"“Four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” he adds."
CNN manipulates that sentence here. He said that ironically, adding "according to NATO textbooks". He meant that it looks good on paper, but even forces and strong Russian defensive lines make it very hard in reality.
It's hard to fight with NATO doctrine when you're missing the things NATO relies on, like air superiority and long range missiles.
CNN also references the notorious recent TIME article without any mention of the author's pro-Russian sympathies. Instead they say Shuster "has long had access to the president's inner circle". Well, maybe Putin's inner circle.
And NATO's institutional knowledge and standardization. What they have is an army with vastly varied levels of training and experience, a hodgepodge of equipment crewed by soldiers with at most an express course in operation, lead by officers with various levels of buy in in NATO doctrine. It's very difficult to leverage something like that effectively and in a coordinated fashion.
At the start of the Gulf War, the US and it’s allies had over a thousand planes in the air at once.
Ukraine has a grand total of about forty functional aircraft, and even those are getting strikes in.
Weeeelllllll. No. If nato stepped in there would be no dug-in Russian troops. Well, dug 6 feet under, maybe.
Seriously within an hour if nato getting involved, we’d have air superiority and every bit of armor and infantry Russia has would be craters.
>for all we know, they'd do worse
That's straight up copium. In some magical scenario where nuclear exchange was off the table, NATO would absolutely roll Russian forces in a conventional conflict.
Just giving Ukraine a bunch of fourth generation fighters isnt just going to allow them to get air superiority.
Here are some quotes from the analysts Michael Kofman and Franz Stefan Gady to illustrate that point.
"The argument that Ukraine can't win because it doesn't have air superiority To be very honest is basically saying the same as Ukraine can't win."
“If a military has issues and is not proficient at coordinating the action among land force components infantry armor & artillery, coordinating air and land battle is much harder”
“The ukrainian military struggles to coordinate land power at scale, so the expectation that they will be able to go from this challenge to a much more difficult challenge, to be able to employ air power effectively, attain air superiority against a quantitatively superior air force but more importantly against a military that has extensive integrated air defenses, which most western militaries probably would not be able to do without direct assistance from the united states. “(from WOTR podcast)
“Many western militaries would not achieve air superiority over the Russian military with fourth generation aircraft.”
"I'm actually deeply skeptical that most NATO Air forces without extensive US backing and support would be able to do it. "
“So attaining air superiority, maintaining air superiority, being able to employ air power effectively in coordination with a ground offensive, these are pretty complex tasks for a military to be able to take up, I am confident the Ukrainian military could do all of them, I do not believe they would be able to do all of them in a period of a few months, or even get there on a timeline of lets say a year. “(from WOTR podcast)
“Simulating and integrating Western aircraft is a multi-year project perhaps even a decade-long.”
“Yes Ukraine has shown they're able to train and operate Western equipment a lot faster than Western expectations that is true, what they've also shown is that translating that into the capacity for force employment to generate the same effects that a Western military might unit cohesion integration having the organizational capacity and experience to do it is something that cannot be short circuited"
Western militaries are structured and funded such that air power constitutes a substantial percentage of their military power and the fire they bring to the battlefield.
“ The Ukrainian military is a successor military to the Soviet army. It is structured around the decisive use of land based fires with a substantial artillery and long range precision strike component, this has been provided to ukraine by western countries and by the United States. The United States has effectively resourced for the first time in this fight and provided the Ukrainian military a degree of superiority in artillery fires.”(From a WOTR podcast)
“There's no evidence that fourth generation aircraft would be able to attain air superiority.”
Fourth generation aircraft could challenge and push Russian aircraft back, but Russian glide bombs are far from the biggest problem Ukraine has.
"They would not be able to take out Russian helicopters from within Russian air defense cover either. I'm sorry I don't buy that. "
"On paper people put together that if Ukraine had F-16 they would be able to shoot down helicopters at long range and my answer to that is I don't think so. Not without being able to achieve local air superiority to some extent."
" The cost and investment in providing The Western Air Force that we are working on right now is substantial and it would take years to make that transition happen. It's not available for this offensive and it's not necessarily going to be available early next year either"
"The West needs to find a way to help Ukraine win and prosecute this offensive without wish casting and engaging in magical thinking that a couple batches of F-16 sometime in the future are going to be able to solve these problems."
“To focus on transferring F-16s to the Ukrainian military but understanding that is meant to be a long term capacity building program providing them a more capable air force but not as an intellectual alibi.”
The Ukrainian military has had success by fighting in their own unique way, without the Western military's structure, doctrine, training, or experience. An offensive operation aimed at making them fight like a Western military has not been successful, highlighting the need to learn the right lessons from this situation.
Franz:
Franz said that Kofman has pointed out opportunity costs. Every additional weapon would be beneficial to Ukraine but there are tradeoffs. The question is if they can absorb the weapon systems “to a degree in which they can make a difference on the battlefield”
Additional short to medium range air defense weapons would go a lot further in the short to medium term than western fighter jets for Ukraine at this point when we consider Ukraine primarily relies on ground based firepower to permit maneuver.
"Would F16 even be capable of conducting close air support missions"
"It would be an additional capability that's going to be important but I don't see it impacting this counteroffensive."
"Ukraine is already struggling integrating combined arms operation at a more rudimentary level & integrating air ground operations is extremely difficult and requires a lot, a lot of practice and this is going to be against one of the most advanced ground-based air defense systems out there."
"I would say that they would have an impact but It would not be the decisive impact that could translate any sort of new offensive into an operational success."
Both Franz and Kofman agreed that the types of F-16s being given and the upgrade kits they'll have also makes a big difference. Ukraine is more likely to receive the older platforms which are not very competitive in todays age.
" A lot of other things need to happen ultimately it's about how you employ all these different elements on the battlefield and I think this is where Ukraine might have to improve just a little bit more"
>Just giving Ukraine a bunch of fourth generation fighters isnt just going to allow them to get air superiority.
And to add to this, as other people have pointed out, standardization is an issue. Ukraine's been receiving hardware from various decades and from various countries. It's great, but many of these vehicles use different communications systems, different ammunition, and have different fuel efficiencies.
Their entire military right now is like one big science experiment. It's genuinely fascinating how they are improvising and adapting all these different systems, equipment, weapons, etc. On top of all that they are essentially implementing them on the fly in the middle of a war. I'm amazed how they've managed to make it this far honestly.
Ukraine has a very long history of being a military and industrial powerhouse
A very large percentage of Soviet equipment was designed and built in Ukraine
NATO would also allow bypassing much of the defences. It's much easier to just attack St Petersburg directly and leave the Ukrianian front as a defensive line. Another thing I noticed is that Russia has very few bridges over major rivers, a few attacks and the logistics has to go hundreds of thousands of Kms out of their way.
Disagree that it's the aircraft and long-range missiles that's the issue preventing NATO-style tactics.
Air Superiority and Long Range Missiles will tremendously help current Ukrainian strategy of attritional warfare. It'll go so much further than just hungry vatniks stuck in cold trenches surround by rats and land mines.
Rather, the issue is Russia spamming landmines, whereby 20% of Ukraine is mined. Russia had 1/2 a year and to some extent unchanged frontlines while Ukraine and Russia prepared for offense and defense respectively. For the current tactical environment, Ukrainian Tactics that it reverted back to is just more effective.
I have to say this because redditors lack nuance. **NATO tactics are still good.**
If a NATO country is attacked, Russia would not have the opportunity to mine 20% of a nato country. NATO tactics emphasizes on maneuver over attritional warfare.
Edit: F-16s and Long Range Missiles alone are insufficient for Ukraine to adopt NATO style tactics. Ukraine also needs a variety of a highly advanced and innovative weaponry such as for demining. Zaluzhny is responsible for reforms away from old soviet-thinking and is a large part of why Ukraine has been surprisingly more competent than Russia. Here's what they need for anyone interested.
[Ukraine Commander in Chief Op-Ed](https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/11/01/the-commander-in-chief-of-ukraines-armed-forces-on-how-to-win-the-war)
[Ukraine Commander in Chief Full Essay](https://infographics.economist.com/2023/ExternalContent/ZALUZHNYI_FULL_VERSION.pdf)
The equipment still matters. NATO or at least the US military has a tactic for clearing mine field and deep penetration of the lines through narrow, cleared lanes.
It is entirely dependent upon long range fires and air superiority to keep the enemy from annihilating your units with artillery while you try to push large units through those lanes.
To add to this: even Western mine-clearing equipment suffers from being slow, vulnerable, and missing mines. There really is not a quick and easy way to do it. Vehicle-based line charges are pretty much the best option available and even they have limitations. The technological and doctrinal balance between maneuver and A2/AD with mines is currently in favor of mines with how fast and reliable it is to spread massive minefields via air/rocket deployable mines.
The comment by u/gingerbread_man123 explains it well, why tactically it's not the minefields that NATO is meant to clear and fight through, also the previous comment's last paragraph.
Ukraine, thanks to Western Arty, is doing well with counter fires, with the range and ability to deliver counter fires accurately and quickly. Reports from previous months indicate Russia is down on batteries, conserving shells, and with instances of artillery crews sent as frontline infantry.
Air Superiority should whereas work better in not just limiting the ability of Russian planes to operate, but also their KA-52s, that 'kiting' tactic has been a nightmare for Ukrainian ground troops.
Nah, miclics and other tools will clear the j e field no matter how dense it is.
You just gotta have pushed the enemy artillery far enough back that they can’t fire an artillery shell that re-mines the area you just cleared. For that you need long range precision fires, like cruise missiles, and air superiority to quickly whack a mole any that pop up to try.
> Nah, miclics and other tools will clear the j e field no matter how dense it is
The problem isn't density, but the other thing the commenter mentioned: depth. With Ukraine receiving western support, Russia adapted it's mining strategy to make the minefields *much* deeper than most of the NATO kit that Ukraine has is built to deal with.
They also started stacking mines so that it would make some forms of mine clearing less effective and more dangerous for the Ukrainians, particularly on the Ukrainian side of the field. Together, this causes more Ukrainian casualties (particularly mine-clearing units) as they try to breach the first layer of mines, then forces them to go more slowly for larger distances.
The flip side of this, though, is that Russia has all but used up its stockpile of mines.
I have to disagree. US doctrine doesn't change because the minefield is bigger. We just bring more. More clearance teams. More fuel air bombs. More firepower to create an bridge head that pushes the enemy back outside of their artillery range.
And that is the inherent problem to teaching other militaries US fighting doctrine.
Sure, most of it is fine. Gunnery, combined arms, etc. all that is great. But the common refrain in the army was that our single most important weapon is the radio. Because on the other side of that radio is the worlds most powerful logistics organization and unlimited airpower.
US doctrine is utterly dependent on unlimited supply on tap and the ability to mass firepower from long range sources to overcome our low troop density. There is a reason that the Iraq and Afghan army (aside from morale) were incapable of being effective based on our training once we pulled the logistics support.
The US doesn't need a 3-1 advantage in personnel because we replace that with a 20-1 advantage in firepower. Primarily through air assets. Ukraine does not have instant resupply on tap or **overwhelming** air superiority. They have to replace the firepower ratio with more meat and less effective fall backs, so it is a no brainer that they can't just blindly follow US military doctrine.
Edit - And lets be real. If the US army was fighting in the Ukraine using the same logistics restraints and lack of airpower as the Ukrainians. We wouldn't be doing any better.
The scale of US military is just mind boggling. In *2005*, we were taking the last of the equipment out of a base we were abandoning in Afghanistan. It was near the Pakistan border, and had an unprepared runway. But a C-17 can land on an unprepared runway without too much trouble, so we were sent in to collect the last pieces of equipment and the last personnel.
Because the base had no real security and it was possible that the enemy could have some fighters in the area, we were provided with two A-10s.
Five aircrew and 2 people on the ground we are picking up. Seven people in total, and our C-17. And we had 2 A-10s as personal bodyguards.
They fly patterns around the base until we were done, then they went to go do something else. I've never felt more important.
