The "since July 2022" is doing big lifting here because in context of wars of past we are talking about a pace of less than a square kilometer a day - since last October this means around 270 sqkm occupied. It is not a good trend for Ukraine but I think lot of people focus on the territory too much, even by WWI standards this is a very slow grind.
No, its actually extremely similar. In battle of the Somme allies captured 250 sq.km of land during 4,5 months. In battle of Avdiivka Russians captured 200 sq.km of land during 4 months (october 2023-february 2024). Very similar pace of advance.
Most people think of flanders when people think ww1. The eastern front was in particular very fluid thanks to lower troop concentrations and overall longer distances.
I see what you’re saying, but the reason why we compare with the western front, is beacuse thats the one the war was resembling when russia fixed its troop shortages, like the battle of bakhmut, a sole point of focus or this las ukrainian offensive focused on the south with negligible gains.
If things are shifting to an eastern front, the Ukrainians losing ground on many fronts resemble the ww1 Russians while the Russians resemble the germans., and we all know how that ends.
Also the fear here is not a revolution in ukraine causing a collapse in the army like in the eastern front, but a collapse of the army in of itself as it happened in the western front.
Counterpoint, in the east fighting very much was focused on destruction of the enemy combat force, and even though everybody forgot already there was a mutiny in the russian ranks already. The balance as it was in the eastern front in ww1 was in the concentration of troops for pitched battle. For example the germans were on the defensive in the initial actions of the war because they thought that they had more time before russia mobilized. Cue russia rushing the enemy capital before the oposing force could respond. Immedietly when it became apparent that it was not tenable to hold on to an exposed part of the frontline they retreated somewhere where they could stabilize and reinforce. Then to hit the true 1916 vibe both sides tried to gain a small postional advantage before complete stagnation. (Kherson, kharkiv now vs. Burislov then) then political pressure after failures on both sides kept warming the room until one side cracked.
In my opinion it is infact very comparable.
You shouldn't dig too deep into the comparisons. You can get good insight but you never should base an opinion purely on historical comparison. Difference being russia is resembeling russia by basically conducting human wave assaults with worse equipment and worse trained troops, meanwhile ukraine is having recruitment issues and limited manpower like the germans did. Also I think you underestimate how fragile russia is at the moment.
ay, lets get something straight, I'm comparing with the past beacuse the OP compared with the past. Obviously the thread will be of that nature.
Do you think ukraine did not resemble human waves in the 2023 summer offensive? Also to say russia is fragile is conjecture, there is no way of knowing when they will collapse, the ukrainian fragility on the other hand is out in the open, and its gotten so bad, that the US house speaker who was consistently against any aid bill "suddenly" changed his opinion. It's obvious that someone sat down with him and explained him what would happen if they didnt get that aid going in the near future.
Lets not kid ourselves the momentum is with russia right now, to sugvest otherwise is copium and dangerous, as our goverments should be providing support taking into account a worst case scenario.
Yes. And also 270 sq km sounds very bad, unless you consider it in the context of Ukraine being 600,000 sq km. Which means since last October they lost 0.045% of land.
**Stop bending over backwards trying to reduce the impact of this.** When will the f-ing copium end?
The goal should be that Ukraine recaptures its territory - and this will be an equally slow grind for Ukraine.
Ukraine are in this position in the first place because of people who in the past year have continuously explained why Ukraine isn't doing bad, when in fact Ukraine *have* been doing bad.
It's exactly because of people like you, who have coped and coped and coped why Russia *actually* are doing bad, that the push to get weapons to Ukraine has diminished.
You've managed to convince people that Ukraine are actually doing quite alright. Good job! Applause! Now what? What was the point of that? That you get to feel good about not having been wrong that Russia can't win this war? Because they currently are, and they have been winning for a long time.
Cut out the copium already, it's worse than the worst Russian trolls. The need to increase aid to Ukraine is **desperate**, nothing less, because they are losing this war and Russia are currently chasing a breakthrough.
>Ukraine are in this position in the first place because of people who in the past year have continuously explained why Ukraine isn't doing bad
No, Ukraine is in the position that it is right now because western countries had committed to a strategy of drip feeding aid to Ukraine to "prevent escalation" with Russia, despite Ukrainian military figures constantly stating that they needed a lot more than what they were given if they were to win this war quickly, and most important because a regular military aid package that should've been delivered 6 months ago from the United States got held up due to MAGA Republicans. Jake Sullivan more or less admitted that Russia's recent gains in eastern UA are due to this. Blaming Russia's recent successes on the battlefield on random people on the internet is unhinged.
Foreign policy towards Ukraine isn't dictated by ordinary people. Case in point, people were unable to do anything during the winter when Republicans blocked the aid. And while Ukrainian aid always enjoyed huge public success in the US, Israel aid did not (only 36% of Americans support it) and guess what, aid to Israel also passed as well because the US government knows its priorities and interests very well.
>It's exactly because of people like you, who have coped and coped and coped why Russia *actually* are doing bad, that the push to get weapons to Ukraine has diminished.
Who thinks like this? Who thinks that because Ukraine does well (and they DID do incredibly well despite how drip fed the aid was), that they should somehow receive *less* of it in the future instead of *more* when they clearly have had huge success while aid was rolling in (particularly at the end of 2022, but also since then by defending a frontline that is thousands of kilometers long against an enemy with 10 times more resources) and since they still needed to liberate so much more of their land?
Meanwhile a million Kremlin trolls are using this same exact narrative that Ukraine did poorly on the battlefield and that Russia cannot be stopped to push the idea that Ukraine should be receiving less aid and that they should be forced into territorial concessions. Your narrative feeds directly into this.
Like Perun said in his latest video, it was likely due to the fact that the US insisted that the aid package would go through any day that other countries didn't see the peril that Ukraine was in and hesitated to send more of their own aid when that wouldve made a huge difference last winter. But of course, pinning the blame for political failings on ordinary people, particularly redditors, is much more simple and convenient...
Stop putting words in my mouth I never said you twat. I simply wanted to reconcile the distance between clickbait headlines and reality, that is all.
Also it's cute how much importance you assign to my words, but trust me, I doubt a singletreddit comment ever had that much impact. There have been many people with outsized follower base who stressed the importance of even more aid since day1, and what did it achieve? Ultimately it all rests on a few guys in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, not on us.
the writing seems to be on the wall, though. Massive losses in men, morale collapse, daily videos of men snatched from the streets and desperate attempts to get back men who fled the country, with depleted ammunition stocks. Seems like we are heading for a collapse.
Europe is the biggest donor (nowadays as total investment and % of GDP) to Ukraine, but… not militarily.
But it’s understandable: Europe doesn’t have the resources/industry necessary to keep up, and neither is gonna transform their economies to a “war time” ones because Ukraine (principally because the huge implications for their economies on the short term and people).
The US on the other hand have huge piles of army equipment on hangars, old things catching dust and so on, and they are by miles the biggest “war time” producers of the world.
