the march of history.  The British who didn't have the stomach to fight back against the Vikings were conquered by the Vikings.  The Indians who, despite all their myriads of people, couldn't beat a few thousand British soldiers, were conquered by Britain.  The Amerindians were bulldozed over by the Americans, the Incas by the Spanish, and the Palestinians by the Israelis.  This world lives by one law, survival of the fittest.  If you lose a war you lose everything.  There are no second chances.  If Russia had lost World War II they'd have gone extinct.  This too is an existential crisis.

If Russia loses to Ukraine then the Russian people will lose faith in their leaders, culture and institutions, and switch their allegiance to the 'strong horse', the victors, which is western leaders, western culture and western institutions.  Within a century they'll be assimilated to western values -- the whole rigmarole -- LGBT+ rights, child tranny surgery, tranny men competing in women's sports, open borders with Africa, critical race theory, Islamophobia lessons, affirmative action, you name it.  Russia will cease to be Russia, it likely will split up into another five or so countries, and its people will lose their souls.

Alternatively if Russia defeats Ukraine then the west will be humiliated and the people will rally behind the 'strong horse', the patriotic patriarchal Christian values of Russia.  A new vigor and energy will be put in their step as they realize they faced down the entire degenerate world and prevailed.  No matter what financial hardships they are put through their souls will be light as a feather because they know God is with them.  There is nothing more powerful to the psyche than winning a war or more devastating than losing a war.  Just look how the pathetic German people all these years after World War II are still on their knees, occupied by US forces, paying Holocaust reparations, full of Holocaust museums, inviting in Muslims to repopulate their dying country.  Look at all the alcoholic suicidal Amerindian reservations of the once proud Comanches and Apaches with their gigantic empires.  Look at how vast and powerful the Umayyad Dynasty and the Abbasid Dynasty became by stringing together one victory after another in the name of Allah.  In a few decades some scattered desert nomads owned half the civilized world.  What propelled them?  Victory in battle.  Time after time after time.  Each victory gave them confidence and new supporters which led to the next victory, and so on.  All the way to Tours, France, where finally they suffered their first loss to Charles Martel.  Victory is everything.  If Charles Martel hadn't won a victory over his invaders, France would be another province of the worldwide Caliphate.  Of course, ultimately France will still be a province of the Caliphate, because they lost their war with Algeria and afterwards lost confidence in their civilization as something worth preserving.  But heck, at least they delayed the inevitable for a millennia.

The survivors of this world can't afford to lose any wars.  Lose one war and you're done.  This is like the NFL Playoffs.  The world's survivors are all groups of people, nations, that never lost a single important conflict in their entire history.  Japan's mainland has never been conquered by anyone in history.  Hence Japan is still a self-confident people with their own unique culture and way of life.

You can kill as many people as you want, but you can't kill Russia until they surrender in a war.  They didn't surrender in World War II after losing 20 million Russians.  Do you really think they'll surrender to this pathetic resistance and your petty, meaningless sanctions?  Russia will go nuclear if that's what it takes to win.  Better to take the whole world with them than go down alone.  They have nothing to lose -- as the true heirs to the original Orthodox Christianity of Jesus' time, they're all going to heaven, fighting open Satanists who God explicitly condemned to fiery death in Sodom and Gomorrah who parade around bragging about their sins.  Heck, you could say nuclear war is God's instrument of punishment for gays' sins.  Wiping out all the countries on Earth who promote LGBT+ simultaneously would get a major thumbs up from St. Peter and St. Paul at the pearly gates.

I have full confidence Russia will fight this war to ultimate victory however long it takes and however many losses they take.  I can't predict exactly when Ukraine will give up its futile resistance, no one can.  But the fact remains that Ukraine's army is no match for Russia's and their capital city is already under siege.  The whole thing is a farce.  The conclusion was obvious before the first shot was fired, all Zelensky is doing is prolonging the pain to his own people.  But then again they aren't really his own people -- he's a Jew, as was the coup installed Prime Minister before him, so it's no wonder he's willing to sacrifice as many goys as it takes to make himself look heroic.  Behind every problem on Earth it doesn't take long to find a Jew.

Meanwhile, I finished re-reading UQ Holder and thus the entire Negima storyline.  UQ Holder is a story that can be broken down into many discrete parts.  The beginning is weak.  It introduces a bunch of uninspiring heroes who are weak and immature and has them go up against a bunch of mindless sadistic villains with no redeeming characteristics.  But things suddenly change when a bunch of new girls are introduced and they all become competing love interests for the protagonist, Touta.  One of these romances is with Evangeline through an interesting series of time travels.  Another is with Kirie after a time freeze.  The story becomes a lot better when pretty girls start blushing, like the good old days of Negima.  Then the story changes again when it suddenly becomes about explaining what happened in the eighty years between when Negima ended and UQ Holder began.  This portion of the story is fantastic because it features the old and much better cast of Negima instead of the new cast of UQ.  Eventually the past is fully explained, removing the only problem with Negima (its sudden ending with lots of unexplained hanging plot threads.)

UQ Holder then has another arc that introduces the remaining powerful UQ Holder members in a big fight, some training and powerup stuff, blah blah.  This section is weak because everything that relies on fighting instead of romance is weak by this author.

And then finally we get to the good stuff, which is Touta having a hard time in battle, starting over from scratch, fulfilling his romances with everyone he met across the entire story, maturing into someone who can win not just fights but arguments with good philosophy, and ultimately saving the world by not running away but standing tall and making the hard decision that had a chance to overcome all the odds.  I finally respected the new cast of UQ Holder instead of just the old Negima holdovers at the very end.

You could say UQ Holder was good when it was a romance story, when it was actually Negima just going by the title of UQ Holder, and the last 28 or so chapters of genuinely good decisions and sound philosophy.  This final section even draws the girls properly with nipples, it's absolutely flawless.  The Santa-Sayoko section of the story is a combination of good romance and good philosophy and stands out as one of the only good sections of the early manga.

If I had to guess around half of UQ Holder is premium quality manga and the other half is below average (but you have to read it anyway because the plot is intertwined throughout and wouldn't make sense if you didn't read it all, good or bad.)  I didn't feel that way about Negima.  I felt like every single chapter of Negima was great.  But without UQ Holder to give a proper ending to Negima and a proper explanation to the things Negima skipped, Negima wouldn't be nearly as good.  So together they form the #1 manga ever, and any weak sections of UQ Holder can be forgiven for the strength it afforded Negima in exchange.