“This is a war that can be won.” – Jack Watling “Yes, Ukraine can still defeat Russia – but it will require far more support from Europe.” Timothy Snyder
by themimeofthemollies
“This is a war that can be won.” – Jack Watling “Yes, Ukraine can still defeat Russia – but it will require far more support from Europe.” Timothy Snyder
by themimeofthemollies
6 comments
Snyder links Watling’s urgent, incisive analysis:
“Here is one fact that sums up the gap between the promises that Kyiv’s European partners have made to Ukraine and the reality.”
“In March 2023, the EU made the historic decision to deliver a million artillery shells to Ukraine within 12 months. But the number that has actually been sent is closer to 300,000.”
“For all the rhetorical commitments to support Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion “for as long as it takes”, Europe has largely failed.”
“The price of this complacency is already being paid in Ukrainian blood.”
“According to the armed forces of Ukraine, over the summer of 2023, Ukraine was firing up to 7,000 artillery shells a day and managed to degrade Russia’s logistics and artillery to the point where Russia was firing about 5,000 rounds a day.”
“Today, the Ukrainians are struggling to fire 2,000 rounds daily, while Russian artillery is reaching about 10,000.”
“Russia is likely to be able to fire about 5m rounds at Ukraine in 2024, based on its mobilised defence production, supply from Iran and North Korea, and remaining stocks.”
“Despite the flippant observation – often made by European officials – that Russia’s economy is the same size as that of Italy, the Kremlin is producing more shells than all of Nato.”
“Meanwhile, Ukraine is unlikely to see any significant increase in supply for some months. This will cede the initiative to the Russians. The Kremlin believes it can win by 2026, and so Putin is in no mood to negotiate or back down.”
“For Ukraine, the immediate future is one of several months of hard fighting without critical resources, while endeavouring to regenerate the combat power that was expended over 2023.”
“But Europe can determine what the second half of 2024 and indeed 2025 will look like.”
“This is a war that can be won.”
“The recent successful strike on the Russian landing ship Novocherkassk in harbour, protected by layers of Russian defences, shows how Ukraine can make effective use of the equipment that it is supplied with.”
“But European security must not be squandered by more complacency.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/27/ukraine-russia-europe-support-kyiv
Europe needs to step up as the US is dead in the water.
as long as it doesnt come in form of more taxes
we already one of the most heavely taxed country in EU
EU has not ramped up defense spending at all. Most likely, it decreased on a real basis after inflation. EU writing a lot of checks that can’t be cashed.
I’ll put this out here: Ukraine doesn’t need to “win”, they only need to resist. A somewhat inappropriate but nonetheless apt analogy is this: The Taliban didn’t need to win either, they _couldn’t_ win, they just needed to resist. Russia can’t win, they have already lost, Putin’s strategic game is totally shattered and his military exposed as incompetent and corrupt. The Ruschists can hang out on Ukrainian territory and kill a lot of people and do a lot of damage, but eventually they will be driven out or leave voluntarily.
The fact is nobody of any importance in the West will care when Ukraine loses EXCEPT insofar as it’ll be an embarrassing defeat (yet another one) for an alliance that vowed over and over again to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes” for them to achieve victory. They’re already shifting the narrative yet again from the imbecilic “Global freedom is at stake” to “What will Taiwan think if we abandon Ukraine now??” (Taiwan, unlike Ukraine, IS a vital US national security interest). 22 months into the war I’d hoped the fatuous bullshit would have stopped by now, but it hasn’t, the same dumb narrative is still being peddled about Putin’s intentions and the consequences of Ukraine’s (inevitable in my opinion) defeat. All the likes of Sullivan, Blinken, Biden, Austin and Kirby can do at this point is double down on it, because they’re utterly out of ideas. Putin’s badly-planned invasion was seen as a golden opportunity for America/the West in March 2022 but it’s become a disaster for them now that Russia has more or less got its act together, and it’s painfully clear to everyone – including in Ukraine – that Biden and Sullivan have absolutely no strategy for where to go from here. They’ve used Ukraine to bleed Russia and that’s as far as their plan ever went.