Posted on 04/06/2024 2:17:04 PM PDT by Vlad0
Far from this being a frozen conflict, a nightmare scenario is edging into view because the West is failing to send arms.
Manual Excerpts
Contrary to the predominant view that this is a perpetual “frozen conflict”, with neither side able to win a decisive advantage, the front line is bitterly contested and there is a real risk of Ukrainian forces being pushed back. Nato leaders must hope their gathering in Washington in July for a summit celebrating the 75th anniversary of the alliance is not consumed by such a crisis.
Only a year ago, it was all very different. The hope then was of a Ukrainian spring offensive that would reclaim territory. That didn’t work and, as the American magazine Foreign Affairs put it this week, “Ukraine is bleeding. Without new US military assistance, Ukrainian ground forces may not be able to hold the line against a relentless Russian military.”
The governments who support Ukraine most strongly are clearly worried and considering even the worst scenarios. The US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has issued several warnings that Ukraine is running out of money, while urging Congress to pass the aid bill that is stuck amid legislative infighting. The US risked being responsible for Ukraine’s defeat, she said.
A Russian advance would obviously be disastrous for the Ukrainians. It would also confront the West with all manner of tough challenges. Would the allies send troops to defend Kyiv?
President Macron has clearly sensed the danger and is trying to steer the West towards a more muscular approach by raising the possibility of ground troops. Other countries, such as Germany, strongly object. When will the message be finally understood that peace for European populations is guaranteed only by strength? When Ukraine falls and Putin moves on to menacing the Baltics, Poland, Finland, Sweden or Norway?
I've read about Russian logistics in this war. They suck.
With the use of satellites and drones, there's no way that the Russians can make it over to Odessa right now.
Kyiv? That's a different story.
If you're curious, Google "russian pontoon bridge".
NATO will support western oblasts of Ukraine.
Before Russia was Russia it was Moscovia, a swamp and forest country. Hundreds of years before that Ukraine was the Kivian-Rus’ Empire.
Peter the Great (sic) renamed his country from Moscovia to Rus, and later Rus-sia or Russia, because he wanted his kingdom to be come a great empire like Kivian-Rus’ was and like the Byzantium Empire before it.
Russia has been stealing and invading countries ever since to achieve Peter the Great’s dream.
It’s time for Bidenskyyyyyyyyyyy to send all late night vomit comedians to Ukraine to build a last line of defense to stop the Russkis.
Ukraine ping
Kazan: [We’ve already spent $150 billion on Ukraine and the Ukrainians have lost 20% of their territory.
Now, Ukraine’s military is shambles. There is a manpower shortage. More military aid won’t make a bit of difference.
Only a surrender will preserve what is left of Ukraine.]
Relative to its 1941 economy, the US sent 12% of a year’s output to the Russians. 12% of today’s economy would be 3T. We are well short of sending $300b, let alone $3T.
When the sanctions fall from Russia watch their economy explode.
Russia took out Berlin in WW2 and I doubt they would have too much trouble shelling and bombing out the CIA rats.
There will have to be peacekeepers in Ukraine after the war ends. Indian peacekeepers? We'll have to pay them a lot of money. No NATO or Russia will attack again.
Why don’t you talk about the front PIFster? None of the Bidenistas talk about the front anymore. All that you loons post about is the need for free weapons.
Contrary to the predominant view that this is a perpetual “frozen conflict”, with neither side able to win a decisive advantage, the front line is bitterly contested and there is a real risk of Ukrainian forces being pushed back.
The Ukraine war is a perpetual "frozen conflict" precisely as the American Civil War was a perpetual frozen conflict. When one side can run the other out of men or materiel, it is frozen until it isn't. Then the lines begin to crack. And then the lines collapse suddenly.
Only a year ago, it was all very different. The hope then was of a Ukrainian spring offensive that would reclaim territory.
The only thing different a year ago was the optimism of the propaganda. Ukraine's situation a year ago was a hopeless as it is now. They were just in an earlier stage of losing.
Without new US military assistance, Ukrainian ground forces may not be able to hold the line against a relentless Russian military.”
With new U.S. military assistance, Ukraine ground forces may lose more men, and suffer greater destruction. The end result will not change.
The US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has issued several warnings that Ukraine is running out of money, while urging Congress to pass the aid bill that is stuck amid legislative infighting.
