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| Zkuq said: Remaining cautions sounds like a good approach to me... It's been pretty much a stalemate for months now, aside from some Black Sea developments. At this point I'm cautiously expecting the next major developments to be the results of developments outside the battlefield, most notably F-16s (which apparently we shouldn't expect to be causing miracles) and elections. |
There is a lot that the West could still do but we either do it in limited amounts, afraid to take hits to our military capability or we take too long. Take the ATACMS cluster munitions for example, a brilliant hit on Russia's air force, months after the counter-offensive started...Imagine what they could have done with it if they had it at the start, if they had the warhead version of ATACMS at the start instead of the much shorter range cluster version. If they have the longer-range version now but no we still have cluster only.
What Ukraine could do with the longer range Storm Shadow, it could reach Kerch Bridge, look at what it did to the Black Sea fleet which was amazing and a big blow to Russia's naval force, but no they still have the shorter range version. Blowing the Kerch Bridge could cause a huge logistical bottleneck to Russia but nobody is willing to give that capability to Ukraine out of fear. ATACMS isn't strong enough so it has to be either Storm Shadow, Taurus or something else. Taurus is specifically designed for blowing bridges.
Feels like the West has accepted this will be a years long fight rather than trying to speed the conclusion up, only feels like a few countries in Europe understand the threat of Russia and are willing to take actual hits to their military in relation to their size versus other countries, and some of them are countries closer to Russia. The West at large still doesn't seem to get that Ukraine is fighting on behalf of Europe so continues to send them limited quantity, older models, stripped back technology, etc. Instead of sending the most sophisticated equipment.
It's clear that Russia isn't just trying to cause a distraction at Avdiivka, they're trying to take it, it's looking like another Bakhmut, massive losses on Russia's side but they'll keep throwing the hordes until they take it and unfortunately colours on a map are persuasive to regular folk and not the finer details of what things cost. Ukraine needs us in the West to be pumping equipment and ammo into them to keep defending these hordes and if the West doesn't do that then Ukraine will lose more land.
The West is still trying to balance this between Ukraine winning but also not winning too quickly because they're scared of what that would do to Russia. Do they not also realise though that the longer this goes on, the less public support they'll be for Ukraine? And if God forbid Russia wins, then America and Europe will be dealing with far more wars in the future, even more migrants (a sore subject for Europeans), more economic uncertainty and Taiwan better start preparing for China's invasion if Russia wins because China will see that all it takes is waiting for the West to grow frustrated.
There's not a silver bullet, but a combination of things, in both quality and quantity.
