You can check out Daniel L. Davis’s explanation in his post at 1945 for yourself but here’s his conclusion:
It would be a near-impossible feat for the West to provide enough heavy weaponry to Ukraine – and the massive volumes of large-caliber artillery ammunition the howitzers need – that would bring back into balance the major disadvantage Ukraine has in firepower. Even the modern rocket launchers the U.S. and UK recently committed will not materially change the negative balance for Kyiv.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian people will soon come face-to-face with the ugly prospect that continuing to fight will only bring more death and destruction to its people, cities, and armed forces – but be insufficient to stave off defeat. The truth is, military fundamentals and simple capacity are in Moscow’s favor. It is unlikely those factors change in time to avoid defeat for Kyiv and its brave people. That is the ugly, bitter reality of war.
Don’t confuse such observations with being pro-Russian. Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s merely a steely-eyed assessment of the realities. Also, we should bear in mind that we (including the Biden Administration) have been receiving propaganda from Ukraine and that the economic sanctions imposed on Russia to date have been nearly as effective as was hoped.
Domino theory revived.
I’ll repeat, if faced with extinction or slavery, we have no serious choice.
What Daniel Davis and Grey Shambler do not seem to understand is that if we gave Ukraine all it needed to defeat Russia, which at this point would necessarily include ground troops in large numbers, the war would expand to cover all of North American and Europe. It would almost certainly go nuclear, and a half billion people would die in the exchanges.
Ukraine is a revanchist Nazi police state. Zelensky has arrested all the major opposition figures, without trial, shut down all the opposition newspapers, radio and TVs, and suppressed all vestiges of free speech and even freedom of religion. The Russian Orthodox Church is actively suppressed, and its priest physically attacked. The Russian language, and several others, is illegal. It may not be taught or used in public.
The Ukronazis have continuously bombarded civilian areas in the Donbas for eight years. They rejected out of hand both Minsk I and Minsk II. They murder, torture and mutilate prisoners of war. The head of their medical services branch order the castration of Russian prisoners.
Wake up! The Ukronazis are real 1930/40s Nazis. In that time period, every European country had a significant Nazi-like party, even Britain and the US. Operation Barbarossa included contingents from France, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Poland, and when the SS got to Ukraine, Ukrainian Nazis joined up, too.
The Ukrainian war actually started in the Clinton administration, when he reneged on the promises to not expand NATO. That expansion was not for the sake of democracy. It was for the profits of the Military Industrial Complex, because all the old Warsaw Pact countries would have to reequip their militaries with Western (meaning US) arms.
You may remember that the US organized, led, and financed the coup that removed Yanukovych and his government, which was the first, and last, democratically elected, legitimate government of Ukraine. In its place we installed the current, Nazi infested and controlled junta. The reason was that Yanukovych (an ethnic Russian) preferred the terms of a Russian loan to those of an EU loan.
Note that Iulia Timoshenko, who lost the runoff to Yanukovych, repeatedly has called for the extermination of all ethnic Russians, and the seizure of their land and property. Iulia was one of the darlings of the EU.
This should not surprise anyone. The US has a long sordid history of using terrorists to overthrow popular governments: the 1953 Iranian coup, the 1973 Chilean coup, the Taliban insurgency in 1994… We used al-Qaeda and its affiliate ISIS to fight Assad in Syria. Our leaders still claim we fought ISIS, when in fact we protected them, and allowed them to steal and export Syrian oil through Turkey. (Nowadays the US is stealing and selling the oil.) Russia stopped the oil theft and sales by bombing the huge oil convoys we ignored. We only went after ISIS when they got uppity and tried to conquer the Euphrates Valley and Iraq. But they’ve been domesticated by leader assassinations, and we support them again now.
Logistics and supplies matter. This has always been the concern, I think, among the more serious people following this. Ukraine needs to figure out how long it wants to go. Might be time to start storing small arms, ammunition and explosives for guerilla actions against the occupation.
Steve
Ukraine is a revanchist Nazi police state.
None of that was on the AP.