Janet Yellen is the Secretary of the Treasury for the United States. She should spend more time on the trillion dollars of debt being taken on every hundred days by the U.S. When we have no debt and a budget surplus, the Secretary of the Treasury can worry about printing more currency so she can play patron saint of hopeless causes.
Would the allies send troops to defend Kyiv?
Let us hope not. Why would these "allies" wait for the rest of Ukraine to fall and then defend Kiev?
President Macron has clearly sensed the danger and is trying to steer the West towards a more muscular approach by raising the possibility of ground troops.
Being French, President Macron can teach a more muscular approach to surrendering in the face of certain defeat. There is nothing stopping President Macron from sending his own ground troops in there now. Surely he has the unanimous support of the French people on that one.
When will the message be finally understood that peace for European populations is guaranteed only by strength? When Ukraine falls and Putin moves on to menacing the Baltics, Poland, Finland, Sweden or Norway?
Oh noes, the domino theory. Did we win or lose the first war of the dominoes? Did the world end, or is it still here? Whatever happened to the dominoes?
I don’t think Putin wants to have to occupy Kyiv.
It’s Kiev. And the sooner, the better.
“ Russia claims it only wants Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk.”
********************************************
That was before. Now they’ll have to take all parts of Ukraine that I are within rocket range of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk…. or within rocket range of anywhere in Russia proper. And of course as NATO members keep giving Zelensky new rockets with longer and longer range the amount of firmer Ukrainian lands that need to be taken expands.
Just sayin’.
Ukraine can not win the war - if NATO intervenes to save face, it will start WWIII.
"It is July and the Russian army is at the gates of Kyiv" even possible? If Russia can attempt this during this coming July, there was nothing stopping them from trying last July in 2023, or in July 2022 when the invasion was stalling.
Losses count for both sides. Ukrainian military losses are bad. Russian military losses are far worse. What I find more than a little disturbing is the cognitive dissonance that prevents people from seeing a very basic reality: Russian losses have kept them from winning. If Russia was inflicting greater losses than they were having, they would have won. There is no way this will drastically change in the next few months. The last time Russia made a battalion sized attack was at Tonenke last week. Out of 36 tanks and 12 APCs, 20 vehicles were destroyed. Both sides have sufficient ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance) that any attempt to mass large forces to engage in force is always detected in advance. That gives the other side time to prepare their own forces and artillery, drones, and other weapons. Massing more than a dozen vehicles, their crews, infantry, other support without getting noticed is impossible.
Both sides have built up their defense in depth in their own way. Russia still has the Surovikin and Wagner lines. Ukraine has its defenses in depth and heavy use of cheap reconnaissance drones. The limitations on both sides mean large scale Cold War scenarios are not going to happen, or Russia would have tried it since the initial invasion stalled.
For those that haven't noticed, Russia has not won and Ukraine has not lost. Russia losses are so high and Ukrainian defense are so effective less than 100 square miles has changed sides over the last year and a half. That includes Bakhmut and Avdiivka, battles which were cheered as ending the war for Russia when they did not.
Attacking Kyiv by definition will be a major offensive operation. Russia will have to mass forces to attack, going up against 2 years of built up defenses, drones, artillery, and Ukrainian defenders expecting it eventually. It is not only Ukraine that has to worry about another attack on Kyiv. It is Russia that has to worry about risking attacking Kyiv a second time, and losing.
Yet, we told $3.5 billion of border wall under Trump was too much....
You act like all the debt we're running is monopoly money that the $34 trillion we are in debt doesn't matter even though we're now paying $1.6 trillion of tax revenue on interest on the debt each year.
And, if going to spend $150 billion maybe we should be spending on our many problems, including border security, infrastructure and on our citizens rather than on a war provoked that has absolutely nothing to do with our national security.
You are OK.
Russia lacks the manpower and military strength to occupy Ukraine indefinitely, while any compliant puppet government they install or favor in Ukraine will be overthrown. To use a term from Soviet military analysis, the long term "correlation of forces" is strongly against Russian control of Ukraine no matter Putin's fantastical thinking to the contrary.
Putin of course will one day pass from the scene and a post-Putin government will have to recognize and accept that even if Ukraine is defeated, they cannot be subjugated indefinitely, at least not at a bearable cost. In that sense, even if Ukraine's resistance today fails, it is nevertheless a hard and bloody down payment toward Ukraine's freedom from Russian control, whether in the current war or in a future struggle.
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