Ukraine has asked the west for 2000 armored vehicles, 1000 howitzers and 500 tanks. That is what Ukraine had at the start of the war. See link at the bottom.
That is a war of attrition. One that Ukraine is losing.
Ukraine admits to 200 soldiers KIA every day (meaning the actual number is higher), with wounded being usually 3-5x the KIA number. That is what attrittion looks like. Note those numbers come from the western press, not Russia.
That is a war of attrition. One that Ukraine is losing.
I remember a couple of lines from a movie where one guy says to the other (I paraphrase), "I'd beat you in a fair fight." To which the other guy replies, "Well, that doesn't give me much incentive to fight fair, does it?" Then hits the first guy with a chair or something. You use your advantages.
The US and Ukraine have spent 8 years hardening Ukraine's defenses. If Russia were to storm those defenses with small arms, they'd be wiped out. Russia tried the "shock and awe" in Kharkov, Kyiv and Kherson. It only worked in Kherson. Russia lost a lot of men and some material, but had Kyiv and Kharkov folded like Kherson, the war would have been mostly over after a month.
Instead we have WWI type fighting in the Donbas except for one huge difference. The front line does not move back towards Russia. It stutters for a while as Russia pounds the poor Ukrainians with artillery and weapons that have longer range than the defenders have. It is fucking horrible. Eventually, the hardened positions of the Ukrainians soften, and the Russians advance a few hundred meters or a few kilometers.
Repeat that scenario every day for 100 days. You see on the map that Russia has taken huge portions of the Ukrainian east and south if you compare a map from 20 June with a map from say, 20 March.
That is a war of attrition. One that Ukraine is losing..
It is a war of attrition that experts in the west knew Ukraine couldn't win. It is a horrible, sociopathic tactic by the west, particularly the US, to lead the Ukrainians to slaughter just so Russia can be "weakened." A whole generation of Ukrainians will be killed so that a western political adversary can be "weakened." Horrible. Barbaric.
Even if (and it is still a big "if") all the weapons get delivered that have been promised - it will take weeks to months to train the Ukrainians on those weapons. I'm guessing they'll cut training from "weeks to months" to "days to weeks" meaning precision weapons won't be precise.
All the while roughly 1000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed or wounded every day. So there will be 30-40,000 fewer Ukrainians to fight by the time the weapons could possibly make a difference.
Russia is destroying transport infrastructure every day, making getting the weapons to the front much more difficult. Not to mention the ammo. Or the spare parts when the weapons break down.
That is a war of attrition. One that Ukraine is losing..
Ukraine is huge. It is roughly the size of Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Austria put together. It is a long ways from Lyiv to the Donbas. Russia's logistics lines are shorter and in much better shape than Ukraine's.
That is a war of attrition. One that Ukraine is losing..
I'm old enough to remember the movie "War Games." The moral of the movie was, "The only way to win is to not play." That was the move Ukraine should have made before the war. Stop killing people in the Donbas. Implement Minsk II - which Ukraine signed!!! Stay neutral. Don't declare you want to build nuclear weapons 4 flight minutes from Moscow.
If you slap Mike Tyson's wife, it would probably be illegal for him to pummel you rather than call the police. I'm actually not sure what the law says there. In real life though, if you slap Tyson's wife, you shouldn't act surprised and outraged when you wake up in the hospital.
I'm not happy about this situation. I wish there had been no war. I have friends in Ukraine, and very many next door in Romania. I'm not yet scared for my own safety, but I am scared for theirs. I'm just not living in a western fantasy that Gandalf will come riding in on Shadowfax and save the day.
Link to a German article on the war from today:
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/ukraine-krieg-scholz-103.html