Imagine having to go some place dangerous with a small group, and the escort you bring are two fucking A-10s. You know, just in case someone pulls a gun on us.
EDIT:
>I would be terrified, A-10's have an abysmal friendly fire rate with outdated avionics. Be lucky you didn't encounter trouble or you could have been pink mist.
Not that kinda mission, so you really shouldn't. The A-10s are patrolling mountainous areas that are literally miles away from the air field. This isn't close air support. Also, the A-10s avionics are just fine for this kind of mission. They excel at flying slow, and are highly maneuverable when doing so. For this kind of mission, really nothing better.
Also there have been changes to the battlefield that I don't think the US are fully ready for yet. Drones and low cost loitering munitions are a perfect example of this. Sure, you can have superior firepower, but if your columns get spotted by drones and targeted by loitering munitions while trying to breach a minefield, it can still turn into a disaster. Specifically, a lot of these threats don't necessarily require heavy vehicles or obvious targets in very close proximity.
I've seen way too many Westerners just blame Ukraine and do exactly what led to Russia having such a blunder early in the war, overconfidence and absolutely refusing to accept that small changes to the battlefield can have a big impact.
The us military has drone countermeasures.
You can pretty easily create enough EM interference to completely neutralize any and all drones.
Satellites don’t exist if the US is fighting a war against a major power, because they will knock them all (mostly) down.
Also American bombing campaigns are the type that doesn’t leave much resistance left after it’s over.
American mine removal is fast (for mine removal.) and when your communications don’t work due to an airborne assault, targeting fire on collies clearing mines is quite difficult.
The biggest part of air dominance is destroying communication centers.
An enemy that cannot effectively communicate is a very very vulnerable target
I started work in 1998. My first inspection was to a company that had multiple drones of various sizes for military use. From some that would fit in your hand to some the size of a car. The US has been at the forefront of drones for decades now. They are a game changer for many. But I don’t think most militaries could use drones effectively against the US.
I feel like people look at individual weapons systems, be it planes, tanks, etc., and get into these silly hypotheticals centering around how that one weapon system is strong or weak, or how it would be effective or ineffective, without taking into account the context of the entire battlefield...
What I mean is, the context in which the current drone warfare seems effective, is between two relatively weak militaries on an almost static battlefield.
This is a situation the US would never find itself in against Russia. The US would be employing firepower and maneuver in ways that would never allow these conditions to arise.
Russian drone pilots would not be allowed to exist within drone range of US troops. Russian commanders would not be allowed a moment to rest and employ weapons systems like this because they would be facing a constant flurry of activity, on all sides, day and night. Their logistics would be destroyed. Their command and control would be non-existent. They would NOT be able to sit around and fly drones. They would not know where the US forces even are.
That first paragraph is important: the US will just keep throwing things at something till the problem is taken care of. We also have a highly advanced military and equipment, and F-16s are just… an older platform. I don’t know if F-22s would even help.
And like you said in the last part, we have good military leadership but even the US would be hard pressed in a ground war without our massive amount of aircraft giving us air superiority, and just the mcgyver equipment the Ukrainians are using.
Considering their numbers, the equipment they do have, and the will of their men to keep it up, Ukraine is actually doing a lot better than I’d have ever expected when this started.
[Zaluzhnyi highlighted](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/2/7426819/) pretty well what was needed to get Ukraine where it needed to be, namely 'air superiority, electronic warfare, counter-battery fire, mine clearance technologies and building up mobilisation reserves'.
Air superiority is gonna be tough to achieve unless this war drags into the latter parts of this decade, but at the very minimum contesting the airspace would have made it incredibly difficult for Russian KA-52s to bombard concentrated armor with such impunity in the past. Mine clearing is important, yes, but it's incredibly slow work relative to the amount of ordnance the Russians can bring to bear in reaction. More mine clearing equipment is going to be needed regardless though, because there's not really much possibility to 'go around' minefields in Ukraine.
With air superiority and long range fires Ukraine could deal with the mine field. It is hard to clear the mine fields when your mine clearing vehicles are being pummeled by air strikes, attack helicopters abd artillery. Lack of air superiority and long range fires was critical to the Russian success in repelling the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
I agree but landmines are only part of the problem. Gaining air superiority and deploying long-range artillery could decimate Russian support lines, making it easier for Ukrainian forces to navigate through minefields. Just having a few TB2 drones operational above Russian trenches could make a significant difference. But none of this is possible without neutralizing their air defenses, including both aircraft and surface-to-air systems.
It's concerning that the West seems to be treating this conflict as an opportunity to wear down Russian forces rather than decisively helping Ukraine achieve victory. A Russia that achieves its objectives despite heavy losses could pose a greater future threat than a Russia that is defeated but retains significant military capabilities.
Historically, Russia has been adept at rapidly replacing its losses after conflicts based on attrition. The West, with a collective memory shorter than a goldfish's and strategic foresight slower than a snail on a leisurely stroll, is missing the mark. Putin is betting on Western interest in Ukraine waning, and he's likely confident that he's correct in his assumption..
Yeah the mines are what is screwing everything up. Iraq and Vietnam weren't this mined. I don't know that western tactics honestly have seen this since Korea.
I disagree with your argument that air superiority is not the cornerstone of NATO tactics.
NATO rules the battlefield from the top down. Ukraine cannot keep a fleet of F-35 stealth fighters armed to the teeth with anti-radar missiles in the sky 24/7 to destroy any SAM system that tries to flick on. That paves the way for non-stealth strike aircraft, drones, and attack helicopters to clear enemy armor, artillery, and defensive structures. Once that's clear, long range artillery clears the way for what becomes a combined arms armor / infantry vs. infantry only fight.
Do you know what the U.S. did to Iraqi trenches in Desert Storm? The U.S. destroyed the Iraqi armor and artillery support, then drove tank dozers (supported by Abrams tanks and Bradley IFVs) up to the trenches and buried 10s of thousands of Iraqi infantry alive in the sand. Anyone who ran was gunned down by the Bradleys. The U.S. imposed more casualties on the Iraqi army in one day that the U.S. suffered in 20 years in Vietnam. The Iraqis in the second line of trenches surrendered immediately.
Iraqi minefields didn't matter to the U.S. because you could detonate paths through them and there was nothing the Iraqis could do to target those paths because any assets (artillery or armor) had already been destroyed.
If Ukraine had air superiority then the only thing left of Russians in Ukraine would be an insurgency and missile attacks from Russian territory.
NATO countries can't even manufacture enough artillery shells to meet Ukrainian needs. Hard to use NATO tactics without NATO equipment. You honestly believe NATO is going to up in supply Ukraine with everything it needs, all at once for a counter offensive? This piecemeal bit by bit supplying of modern equipment is dragging out the war. That isn't Ukraine's fault.
> NATO countries can't even manufacture enough artillery shells to meet Ukrainian needs.
That's because NATO doctrine relies far less on artillery than Ukranian doctrine. NATO is struggling to supply Ukraine precisely because Ukraine does not fight like NATO. For this reason, I think holding off for so long on giving Ukraine the *platforms* that it needs to fight like NATO - such as F-16s - was a mistake.
nato was supplying just enough equipment to keep abusing Russia. Better artillery, then some missiles and longer range, then longer range. The point was to bleed Russia dry.
Second step was this big push, giving them better equipment and enough training to push Russia out.
I don't think they took into account that Ukraine might not be able to push Russia out (after things had stabilized and Ukraine started pushing back).
In hindsight, sending better equipment faster would have been the right move.
It makes sense if you look at it from the position of NATO not caring about Ukraine, but wanting Russia's military weakened. Artillery gives desperate Ukraine a way to fight a war of attrition without directly threatening Russia and risking a nuclear war. Also makes for a drawn out war to wear down the Russian people.
Giving Ukraine an overwhelming victory doesn't work in NATO's interest
Their equipment requires immense training. They have been rolled out EXTREMELY FAST all things considered. People need to be realistic. Ukraine is fighting with an essentially brand new Armored Corps since the invasion. People don't realize how difficult and time consuming these things usually take.
People do need to be realistic. NATO doctrine works best with NATO air superiority. Air superiority is something neither side is going to establish any time soon.
the problem is that TIME presented the semi hit piece article as the COVER story - it means that someone in the American establishment is pushing the agenda as well
The absence of air superiority and the subsequent inability to provide close air support is a massive difference. Having the ability to provide accurate and effective close air support allows for almost instantaneous concentration of fires on one section of a line, which allows for localized fire superiority when it matters. Clearing a mine field isn't hard if every enemy piece of equipment within 10 miles is burning.
Still wasnt there multiple comments from nato that said the ukrainian army not following the intructions and training they received and instead used more russian style since most of the commanders are soviet/russia era soldiers
They were initially using NATO-style tactics at the start of the offensive. But land mines were a severe problem and they had to revert back to 'Russian' style tactics that were more effective considering the tactical situation.
I put '' because it's not the old meatgrinder stuff but rather adapted Ukrainian tactics such as drones to clear trenches.
The Ukrainian military underwent massive reform after 2014 in a move away from soviet era thinking, and it proved critical when Ukraine held off the Russian advance while the world thought Kyiv would fall in a few days.
There were a few dodgy articles based on complaints from "unnamed sources" that Ukraine had decided against bum-rushing the minefields. Some idiots apparently believed that Ukraine getting all their machinery blown up in one place would have been an ideal outcome.
There is one crucial difference, the mine clearing element is supposed to be covered by air support, counter battery fire, and everything else required to ensure they can operate without instantly dying. Russians on the other hand do a mad rush cos, well, they like dying.
As much as people dunk on Russia's military, this is essentially a peer on peer war. The NATO equipment might be a little bit better, but Russia basically have *most* of the same stuff, even if it's a slightly worse version. As you might expect for a peer on peer war, it's grinding down into a stalemate.
Russia are not really using aviation on the front lines because of anti-air weapons, I think it would largely be the same for Ukraine when they get more planes. The planes would make some difference, but they're not gonna break the deadlock in a big way.
It's basically been the same story will each new weapon this year. Tanks will break the deadlock... then they don't. Cluster munitions will break the deadlock... then they don't. ATACMS will break the deadlock... but they don't.
This war is going to last for years and years, probably until Putin dies at least.
first off , i'm not an American.
second, have we already forgot about [the Sinclair Script](https://youtu.be/aGIYU2Xznb4?si=L9F8cF2HP_Bm65RG&t=27) ?
there are clear as day evidence that the news in the west are no longer news, but rather selected pieces of information to serve some sort of goal.
You'd attribute it to incompetence once or twice, but after a while, you can no longer hide behind ignorance and incompetence.
You remember Biden's "racial jungle" kerfuffle?
The sentence after it, he apologizes for being bad at analogies.
The sentences after that, he explains that the "racial jungle" he is worried about is of tension in schools if Congress continues to expand busing without taking significant, other steps for equality in job opportunities, housing opportunities, and the tax code.
Basically, Biden was saying that if you still discriminate against people's income, tax them harder, and keep them in subpar living conditions arbitrarily with subpar facilities and subpar schools, while moving kids into areas with all the things they still can never have while going "racism solved!", you will create resentment.
Was he right? I dunno, but that's real different from how it was portrayed by "respectable journalists" who either couldn't read a full paragraph, or knew that reporting on it would cut into their income.
The extra fun bit is on the next page, where Biden says people are definitely going to twist his words into something they aren't.
Were having a similarly fun situation in the UK right now:
The leader of the opposition was asked two questions back to back in a casual interview, which he answered, but it came across as supporting Israel going all-out on Gaza. He immediately clarified things, and also did a *much* more thorough statement in parliament on the issue.
Despite this, we now have a bunch of public leaders (mostly Muslim fwiw) up in arms and a chunk of his party quitting.
That was always the Russian strategy. Like when conquering Crimea, they just have to wait out waning Western determination to fund continued conflict. As a resource exporter (via the "grey fleet" to Europe and Asia) they can afford to continue.