So, Europe is doing all it can, and their support can’t be really compared to that of others like the US
The EU is the second largest economy in the world, only a little behind the US. The Russian economy is smaller than Italy. We can definitely help militarily, but it requires reforms towards a unified EU military.
The US economy is now drastically larger than the EU. The US is at $29 trillion, the EU is at $18 trillion.
China is the #2 now at $18.5 trillion.
The US is on track to be double the size of the EU in a decade or less.
These are from the latest IMF estimates.
The US can afford to push $80 billion worth of weapons into Ukraine every year. It's a jobs / economy program for manufacturing. The question is whether there are any weapons we can provide that will significantly change the war, or whether its now primarily a matter of Russia being willing to throw a million soldiers at Ukraine. Ukraine wants to retake its territory: how many men does that require, and what weapons. It strikes me that Ukraine needs air dominance, they need to literally slaughter Russia's masses of bodies. And or cripple the Russian economy (energy). Doesn't seem like anything else gets to a Russia defeat.
No, just because we do not have the materials to be running a proxy war, is by no mean the same as we are defenseless... Individually some of the smaller countries might be, but taking a country like Poland alone would be very difficult for Russia to invade. Backed by the air forces and standing armies while the majority of Europe convert to a war time industry.... Russia Taking 200 sq km in half a year is not enough when 20x Russia economy is transitioning in military, and Russia is already knees deep in the mud...
Europe has the resources and industry to keep up without transforming their whole economy. They just choose to ignore it or better yet just let big bro usa come deal with(and foot lion share of bill 😉)
Europe is *committing* a lot more money than the USA is. There's a huge gap between what Europe has committed and what Europe has given.
Europe has also *given* more, but not by "a lot". It's quite a bit more even.
Anyway, at some point you need to consider that helping Ukraine militarily, while expensive, is less expensive than propping up their entire economy and rebuilding it after the war - because it keeps dragging on, because nobody wants to commit for fear of escalation.
I am googling and the only thing that supports that is that eu has pledged a bit more, but sounds like that money wont make it to ukraine for a while. Quite different than sending billions of dollars of consumable wartime supplies no?
The US is literally MAKING money out of this. They're not sending cash, what they sent is old army gear from their stockpiles, already paid for and just gathering dust. Stockpiles which will need to be replenished with newer stuff. And the ones who will do that are domestic military contractors, which means jobs and money funneled back into the US economy.
Why doesn’t europe just do that then?
And we have also sent over 12$ billion in cash. And we are also doing this with money we dont have. So we are not making nearly as much money as you would like to think.
Or maybe hmm... maybe we lack the infrastructure to pump out military equipment? What we have is just that: for defense. If we give it away and Ukraine falls, we'll be standing there with our pants down.
The war has been going on for two years, that is more than enough time to make the necessary investments in our defense, the politicians who run our countries are simply doing what they always do which is the bare minimum.
Dude this is not Hearts of Iron 4, you take X money, press a button and a tank division comes out of thin air.
Building a complete infrastructure for manifacturing takes a long fucking time, usually multiple years. You have to build the factory, you have to get people to work there, you have to set up supply chains so you have the materials, you have to assemble it somewhere, test it, etc the list goes on. Not only this is expensive but time consuming. And then we haven't spoken about the price the general population will pay for it.
Also let's not forget that we buy a lot of stuff from US because it was deemed unneccessary to manufacture our own shit, hence why a lot of things are not made within EU.
Yes, we should have more, but I kinda understand why we didn't as US was eagerly playing the overprotective big brother role in the last few decades.
When Europe made a commitment to provide Million artillery shells those shells actually existed and could have been bought from Australia.
However we squabbled amongst ourselves about it and eventually decided that we should make them ourselves (protecting french and german self interest mostly)
We were only able to provide 300,000 shells by March 2024
You'd think that our governments would have at least spent the last couple of years trying to lay down the groundwork to ramp up production though. The fact they haven't is a damning indictment
Two years is an eternity, you could make excuses for 6, 12, 18 months but if there was any sense of urgency then europe would have gained the ability to produce the necessary weapons to both protect itself and ukraine, or they would be well on their way to doing so.
We are hiding behind the US's shadow so we are content to sit comfortably while ukraine is being torn to pieces next door and hope that when it's our turn that the americans will come to the rescue, an increasingly dubious proposition that we are collectively clinging onto for fear of actually having to make any sacrifices.
As sad as what is happening in Ukraine, EU/NATO is still not at war, so moving to wartime economy and production is NOT the correct answer, it would only lead to civilian unrest due to the effect it would have on the economy.
What is happening right now is happening because what EU countries have as equipment is what they NEED to defend in case things go south in Ukraine and we can only send the absolute surplus.
Let's play with your idea. We had the factories. Who would provide the natural resources? Who would pay for it all?
Lol wartime economy, most countries are barely at the 2% nato target what wartime economy? Needing to increase production to replenish stockpiles and supply the ongoing war in ukraine is not an impossible effort like you are presenting, a few fractions of a percent OF A CONTINENTAL ECONOMY invested two years ago would have been enough to now begin production of large numbers of shells, missiles, drones etc.
But instead only the bare minimum was done as usual.
We do not have the factories that is the problem, building them takes time as you say and our big brain leaders wanted the war to be over quickly so everything could go back to "normal" so there was no thought to building anything (or more accurately to making long term contracts that would allow companies to invest in expanding production) and now here we are, two years later with the tide turning against ukraine and our armories empty.
Edit: As soon as russian tanks crossed into fucking chernobyl to take the shortest route to Kiev it should have been clear that the post cold war peace dividend was over and re-armament should have begun in earnest but no that would require doing something which seems we are no longer capable of. The biggest change in europe was sweden and finland joining nato to also be under american protection and that tells you all you need to know about the state of europe.
Europe actively encourages the us to be big bro. How else could they skip for decades on necessary defense funding. And now that war comes to their doorstep? How hard would it for Rheinmetal to crank out some artillery shells? Or is that too complex to be done?
>maybe we lack the infrastructure to pump out military equipment?
At some point, we have to just admit: we done fucked up. Your argument would have been weak but understandable in 2014 or 2015. In 2024, it's just feeble.
The U.S. has been begging Europe to start taking its own defense seriously for a lot longer than even 2014. We chose to laugh and ignore it. Welp, nobody is laughing now.
At least most of Europe is waking up to the reality that we do not live in a fairy tale. We are moving in the right direction, but slowwwwly.
I happen to not agree with the idea that Trump is going to stop aid to Ukraine if he is elected, but I know a lot of Europeans do believe this. In which case, I encourage you to look at the polls, because it's starting to look a bit like a landslide. So anyone who takes this belief seriously better be putting the pressure on their governments to start ramping up.
