P.U.T.U said:
At this point with Russia focusing all of its efforts on the Donbas region I am not sure what Ukraine can do to stop it. Russia is pulling its WWII strategy and will keep pumping assets into that area. The incoming artillery will help but it may be too little too late since I am not sure if Ukraine has the ability to mount a large counter offensive. Plus Ukraine can do very little now against Russia's navy now that they have pushed out to sea a little further.
The western countries need to stop telling the world what they are sending, seems like they care more about how the world views them versus what is tactically proficient. But then again that is the world we live in now, as long as you look good to others that is all that matters.
Ukraine had a little over 40 million citizens and by the end of this I would not be surprised if they lose a quarter of that to deaths, immigration to other western countries, Russia stealing them for labor, or Russia annexed areas. Yeah we talk about how many troops Russia is losing but it is not even a drop in the bucket compared to what Ukraine is losing.
And I am not even talking about the Russian strategy of annihilating cities in order to defeat the Ukes. From the videos there is nothing left to rebuild in a lot of them. This is the exact same thing Russia did in Syria and that war cause a third of all Syria to immigrate to other countries.
Ultimately, you of course may be right. Maybe a case of too little, too late. Even though we have provided a lot and relatively quickly, I still feel like we waffled around on key weapons and components. We have had to tiptoe around angering Putin of course. That man is still dictating our moves.
If we had started from the very beginning the rate of complexity of our aid, I do think things would look different now. I remember we were patting ourselves on the back for sending bullets at the beginning. God knows they needed it, but at that exact time we needed to have had the first cadre of trainers working on artillery. Could have had them out a month earlier than we actually did.
I know the political and logistical realities could not have pushed it faster but it is still frustrating to piecemeal out weapons and tech. Even though I know how that is how it goes in warfare. My platoon lost an old hand me down humvee with four Marines in it to an IED. Ten days later we got the new MRAPs. Not saying they all would have lived, but their chances would have been exponentially higher.
This sucks. War sucks. Putin sucks most of all.