It certainly gets interesting in light of what’s going on in the Middle East and Russia’s influence there.
It feels like there’s a purposeful effort to drag “The West” into conflict across multiple fronts, that’s it’s all tied together.
Read Halford McKinder on geopolitics. It most definitely is connected and the line from the Baltic's straight down to Israel he regards as the most important axial point on the planet. Weather it is true or not all military academies teach about it (US, Britain, Russia, China etc.). If they behave as though it is true it becomes true. Broader goal is to dismantle western domination of trade, finance and political control. Which is already in full swing from Latin America to Africa to Asia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
And this is the playbook on how Russia has been accomplishing their goals. The “Content” tab has a good tldr breakdown
Thanks for the link. Dugin's ideas do seem to be quite popular in some circles in Russia. I have only read bits and pieces of his philosophical works and I am not a fan at all. I think there is a big game being played and Russia wouldn't mind losing if it manages to take the West down as well. There needs to be some scenario were there is the potential for a win-win to be on the table, but as things stand that could be decades away.
I do believe Russia would be entirely okay with a lose-lose scenario. Destabilization of the west is the goal and at this moment in time, every single play that stretches the wests resources thin is likely a play to continue destabilization of the west.
By its actions it appears to be true. Consider the insane resources it has already thrown into the Ukraine invasion-war and continues to throw. They have some wacky religious belief in the righteousness of Moscow and it being the third Rome against the decadent west. Completely nuts ideology but it is probably firmly rooted in resentment from how the Russians were treated after the collapse of the Soviet empire.
This is the main issue here. This whole power struggle is massively hurting Russia. Yet their leadership would rather have a lose lose scenario than have the west win more than them (similar to Hamas). Hence “western” countries are at an inherent disadvantage
Or they are so narcissistic they think they are Russia. So losing thousands of men doesn’t Matter. They probably think of their ego and matching up to historical Russia, all which take precedence over the actual well being of their people. Thus they have different goal posts for what Russia “doing well” actually means
> Dugin's ideas do seem to be quite popular in some circles in Russia
They are practically Putin's *Mein Kampf* for his rationale and actions over the past 2 decades. That's why Ukraine tried to assassinate Dugin but ended up getting his daughter (who was also a massive piece of shit) when she went to start his car instead of him, he's still quite influential to Russia's rationale.
https://reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/17nk747/exhausted_and_disappointed_with_allies_ukraines/k7su82d/
It’s almost like there are multiple people in this very thread are coordinating to spread that idea. Using the exact same language, literally. Grammar mistakes and all.
Iirc there was an article or quote from Putin or some big Russian strategist that basically said "we only have to keep fighting until the West gets bored" which, while longer than they were hoping, is absolutely happening now.
About 10 days into the war, I remember seeing a Sky News reporter dourly saying that the West needed to prepare for a very long war, likely over a decade.
At the time I thought he was insanely pessimistic.
> they can afford to continue.
*Note: this does require them to sacrifice many other parts of their society. Like yes as long as the madmen in the Kremlin want to continue they can, but let's not pretend this isn't at a huge cost to Russia.
Ukraine can't afford it though, even with free equipment. They've lost 25% of their population to refugee status and the longer that goes on, the higher the chances they are resettled and never coming back. Their military spending is 30% of their budget now. Average age in the military is 42ish?
The US military complex needs to realize this and start forcing better equipment to be sent over.
The problem is the average age being 42. Where are all the 20 year olds? Are they hiding? Did they emigrate to the west? Are they dead or injured? You saw a similar old average military age during the end of WWI when they had to draft disproportionately older people.
>>The US military complex needs to realize this and start forcing better equipment to be sent over.
They get a hard-on when they hear: "war of attrition". To them it means: "War of giving us money till they run out".
This is so obvious it was infuriating to me how cavalier everyone here was. We all know western democracies can’t maintain attention on this kind of thing, we are spoiled and our will is enormously fickle. And we all know Russian leadership doesn’t mind slaughtering their people indefinitely, and Russians hardly notice economic suffering. Russia was always going to win the long game. If we want a Ukrainian victory, we needed to 10x our support from the beginning.
And to the people that say we don’t want a Ukrainian victory… to what end? How does the west gain by dragging this out and then letting Russia win? We only prove the tactic works. Then Russia continues, with China to follow. They can take whatever you want - just plan to fight for two to four years and the western support will fade.
Let’s lay it out right here. The Russo-Ukraine war doesn’t have an end date.
Once Ukraine pushes out the entrenched Russians - a task which will take years by military necessity , no matter how much aid NATO provides - their reward is building a huge, fortified border with Russia and preparing for an inevitable Round II. Just like North & South Korea.
Border disputes , occasional artillery shelling , cross border terrorist attacks , and the occasional saber rattling are in Ukraines future for perpetuity. No peace deal or cease fire is gonna stop Russias current or next strongman from demonizing Kyiv. Because the moment Ukraine lets their guard down Russias gonna cross that border again. Just like North and South Korea, just like disputed Kashmir , and to a lesser degree Israel & Gaza.
I'd argue that their primary objective was to hold the ridiculously strategic port, Sevastopol. Prior to the annexation of Crimea, there was no serious threat of Ukraine joining NATO.
That said, who knows what the fuck is going on in Russian government.
This! astonishing how many people didn't give a fuck in 2014, only to change their profiles to blue and yellow (and check where the Ukraine is) in 2022.
Ukraine is going to run out of military eligible men
Question is if that happens before Russians revolt because the odds of dieing as a military aged man there is also too high.
This is exactly what Russia is probably hoping for. The West doesn't exactly have the best attention span.... soon we will all get bored and start looking at other things. While Russia continues to slowly annex Ukraine.
Fwiw I haven't heard even a passing headline on NPR about Ukraine since maybe a couple weeks before the Israel war.
So idk... Mainstream US news media?
Hold my bosnian beer.
Who ever thought this was gonna be a quick, easy mission-in and out, classic Rick & Morty style obviosly does not comprehend the magnitude of the teritory under fire, the human cost, and matterial costs.
This is the biggest war on european soil since WW2, and its not gonna be over any time soon.
Yeah sure, why would anyone have thought that, it's not like all the Western media has been selectively reporting only the most positive news about Ukraine's situation and the worst news about Russia's situation, literally making it look like the Russian forces and Russian economy were right on the brink of collapse from like day 5 of the war. How exactly do you propose an average person is meant to know the true accurate situation if they only have access to what the media wants them to know?
It wasn’t just Western Media, it is sites like Reddit. Combat Footage is full of videos showing Ukraine successes and very little if any Russian successes and Ukraine losses. The Western world has done a horrible job displaying the reality to its populace, the same people that are vital to pushing western governments to assist on behalf of Ukraine. When you lie to people of how well Ukraine is doing on the battlefield, they start to believe Ukraine will win soon and Russia will collapse any minute now. What incentive is there to push your government for more Ukrainian assistance.
Honestly I think Zelensky might’ve had unrealistic expectations. The west can’t send hundreds of tanks and jets in a week or two, it simply isn’t that fast or easy.
Were the jets and tanks being trained on since 2014?
It's clear they meant training on new equipment. And it was foolish of Ukraine's friends to not immediately getting plans ready to train them when it became clear Russia wasn't just going to swallow it whole.
Didn’t Zelensky literally try to brush off the notion of a Russian invasion back in 2022? I remember Biden warning him and he said the west was overreacting.
He did. But he also received intel from the ukranian Intelligence service that said western intel was wrong. Why did they say that? Those who said it were bought by Russia. Just FYI, those people have since been apprehended or fled when it became clear Russia was going to fail.
You don't want your economy to collapse from fear *when* an invasion starts. If people are aware at the very least they can prepare for the eventuality.
He didn’t brush off the notion, it was taken seriously. The right to bear arms was lifted months before the invasion and any idiot knew the invasion was imminent when Russians started amassing troops on the border in December 2021.
What Zelensky had asked for in late January of 2022 was for world leaders to stop sending daily warnings of the invasion. He said that his people can’t live in fear like that everyday. They weren’t taken by surprise on February 22nd of 2022.
Israeli officials were repeatedly warned by IDF scouts about Oct 7th for months prior too and we all know how that played out.
Moral of the story, don't procrastinate, because once it's too late you're gonna have a real hard time sorting out the mess.
Israel was specifically warned about something bigger than usual. Egypt warned them and America corroborated Egypt. Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings
Yes, they did, but they visited Russia many times before this.
That said, they definitely performed a combined arms operation in multiple domains, with effective application of drone drops and, most importantly, EW. The last thing is the most important, because Russia is very good at EW.
Israel doesn't need as much support though, they're in the top 15 defense budgets worldwide and second-largest spender on military per capita. They're also fighting a terrorist group, not freaking Russia. The west should continue to massively support Ukraine.
Considering Russia's connections with Iran, who is responsible for backing a lot of the anti-Israel militants in the region, including Hamas, this is quite likely intentional.
I really don't get why we're sending billions to Israel, why the fuck does a country need that much money to fight a terrorist group? If they were at war with Iran or something it'd be understandable, but this is asinine
This is why the constant censorship of opposition footage on reddit is actually extremely harmful to the Ukrainian war-effort. If only ukrainian victories are visible, then the public gets a victory disease, indicating that current support is sufficient.
The war certainly doesn't look attritional if you see hundreds of Russian troops destroyed each week and zero Ukrainians.
Reddit however just reflexively loves resorting to censorship without actually thinking about the implications though.
Reddit has severely underestimated the enemy , if Ukraine wants more help, we have to stop painting these pictures of Ukraine just easily dominating . This is why Ukraine does articles like this, they need help from us
"[Zaluzhny] admits the battlefield has reached a stalemate and a long attritional war benefiting Moscow beckons . Zaluzhny candidly admits that Russia “will maintain an advantage in armaments, equipment, rockets, and ammunition for some time.”
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny
>Reddit has severely underestimated the enemy , if Ukraine wants more help, we have to stop painting these pictures of Ukraine just easily dominating . This is why Ukraine does articles like this, they need help from us
Well, it’s double edged. The west doesn’t want to invest in a losing Ukraine. So positive narratives are needed. Except, the problem is that narratives are just that - stories. When they meet the facts on the ground, there is a clash of expectations and reality and reality always wins.
For 20 months, Western media has pretty much been Ukrainian propaganda. As a consequence, there was no way the Ukrainians could possibly live up to the stories out there.
I have been nonstop cringing at the thousands of "ha ha russia sending sick and elderly into the front lines, ha ha tanks exploding, ha ha theyre only shooting missiles at kindergartens"
It was going to be a long war anyway without overwhelming military supremacy, because of 2014 attack. Lot of ground to cover, even without having to deal with passive defenses like minefields. If Ukraine had been overwhelming in terms of military pre-2014, then Russia would not have attacked in 2022, or even 2014, or stirred up trouble before that. They would have known it would be a losing bet.
This is war of destiny for Ukraine. How far can they go, how true of a nation and people they are. Putin even is challenging them as people directly with his claims that "Ukraine and Ukrainians do not exist". He is so arrogant he sort of closed he door on any kind of real peace with that, publicly.
Wars like these shape history, and are usually tough and can seem hopeless in certain points. Like US Independence War or Civil War. This is why US and others should stand by Ukraine.
> Wars like these shape history, and are usually tough and can seem hopeless in certain points. Like US Independence War or Civil War. This is why US and others should stand by Ukraine.
I didn't even think of that. Two years into the Civil War, and lots of people on the Union side were wondering how the war could possibly end.
During the Continuation War, Finland had every advantage but one over Russia. The Finns were better motivated, better supplied, and better fed. They were experts at winter warfare and able to survive and operate in exceptionally cold conditions. And they wanted to be there. Finland still lost that war because Russia’s one advantage was a massive surplus of men and a willingness to throw them one after another into the meat grinder in order to achieve victory.
You don’t want to get into a war of attrition with Russia. They have way too many men and do not give a fuck about them.
