The outcome of all wars is dependent on who can sustain their combat power, while overwhelming their enemy’s. That is force structure and logistics. In the beginning it appeared so lopsided that the Russians should have brushed the Ukrainian forces aside. But Russian command hubris, incompetence and poor combat readiness has allowed Ukraine to turn it into a war of attrition. That is no small feat on their part, but it was only accomplished with lots of help from us. And reality is that Russia has a deeper bench.
It’s going to go on forever and the part I’m worried about for personal reasons connected to that region is the human cost. You hear little about the millions fleeing (never to return) or that the country was already in a huge birthrate decline now this.
It’s all about the war, trying to get Putin out and Zelensky worship. What’s happening to the country is complete wiping out city after city while the citizens flee and the majority of them know they lived in a corrupt country so they aren’t coming back.
Or Russia was looking for a limited military action with a negotiated settlement. Intervention from London and Washington prevented that solution back in April.
The expectation from the west was that Russia could advance on the battlefield but would collapse under the sanctions. NATO would turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan. Things are not going to NATO’s plan.
At this point, Ukraine has become a machine for exterminating Ukrainian men. Conscripts are delivered to front lines with little to no training; the losses are horrendous. I saw a report recently that a pastor in western Ukraine does several funerals each week for dead soldiers from his parish. There are good reasons why Ukrainian losses are a state secret.
It is illegal for men to leave Ukraine, but many still do. The alternative is a likely one-way ticket to the hospital or the grave. Here are some headlines from just the last day or two from one border region:
Smugglers of evaders, across the border, will appear before the court
In Transcarpathia, a girl tried to take a friend abroad, hiding him in a car under a blanket
Two men tried to cross the border with Romania on forged documents
The Russian collusion hoax that dominated media reports for years served two purposes. One was to sabotage the elected president. The other was to spread lies to justify war with Russia.
Well it is going to get interesting in a month or 2. Ukrainians are in Graf training on 50 M2 Bradley IFVs. I going to go out on a limb and say these came from pre-positioned US equipment in Europe.