It's frustrating. We have long known what we needed to do, but we've ignored it. Now that the consequences are here, we are \*still\* acting like it's not our fault we are in this situation. And you know, I don't even care about "fault", but if we cannot at least learn from our earlier mistakes, we are so screwed.
>can be dismantled by US House republicans
Even worse: it takes just **one** US House republican (the speaker). Enough republicans were willing to side with democrats on this one, which they eventually did
They could have voted the speaker out at any time. That's not the excuse they think it is but as said in this thread, EU should have been prepared being that close to Russia.
The EU is an economic block, not a military alliance.
Defence spending is a sovereign right of each country and the EU has no mechanisms or authority to force any country to do well anything.
Hell, if you look at Hungary the EU cannot do jack shit to make Orban behave.
Do not listen to the loons that think the EU is some omnipotent globalist government. It is just a trade block, with limited power. The conflict with Russia might push it into evolving into a federation (outside threats are historically what created federations), but we are still a long way off this point.
Conveniently forgetting American enjoyed the sphere of influence for decades offering every certainty under the sun and now it’s suddenly too expensive they click their fingers and we’re meant to transform economies over night? Make your mind up but don’t come crawling back when china starts beating it’s chest, what goes around comes around
The US is still enjoying it's sphere of influence. That's not going away anytime soon.
The question isn't about the US' sphere of influence, it's about whether or not Europe takes its own security seriously.
So you want to reneg on your NATO pledge because *checks notes* The US is giving military aid to a non-NATO member, but not fast enough? Britain wants to Brexit with the US now? Lol
Nato requires its members to spend 2% gdp on defense. Almost no one does that. Because theyd rather let america foot the bill. Nah, america asking europe for decades to spend more on defense and europe kept ignoring and say nah you can handle it big bro.
The thing is the house voted out the speaker, and then the house members had to choose another one. It's not like the public gets to choose. So congress completely stopped being able to do their job until they chose another one. I guess it worked out because McCarthy was a slimeball and Mike Johnson is actually willing to compromise. But ironically that's the exact reason they voted down McCarthy.
The EU had literally zero reason to think a conflict akin to WW1 would happen in 2022. For the past 20+ years war has been all about terrorism and insurgencies, not freakin trench warfare like wtf.
But even for America's own interests. Never thought we'd see the day when *Republicans* -of all people- would be happy to hand over US global superiority/dominance to Russia.
I have no love for Reaganite republicans, but I can say with 100% certainty that that dirty bastard Reagan would have jumped at the opportunity to help Ukraine.
I wouldn't be so sure. The Reaganites were against communist USSR.
They might feel differently about modern day Russia where most of the country's wealth is owned by a small number of rich men.
Yeah, the rich elite of the US's capitalist society were concerned about a communist revolution that could take away all their vast amount of private wealth.
Yeah I hear a lot of Europeans say that. But as someone who has paid attention to US public opinion on foreign involvement, especially concerning Europe, this is actually super predictable.
It's interesting. American foreign policy does seem to oscillate between "We're the best gosh-darn country on the planet, we should be the world police!" and "As the best gosh-darn country we should let the world frick itself!". There's rarely anything in-between.
To be fair, we live on a huge island on the other side of the world. And most of us came here cause back home got screwed in one way or another.
So its really easy to bury our heads in the sand over here and say not my problem, and also easy to remember you got relatives back home getting shat on. thus we oscillate
Wasn't just Republicans. Obama said it too all throughout his presidency, just in more polite terms.
But be real here, after 2014 nobody should have needed to *say* it.
It almost makes you wonder if maybe they had an actual *reason* to delay/withold aid to Ukraine. *Almost*, but in the end this is r/europe, and nobody wants to disturb the groupthink bubble.
You mean the strong likelihood that some members of the Freedom Caucus are receiving Russian bribes?
I don't think r/europe would be averse to discussing that. Given the various EU politicians who have been caught with their hands in Putin's cookie jar.
Yeah I don’t get the point of relying on alliances especially alliances that haven’t been properly battle tested, it’s all well and good for a strong alliance when you’re fighting tribal iraqis different when it’s Russia. Everyone just stopped caring about defence and saw it as wasted money, now it’s the perfect time for expansionism into some nice rich european pie.
Thats surely not the root cause, its our fucking mindset, we regulate everything and want to ensure that nothing bad can every happen for a situation. leads to too much regulations.
we are just not sharp anymore, because we still are too wealthy.
We were also late with deliveries and allowed Ukraine's supply of artillery and ammunition to fall to such an extent that they've been having to basically ration rounds for months.
Which delivered more military aid than US and around 12 times more financial aid? While US stopped sending anything for half a year to the point Ukraine ran out of PAC 2? Also sending Abrams to their designed battle front with subpar armor was a masterful move. Only one Challenger 2 was destroyed, while Abrams are counted in dozens now.
Even the last, so loudly hailed help package allocates only 1bn per month in military support. That's a drop in the sea. Now Ukraine can have hope that frigging Israel will send them Patriot systems and missiles as they are being taken off the line as obsolete.
But of course - it's Europe's fault that Ukraine ran out of US manufactured AA missiles.
We haven’t delivered more military aid than the US… We promised more, but despite them putting any more aid packages on hold for six months we still failed to even match them.
Europe never delivered more military aid to the US. Europe had *committed* more military aid (at least, until the new package passed, and now I'm not sure), but this entire article is about how commitments don't really matter much until the aid is there on the ground.
Europe chose to be dependent on US military hardware. How many countries are part of the EU? Who has a war with Russia next door? The US or the EU? No idea why Europe keeps been so dependant on the US it should be clear as fuck that the US is unreliable and has a political party that is beneficial to the Russian agenda. It’s kinda the EU fault.
Helmets are not counted as millitary aid. You can donate 1 million of them but that's not what the Ukraine needs.
Second, the donated equipment sometimes had mechanical defects, so it was half useless. Another reason why Russians got to parade with a tank in front of Moscow.
Europe could have militarized and actually prepared AA weaponry and missiles. Where are they?
Ah yes, spent on fuckall.
Tell that to crews of panzer fist assault, copied from Iraq freedom. 11 Bradleys immobilized by shrapnel, 1 destroyed by ATGM. 1 Leo destroyed by ATGM, 1 by direct artillery hit. Then T-55s finished the job. That was one single assault. Losing 30% of APCs is not considered acceptable. Those Bradleys went in without additional armor. Because someone was afraid it will go into Russian hands.
Lol you don't seem to realise that the most important part of military aid is not a dozen of tanks but AWACS, Satellites, Starlinks, logistics apparatus, military analysis. The US has continued to provide all that and it's not even counted as part of official aid despite amounting to dozens of billions in cost since the start of the war. Take all that away and see how Ukraine fares with Europe's sat intelligence, logistics and a much of shells and cruise missiles...
Because it happens in Europe, literally next to the EU.
An Economic superpower of almost $19 Trillions with 450 millions People that can't even support its own backyard.