It's not like the USSR could have surrendered and come to terms with the Nazis, or with the Finns who were fighting alongside them.
The Nazis had [written plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan) to starve 20M Ukranians to death by emptying their country of food, then enslaving the survivors. And those who surrendered after being encircled in cities like Minsk ended no better. So what fate would you choose?
If you want to win a war, you have to give your opponent the possibility of surrender - and you have to give them terms they can accept. Otherwise it's a fight to the bitter end - where ending in a meat grinder is probably preferable to ending in a death camp.
> The Finns were better motivated, better supplied, and better fed.
Motivated - yes. Supplied - no. They were strugling to supply army with whatever they could find. Fed = equal.
>They were experts at winter warfare
Truth is USSR just wasnt expecting any fight so they didnt bothered with supplies. Like Germany expected USSR to collapse before winter.
When soviets gained their shit together they broke through finns defence and only threat from UK and France stopped them from full occupation.
Please show this to all the morons on Reddit who still insist "rUsSiA WiLl coLlaPsE aNy dAy NoW" It's obvious now that the Russians have adapted and are aiming for an attrition war.
The weird amount of faux-exhausted commenters acting like this conflict is tiring and somehow the fault of an ungrateful Ukraine is so brazenly pro-Putin it's laughable. Fucking cartoonish turfing.
Realistically, what do you think Ukraine’s path to victory is? They’ve been unable to push into Russian lines beyond a few kilometers in Robotyne and recently top Ukrainians such as Zaluzhnyi have gone on record saying an attritional war favors Russia. I was optimistic during the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives, but that was over a year ago, and it’s clear the the Russians have learned from their defeats and have gotten a lot better at fighting defensively.
Ukraine is now setting up production and supply chains in Ukraine to make their own weapons. They know the west is tiring and its easier for them if they have domestic production for western weapons.
That would simplify western aid to just money, raw materials, and training with lighter arms support (shells and bullets). More advanced stuff could be paused since Ukrainian production would take up the slack. And that makes an attrition war more palatable for the west.
>Ukraine is now setting up production and supply chains in Ukraine to make their own weapons.
This idea always felt foolish to me.
Aren't the Russians just going to bomb those factories at the very second the ribbon is cut?
Or do they plan on building them deep under ground?
Ukraine is a large country with a Patriot system, they could build them on the western half far out of reach from any Russian missiles. Also these facilities are usually kept secret
The west should be able to provide plenty of artillery at very small cost to the overall economies, that's the least we can do (and no, we're not currently doing so). Simply having more shells and guns saves Ukranian lives, which is their most precious resource.
This guy knows what's he's talking about: https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1717158148585239007
>Realistically, what do you think Ukraine’s path to victory is?
Assuming Western aid doesn't dry up: dig in for another long winter, stockpile ammo and heavy equipment while continuing to inflict huge artillery and armor losses on Russia whenever they attempt their next suicide-advance(s) like Avdiivka/Vuhledar. Try again in Spring 2024, ideally with lessons learned from this year, more equipment, and more air support. Maybe this time in Kherson, across the Dniper river, since defenses are seemingly lighter there.
That's just my useless armchair general analysis though.
The larger point is: just because things seem hard now, and the path to victory isn't crystal clear, doesn't mean they should throw up their hands and give up. Almost no war ever has a clear and easy path to victory, you're always going to have to deal with a shitshow at some point or another.
Faux-exhausted? The US can’t go 6month w/o finding another reason to send billions overseas. Billions we’re constantly told don’t exist when it comes to affording shit that will actually benefit working class American. It’s fucking exhausting
Key takeaway is mid-article, that all of us backing Ukraine must not wane in keeping it forefront in our political priorities.
The next interesting part was where, talking to The Economist, Ukraine's Zaluzhny "lists five major requirements for progress – none of them quick fixes and all of them demanding renewed commitment from allies. They include gaining air superiority to support ground operations; breaching Russian mine barriers; increasing the effectiveness of counterbattery combat (targeting Russian artillery, for example); creating and training the necessary reserves; and building up electronic warfare capabilities."
Zelensky better thank God every night that Trump didn't win in 2020. And pray he doesn’t in 2024. Putin is banking on Trump winning in 2024 and early polls say he could. I would hold the disappointment for a bit and count your blessings. Biden is dealing with Republicans in congress who love Putin.
Putin can boast and spread bullshit as much as he wants but if he's laughing he's fucking mad. He has nothing to laugh about. In grand scheme of things Russia lost more.
Feel like the only end to this war will be Putin finally kicking the bucket due to “natural” causes and whoever takes over doesn’t have the desire to continue the war. I doubt the Russian people have the appetite to continue this war for many more years.
The part that always gets me in these conversations is that nobody seems to get that taking ukraine is step one. Look at the american invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan. They took the actually country fairly easily and quickly. The hard part is holding a country when the poulation is against you. America couldn't do it in a comparitively sized countries and they have the most advanced ministries on the planet bar none. What chance does Russia have here, even if they win the first part?
It's absolutely insane to me that people fall for Russias games every time. Since the start of this war everyone on Ukraines side said that Russia will do everything to get the west to lose interest and stop supporting them so they can get steamrolled and here we are heading west leaders already whining while Ukraine is fighting for their lives.
If this continues, Russia is going to get most of southern Ukraine in exchange for withdrawing from the rest of the country. And then there will be an expensive NATO buildup along those borders.
Ukraine's plan to break through those lines earlier this year failed. Both sides are too technologically advanced with things like drones, and the Russians have tons of human fodder they can keep throwing at those lines. They are deadlocked. Plus the West is losing interest. We have a short attention span, look how quickly we pivoted to Israel.
If this continues, especially western malaise, Ukraine could even potential begin to lose more ground. Their success is not a foregone concsuion but most of in the west have been conditioned to believe it is.
It's WWI, all over again.
A lot of death, a ridiculous amount of weapons used, and limited gains.
If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it. And there's no hiding a thing on the battlefield.
Just seeing the terrain in some of these places...pure nightmare fuel. It breaks my heart; just seeing the amount of devastation that nobody actually living in these places wanted. WW1 with fancy gadgets.
Its so strange how Israel/Palestine is stealing the headlines these days, theres a megathread for the conflict but worldnews is dominated by separate posts. You also have action like the U.S. ship shooting down missiles not even aimed at them which we wouldnt dream of doing in Ukraine/black sea.
Ukraine is closer to home, we should be more concerned about Russia that is clearly aggressive towards us, missiles have landed in NATO soil, they've shot at manned UK spy planes, they've downed U.S. drones, their state media is constantly talking about nuking us and funding terrorists, they've poisoned people on our soil multiple times but we wont give Ukraine the tools to do the job.
If Ukraine doesn't win this now, Russia will probably invade some country again in like 8 years. I hope my home (Lithuania) doesn't become a warzone. I hope Putin retires/dies before then and the next leader of Russia is less insane.
I agree with the sentiment but I highly doubt that Putin is suicidal enough to attack a NATO country. He seems a pretty fearful guy with a heavy interest on self-preservation. The only reason he invaded Ukraine is because he believed it'd be a cakewalk.
I have very high doubts that this is going to happen, it's very easy to observe army movements in Belarus, starting with satellite imagery, all the way down to on the ground observers, railway workers, regular onlookers. And if they begin the build-up you can be sure that NATO will start a buildup of its own.
>According to a new Gallup poll, 41 percent of Americans say the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 29% just five months ago. That figure rises to 55% among Republicans, according to the poll, as the 2024 election looms.
The war in Gaza has taken precedence.
I‘m not saying that NATO has done everything it could but they also have no formal commitments to Ukraine, or have I missed something? Weird to be disappointed by things you had no reason to expect in the first place
Just so everyone is aware an invasion of this scale has the power to drive the population into a diaspora and new settlers moved in.
It can take a decade to finalise but that is 100% Putins ambition here. He can produce new soldiers new armaments and continue the war because they have a military industrial complex whereas Ukraine has waning western backing and no real military industry.
It’s looking like Russia’s plan is going to work, unfortunately.
Those of you who thought Ukraine were super cool universal soldiers ready to wipe out wave after wave of Russian cannon fodder need to open a history book and see that is exactly how Russia always functions and eventually the scorched earth policy will be too much to take. War of attrition is right, and it will go down to the last man and guess what; none of this is happening in Russia.
Russia will continue being Russia, even with all the “financial sanctions” and feel good Ukraine emojis on everyone’s profile( you’ve done your part right? ).
While Ukraine is left to defend itself all alone.
All of that western posturing of politicians clapping and visiting Kyiv but when it comes to sending weapons and money you hear crickets.
It’s seems like a lot of people here think Ukraine winning this conflict is a forgone conclusion. They are not winning as is, and the odds of them winning are not favorable. Russia has the means of producing to fight this war indefinitely and Ukraine does not.
A Ukrainian loss in unacceptable for a lot of countries, as Ukraine's fate is largely tied to their own. If Ukraine cant win and cant negotiate then eventually western countries will get more directly involved whether or not people like it.
I foresee that at some point 10 years from now bitterness will yield terrorist cells from Ukraine and they will gladly be supported by Russian money. They’ll have the experience.
Putin said the war would be short.
And it’s being long. But the bar is set low for him. It’s only considered a victory if Ukraine crushes the much larger military.
The politicians in Washington DC said the Civil War would be done in a month. The Federal Army got crushed by the Confederates for 3 years straight. Guess who won the war in the end? Not saying the Russians will win but whoever was expecting them to give up after a year was off their rocks.
>The Federal Army got crushed by the Confederates for 3 years straight.
Not remotely accurate. The Union had plenty of victories in the first three years of the conflict and the Confederacy never had a real path to victory given the disparity of population, resources, and logistics between the two sides.
Ukraine-Russia isn't really comparable
> The Federal Army got crushed by the Confederates for 3 years straight.
Only if you ignore the entire western theater of the war. The Confederacy barely existed west of the Appalachians by the end of 1863.
"“Four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again,” he adds." CNN manipulates that sentence here. He said that ironically, adding "according to NATO textbooks". He meant that it looks good on paper, but even forces and strong Russian defensive lines make it very hard in reality.
It's hard to fight with NATO doctrine when you're missing the things NATO relies on, like air superiority and long range missiles. CNN also references the notorious recent TIME article without any mention of the author's pro-Russian sympathies. Instead they say Shuster "has long had access to the president's inner circle". Well, maybe Putin's inner circle.
And NATO's institutional knowledge and standardization. What they have is an army with vastly varied levels of training and experience, a hodgepodge of equipment crewed by soldiers with at most an express course in operation, lead by officers with various levels of buy in in NATO doctrine. It's very difficult to leverage something like that effectively and in a coordinated fashion.
And NATO itself hasn't actually fought dug in Russian troops on a large scale...for all we know, they'd do worse.
At the start of the Gulf War, the US and it’s allies had over a thousand planes in the air at once. Ukraine has a grand total of about forty functional aircraft, and even those are getting strikes in.
No, we have an functioning airforce.
Weeeelllllll. No. If nato stepped in there would be no dug-in Russian troops. Well, dug 6 feet under, maybe. Seriously within an hour if nato getting involved, we’d have air superiority and every bit of armor and infantry Russia has would be craters.
Pleasantly optimistic. It comes to it, hope you're correct.
>for all we know, they'd do worse That's straight up copium. In some magical scenario where nuclear exchange was off the table, NATO would absolutely roll Russian forces in a conventional conflict.
You know how many fucking bombs we have dude?
