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.”
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)