halls120 wrote:
Wrong. When the dust settles and the inventories of what the US and NATO countries have provided Ukraine - both in terms of material and other assistance - can be revealed, you will see just how non-timid NATO partners have been. There is a reason why the Russians have been calling this a proxy war with the US.
Yeah........no. When the dust settles the inventories of what the U.S. will have provided Ukraine may prove that the U.S., might have stepped up but at this point the material assistance given allows the Ukrainians to "hang on" but not much more.
In the run up to the war and in the initial week everyone, from Biden, to SECDEF Austin, to General Mark Milley, to a bunch of pundits had written the Ukrainians off. I thought, and said here, that I thought they would be like the 300 Spartans, putting up a good fight but losing in the end to Russia's sheer weight of numbers. Thanks in part to the Russian military's completely inept battle plan, as well as some very smart tactics by the Ukrainians playing on their home turf, and a President that could school our President on leadership every day of the week and twice on Sunday, they've done fantastically well given the weak military support from the U.S. and NATO.
It has only been in the past week that the Czech's have sent T-72 tanks and BVP's, joined by Germany sending BVP's to the Ukrainians to replace their losses.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/45078/ukraine-situation-report-donated-czech-t-72-tanks-bmp-1-armored-vehicles-headed-to-ukraine There are widespread reports that the Czech government has at least begun moving T-72 tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles out of storage for transfer to Ukraine. This follows reports over the weekend that the U.S. government would help facilitate the delivery of T-72 tanks from an unspecified NATO member to the Ukrainian armed forces. Last week, the German government had separately approved a request from authorities in the Czech Republic to send ex-East German BMP-1s that they now own to Ukraine.
No other country, including the U.S. has provided that kind of assistance. Switchblade drones, javelins, stingers, and satellite surveillance are nice but won't stop a massed armor attack. The Ukrainians are actually their own best resupplier of armor having captured an estimated 118 working or repairable Russian tanks!
Forbes, citing Oryx, a military website that monitors open-source information on social media to work out losses of military equipment during the war, on Friday said that Ukraine has lost at least 74 tanks since Russia started the war on February 24, but it had captured at least 118 Russian tanks. This means that Ukraine has more tanks than it did at the start of the conflict.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-has-actually-gained-tanks-during-war-while-russia-has-lost-hundreds/ar-AAVtUQf#:~:text=Forbes%2C%20citing%20Oryx%2C%20a%20military%20website%20that%20monitors,it%20had%20captured%20at%20least%20118%20Russian%20tanks.There are other countries that have old Soviet style equipment, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, have tanks and armored personnel carriers but of those Slovakia only has a minimal amount and Hungary has forbidden transfers of military equipment to Ukraine as well as any transportation of military equipment transfers across their territory going to Ukraine.
https://finabel.org/the-replacement-of-soviet-era-equipment-in-the-eastern-flank/In addition, Ukrainian air defense losses are not being made up at the rate they are losing them.
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-anti-aircraft-weapon-donations-not-covering-ukraine-losses-russia-invasion-s-300-1696924NATO Anti-Aircraft Weapon Donations Aren't Covering Ukraine Losses
The Turks, to their credit, didn't hesitate to send their Bayraktar TB2 UAV into the fight. Several retired military professionals have said that it wouldn't be a big stretch to teach Ukrainians how to handle the now retired MQ-1 Predator which can be equipped with hellfire missiles. The MQ-1 was retired from active USAF duty in 2018 but remains in the surplus inventory. It could easily be trained on then shipped to Ukraine with the caveat that they are only to be used within Ukrainian airspace as defined before the invasion began.
halls120 wrote:Pep is right. We are being very careful so as to not trigger uncontrollable escalation, and our assistance has been and is anything but timid.
There's plenty more the U.S. could be doing but thanks to our forgetful leader and his pack of spineless minions, nothing probably will but the Predator drones, as well as digging up more old soviet style armor would be a big help. The time to stop letting Putin dictate what we can and can't do has come and gone. He is a war criminal and should be treated as such. Only by giving the Ukrainians the types of assistance that can allow them to win, and publicly announcing that as our policy will Putin be forced to really negotiate a peace. This would also have the effect of dampening any designs on the Chinese communists of invading Tiawan and thinking the U.S. would do nothing.
At this point the Ukrainians should be willing to trade the Crimean peninsula for an end to the separatist movement in the Donbas region and reparations for destroyed property both public and private as well as restoration of roads and other infrastructure destroyed by the Russian invasion. In 2008 when I visited the Crimea it was readily apparent that it was mostly people of Russian descent inhabiting it. From the Cossacks living on top of Ai-Petri outside of Yalta, to the Russian Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol to a line of Russian restaurants in Simferopol I was surprised that it had been ceded to Ukraine when the Soviet Union broke up.
What's the point of an open door policy if inside the open door sits a closed mind?