Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has flown to Washington DC in an attempt to rescue a critical $61bn military aid package, while the UK separately hinted that it could increase the value of the arms, ammunition and training that it donates to Kyiv.
Zelenskiy is due to meet the US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday, as well as US senators and the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a time when Congress is holding up future American financial support for Kyiv’s war effort.
Shortly after arriving in the US capital, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was counting on the US, and that delays to future rounds of military aid were “dreams come true” for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
“Putin must lose,” Zelenskiy said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington DC. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”
I don’t think Ukraine can win without foreign troops.
Some numbers:
Russia’s military has 1m active personnel and 2m reserve, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces
Ukraine’s military has 800,000 active personnel and 900,000 reserve, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine
Ukranians will have to be killing Russians at over a 3 to 1 ratio in order to succeed. This is before we start counting conscriptions, which Russia has a much larger population to pull from.
where is the problem? Russia is already throwing them to the meatgrinder with no regards for their own people. Only issue I see is that Ukraine’s ammo could run out.
And do you really think that Russia could start another drafting without destabilizing its society even further? Not to mention that numbers doesen’t really mean that much if morality is low and they are barely equipped or trained.
This is how the USSR defeated the Nazis at
LeningradStalingrad. The Nazis had superior firepower but they literally ran out of bullets because there were so many Russians.Russia =/= the Soviet Union. Even with that aside, Russia’s demographics aren’t great to support this kind of meat grinder war. Their median age is nearly 40 now, that was not the case in the Soviet Union in 1939.
Two years later, the grinder is still grinding.
Sure, but they can only barrel scrape for a finite amount of time. I don’t know if that’s another 10 months or 10 years but there is bound to be a limit. The same can be said for Russia’s industrial production capability. They’re sourcing old Soviet arms from North Korea which I don’t find encouraging from a Russian perspective.
The same goes for Ukraine as well, though. And judging by how much their foreign aid is dropping and them running out of artillery ammunition, I’m no longer that sure that it’s russia who is reaching their limitations first.
Valid point. The next month or two will be really telling. I expect US aid to pass eventually and it seems like the EU wants a reckoning with Hungary but I’m not sure how that will play out.
Oh for sure it’s finite, but they only have to wait out Ukraine, that’s the problem. And it looks to be very clear that Russia is not the paper tiger (economically and militarily) that western media and governments have been claiming. Without substantial and prolonged foreign aid, there is only a slim chance that Ukraine will be able to resist Russian imperialist aggression in any serious way, let alone regain conquered territory.
They seem to be burning through Soviet surplus. I have questions about their ability to produce new material in sufficient quantities. They definitely have a network to smuggle in western machinery and tech but in what volumes?
Key difference: The Nazis were on the offensive.
The only risk of “losing” I foresee for Ukraine is not being able to reclaim all territory lost without sustaining losses they aren’t willing to. There is in my view zero chance Russia takes Kyiv, well without nukes or chemical warfare etc but I doubt they’d go that far. As it is right now it’s looking like this could be a long war, 10+ years of very little movement of the frontlines.
You mean Stalingrad? Leningrad was a horrific siege, considered longest in modern history, that was only lifted in 1944 when German forces were thinned out by losses all over, most notably Kursk.
Also not true. This is a movie/game trope, but no historian worth their salt will ever say this. In 1941 the German army invading USSR was, with allies, actually more numerous than the soviets. Soviet army did win with the use of numbers, through, but also with some very innovative tactics and well executed combined-arms offensive.
Germans did not just fight until running out of bullets. In Stalingrad in particular, the 6th army was surrounded after operation Uranus, a two-pronged attack that destroyed the flanks of the German army, encircling it and than crushing them.
Let’s keep them in supply of bullets then
They have. Ukrainians have been fucking the Russians because they’re better equipped, better trained, and have greater morale than the Russian “I’m just here to die” meat grinder.
That said, is it enough? I really don’t think it is. I think the Russian meat grinder is that strong.
If NATO were to send their own troops (not volunteers) on the ground, then it would be a completely different ballgame.
Unfortunately, Ukraine’s recent “counteroffensive” is showing us that equipment and logistics are simply not enough to win a war.
You need men. Which Russia has in spades. (literally)
Ukraine doesn’t have to kill every single military conscript. First of all, many of those 1mil. russian troops are working logistics. Second, an army isn’t beat when all of its men are dead, but when morale breaks. So what needs to happen is that Ukraine gets enough material to crush russian assaults for long enough to convince the russian cannon fodder to not attack anymore. And the military support needs to be sustained to indicate to Putin that he can’t out-wait the support, but will have to strike a deal before his army gets overpowered.
Considering the Russians don’t use pallets or forklifts it might be way more than a million in logistics
Totally, truly, and honestly.
If Russian people were to say “fuck this”, then the war is over.
The problem is that Russian propaganda is so strong among its people that I don’t really see that as a possibility until the bitter end. I think Ukraine will reach their bitter end before Russia does without foreign troops on the ground.
Not just volunteers. But coordinated, military aid.
Putins popularity numbers crashed like 20% when he announced mobilisation before it was clear that Moscow wouldn’t have very many people mobilized from it. Putin can’t use Russia’s manpower without becoming extremely unpopular. And if he becomes unpopular, especially among the rich in Moscow, coups are much more likely.
Plus, Ukraine is commonly seeing loss ratios of 3:1 or more.
Which does not really count, because there are no real elections in Russia
That is something I really hope. Just some pissed oligarch with some true love for mother russia putting a bullet into Putins head and finally end him. But this is tied to a major mobilization, some balls and we don’t know if Putin’s successor will be better or worse.
I wonder if the war would actually end and if Russia would cede territory if/when Putin dies and Ukraine is still fighting? Has the Russian military machine gained so much momentum that no matter who takes over after Putin is gone, they’ll just continue the war out of fear of looking weak? I think there’s this notion that the only thing still driving this war is Putin himself, but it seems like Russia has transitioned to a permanent wartime economy, I doubt they could just turn on a dime when Putin isn’t there anymore. Potentially the country could devolve into a civil war and the occupied territories will just slip out of their grasp and back into Ukraine’s, but that’s not a certainty.
Putin is convinced that internal unrest is the biggest threat to his rule. He doesn’t fear bad polling results, he fears massive civilian unrest.