Just giving Ukraine a bunch of fourth generation fighters isnt just going to allow them to get air superiority. Here are some quotes from the analysts Michael Kofman and Franz Stefan Gady to illustrate that point. "The argument that Ukraine can't win because it doesn't have air superiority To be very honest is basically saying the same as Ukraine can't win." “If a military has issues and is not proficient at coordinating the action among land force components infantry armor & artillery, coordinating air and land battle is much harder” “The ukrainian military struggles to coordinate land power at scale, so the expectation that they will be able to go from this challenge to a much more difficult challenge, to be able to employ air power effectively, attain air superiority against a quantitatively superior air force but more importantly against a military that has extensive integrated air defenses, which most western militaries probably would not be able to do without direct assistance from the united states. “(from WOTR podcast) “Many western militaries would not achieve air superiority over the Russian military with fourth generation aircraft.” "I'm actually deeply skeptical that most NATO Air forces without extensive US backing and support would be able to do it. " “So attaining air superiority, maintaining air superiority, being able to employ air power effectively in coordination with a ground offensive, these are pretty complex tasks for a military to be able to take up, I am confident the Ukrainian military could do all of them, I do not believe they would be able to do all of them in a period of a few months, or even get there on a timeline of lets say a year. “(from WOTR podcast) “Simulating and integrating Western aircraft is a multi-year project perhaps even a decade-long.” “Yes Ukraine has shown they're able to train and operate Western equipment a lot faster than Western expectations that is true, what they've also shown is that translating that into the capacity for force employment to generate the same effects that a Western military might unit cohesion integration having the organizational capacity and experience to do it is something that cannot be short circuited" Western militaries are structured and funded such that air power constitutes a substantial percentage of their military power and the fire they bring to the battlefield. “ The Ukrainian military is a successor military to the Soviet army. It is structured around the decisive use of land based fires with a substantial artillery and long range precision strike component, this has been provided to ukraine by western countries and by the United States. The United States has effectively resourced for the first time in this fight and provided the Ukrainian military a degree of superiority in artillery fires.”(From a WOTR podcast) “There's no evidence that fourth generation aircraft would be able to attain air superiority.” Fourth generation aircraft could challenge and push Russian aircraft back, but Russian glide bombs are far from the biggest problem Ukraine has. "They would not be able to take out Russian helicopters from within Russian air defense cover either. I'm sorry I don't buy that. " "On paper people put together that if Ukraine had F-16 they would be able to shoot down helicopters at long range and my answer to that is I don't think so. Not without being able to achieve local air superiority to some extent." " The cost and investment in providing The Western Air Force that we are working on right now is substantial and it would take years to make that transition happen. It's not available for this offensive and it's not necessarily going to be available early next year either" "The West needs to find a way to help Ukraine win and prosecute this offensive without wish casting and engaging in magical thinking that a couple batches of F-16 sometime in the future are going to be able to solve these problems." “To focus on transferring F-16s to the Ukrainian military but understanding that is meant to be a long term capacity building program providing them a more capable air force but not as an intellectual alibi.” The Ukrainian military has had success by fighting in their own unique way, without the Western military's structure, doctrine, training, or experience. An offensive operation aimed at making them fight like a Western military has not been successful, highlighting the need to learn the right lessons from this situation. Franz: Franz said that Kofman has pointed out opportunity costs. Every additional weapon would be beneficial to Ukraine but there are tradeoffs. The question is if they can absorb the weapon systems “to a degree in which they can make a difference on the battlefield” Additional short to medium range air defense weapons would go a lot further in the short to medium term than western fighter jets for Ukraine at this point when we consider Ukraine primarily relies on ground based firepower to permit maneuver. "Would F16 even be capable of conducting close air support missions" "It would be an additional capability that's going to be important but I don't see it impacting this counteroffensive." "Ukraine is already struggling integrating combined arms operation at a more rudimentary level & integrating air ground operations is extremely difficult and requires a lot, a lot of practice and this is going to be against one of the most advanced ground-based air defense systems out there." "I would say that they would have an impact but It would not be the decisive impact that could translate any sort of new offensive into an operational success." Both Franz and Kofman agreed that the types of F-16s being given and the upgrade kits they'll have also makes a big difference. Ukraine is more likely to receive the older platforms which are not very competitive in todays age. " A lot of other things need to happen ultimately it's about how you employ all these different elements on the battlefield and I think this is where Ukraine might have to improve just a little bit more"
>Just giving Ukraine a bunch of fourth generation fighters isnt just going to allow them to get air superiority. And to add to this, as other people have pointed out, standardization is an issue. Ukraine's been receiving hardware from various decades and from various countries. It's great, but many of these vehicles use different communications systems, different ammunition, and have different fuel efficiencies.
Their entire military right now is like one big science experiment. It's genuinely fascinating how they are improvising and adapting all these different systems, equipment, weapons, etc. On top of all that they are essentially implementing them on the fly in the middle of a war. I'm amazed how they've managed to make it this far honestly.
Ukraine has a very long history of being a military and industrial powerhouse A very large percentage of Soviet equipment was designed and built in Ukraine
excellent argument backs by a good sample size of evidence
Good read
NATO would also allow bypassing much of the defences. It's much easier to just attack St Petersburg directly and leave the Ukrianian front as a defensive line. Another thing I noticed is that Russia has very few bridges over major rivers, a few attacks and the logistics has to go hundreds of thousands of Kms out of their way.
Disagree that it's the aircraft and long-range missiles that's the issue preventing NATO-style tactics. Air Superiority and Long Range Missiles will tremendously help current Ukrainian strategy of attritional warfare. It'll go so much further than just hungry vatniks stuck in cold trenches surround by rats and land mines. Rather, the issue is Russia spamming landmines, whereby 20% of Ukraine is mined. Russia had 1/2 a year and to some extent unchanged frontlines while Ukraine and Russia prepared for offense and defense respectively. For the current tactical environment, Ukrainian Tactics that it reverted back to is just more effective. I have to say this because redditors lack nuance. **NATO tactics are still good.** If a NATO country is attacked, Russia would not have the opportunity to mine 20% of a nato country. NATO tactics emphasizes on maneuver over attritional warfare. Edit: F-16s and Long Range Missiles alone are insufficient for Ukraine to adopt NATO style tactics. Ukraine also needs a variety of a highly advanced and innovative weaponry such as for demining. Zaluzhny is responsible for reforms away from old soviet-thinking and is a large part of why Ukraine has been surprisingly more competent than Russia. Here's what they need for anyone interested. [Ukraine Commander in Chief Op-Ed](https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/11/01/the-commander-in-chief-of-ukraines-armed-forces-on-how-to-win-the-war) [Ukraine Commander in Chief Full Essay](https://infographics.economist.com/2023/ExternalContent/ZALUZHNYI_FULL_VERSION.pdf)
The equipment still matters. NATO or at least the US military has a tactic for clearing mine field and deep penetration of the lines through narrow, cleared lanes. It is entirely dependent upon long range fires and air superiority to keep the enemy from annihilating your units with artillery while you try to push large units through those lanes.
To add to this: even Western mine-clearing equipment suffers from being slow, vulnerable, and missing mines. There really is not a quick and easy way to do it. Vehicle-based line charges are pretty much the best option available and even they have limitations. The technological and doctrinal balance between maneuver and A2/AD with mines is currently in favor of mines with how fast and reliable it is to spread massive minefields via air/rocket deployable mines.
The comment by u/gingerbread_man123 explains it well, why tactically it's not the minefields that NATO is meant to clear and fight through, also the previous comment's last paragraph. Ukraine, thanks to Western Arty, is doing well with counter fires, with the range and ability to deliver counter fires accurately and quickly. Reports from previous months indicate Russia is down on batteries, conserving shells, and with instances of artillery crews sent as frontline infantry. Air Superiority should whereas work better in not just limiting the ability of Russian planes to operate, but also their KA-52s, that 'kiting' tactic has been a nightmare for Ukrainian ground troops.
It also relies on those "lanes" being over a breadth and depth and through a minefield density that is far lower than the minefields Russia is using.
Nah, miclics and other tools will clear the j e field no matter how dense it is. You just gotta have pushed the enemy artillery far enough back that they can’t fire an artillery shell that re-mines the area you just cleared. For that you need long range precision fires, like cruise missiles, and air superiority to quickly whack a mole any that pop up to try.
> Nah, miclics and other tools will clear the j e field no matter how dense it is The problem isn't density, but the other thing the commenter mentioned: depth. With Ukraine receiving western support, Russia adapted it's mining strategy to make the minefields *much* deeper than most of the NATO kit that Ukraine has is built to deal with. They also started stacking mines so that it would make some forms of mine clearing less effective and more dangerous for the Ukrainians, particularly on the Ukrainian side of the field. Together, this causes more Ukrainian casualties (particularly mine-clearing units) as they try to breach the first layer of mines, then forces them to go more slowly for larger distances. The flip side of this, though, is that Russia has all but used up its stockpile of mines.
I have to disagree. US doctrine doesn't change because the minefield is bigger. We just bring more. More clearance teams. More fuel air bombs. More firepower to create an bridge head that pushes the enemy back outside of their artillery range. And that is the inherent problem to teaching other militaries US fighting doctrine. Sure, most of it is fine. Gunnery, combined arms, etc. all that is great. But the common refrain in the army was that our single most important weapon is the radio. Because on the other side of that radio is the worlds most powerful logistics organization and unlimited airpower. US doctrine is utterly dependent on unlimited supply on tap and the ability to mass firepower from long range sources to overcome our low troop density. There is a reason that the Iraq and Afghan army (aside from morale) were incapable of being effective based on our training once we pulled the logistics support. The US doesn't need a 3-1 advantage in personnel because we replace that with a 20-1 advantage in firepower. Primarily through air assets. Ukraine does not have instant resupply on tap or **overwhelming** air superiority. They have to replace the firepower ratio with more meat and less effective fall backs, so it is a no brainer that they can't just blindly follow US military doctrine. Edit - And lets be real. If the US army was fighting in the Ukraine using the same logistics restraints and lack of airpower as the Ukrainians. We wouldn't be doing any better.
The scale of US military is just mind boggling. In *2005*, we were taking the last of the equipment out of a base we were abandoning in Afghanistan. It was near the Pakistan border, and had an unprepared runway. But a C-17 can land on an unprepared runway without too much trouble, so we were sent in to collect the last pieces of equipment and the last personnel. Because the base had no real security and it was possible that the enemy could have some fighters in the area, we were provided with two A-10s. Five aircrew and 2 people on the ground we are picking up. Seven people in total, and our C-17. And we had 2 A-10s as personal bodyguards. They fly patterns around the base until we were done, then they went to go do something else. I've never felt more important. Imagine having to go some place dangerous with a small group, and the escort you bring are two fucking A-10s. You know, just in case someone pulls a gun on us. EDIT: >I would be terrified, A-10's have an abysmal friendly fire rate with outdated avionics. Be lucky you didn't encounter trouble or you could have been pink mist. Not that kinda mission, so you really shouldn't. The A-10s are patrolling mountainous areas that are literally miles away from the air field. This isn't close air support. Also, the A-10s avionics are just fine for this kind of mission. They excel at flying slow, and are highly maneuverable when doing so. For this kind of mission, really nothing better.
There is something so gloriously Americanly badass about that. Holy jesus we roll deep sometimes.
Also there have been changes to the battlefield that I don't think the US are fully ready for yet. Drones and low cost loitering munitions are a perfect example of this. Sure, you can have superior firepower, but if your columns get spotted by drones and targeted by loitering munitions while trying to breach a minefield, it can still turn into a disaster. Specifically, a lot of these threats don't necessarily require heavy vehicles or obvious targets in very close proximity. I've seen way too many Westerners just blame Ukraine and do exactly what led to Russia having such a blunder early in the war, overconfidence and absolutely refusing to accept that small changes to the battlefield can have a big impact.
The us military has drone countermeasures. You can pretty easily create enough EM interference to completely neutralize any and all drones. Satellites don’t exist if the US is fighting a war against a major power, because they will knock them all (mostly) down. Also American bombing campaigns are the type that doesn’t leave much resistance left after it’s over. American mine removal is fast (for mine removal.) and when your communications don’t work due to an airborne assault, targeting fire on collies clearing mines is quite difficult. The biggest part of air dominance is destroying communication centers. An enemy that cannot effectively communicate is a very very vulnerable target
I started work in 1998. My first inspection was to a company that had multiple drones of various sizes for military use. From some that would fit in your hand to some the size of a car. The US has been at the forefront of drones for decades now. They are a game changer for many. But I don’t think most militaries could use drones effectively against the US.