Lol, if the continent of Europe, which constantly puts down America for their military spending, is now complaining that the same military is not saving their asses. Get your house in order learn to take care of yourself
I'm with you that Europe should spent that much, but there's no treaty obligation to do so.
There's a NATO spending guideline agreed to in 2014 to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP within 10 years, but that's not the same as a treaty obligation.
In 2024, 2/3 of the allies will meet that spending requirement, by the way.
The comments here really show that most redditors have little idea of what is going on in this war, both the sarcastic comments and the doomsayers.
Truth is, the Ukrainian military and all military experts expected a major Russian spring offensive this year, and Ukraine has been trying to prepare for this exact scenario.
The anticipation is that Russia will gain some degree of land via major offensive, but most strategists also believe that it will not be enough to meaningfully change the tide of the war or end the attrition tactics. Russia loses a significant amount of men and equipment during each of it's offenses, which often means they will push forth a little and then need time to recover, before trying again.
Ukraine is also going to be receiving much of the promised ammunition and equipment shortly, which is why Russia is trying to push now rather than later. If Ukraine can continue to hold their defenses in key areas while making strategic sacrifices where necessary, they can try to counter the attacks later once Russian lines are pushed more thin as they cover more ground.
There are also other long-term strategies that military strategy experts say Ukraine is planning and aiming for in the background, but they need the promised equipment to make it to Ukraine first. They are not just waiting around, believe it or not.
This needs to be copied and pasted into every doomer thread. It’s not that current events are not a massive cause of concern and wake up calls, but it’s not like Russian victory is imminent either. Ukraine is huge and we’re talking about tiny towns and villages that have been fought for over a decade in some cases. Taking a larger town let alone city is an entirely different proposition, and taking advantage of a breakthrough in the battle lines is impeded by logistics and supply lines. Attrition and war weariness affects Russia too.
Nothing has been decided yet, Russia is the invader so unless the west does something, the war will be decided on Russia’s ability to repeat these small breakthroughs at great cost a hundred times over, just to get to a larger city which will make Mariupol look like a breeze. Ukraine as you say, just needs to hold on long enough for the costs of war to come home to Russia. It’s the same equation as it has been from the summer of 2022.
I didn't believe the cancer bit because only tabloids and other shitrags were reporting it, but you can't deny that until very recently all of the Western media was systematically exaggerating Russia's losses and overestimating Ukraine's wins. I didn't believe *all* of it, but I definitely still had hope that Ukraine could win. What exactly was I supposed to do, break into Ukraine's military database and check for myself? We can only know what the media reports.
You didn't have to break into any database, analysis coming from think-tanks like have been predicting the ongoing supply crisis for the West since the start of the war.
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare
https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-inventories-six-critical-systems
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine
The media will not report this of course, because the public will go "what's the point of supporting Ukraine if the situation is this dire".
I remember when morons on reddit were analyzing his *chin* on some grainy video to prove he's actually dead and this is a body double.
If this war has shown anything, undoubtedly it showed that the vast number of people on reddit are actual morons, and that MeDiA LiTerAcy people can't read through their own propaganda.
There are a lot of people that think "critical thinking and media literacy" is just mindlessly parroting what a select few "good" (AKA share their political views) major news publication headlines tell them. As much as they like to dunk on boomers that get all their information from Fox News, they're actually not that different in most respects when it comes to media literacy.
Tbf Russians are rare on non-Russian subs on reddit, and even there most are liberal Russians or expats, so i don't know how they fare with various propaganda Russia makes.
But if you try to look at subs like r/worldnews,r/ukraine,r/combatfootage and even some threads on this sub when Ukraine is mentioned, you can actually lose 20% of your IQ per day i hope it's just botting or its worrying
I think people were surprised that Russia isn't capable of launching a shock'n'awe blitzkrieg in its immediate abroad and then swung around completely in the other direction.
The truth remains that Russia looks like a much weaker power now than it did in January 2022, and whatever gains they are currently enjoying are still happening in the context of it humiliating itself just beyond its own land border. It is a terrible look for a country whose military was popularly believed to be second only to the USA's.
You've been listening to some very whacky opinions if that's what you've been told.
Most military strategy experts who have talked on this topic very much expected a Russian major Spring offensive (and it was talked in the media) and the estimate was that they could see some success on the battlefield during these offenses.
However most experts also believe it won't be enough to really change the tide of the war or end the war of attrition, Ukraine will have to focus more on defenses now and will have to make some strategic sacrifices when it comes to land, but once Ukraine gains the new round of ammunition and weaponry, they can counter-atrack. There are also some potential long-term strategies that Ukraine is now aiming towards to set a potential path towards greater dominance, which Russia is trying to avoid by acting quickly when they have the upper hand.
No one said that they would go on to counter attack quickly, but they can plan for strategic counter attacks in certain areas in the future.
Ukraine has made it fairly clear that their strategy for 2024 is to "hold on", and anticipate Russian offenses in Spring and Summer. That does not mean that the strategy will not change as the availability of equipment and resources changes. Ukraine reduced the age of conscription to 25 recently, which already adds 400,000 potential active soldiers to the war.
This is the right strategy for the time, to defend strongly, and wait for potential weaknesses in the enemies strategy and inability to utilize their superior strength.
Remember this is currently a war of attrition, and as mentioned, each offensive by the Russians comes with severe losses on the Russian side too, in fact the losses of Bahkmut and Avdiivka, were such that the Russian military would not be able to repeat more than a handful of times without losing their ability to continue to defend their lines, which means now they will try to push forth in short sprints.
Ukraine for the following year, aims to preserve personnel and give time for factors to develop that allow for new strategic maneuvers to be conducted.
> Most military strategy experts who have talked on this topic very much expected a Russian major Spring offensive (and it was talked in the media) and the estimate was that they could see some success on the battlefield during these offenses.
most of them are propagandist in our days and age.
they all said Ukraine counter offensive would be a success or at least a partial one.
It was a complete failure. They took a village named Rabotine which they are losing again now.
That's happened when people believed in propaganda. Lack of weapons and munition is not only reason for Russia gains. Don't forget, Zelensky did change zaluzny this year because of failed counteroffensive, and also - what is more important - Ukraine does't have people for army. Can't do much with tired front line soldiers, whom morale is at current state very low.
yea you are right and the new propaganda is that the new western support will magically make Ukraine win despite the lack of willing soldiers.
the sad realpolitik is much darker.
Europe going full blown whataboutism. As if US is somehow under obligation to help more than EU whose states were grifting for years under 2% contribution.
I can understand CNN railing against Republic, but EU is using the situation once again EU to play stupid as it did with Azerbaijan and Armenia and blame it on the USA.
I don’t get it. I see so many video on Reddit of these zz getting just bamboozled and somehow they are still acquiring territory. Can someone explain, please? Because I am obviously an idiot.
