This time last year the tone of the discussion was very different. We weren't sure if Ukraine as we know it would even be a thing today. Now there's optimism that they could more or less win this war. With any luck by this time next year Ukraine could have or be in sight of some form of victory over their oppressors. Just taking a moment to appreciate how different things feel compared to then. And thanks as always for the tireless updates, Ryuu.

Gen. Mark Milley: The Russians have never achieved air superiority. Because they haven't achieved air superiority, they didn't have close air support for the ground forces. Another thing that they didn't do — which everyone thought they would do — is effectively use electronic warfare, jamming, shutting down the electronic spectrum. We don't really know yet why they didn't. One thing could be that the Russian radios and the Ukrainian radios were essentially the same old Soviet-era model radios, using the same spectrum, same frequency band. So if you shut down the Ukrainian radios, then you might be shutting down your own radio?

Another reason might be that the Russians anticipated taking over the commercial air waves — the television stations, the radio stations — in order to put out their propaganda. The Russian special forces and intelligence services are specifically tasked to do that, and they failed. They have a lot of special operations forces, and usually we think they're pretty well trained, but their special operations forces did not, as best I can tell, play a significant role in Russian operations. Everybody thought that they would be much more effective. Their paratroopers, assault forces, were not nearly as effective as we would have thought.

‘Something Was Badly Wrong’: When Washington Realized Russia Was Actually Invading Ukraine - POLITICO

Everyone seemed to make a deadly combination of underestimating Ukraine's strength & courage and overestimating Russia's military capabilities, not realising the sheer level of corruption and rot that has infested Russia.

For now at least. It wouldn't surprise me if there would be another round of shipments later this year when countries like Spain have dusted off and repaired some of their tanks they have in long-term storage. Poland could send additional Tanks as soon as they have enough Abrams and/or K2 to replace another batch of Leopards.

Also Germany could produce new ones to replace the old ones for countries who operate the Leopards in their Ringtausch system, though that would take some time for sure.

Fucking kill each other already, Lol.

A year lateron, and like 140k russians have lost their lives at the frontlines.
Im not sure how many Ukraine lost, but I wouldn't be surprised if its roughly half of the russians or there abouts.

This stupid war, russia started, is expensive for the world, and cost so many lives.
I wish russia would just retreat, its been a year, and it doesn't feel like russia is anywhere close to winning and may never.
Why do they bother prolonging it at the cost of human lives, ect.

Putin just needs to man up, admit that it was a mistake, and do the logical thing, which is to pull out.

Sounds more like next Putin is going to try to outlast Ukraine and then have his way, so not looking great for this wish.

And this is why these news/rumors of European leaders persuading Ukraine to negotiate with Russia are dangerous. Putin will try to outlast the West.

Putin cant back out of the war, he is a dead man if he does, for his personal survival he must fight on and hope the West will break

Anyone surprised Greece isn't giving any Leopard 2 tanks?

I could unfortunately see a scenario where Putin could retreat and still survive, I've lost all confidence that anyone will ever stand up to Putin, I don't know what happened to Russia but it seems like every single person is afraid of him. There is hardly any criticism directed towards him, it is carefully and specifically always directed towards Shoigu or Gerasimov, aside from Girkin who nobody takes seriously, I don't see anyone criticising Putin.

Russians seem contempt with being sent to their deaths with awful equipment and treated like shit with next to zero protests and the ones that do happen are ridiculously small for the population, the FSB will always have Putin's back and Prigozhin I don't see as a threat to Putin as the Russian MoD hates him, I see him as the most likely to meet a window by the end of this and someone else thrown under the bus to take the blame.

The Oligarchs are useless as well.

I'd say that the major thing in the near future which Ukraine has to watch out for is the US elections, if a twat like Trump or DeSantis wins then that will hurt Ukraine's support significantly. So ideally, Ukraine needs to make some major gains before then but I do have confidence that Biden will win another term.

It is annoying, I'm sure it doesn't help that the prick Erdogan is threatening them every week but still, Greece is in NATO, as is Turkey, if Greece is attacked then they'll have full support of NATO. I don't think Turkey has any serious intention of attacking Greece and it's just Erdogan being a dick as per usual and hamming things up for the elections.