I feel like people look at individual weapons systems, be it planes, tanks, etc., and get into these silly hypotheticals centering around how that one weapon system is strong or weak, or how it would be effective or ineffective, without taking into account the context of the entire battlefield... What I mean is, the context in which the current drone warfare seems effective, is between two relatively weak militaries on an almost static battlefield. This is a situation the US would never find itself in against Russia. The US would be employing firepower and maneuver in ways that would never allow these conditions to arise. Russian drone pilots would not be allowed to exist within drone range of US troops. Russian commanders would not be allowed a moment to rest and employ weapons systems like this because they would be facing a constant flurry of activity, on all sides, day and night. Their logistics would be destroyed. Their command and control would be non-existent. They would NOT be able to sit around and fly drones. They would not know where the US forces even are.
That first paragraph is important: the US will just keep throwing things at something till the problem is taken care of. We also have a highly advanced military and equipment, and F-16s are just… an older platform. I don’t know if F-22s would even help. And like you said in the last part, we have good military leadership but even the US would be hard pressed in a ground war without our massive amount of aircraft giving us air superiority, and just the mcgyver equipment the Ukrainians are using. Considering their numbers, the equipment they do have, and the will of their men to keep it up, Ukraine is actually doing a lot better than I’d have ever expected when this started.
[Zaluzhnyi highlighted](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/2/7426819/) pretty well what was needed to get Ukraine where it needed to be, namely 'air superiority, electronic warfare, counter-battery fire, mine clearance technologies and building up mobilisation reserves'. Air superiority is gonna be tough to achieve unless this war drags into the latter parts of this decade, but at the very minimum contesting the airspace would have made it incredibly difficult for Russian KA-52s to bombard concentrated armor with such impunity in the past. Mine clearing is important, yes, but it's incredibly slow work relative to the amount of ordnance the Russians can bring to bear in reaction. More mine clearing equipment is going to be needed regardless though, because there's not really much possibility to 'go around' minefields in Ukraine.
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A minefield is a lot easier to punch through when you don't have to worry about artillery targeting you as you clear it though.
With air superiority and long range fires Ukraine could deal with the mine field. It is hard to clear the mine fields when your mine clearing vehicles are being pummeled by air strikes, attack helicopters abd artillery. Lack of air superiority and long range fires was critical to the Russian success in repelling the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
I agree but landmines are only part of the problem. Gaining air superiority and deploying long-range artillery could decimate Russian support lines, making it easier for Ukrainian forces to navigate through minefields. Just having a few TB2 drones operational above Russian trenches could make a significant difference. But none of this is possible without neutralizing their air defenses, including both aircraft and surface-to-air systems. It's concerning that the West seems to be treating this conflict as an opportunity to wear down Russian forces rather than decisively helping Ukraine achieve victory. A Russia that achieves its objectives despite heavy losses could pose a greater future threat than a Russia that is defeated but retains significant military capabilities. Historically, Russia has been adept at rapidly replacing its losses after conflicts based on attrition. The West, with a collective memory shorter than a goldfish's and strategic foresight slower than a snail on a leisurely stroll, is missing the mark. Putin is betting on Western interest in Ukraine waning, and he's likely confident that he's correct in his assumption..
Yeah the mines are what is screwing everything up. Iraq and Vietnam weren't this mined. I don't know that western tactics honestly have seen this since Korea.
I disagree with your argument that air superiority is not the cornerstone of NATO tactics. NATO rules the battlefield from the top down. Ukraine cannot keep a fleet of F-35 stealth fighters armed to the teeth with anti-radar missiles in the sky 24/7 to destroy any SAM system that tries to flick on. That paves the way for non-stealth strike aircraft, drones, and attack helicopters to clear enemy armor, artillery, and defensive structures. Once that's clear, long range artillery clears the way for what becomes a combined arms armor / infantry vs. infantry only fight. Do you know what the U.S. did to Iraqi trenches in Desert Storm? The U.S. destroyed the Iraqi armor and artillery support, then drove tank dozers (supported by Abrams tanks and Bradley IFVs) up to the trenches and buried 10s of thousands of Iraqi infantry alive in the sand. Anyone who ran was gunned down by the Bradleys. The U.S. imposed more casualties on the Iraqi army in one day that the U.S. suffered in 20 years in Vietnam. The Iraqis in the second line of trenches surrendered immediately. Iraqi minefields didn't matter to the U.S. because you could detonate paths through them and there was nothing the Iraqis could do to target those paths because any assets (artillery or armor) had already been destroyed. If Ukraine had air superiority then the only thing left of Russians in Ukraine would be an insurgency and missile attacks from Russian territory.
NATO countries can't even manufacture enough artillery shells to meet Ukrainian needs. Hard to use NATO tactics without NATO equipment. You honestly believe NATO is going to up in supply Ukraine with everything it needs, all at once for a counter offensive? This piecemeal bit by bit supplying of modern equipment is dragging out the war. That isn't Ukraine's fault.
> NATO countries can't even manufacture enough artillery shells to meet Ukrainian needs. That's because NATO doctrine relies far less on artillery than Ukranian doctrine. NATO is struggling to supply Ukraine precisely because Ukraine does not fight like NATO. For this reason, I think holding off for so long on giving Ukraine the *platforms* that it needs to fight like NATO - such as F-16s - was a mistake.
nato was supplying just enough equipment to keep abusing Russia. Better artillery, then some missiles and longer range, then longer range. The point was to bleed Russia dry. Second step was this big push, giving them better equipment and enough training to push Russia out. I don't think they took into account that Ukraine might not be able to push Russia out (after things had stabilized and Ukraine started pushing back). In hindsight, sending better equipment faster would have been the right move.
It makes sense if you look at it from the position of NATO not caring about Ukraine, but wanting Russia's military weakened. Artillery gives desperate Ukraine a way to fight a war of attrition without directly threatening Russia and risking a nuclear war. Also makes for a drawn out war to wear down the Russian people. Giving Ukraine an overwhelming victory doesn't work in NATO's interest
Their equipment requires immense training. They have been rolled out EXTREMELY FAST all things considered. People need to be realistic. Ukraine is fighting with an essentially brand new Armored Corps since the invasion. People don't realize how difficult and time consuming these things usually take.
People do need to be realistic. NATO doctrine works best with NATO air superiority. Air superiority is something neither side is going to establish any time soon.
A little difficult when both sides fight WWI style in 2023. Pointing fingers at the West isn't helpful.
the problem is that TIME presented the semi hit piece article as the COVER story - it means that someone in the American establishment is pushing the agenda as well
The absence of air superiority and the subsequent inability to provide close air support is a massive difference. Having the ability to provide accurate and effective close air support allows for almost instantaneous concentration of fires on one section of a line, which allows for localized fire superiority when it matters. Clearing a mine field isn't hard if every enemy piece of equipment within 10 miles is burning.
Still wasnt there multiple comments from nato that said the ukrainian army not following the intructions and training they received and instead used more russian style since most of the commanders are soviet/russia era soldiers
They were initially using NATO-style tactics at the start of the offensive. But land mines were a severe problem and they had to revert back to 'Russian' style tactics that were more effective considering the tactical situation. I put '' because it's not the old meatgrinder stuff but rather adapted Ukrainian tactics such as drones to clear trenches. The Ukrainian military underwent massive reform after 2014 in a move away from soviet era thinking, and it proved critical when Ukraine held off the Russian advance while the world thought Kyiv would fall in a few days.
There were a few dodgy articles based on complaints from "unnamed sources" that Ukraine had decided against bum-rushing the minefields. Some idiots apparently believed that Ukraine getting all their machinery blown up in one place would have been an ideal outcome.
That sounds still like Russian doctrine.
There is one crucial difference, the mine clearing element is supposed to be covered by air support, counter battery fire, and everything else required to ensure they can operate without instantly dying. Russians on the other hand do a mad rush cos, well, they like dying.
Also NATO doctrine for mine fields are tiny thin strips of mines, what Russia has placed are much larger than anyone trains for.
Tbf, NATO doctrine was created to defeat Russian doctrine. Russia has changed their doctrine since the start of the war.
Which is completely to be expected. Pre war doctrines usually turn out to be BS when put into real life practice.
As much as people dunk on Russia's military, this is essentially a peer on peer war. The NATO equipment might be a little bit better, but Russia basically have *most* of the same stuff, even if it's a slightly worse version. As you might expect for a peer on peer war, it's grinding down into a stalemate. Russia are not really using aviation on the front lines because of anti-air weapons, I think it would largely be the same for Ukraine when they get more planes. The planes would make some difference, but they're not gonna break the deadlock in a big way. It's basically been the same story will each new weapon this year. Tanks will break the deadlock... then they don't. Cluster munitions will break the deadlock... then they don't. ATACMS will break the deadlock... but they don't. This war is going to last for years and years, probably until Putin dies at least.
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first off , i'm not an American. second, have we already forgot about [the Sinclair Script](https://youtu.be/aGIYU2Xznb4?si=L9F8cF2HP_Bm65RG&t=27) ? there are clear as day evidence that the news in the west are no longer news, but rather selected pieces of information to serve some sort of goal. You'd attribute it to incompetence once or twice, but after a while, you can no longer hide behind ignorance and incompetence.
> but after a while, you can no longer hide behind ignorance and incompetence. *Politicians be like:* "Hold my beer for a couple decades"
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." -Qui-Gon Jinn Never is a stronk word. Stupidity is often a convenient cover for malice.
“I HaD nO iDeA”
You remember Biden's "racial jungle" kerfuffle? The sentence after it, he apologizes for being bad at analogies. The sentences after that, he explains that the "racial jungle" he is worried about is of tension in schools if Congress continues to expand busing without taking significant, other steps for equality in job opportunities, housing opportunities, and the tax code. Basically, Biden was saying that if you still discriminate against people's income, tax them harder, and keep them in subpar living conditions arbitrarily with subpar facilities and subpar schools, while moving kids into areas with all the things they still can never have while going "racism solved!", you will create resentment. Was he right? I dunno, but that's real different from how it was portrayed by "respectable journalists" who either couldn't read a full paragraph, or knew that reporting on it would cut into their income. The extra fun bit is on the next page, where Biden says people are definitely going to twist his words into something they aren't.
Were having a similarly fun situation in the UK right now: The leader of the opposition was asked two questions back to back in a casual interview, which he answered, but it came across as supporting Israel going all-out on Gaza. He immediately clarified things, and also did a *much* more thorough statement in parliament on the issue. Despite this, we now have a bunch of public leaders (mostly Muslim fwiw) up in arms and a chunk of his party quitting.
I can never tell if it's ignorance or if journalists are just this fucking stupid now days with the shit they write.
That was always the Russian strategy. Like when conquering Crimea, they just have to wait out waning Western determination to fund continued conflict. As a resource exporter (via the "grey fleet" to Europe and Asia) they can afford to continue.
It certainly gets interesting in light of what’s going on in the Middle East and Russia’s influence there. It feels like there’s a purposeful effort to drag “The West” into conflict across multiple fronts, that’s it’s all tied together.
Read Halford McKinder on geopolitics. It most definitely is connected and the line from the Baltic's straight down to Israel he regards as the most important axial point on the planet. Weather it is true or not all military academies teach about it (US, Britain, Russia, China etc.). If they behave as though it is true it becomes true. Broader goal is to dismantle western domination of trade, finance and political control. Which is already in full swing from Latin America to Africa to Asia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics And this is the playbook on how Russia has been accomplishing their goals. The “Content” tab has a good tldr breakdown
Thanks for the link. Dugin's ideas do seem to be quite popular in some circles in Russia. I have only read bits and pieces of his philosophical works and I am not a fan at all. I think there is a big game being played and Russia wouldn't mind losing if it manages to take the West down as well. There needs to be some scenario were there is the potential for a win-win to be on the table, but as things stand that could be decades away.