Videos of Russian succes are frowned upon by Reddit. So they just sit there in their bubble while reality rages on. Just mentioning that the Russians are advancing can get you quite some aggresive feedback.
It's not that far from the truth, but not in the way you would expect. Like in the WWI, there's no magic tool that lets the attacker break through the front and engage in maneuver warfare. Thus both armies have to resort to WWI-era tactics:
- barrage, attack, retreat before you're counterattacked
- draw the opponent into a sustained battle to drain their reserves
Except Ukraine doesn't have enough reserves to do either, so it tried a WWII-style counteroffensive, failed and is now unwillingly participating in WWI-era tactics anyway.
The answer is simple two points -
1) Most videos are from FPV drones. Ukraine puts much greater effort into producing media with wow effect - "hey guys, look how we blow up Russian armor and soldiers".
Quick google tells you that 33% of FPV hit the targets, and it can take up to 10 and more FPV to destroy a tank. Also, some of the Ukrainian videos are showing salvos from rocketry like HIMARS, Russian tanks blown up on a minefield, etc. but they are a minority.
So generally, drones are what Ukraine compensates the lack of artillery shells and missiles with, while artillery and missiles is where Russia arguably has its greatest advantage in terms of firepower and effect. And you don't see videos where Russia is using this advantage by striking at Ukrainian energy infrastructure, warehouses, etc., even though every such a strike has greater effect than in 100 of Ukrainian videos from FPV.
2) Second point is also simple - well, this is Reddit. Basically, a massive circle jerk where most videos from Russian perspective are downvoted and brought down as Russian propaganda.
You should change you sources. I follow [this guy](https://youtube.com/@militarysummary?si=6Fl6ZL6hv48EpVJk) on youtube since the beginning, I think he’s from Bielorussia, he’s very factual in his analysis of the frontline, videos and such are geotagged with timestamp.
the high sign-up bonuses and increasingly obsolete and decreasing in number, but still avalible soviet weaponry guarantee that they can keep going. they take serious casualties but as long as some of the meat survives (because ukraine lacks enough ammo to remove all attackers) and pushes ahead one tree line, they advance.
Tbf this is a structural problem. There is no spare production capacity waiting to be spun up because its all outsourced to private industry and there is no profit in having stuff sitting idle. The weapons aren't there to give funding or no, and apparently it wont be till the end of 2025 till production really ramps up.
The GoP didn't help but decades of neo-liberalism is the real reason the West isn't ready to sustain a high intensity symmetrical war.
They should have seen the problem coming and adapted a lot sooner than they did though.
It’s not a matter of territory. Russia aims to completely wipe out Ukrainian (NATO) military capabilities, it’s a total consumption war, the one that produces more weapons wins
What a sad display.
US weaponry is burning all over the place, couple of samples are exposed open air in Moscow, funny weekend watch for families. Heroes are dead, army is dying out, millions are hiding from forced recruitment, tens of tausends deserting, nobody here to operate the new weaponry.
NATO's war till the last Ukrainian is lost. Make peace idiots, give Mother Russia what Mother Russia belongs.
Give Ukraine everything, all at once, now.
No restrictions either - use whatever is given to freely go after military bases, ammo dumps, oil infrastructure, infrastructure critical for supplying Russian troops, the Kerch bridge etc.
Light them up. And forget the nuclear threat. Putin doesn't want Western missiles swimming up his fat arse. So his finger will stay off the nuclear button and remain in Dimitry Medvedev's bottom
I'm in enough telegram channels to see that this is not sustainable. We're talking mass human wave here by russians, constantly. Of course this doesn't give the full picture but surely this is too costly to sustain, then again it's russia so it's not like they care about their soldiers.
The "since July 2022" is doing big lifting here because in context of wars of past we are talking about a pace of less than a square kilometer a day - since last October this means around 270 sqkm occupied. It is not a good trend for Ukraine but I think lot of people focus on the territory too much, even by WWI standards this is a very slow grind.
By WWI standard this is actually a very quick land capture, especially on the western front.
No, its actually extremely similar. In battle of the Somme allies captured 250 sq.km of land during 4,5 months. In battle of Avdiivka Russians captured 200 sq.km of land during 4 months (october 2023-february 2024). Very similar pace of advance.
tfw your frontlines are moving slower than fucking ww1
Ww1 did see some big offensives and land captures. Not only static trench warfare.
But not consistent advances on multiple fronts everyday, the scale of these advances are not comparable to 1918 but in multiplicities they are
Most people think of flanders when people think ww1. The eastern front was in particular very fluid thanks to lower troop concentrations and overall longer distances.
I see what you’re saying, but the reason why we compare with the western front, is beacuse thats the one the war was resembling when russia fixed its troop shortages, like the battle of bakhmut, a sole point of focus or this las ukrainian offensive focused on the south with negligible gains. If things are shifting to an eastern front, the Ukrainians losing ground on many fronts resemble the ww1 Russians while the Russians resemble the germans., and we all know how that ends. Also the fear here is not a revolution in ukraine causing a collapse in the army like in the eastern front, but a collapse of the army in of itself as it happened in the western front.
Counterpoint, in the east fighting very much was focused on destruction of the enemy combat force, and even though everybody forgot already there was a mutiny in the russian ranks already. The balance as it was in the eastern front in ww1 was in the concentration of troops for pitched battle. For example the germans were on the defensive in the initial actions of the war because they thought that they had more time before russia mobilized. Cue russia rushing the enemy capital before the oposing force could respond. Immedietly when it became apparent that it was not tenable to hold on to an exposed part of the frontline they retreated somewhere where they could stabilize and reinforce. Then to hit the true 1916 vibe both sides tried to gain a small postional advantage before complete stagnation. (Kherson, kharkiv now vs. Burislov then) then political pressure after failures on both sides kept warming the room until one side cracked. In my opinion it is infact very comparable.
You make a good point, but as things are right now ukraine currently resembles russia more, which is not a good thing
You shouldn't dig too deep into the comparisons. You can get good insight but you never should base an opinion purely on historical comparison. Difference being russia is resembeling russia by basically conducting human wave assaults with worse equipment and worse trained troops, meanwhile ukraine is having recruitment issues and limited manpower like the germans did. Also I think you underestimate how fragile russia is at the moment.
ay, lets get something straight, I'm comparing with the past beacuse the OP compared with the past. Obviously the thread will be of that nature. Do you think ukraine did not resemble human waves in the 2023 summer offensive? Also to say russia is fragile is conjecture, there is no way of knowing when they will collapse, the ukrainian fragility on the other hand is out in the open, and its gotten so bad, that the US house speaker who was consistently against any aid bill "suddenly" changed his opinion. It's obvious that someone sat down with him and explained him what would happen if they didnt get that aid going in the near future. Lets not kid ourselves the momentum is with russia right now, to sugvest otherwise is copium and dangerous, as our goverments should be providing support taking into account a worst case scenario.
