War in Ukraine: “This miserable purgatory brings no result” | The West is supplying Ukraine with too few weapons, while Russia always manages to adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield, warns Colonel Reisner from the Austrian army. He demands a tough decision from Europe.
by GirasoleDE
5 comments
(1/2)
>ARD: Is Ukraine about to lose the war?
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>Markus Reisner: Ukraine is about to lose the war if the West does not provide Ukraine with the necessary support. This is a war of attrition – and it will be decided primarily on resources, not on morale.
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>Ukraine must be put on a sustainable footing. However, there is a certain hangover mood in the European capitals. They thought that the arms supplies would be enough. But that is not the case.
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>ARD: But the West has supplied a lot in the past, continues to supply and support. Is more support even possible?
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>Reisner: With the existing arms production, we won’t be able to supply what we really need. More effort is needed. And I don’t want to use the word “war economy” here, but it will require more in-depth efforts.
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>From a neutral point of view, the situation is serious. The West must understand that. Is it prepared to support Ukraine? Then it must do more. If it is not prepared to do so, then it must communicate that. This miserable purgatory currently only brings more deaths, but no result.
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>ARD: About a year ago, you criticized the arms deliveries as being “too much to die, too little to live”.
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>Reisner: I actually said that relatively soon after the war began. When it was clear that the Russians were beginning to recover from the shock of failure at the beginning. Even then you could see that all the preconditions for a war of attrition were being created. You can’t fight a war of attrition on the side, you have to go “all in”.
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>Think of the HIMARS system. Instead of the required 100 to 150 units, 38 have been delivered to date. Combat aircraft could also have been delivered earlier. In the case of the ATACMs, the oldest version is delivered in small numbers. More can be done, but there is a fear of escalation.
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>Now the West is coming to the sobering realization that it will have to dig deeper into its pockets. But nobody dares to communicate this message to their populations at the moment because they are afraid of encouraging radicals.
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>ARD: The EU repeatedly emphasizes that it will stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary and support it in restoring the internationally recognized state borders of 1991, i.e. including Crimea and Donbass.
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>Reisner: Then you also have to do what is necessary. Despite eleven sets of sanctions, the Russian war industry is increasingly able to adapt. And Russia is not isolated, it has enough support from the Global South to be able to wage this war for longer.
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>ARD: It is said that Russia produces two million artillery shells a year and, according to South Korean information, has been supplied with an additional one million shells from North Korea since August. The EU, on the other hand, has not been able to keep its promises and has only supplied 300,000 artillery shells so far.
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>Reisner: Europe does not seem to have recognized the seriousness of the situation. Why is that? Because this would have to be linked to a truly significant economic war effort. NATO itself says: The barrel is slowly running dry, that’s all we have. It takes years, not months, to ramp up production capacities.
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>And Ukraine no longer has a functioning military-industrial complex on the necessary scale. It cannot produce on a large scale, partly because of the Russian airstrikes on critical infrastructure.
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>ARD: The Ukrainian offensive has not brought the desired success. And the Ukrainians are currently unable to keep the Russians on the move. So are they being given the opportunity to build up strong lines of defense, as they were last year?
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>Reisner: I think the situation is even more precarious than last year. Russia was on the defensive for a long time. The Russian side was afraid of losing the occupied territories. That’s why it started to dig in.
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>Ukraine then went on the offensive with the available equipment and failed. After this defensive success, the Russian mood changed for the better. And now the Russians even believe that they can bring the Ukrainians to their knees over time.
*Translated with DeepL.com (free version)*
First of all he’s right.
And yet it’s kinda funny that it comes from Austrian colonel, as Austria is “neutral and don’t care”. I guess it’s says a lot if even there people start to realize that in case of ruzian victory shit would happen for everyone (ofc for Ukrainians sooner than for the rest).
The West, USA/EU/NATO politician or officials, no matter who, should just outright say about 2023 year reality, and not continue to waste everyone’s time:
“Ukraine give up WMD for International Law and conventional weapon assistance, but during 2014-2021 and 2022-2023 years International Law and conventional weapon assistance don’t work (except for “stabilizing/de-escalation purposes”) because Russia has WMD and USE it in form of WMD-blackmail.”
And only after recognizing objective reality, think about what to do with it. Not before.
Sad reality is no one in the West, neither the US nor Germany/France/UK, is really taking charge on the long range weapon front cause their scared of escalation.
Let the NL and Denmark send some jets instead (a year late) at least that definitely wont start WW3. None of the big players dare stick their neck out too much. A couple dozen stoemshadows, a handful of ATACMS, that aint the numbers were looking for.
Its disappointing for sure.
He’s right about it being a tough decision — Ukraine’s allies need to be able to support Ukraine in a way that does not deplete their capacity to support other allies. Even Ukraine doesn’t want that outcome — they know that if the USA for example has to choose between Ukraine, Taiwan, and South Korea, that’s going to put them all in a bad position.
So Ukraine wants support that is sustainable and doesn’t require compromise. Which Ukraine’s allies are trying to provide.
But unsurprisingly, the delusional psychopath who instigated the invasion in the first place is still delusional and still a psychopath when it comes to persisting in the suicidal, slow-motion destruction of his country. He doesn’t care. If he loses provinces in the east but can weld the Donbas to Neo-Moscovia or whatever, he’ll tell himself that it was worth it.
And then find another way to get more people killed. Because psychopath.
Surely Ukraine’s allies can figure out how to adapt to this situation. If we want to follow the orthodox approach, we can lend money to Ukraine to, in turn, purchase material from allied factories. In fact I think we are already doing that. But, it will require a steady subsidy for a while. Ukraine was not a wealthy country when the war started and it is no more wealthy now for having been smashed by Russian assault waves.
I get that after 30 years of enjoying a lack of arms race in the post-Cold War era, nobody wants to rush back into an arms buildup particularly quickly. I feel that. But unfortunately we don’t always get that choice. Like with back during the pandemic, doing nothing now will lead to facing much, much, much worse later.
Aid, loans, mass manufacturing support… these are things that are within our collective power to aid Ukraine. Easily. Not that much of a tough decision after all, when you think about it. Not when compared to the tough decisions Ukraine has to make every day.