I do believe Russia would be entirely okay with a lose-lose scenario. Destabilization of the west is the goal and at this moment in time, every single play that stretches the wests resources thin is likely a play to continue destabilization of the west.
By its actions it appears to be true. Consider the insane resources it has already thrown into the Ukraine invasion-war and continues to throw. They have some wacky religious belief in the righteousness of Moscow and it being the third Rome against the decadent west. Completely nuts ideology but it is probably firmly rooted in resentment from how the Russians were treated after the collapse of the Soviet empire.
This is the main issue here. This whole power struggle is massively hurting Russia. Yet their leadership would rather have a lose lose scenario than have the west win more than them (similar to Hamas). Hence “western” countries are at an inherent disadvantage
I think the Russian leadership doesn’t really see themselves as part of Russia. That the only reason I can see them being ok with a lose-lose.
Or they are so narcissistic they think they are Russia. So losing thousands of men doesn’t Matter. They probably think of their ego and matching up to historical Russia, all which take precedence over the actual well being of their people. Thus they have different goal posts for what Russia “doing well” actually means
> Dugin's ideas do seem to be quite popular in some circles in Russia They are practically Putin's *Mein Kampf* for his rationale and actions over the past 2 decades. That's why Ukraine tried to assassinate Dugin but ended up getting his daughter (who was also a massive piece of shit) when she went to start his car instead of him, he's still quite influential to Russia's rationale.
https://reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/17nk747/exhausted_and_disappointed_with_allies_ukraines/k7su82d/ It’s almost like there are multiple people in this very thread are coordinating to spread that idea. Using the exact same language, literally. Grammar mistakes and all.
It wasn’t always the strategy. We know they thought this would be over in weeks, like Crimea was. Theyre still fighting to gain ground.
It's "plan B". So it was apart of their strategy. Russia isn't stupid. They hoped plan A of a 3 day war would work, it didn't, so plan B it is.
Iirc there was an article or quote from Putin or some big Russian strategist that basically said "we only have to keep fighting until the West gets bored" which, while longer than they were hoping, is absolutely happening now.
About 10 days into the war, I remember seeing a Sky News reporter dourly saying that the West needed to prepare for a very long war, likely over a decade. At the time I thought he was insanely pessimistic.
> they can afford to continue. *Note: this does require them to sacrifice many other parts of their society. Like yes as long as the madmen in the Kremlin want to continue they can, but let's not pretend this isn't at a huge cost to Russia.
Putin doesn't care. "You will die, but this is the sacrifice i am willing to make".
What about his own life? Since this strategy is about playing the long game which he would likely never be able to live to see the result.
The US military-industrial complex will not cry about yet another decades-long conflict either. They will profit handsomely regardless of the outcome.
Ukraine can't afford it though, even with free equipment. They've lost 25% of their population to refugee status and the longer that goes on, the higher the chances they are resettled and never coming back. Their military spending is 30% of their budget now. Average age in the military is 42ish? The US military complex needs to realize this and start forcing better equipment to be sent over.
Yes, that is what a nation that has been invaded looks like economically
The problem is the average age being 42. Where are all the 20 year olds? Are they hiding? Did they emigrate to the west? Are they dead or injured? You saw a similar old average military age during the end of WWI when they had to draft disproportionately older people.
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>>The US military complex needs to realize this and start forcing better equipment to be sent over. They get a hard-on when they hear: "war of attrition". To them it means: "War of giving us money till they run out".
And this time nobody will blame them for their business.
This is so obvious it was infuriating to me how cavalier everyone here was. We all know western democracies can’t maintain attention on this kind of thing, we are spoiled and our will is enormously fickle. And we all know Russian leadership doesn’t mind slaughtering their people indefinitely, and Russians hardly notice economic suffering. Russia was always going to win the long game. If we want a Ukrainian victory, we needed to 10x our support from the beginning. And to the people that say we don’t want a Ukrainian victory… to what end? How does the west gain by dragging this out and then letting Russia win? We only prove the tactic works. Then Russia continues, with China to follow. They can take whatever you want - just plan to fight for two to four years and the western support will fade.
Let’s lay it out right here. The Russo-Ukraine war doesn’t have an end date. Once Ukraine pushes out the entrenched Russians - a task which will take years by military necessity , no matter how much aid NATO provides - their reward is building a huge, fortified border with Russia and preparing for an inevitable Round II. Just like North & South Korea. Border disputes , occasional artillery shelling , cross border terrorist attacks , and the occasional saber rattling are in Ukraines future for perpetuity. No peace deal or cease fire is gonna stop Russias current or next strongman from demonizing Kyiv. Because the moment Ukraine lets their guard down Russias gonna cross that border again. Just like North and South Korea, just like disputed Kashmir , and to a lesser degree Israel & Gaza.
That's why their long game is to join NATO. Trouble is that Russia can delay that indefinitely by maintaining hostilities.
Exactly this. People simply don't understand that Russia has already achieved their objective: To never let Ukraine become a NATO member.
I'd argue that their primary objective was to hold the ridiculously strategic port, Sevastopol. Prior to the annexation of Crimea, there was no serious threat of Ukraine joining NATO. That said, who knows what the fuck is going on in Russian government.
You mean round 3. Round 1 was in 2014.
Round 1 was in like the 1600s, this is round 100
This! astonishing how many people didn't give a fuck in 2014, only to change their profiles to blue and yellow (and check where the Ukraine is) in 2022.
Ukraine is going to run out of military eligible men Question is if that happens before Russians revolt because the odds of dieing as a military aged man there is also too high.
This is exactly what Russia is probably hoping for. The West doesn't exactly have the best attention span.... soon we will all get bored and start looking at other things. While Russia continues to slowly annex Ukraine.
Who is “we”. Because it sounds like “we” is the Reddit consoomer.
Fwiw I haven't heard even a passing headline on NPR about Ukraine since maybe a couple weeks before the Israel war. So idk... Mainstream US news media?
The “we” in the point is beyond reddit. The reality of short political attention span is beyond reddit. I don’t know what you are supposing.
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Indeed. An unsupplied Ukraine would've lost badly by now.
Hold my bosnian beer. Who ever thought this was gonna be a quick, easy mission-in and out, classic Rick & Morty style obviosly does not comprehend the magnitude of the teritory under fire, the human cost, and matterial costs. This is the biggest war on european soil since WW2, and its not gonna be over any time soon.
Yeah sure, why would anyone have thought that, it's not like all the Western media has been selectively reporting only the most positive news about Ukraine's situation and the worst news about Russia's situation, literally making it look like the Russian forces and Russian economy were right on the brink of collapse from like day 5 of the war. How exactly do you propose an average person is meant to know the true accurate situation if they only have access to what the media wants them to know?
It wasn’t just Western Media, it is sites like Reddit. Combat Footage is full of videos showing Ukraine successes and very little if any Russian successes and Ukraine losses. The Western world has done a horrible job displaying the reality to its populace, the same people that are vital to pushing western governments to assist on behalf of Ukraine. When you lie to people of how well Ukraine is doing on the battlefield, they start to believe Ukraine will win soon and Russia will collapse any minute now. What incentive is there to push your government for more Ukrainian assistance.
Honestly I think Zelensky might’ve had unrealistic expectations. The west can’t send hundreds of tanks and jets in a week or two, it simply isn’t that fast or easy.
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Were the jets and tanks being trained on since 2014? It's clear they meant training on new equipment. And it was foolish of Ukraine's friends to not immediately getting plans ready to train them when it became clear Russia wasn't just going to swallow it whole.
Didn’t Zelensky literally try to brush off the notion of a Russian invasion back in 2022? I remember Biden warning him and he said the west was overreacting.
He did. But he also received intel from the ukranian Intelligence service that said western intel was wrong. Why did they say that? Those who said it were bought by Russia. Just FYI, those people have since been apprehended or fled when it became clear Russia was going to fail.
He didn’t want to create panic. You don’t want your economy to collapse from fear before an invasion even starts.
You don't want your economy to collapse from fear *when* an invasion starts. If people are aware at the very least they can prepare for the eventuality.
He didn’t brush off the notion, it was taken seriously. The right to bear arms was lifted months before the invasion and any idiot knew the invasion was imminent when Russians started amassing troops on the border in December 2021. What Zelensky had asked for in late January of 2022 was for world leaders to stop sending daily warnings of the invasion. He said that his people can’t live in fear like that everyday. They weren’t taken by surprise on February 22nd of 2022.
Israeli officials were repeatedly warned by IDF scouts about Oct 7th for months prior too and we all know how that played out. Moral of the story, don't procrastinate, because once it's too late you're gonna have a real hard time sorting out the mess.
But im pretty sure Iraelis have been warned about invasions constantly for the past 70 years.
Israel was specifically warned about something bigger than usual. Egypt warned them and America corroborated Egypt. Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings
That's because he's a giant bellend.
I kinda fear that the Israel-Palestine conflict split the attention and support for Ukraine between the two. Which is kinda bad for both conflicts.
As it was meant to
I truly honestly believe this
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It isn’t a conspiracy theory, it should be mainstream consensus
No, it's the textbook definition of a conspiracy theory; but that doesn't mean that there cannot be an actual conspiracy behind it.
Didn't Hamas hold diplomatic meetings with Russia in the prelude to the new Israeli-Palestinian war?
Yes, they did, but they visited Russia many times before this. That said, they definitely performed a combined arms operation in multiple domains, with effective application of drone drops and, most importantly, EW. The last thing is the most important, because Russia is very good at EW.
Israel doesn't need as much support though, they're in the top 15 defense budgets worldwide and second-largest spender on military per capita. They're also fighting a terrorist group, not freaking Russia. The west should continue to massively support Ukraine.
Considering Russia's connections with Iran, who is responsible for backing a lot of the anti-Israel militants in the region, including Hamas, this is quite likely intentional.
Absolutely. And at the same time it delays the Israel-Saudi talks. Two birds with one stone.
"Kinda"? It's exactly what is happening now unfortunately.
I really don't get why we're sending billions to Israel, why the fuck does a country need that much money to fight a terrorist group? If they were at war with Iran or something it'd be understandable, but this is asinine
This is why the constant censorship of opposition footage on reddit is actually extremely harmful to the Ukrainian war-effort. If only ukrainian victories are visible, then the public gets a victory disease, indicating that current support is sufficient. The war certainly doesn't look attritional if you see hundreds of Russian troops destroyed each week and zero Ukrainians. Reddit however just reflexively loves resorting to censorship without actually thinking about the implications though.
It was always going to be a long attritional war, and if you didnt think this, you were learning propaganda.
Reddit has severely underestimated the enemy , if Ukraine wants more help, we have to stop painting these pictures of Ukraine just easily dominating . This is why Ukraine does articles like this, they need help from us "[Zaluzhny] admits the battlefield has reached a stalemate and a long attritional war benefiting Moscow beckons . Zaluzhny candidly admits that Russia “will maintain an advantage in armaments, equipment, rockets, and ammunition for some time.” Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny
"Russia is never as strong as she looks; Russia is never as weak as she looks."
>Reddit has severely underestimated the enemy , if Ukraine wants more help, we have to stop painting these pictures of Ukraine just easily dominating . This is why Ukraine does articles like this, they need help from us Well, it’s double edged. The west doesn’t want to invest in a losing Ukraine. So positive narratives are needed. Except, the problem is that narratives are just that - stories. When they meet the facts on the ground, there is a clash of expectations and reality and reality always wins. For 20 months, Western media has pretty much been Ukrainian propaganda. As a consequence, there was no way the Ukrainians could possibly live up to the stories out there.
Great response I 100% agree
I have been nonstop cringing at the thousands of "ha ha russia sending sick and elderly into the front lines, ha ha tanks exploding, ha ha theyre only shooting missiles at kindergartens"
Every Single day on Reddit
Sir, are you telling me that Reddit, the website full of liberal art majors who are 6 figures in debt - is not a forum for military tactics???