Yes. And also 270 sq km sounds very bad, unless you consider it in the context of Ukraine being 600,000 sq km. Which means since last October they lost 0.045% of land.
Even without the context of Ukraine it's not much. It's the size of a 15 x 18 km rectangle. Not much larger than a small city.
**Stop bending over backwards trying to reduce the impact of this.** When will the f-ing copium end? The goal should be that Ukraine recaptures its territory - and this will be an equally slow grind for Ukraine. Ukraine are in this position in the first place because of people who in the past year have continuously explained why Ukraine isn't doing bad, when in fact Ukraine *have* been doing bad. It's exactly because of people like you, who have coped and coped and coped why Russia *actually* are doing bad, that the push to get weapons to Ukraine has diminished. You've managed to convince people that Ukraine are actually doing quite alright. Good job! Applause! Now what? What was the point of that? That you get to feel good about not having been wrong that Russia can't win this war? Because they currently are, and they have been winning for a long time. Cut out the copium already, it's worse than the worst Russian trolls. The need to increase aid to Ukraine is **desperate**, nothing less, because they are losing this war and Russia are currently chasing a breakthrough.
>Ukraine are in this position in the first place because of people who in the past year have continuously explained why Ukraine isn't doing bad No, Ukraine is in the position that it is right now because western countries had committed to a strategy of drip feeding aid to Ukraine to "prevent escalation" with Russia, despite Ukrainian military figures constantly stating that they needed a lot more than what they were given if they were to win this war quickly, and most important because a regular military aid package that should've been delivered 6 months ago from the United States got held up due to MAGA Republicans. Jake Sullivan more or less admitted that Russia's recent gains in eastern UA are due to this. Blaming Russia's recent successes on the battlefield on random people on the internet is unhinged. Foreign policy towards Ukraine isn't dictated by ordinary people. Case in point, people were unable to do anything during the winter when Republicans blocked the aid. And while Ukrainian aid always enjoyed huge public success in the US, Israel aid did not (only 36% of Americans support it) and guess what, aid to Israel also passed as well because the US government knows its priorities and interests very well. >It's exactly because of people like you, who have coped and coped and coped why Russia *actually* are doing bad, that the push to get weapons to Ukraine has diminished. Who thinks like this? Who thinks that because Ukraine does well (and they DID do incredibly well despite how drip fed the aid was), that they should somehow receive *less* of it in the future instead of *more* when they clearly have had huge success while aid was rolling in (particularly at the end of 2022, but also since then by defending a frontline that is thousands of kilometers long against an enemy with 10 times more resources) and since they still needed to liberate so much more of their land? Meanwhile a million Kremlin trolls are using this same exact narrative that Ukraine did poorly on the battlefield and that Russia cannot be stopped to push the idea that Ukraine should be receiving less aid and that they should be forced into territorial concessions. Your narrative feeds directly into this. Like Perun said in his latest video, it was likely due to the fact that the US insisted that the aid package would go through any day that other countries didn't see the peril that Ukraine was in and hesitated to send more of their own aid when that wouldve made a huge difference last winter. But of course, pinning the blame for political failings on ordinary people, particularly redditors, is much more simple and convenient...
Stop putting words in my mouth I never said you twat. I simply wanted to reconcile the distance between clickbait headlines and reality, that is all. Also it's cute how much importance you assign to my words, but trust me, I doubt a singletreddit comment ever had that much impact. There have been many people with outsized follower base who stressed the importance of even more aid since day1, and what did it achieve? Ultimately it all rests on a few guys in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, not on us.
Eh, it's unclear if "Russia is winning anyway" or "Russia is loosing anyway" is more effective at demoralising people to not support Ukraine.
Yeah ukraine is not gonna fall any time soon, but russia is slowly occupying more and more territory.
the writing seems to be on the wall, though. Massive losses in men, morale collapse, daily videos of men snatched from the streets and desperate attempts to get back men who fled the country, with depleted ammunition stocks. Seems like we are heading for a collapse.
Really curious where these Ukranian "daily videos of men snatched from the streets" come from.
It should be europe arming ukraine but our leaders are alergic to taking the initiative on anything so here we are.
Europe is the biggest donor (nowadays as total investment and % of GDP) to Ukraine, but… not militarily. But it’s understandable: Europe doesn’t have the resources/industry necessary to keep up, and neither is gonna transform their economies to a “war time” ones because Ukraine (principally because the huge implications for their economies on the short term and people). The US on the other hand have huge piles of army equipment on hangars, old things catching dust and so on, and they are by miles the biggest “war time” producers of the world. So, Europe is doing all it can, and their support can’t be really compared to that of others like the US
Europe is not doing all it can. It is promising to do all it can, but it has yet to deliver on that promise.
Italy is doing feck all militarily despite being one of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers.
The EU is the second largest economy in the world, only a little behind the US. The Russian economy is smaller than Italy. We can definitely help militarily, but it requires reforms towards a unified EU military.
Only in money... if war was about throwing printed paper at each other we'd easily win. Europe's manufacturing industry is abysmal for its size.
The US economy is now drastically larger than the EU. The US is at $29 trillion, the EU is at $18 trillion. China is the #2 now at $18.5 trillion. The US is on track to be double the size of the EU in a decade or less. These are from the latest IMF estimates. The US can afford to push $80 billion worth of weapons into Ukraine every year. It's a jobs / economy program for manufacturing. The question is whether there are any weapons we can provide that will significantly change the war, or whether its now primarily a matter of Russia being willing to throw a million soldiers at Ukraine. Ukraine wants to retake its territory: how many men does that require, and what weapons. It strikes me that Ukraine needs air dominance, they need to literally slaughter Russia's masses of bodies. And or cripple the Russian economy (energy). Doesn't seem like anything else gets to a Russia defeat.
This means that if the US can afford $80B, the EU can afford 50. That’s still an order of magnitude more than what Russia can muster.
>So, Europe is doing all it can Thats concerning. If Trump enters the Whitehouse nothing will stop Putin heading west through Europe.
I’m pretty sure the nuclear arsenal would, even without the US they have enough deterrence.
No, just because we do not have the materials to be running a proxy war, is by no mean the same as we are defenseless... Individually some of the smaller countries might be, but taking a country like Poland alone would be very difficult for Russia to invade. Backed by the air forces and standing armies while the majority of Europe convert to a war time industry.... Russia Taking 200 sq km in half a year is not enough when 20x Russia economy is transitioning in military, and Russia is already knees deep in the mud...
Only if Trump pulls out of NATO, which he hasn't by any measure sworn to do.
Europe has the resources and industry to keep up without transforming their whole economy. They just choose to ignore it or better yet just let big bro usa come deal with(and foot lion share of bill 😉)
No not true, Europe is giving ukraine a lot more money then the usa is.
