| RolStoppable said: The war now lasts since almost two and a half years, yet somehow the West still needs more time. I don't buy this excuse, nor do I believe that any European country is ready to go to war with Russia in case that Ukraine falls. Ukraine made huge gains in fall 2022 with the little they had got until then, so if the West had continued to give equipment step by step instead of hesitating on things like tanks for several months, Russia could have been pushed even farther back. But what happened instead is that the West got scared that Russia could lose the war. The West's strategy is about hoping that Putin will eventually give in, seeing how much this war has cost his country. But the problem with this approach is that Putin won't give up exactly because he has already invested so much. The sunk cost is so high that anything but victory is unacceptable for Russia. |
In Europe, governments know that:
-Ukraine is a European country: it is one of ours and they are attacking it. And if the Russians win they will continue advancing.
-The USSR and the KGB never left; They just changed their name.
-In Russia neither the government nor the people rule; the KGB commands (now it is called FSB, but it is the KGB).
-Those in charge of the KGB believe that Russia is an empire, they believe that Russia cannot lose, they believe that Russia is in danger (it is not the real Russia that is in danger, but the imperial Russia that exists in their minds), etc. They are crazy and dangerous people. There is no possible agreement with these madmen. They are going to fight as long as they have resources left. And that means at least one or two more years of war.
-Russia swims in defensive resources. The Russian military has known for 50 years that Russia is weak and that they must allocate resources to defense. And they've fought in the shadows to make sure that's the focus almost all the time.
-Logistics is maximum in areas near the sea because almost all world trade is done through the sea. It is not possible to drive Russia out of southern Ukraine because its troops are supplied. Furthermore, Ukraine did not and does not have trained people. And we did not have and do not have the weapons or ammunition to give it to them.
-The function of weapons is not to have to be used. For example, in Europe we have more than 100 patriots that we could deliver to Ukraine (another question is whether Ukraine has people capable of handling them). But its function is to let our enemies know that attacking us is going to be very costly. And therefore do not attack us. Actually, we cannot give Ukraine that. We have lots of weapons, but we can't deliver them.
-Training a soldier can be done in months. But training a specialist takes years. And it is the specialists who make a real combat force exist. The few Ukrainian units that fight well are those with specialists. And the Russians focus all their attacks against them because if they finish off those then the others will collapse.
-It takes a year to teach how to drive a tank and another year to teach how to fight as a team. Of course you can send people who only know 20% of what they should know. But that is said alone.
-A part of the front is protected by a river. The other part consists of defenses tens of kilometers deep, terrain that half the year is a natural mud, irrigation canals everywhere (which means that the other half of the year the Russians can turn it into a mud), and urban terrain everywhere.
-Not everything is bad. The European military industry is increasing its numbers without problems. The Russian only maintains them and at the cost of sinking quality and skyrocketing costs. Within a year or two the tables are irreversibly reversed.
-Until then we have to put up with the Russians.