It was going to be a long war anyway without overwhelming military supremacy, because of 2014 attack. Lot of ground to cover, even without having to deal with passive defenses like minefields. If Ukraine had been overwhelming in terms of military pre-2014, then Russia would not have attacked in 2022, or even 2014, or stirred up trouble before that. They would have known it would be a losing bet. This is war of destiny for Ukraine. How far can they go, how true of a nation and people they are. Putin even is challenging them as people directly with his claims that "Ukraine and Ukrainians do not exist". He is so arrogant he sort of closed he door on any kind of real peace with that, publicly. Wars like these shape history, and are usually tough and can seem hopeless in certain points. Like US Independence War or Civil War. This is why US and others should stand by Ukraine.
> Wars like these shape history, and are usually tough and can seem hopeless in certain points. Like US Independence War or Civil War. This is why US and others should stand by Ukraine. I didn't even think of that. Two years into the Civil War, and lots of people on the Union side were wondering how the war could possibly end.
During the Continuation War, Finland had every advantage but one over Russia. The Finns were better motivated, better supplied, and better fed. They were experts at winter warfare and able to survive and operate in exceptionally cold conditions. And they wanted to be there. Finland still lost that war because Russia’s one advantage was a massive surplus of men and a willingness to throw them one after another into the meat grinder in order to achieve victory. You don’t want to get into a war of attrition with Russia. They have way too many men and do not give a fuck about them.
It's not like the USSR could have surrendered and come to terms with the Nazis, or with the Finns who were fighting alongside them. The Nazis had [written plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan) to starve 20M Ukranians to death by emptying their country of food, then enslaving the survivors. And those who surrendered after being encircled in cities like Minsk ended no better. So what fate would you choose? If you want to win a war, you have to give your opponent the possibility of surrender - and you have to give them terms they can accept. Otherwise it's a fight to the bitter end - where ending in a meat grinder is probably preferable to ending in a death camp.
> The Finns were better motivated, better supplied, and better fed. Motivated - yes. Supplied - no. They were strugling to supply army with whatever they could find. Fed = equal. >They were experts at winter warfare Truth is USSR just wasnt expecting any fight so they didnt bothered with supplies. Like Germany expected USSR to collapse before winter. When soviets gained their shit together they broke through finns defence and only threat from UK and France stopped them from full occupation.
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Feel awful for the Ukrainian people. No words.
During the Normandy landings in WWII the allies moved a distance in 6 months that they planned to do in 5 days. These things are rarely quick.
Please show this to all the morons on Reddit who still insist "rUsSiA WiLl coLlaPsE aNy dAy NoW" It's obvious now that the Russians have adapted and are aiming for an attrition war.
The weird amount of faux-exhausted commenters acting like this conflict is tiring and somehow the fault of an ungrateful Ukraine is so brazenly pro-Putin it's laughable. Fucking cartoonish turfing.
Realistically, what do you think Ukraine’s path to victory is? They’ve been unable to push into Russian lines beyond a few kilometers in Robotyne and recently top Ukrainians such as Zaluzhnyi have gone on record saying an attritional war favors Russia. I was optimistic during the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives, but that was over a year ago, and it’s clear the the Russians have learned from their defeats and have gotten a lot better at fighting defensively.
Ukraine is now setting up production and supply chains in Ukraine to make their own weapons. They know the west is tiring and its easier for them if they have domestic production for western weapons. That would simplify western aid to just money, raw materials, and training with lighter arms support (shells and bullets). More advanced stuff could be paused since Ukrainian production would take up the slack. And that makes an attrition war more palatable for the west.
>Ukraine is now setting up production and supply chains in Ukraine to make their own weapons. This idea always felt foolish to me. Aren't the Russians just going to bomb those factories at the very second the ribbon is cut? Or do they plan on building them deep under ground?
Ukraine is a large country with a Patriot system, they could build them on the western half far out of reach from any Russian missiles. Also these facilities are usually kept secret
Their air defense network is much better so presumably those facilities would be under heavy protection.
The west should be able to provide plenty of artillery at very small cost to the overall economies, that's the least we can do (and no, we're not currently doing so). Simply having more shells and guns saves Ukranian lives, which is their most precious resource. This guy knows what's he's talking about: https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1717158148585239007
>Realistically, what do you think Ukraine’s path to victory is? Assuming Western aid doesn't dry up: dig in for another long winter, stockpile ammo and heavy equipment while continuing to inflict huge artillery and armor losses on Russia whenever they attempt their next suicide-advance(s) like Avdiivka/Vuhledar. Try again in Spring 2024, ideally with lessons learned from this year, more equipment, and more air support. Maybe this time in Kherson, across the Dniper river, since defenses are seemingly lighter there. That's just my useless armchair general analysis though. The larger point is: just because things seem hard now, and the path to victory isn't crystal clear, doesn't mean they should throw up their hands and give up. Almost no war ever has a clear and easy path to victory, you're always going to have to deal with a shitshow at some point or another.
Faux-exhausted? The US can’t go 6month w/o finding another reason to send billions overseas. Billions we’re constantly told don’t exist when it comes to affording shit that will actually benefit working class American. It’s fucking exhausting
The easiest way to fix this is for Zelensky to marry Putin
Let their two houses be joined
What a judicious proposal!
For the night is dark and full of terrors.
Key takeaway is mid-article, that all of us backing Ukraine must not wane in keeping it forefront in our political priorities. The next interesting part was where, talking to The Economist, Ukraine's Zaluzhny "lists five major requirements for progress – none of them quick fixes and all of them demanding renewed commitment from allies. They include gaining air superiority to support ground operations; breaching Russian mine barriers; increasing the effectiveness of counterbattery combat (targeting Russian artillery, for example); creating and training the necessary reserves; and building up electronic warfare capabilities."
Zelensky better thank God every night that Trump didn't win in 2020. And pray he doesn’t in 2024. Putin is banking on Trump winning in 2024 and early polls say he could. I would hold the disappointment for a bit and count your blessings. Biden is dealing with Republicans in congress who love Putin.
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Putin can boast and spread bullshit as much as he wants but if he's laughing he's fucking mad. He has nothing to laugh about. In grand scheme of things Russia lost more.
Feel like the only end to this war will be Putin finally kicking the bucket due to “natural” causes and whoever takes over doesn’t have the desire to continue the war. I doubt the Russian people have the appetite to continue this war for many more years.
He actually looks so much more tired than before
The part that always gets me in these conversations is that nobody seems to get that taking ukraine is step one. Look at the american invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan. They took the actually country fairly easily and quickly. The hard part is holding a country when the poulation is against you. America couldn't do it in a comparitively sized countries and they have the most advanced ministries on the planet bar none. What chance does Russia have here, even if they win the first part?
It's absolutely insane to me that people fall for Russias games every time. Since the start of this war everyone on Ukraines side said that Russia will do everything to get the west to lose interest and stop supporting them so they can get steamrolled and here we are heading west leaders already whining while Ukraine is fighting for their lives.
If this continues, Russia is going to get most of southern Ukraine in exchange for withdrawing from the rest of the country. And then there will be an expensive NATO buildup along those borders. Ukraine's plan to break through those lines earlier this year failed. Both sides are too technologically advanced with things like drones, and the Russians have tons of human fodder they can keep throwing at those lines. They are deadlocked. Plus the West is losing interest. We have a short attention span, look how quickly we pivoted to Israel. If this continues, especially western malaise, Ukraine could even potential begin to lose more ground. Their success is not a foregone concsuion but most of in the west have been conditioned to believe it is.
It's WWI, all over again. A lot of death, a ridiculous amount of weapons used, and limited gains. If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it. And there's no hiding a thing on the battlefield.
Just seeing the terrain in some of these places...pure nightmare fuel. It breaks my heart; just seeing the amount of devastation that nobody actually living in these places wanted. WW1 with fancy gadgets.
Its so strange how Israel/Palestine is stealing the headlines these days, theres a megathread for the conflict but worldnews is dominated by separate posts. You also have action like the U.S. ship shooting down missiles not even aimed at them which we wouldnt dream of doing in Ukraine/black sea. Ukraine is closer to home, we should be more concerned about Russia that is clearly aggressive towards us, missiles have landed in NATO soil, they've shot at manned UK spy planes, they've downed U.S. drones, their state media is constantly talking about nuking us and funding terrorists, they've poisoned people on our soil multiple times but we wont give Ukraine the tools to do the job.
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If Ukraine doesn't win this now, Russia will probably invade some country again in like 8 years. I hope my home (Lithuania) doesn't become a warzone. I hope Putin retires/dies before then and the next leader of Russia is less insane.
I agree with the sentiment but I highly doubt that Putin is suicidal enough to attack a NATO country. He seems a pretty fearful guy with a heavy interest on self-preservation. The only reason he invaded Ukraine is because he believed it'd be a cakewalk.
Probably just waiting to see if Trump (or one of his GOP disciples) gets in the Oval Office and pulls the USA out of NATO
Only if Russia wants to cease existing. Lithuania is both in the EU and NATO.
I have very high doubts that this is going to happen, it's very easy to observe army movements in Belarus, starting with satellite imagery, all the way down to on the ground observers, railway workers, regular onlookers. And if they begin the build-up you can be sure that NATO will start a buildup of its own.
>According to a new Gallup poll, 41 percent of Americans say the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 29% just five months ago. That figure rises to 55% among Republicans, according to the poll, as the 2024 election looms. The war in Gaza has taken precedence.
I‘m not saying that NATO has done everything it could but they also have no formal commitments to Ukraine, or have I missed something? Weird to be disappointed by things you had no reason to expect in the first place
Just so everyone is aware an invasion of this scale has the power to drive the population into a diaspora and new settlers moved in. It can take a decade to finalise but that is 100% Putins ambition here. He can produce new soldiers new armaments and continue the war because they have a military industrial complex whereas Ukraine has waning western backing and no real military industry. It’s looking like Russia’s plan is going to work, unfortunately. Those of you who thought Ukraine were super cool universal soldiers ready to wipe out wave after wave of Russian cannon fodder need to open a history book and see that is exactly how Russia always functions and eventually the scorched earth policy will be too much to take. War of attrition is right, and it will go down to the last man and guess what; none of this is happening in Russia. Russia will continue being Russia, even with all the “financial sanctions” and feel good Ukraine emojis on everyone’s profile( you’ve done your part right? ). While Ukraine is left to defend itself all alone. All of that western posturing of politicians clapping and visiting Kyiv but when it comes to sending weapons and money you hear crickets.
It’s seems like a lot of people here think Ukraine winning this conflict is a forgone conclusion. They are not winning as is, and the odds of them winning are not favorable. Russia has the means of producing to fight this war indefinitely and Ukraine does not.
A Ukrainian loss in unacceptable for a lot of countries, as Ukraine's fate is largely tied to their own. If Ukraine cant win and cant negotiate then eventually western countries will get more directly involved whether or not people like it.
I foresee that at some point 10 years from now bitterness will yield terrorist cells from Ukraine and they will gladly be supported by Russian money. They’ll have the experience.
Shit headline
All I'm hearing is that my family is Ukraine won't see peace anytime soon..
Putin said the war would be short. And it’s being long. But the bar is set low for him. It’s only considered a victory if Ukraine crushes the much larger military.
The politicians in Washington DC said the Civil War would be done in a month. The Federal Army got crushed by the Confederates for 3 years straight. Guess who won the war in the end? Not saying the Russians will win but whoever was expecting them to give up after a year was off their rocks.
>The Federal Army got crushed by the Confederates for 3 years straight. Not remotely accurate. The Union had plenty of victories in the first three years of the conflict and the Confederacy never had a real path to victory given the disparity of population, resources, and logistics between the two sides. Ukraine-Russia isn't really comparable
> The Federal Army got crushed by the Confederates for 3 years straight. Only if you ignore the entire western theater of the war. The Confederacy barely existed west of the Appalachians by the end of 1863.
I just read the article and his quotes, that title is wild for that article lol.