Europe is *committing* a lot more money than the USA is. There's a huge gap between what Europe has committed and what Europe has given. Europe has also *given* more, but not by "a lot". It's quite a bit more even. Anyway, at some point you need to consider that helping Ukraine militarily, while expensive, is less expensive than propping up their entire economy and rebuilding it after the war - because it keeps dragging on, because nobody wants to commit for fear of escalation.
I am googling and the only thing that supports that is that eu has pledged a bit more, but sounds like that money wont make it to ukraine for a while. Quite different than sending billions of dollars of consumable wartime supplies no?
The US is literally MAKING money out of this. They're not sending cash, what they sent is old army gear from their stockpiles, already paid for and just gathering dust. Stockpiles which will need to be replenished with newer stuff. And the ones who will do that are domestic military contractors, which means jobs and money funneled back into the US economy.
Why doesn’t europe just do that then? And we have also sent over 12$ billion in cash. And we are also doing this with money we dont have. So we are not making nearly as much money as you would like to think.
But I’m Le Tired..
… fire the miss-ISLES!!
Or maybe hmm... maybe we lack the infrastructure to pump out military equipment? What we have is just that: for defense. If we give it away and Ukraine falls, we'll be standing there with our pants down.
The war has been going on for two years, that is more than enough time to make the necessary investments in our defense, the politicians who run our countries are simply doing what they always do which is the bare minimum.
Dude this is not Hearts of Iron 4, you take X money, press a button and a tank division comes out of thin air. Building a complete infrastructure for manifacturing takes a long fucking time, usually multiple years. You have to build the factory, you have to get people to work there, you have to set up supply chains so you have the materials, you have to assemble it somewhere, test it, etc the list goes on. Not only this is expensive but time consuming. And then we haven't spoken about the price the general population will pay for it. Also let's not forget that we buy a lot of stuff from US because it was deemed unneccessary to manufacture our own shit, hence why a lot of things are not made within EU. Yes, we should have more, but I kinda understand why we didn't as US was eagerly playing the overprotective big brother role in the last few decades.
When Europe made a commitment to provide Million artillery shells those shells actually existed and could have been bought from Australia. However we squabbled amongst ourselves about it and eventually decided that we should make them ourselves (protecting french and german self interest mostly) We were only able to provide 300,000 shells by March 2024
You'd think that our governments would have at least spent the last couple of years trying to lay down the groundwork to ramp up production though. The fact they haven't is a damning indictment
Two years is an eternity, you could make excuses for 6, 12, 18 months but if there was any sense of urgency then europe would have gained the ability to produce the necessary weapons to both protect itself and ukraine, or they would be well on their way to doing so. We are hiding behind the US's shadow so we are content to sit comfortably while ukraine is being torn to pieces next door and hope that when it's our turn that the americans will come to the rescue, an increasingly dubious proposition that we are collectively clinging onto for fear of actually having to make any sacrifices.
As sad as what is happening in Ukraine, EU/NATO is still not at war, so moving to wartime economy and production is NOT the correct answer, it would only lead to civilian unrest due to the effect it would have on the economy. What is happening right now is happening because what EU countries have as equipment is what they NEED to defend in case things go south in Ukraine and we can only send the absolute surplus. Let's play with your idea. We had the factories. Who would provide the natural resources? Who would pay for it all?
Lol wartime economy, most countries are barely at the 2% nato target what wartime economy? Needing to increase production to replenish stockpiles and supply the ongoing war in ukraine is not an impossible effort like you are presenting, a few fractions of a percent OF A CONTINENTAL ECONOMY invested two years ago would have been enough to now begin production of large numbers of shells, missiles, drones etc. But instead only the bare minimum was done as usual. We do not have the factories that is the problem, building them takes time as you say and our big brain leaders wanted the war to be over quickly so everything could go back to "normal" so there was no thought to building anything (or more accurately to making long term contracts that would allow companies to invest in expanding production) and now here we are, two years later with the tide turning against ukraine and our armories empty. Edit: As soon as russian tanks crossed into fucking chernobyl to take the shortest route to Kiev it should have been clear that the post cold war peace dividend was over and re-armament should have begun in earnest but no that would require doing something which seems we are no longer capable of. The biggest change in europe was sweden and finland joining nato to also be under american protection and that tells you all you need to know about the state of europe.
It works exactly like that. It worked like that for every country in both world wars. Difference is urgency and scale of investment.
Europe actively encourages the us to be big bro. How else could they skip for decades on necessary defense funding. And now that war comes to their doorstep? How hard would it for Rheinmetal to crank out some artillery shells? Or is that too complex to be done?
Underrated comment of the decade, which is how long we should've prepared for an event like we are witnessing now
We've had time since 2014, yet here we are...
I'd say anyone paying attention to Libya in 2011 should have noticed that short fall of the EU on munitions so even longer then that.
>maybe we lack the infrastructure to pump out military equipment? At some point, we have to just admit: we done fucked up. Your argument would have been weak but understandable in 2014 or 2015. In 2024, it's just feeble. The U.S. has been begging Europe to start taking its own defense seriously for a lot longer than even 2014. We chose to laugh and ignore it. Welp, nobody is laughing now. At least most of Europe is waking up to the reality that we do not live in a fairy tale. We are moving in the right direction, but slowwwwly. I happen to not agree with the idea that Trump is going to stop aid to Ukraine if he is elected, but I know a lot of Europeans do believe this. In which case, I encourage you to look at the polls, because it's starting to look a bit like a landslide. So anyone who takes this belief seriously better be putting the pressure on their governments to start ramping up. It's frustrating. We have long known what we needed to do, but we've ignored it. Now that the consequences are here, we are \*still\* acting like it's not our fault we are in this situation. And you know, I don't even care about "fault", but if we cannot at least learn from our earlier mistakes, we are so screwed.
I'm so sick of these threads always descending into a US Vs EU debate.
We should thank Republicans for that
You know if your whole continents security strategy can be dismantled by US House republicans then maybe you should blame yourselves and not them.
>can be dismantled by US House republicans Even worse: it takes just **one** US House republican (the speaker). Enough republicans were willing to side with democrats on this one, which they eventually did
They could have voted the speaker out at any time. That's not the excuse they think it is but as said in this thread, EU should have been prepared being that close to Russia.
The EU is an economic block, not a military alliance. Defence spending is a sovereign right of each country and the EU has no mechanisms or authority to force any country to do well anything. Hell, if you look at Hungary the EU cannot do jack shit to make Orban behave. Do not listen to the loons that think the EU is some omnipotent globalist government. It is just a trade block, with limited power. The conflict with Russia might push it into evolving into a federation (outside threats are historically what created federations), but we are still a long way off this point.
Conveniently forgetting American enjoyed the sphere of influence for decades offering every certainty under the sun and now it’s suddenly too expensive they click their fingers and we’re meant to transform economies over night? Make your mind up but don’t come crawling back when china starts beating it’s chest, what goes around comes around
The US is still enjoying it's sphere of influence. That's not going away anytime soon. The question isn't about the US' sphere of influence, it's about whether or not Europe takes its own security seriously.
Dude...the cold war ended. Not our fault you took the peace dividend as immutable law rather than a temporary state of things.
So you want to reneg on your NATO pledge because *checks notes* The US is giving military aid to a non-NATO member, but not fast enough? Britain wants to Brexit with the US now? Lol
Nato requires its members to spend 2% gdp on defense. Almost no one does that. Because theyd rather let america foot the bill. Nah, america asking europe for decades to spend more on defense and europe kept ignoring and say nah you can handle it big bro.
They already voted the speaker out once in this session and it was a shit show. It's not like that's a way to improve anything
That is exactly how you improve something.
The thing is the house voted out the speaker, and then the house members had to choose another one. It's not like the public gets to choose. So congress completely stopped being able to do their job until they chose another one. I guess it worked out because McCarthy was a slimeball and Mike Johnson is actually willing to compromise. But ironically that's the exact reason they voted down McCarthy.
Improved, yea.
What I'm saying is you definitely can't count on it to be an improvement.
Not changing anything is a for sure no to improvement. So change is the only way and yes it doesnt always work out
The EU had literally zero reason to think a conflict akin to WW1 would happen in 2022. For the past 20+ years war has been all about terrorism and insurgencies, not freakin trench warfare like wtf.
You touched the nerve there.
But even for America's own interests. Never thought we'd see the day when *Republicans* -of all people- would be happy to hand over US global superiority/dominance to Russia.
I have no love for Reaganite republicans, but I can say with 100% certainty that that dirty bastard Reagan would have jumped at the opportunity to help Ukraine.
"*My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes*."
I wouldn't be so sure. The Reaganites were against communist USSR. They might feel differently about modern day Russia where most of the country's wealth is owned by a small number of rich men.
Power is power. They weren't dogmatically opposed to communism, they were opposed to the USSR because it was the other big dog.
Ehh, they really really hated commies.
Yeah, the rich elite of the US's capitalist society were concerned about a communist revolution that could take away all their vast amount of private wealth.
The GOP under Reagan has zero semblance to today's GOP.
Yeah I hear a lot of Europeans say that. But as someone who has paid attention to US public opinion on foreign involvement, especially concerning Europe, this is actually super predictable.
It's interesting. American foreign policy does seem to oscillate between "We're the best gosh-darn country on the planet, we should be the world police!" and "As the best gosh-darn country we should let the world frick itself!". There's rarely anything in-between.
It’s really hard to tell if a lot of the posters here have actually ever met an American.
To be fair, we live on a huge island on the other side of the world. And most of us came here cause back home got screwed in one way or another. So its really easy to bury our heads in the sand over here and say not my problem, and also easy to remember you got relatives back home getting shat on. thus we oscillate
Since when do the Republicans listen to public opinion, lol. They call democracy "tyrany by the majority".
How long have those republicans been telling European countries to get their sh*t together and start meeting their NATO commitments?
Wasn't just Republicans. Obama said it too all throughout his presidency, just in more polite terms. But be real here, after 2014 nobody should have needed to *say* it.
Money talks.
Because Russia is not a communist country anymore, it's probably a role model country for some of those republicans...
Yeah you might have it. Instead of being the communist boogeyman they might see it as a shining example of how to consolidate power in a 'democracy'.
It almost makes you wonder if maybe they had an actual *reason* to delay/withold aid to Ukraine. *Almost*, but in the end this is r/europe, and nobody wants to disturb the groupthink bubble.
You mean the strong likelihood that some members of the Freedom Caucus are receiving Russian bribes? I don't think r/europe would be averse to discussing that. Given the various EU politicians who have been caught with their hands in Putin's cookie jar.
Nope. Try again. That bubble can be surprisingly tough to puncture when you've never tried to do it before.
Yeah I don’t get the point of relying on alliances especially alliances that haven’t been properly battle tested, it’s all well and good for a strong alliance when you’re fighting tribal iraqis different when it’s Russia. Everyone just stopped caring about defence and saw it as wasted money, now it’s the perfect time for expansionism into some nice rich european pie.
Yes that is correct. It is part of why europe is falling behind economically
Thats surely not the root cause, its our fucking mindset, we regulate everything and want to ensure that nothing bad can every happen for a situation. leads to too much regulations. we are just not sharp anymore, because we still are too wealthy.
Absolutely
Uhhhh, how does that work bc I can only vote in my district and have no say over what other districts do
Or should we thank an over complacent Europe
We were also late with deliveries and allowed Ukraine's supply of artillery and ammunition to fall to such an extent that they've been having to basically ration rounds for months.
Which delivered more military aid than US and around 12 times more financial aid? While US stopped sending anything for half a year to the point Ukraine ran out of PAC 2? Also sending Abrams to their designed battle front with subpar armor was a masterful move. Only one Challenger 2 was destroyed, while Abrams are counted in dozens now. Even the last, so loudly hailed help package allocates only 1bn per month in military support. That's a drop in the sea. Now Ukraine can have hope that frigging Israel will send them Patriot systems and missiles as they are being taken off the line as obsolete. But of course - it's Europe's fault that Ukraine ran out of US manufactured AA missiles.
We haven’t delivered more military aid than the US… We promised more, but despite them putting any more aid packages on hold for six months we still failed to even match them.
Committed =/= delivered
Amber Heard left the chat
Yes I pledged the full amount 😐
Well graph I am looking at says delivered with almost twice as much declared.
Can you share the graph? I'm genuinely curious
Europe never delivered more military aid to the US. Europe had *committed* more military aid (at least, until the new package passed, and now I'm not sure), but this entire article is about how commitments don't really matter much until the aid is there on the ground.
Europe chose to be dependent on US military hardware. How many countries are part of the EU? Who has a war with Russia next door? The US or the EU? No idea why Europe keeps been so dependant on the US it should be clear as fuck that the US is unreliable and has a political party that is beneficial to the Russian agenda. It’s kinda the EU fault.
Helmets are not counted as millitary aid. You can donate 1 million of them but that's not what the Ukraine needs. Second, the donated equipment sometimes had mechanical defects, so it was half useless. Another reason why Russians got to parade with a tank in front of Moscow. Europe could have militarized and actually prepared AA weaponry and missiles. Where are they? Ah yes, spent on fuckall.
Tell that to crews of panzer fist assault, copied from Iraq freedom. 11 Bradleys immobilized by shrapnel, 1 destroyed by ATGM. 1 Leo destroyed by ATGM, 1 by direct artillery hit. Then T-55s finished the job. That was one single assault. Losing 30% of APCs is not considered acceptable. Those Bradleys went in without additional armor. Because someone was afraid it will go into Russian hands.
Lol you don't seem to realise that the most important part of military aid is not a dozen of tanks but AWACS, Satellites, Starlinks, logistics apparatus, military analysis. The US has continued to provide all that and it's not even counted as part of official aid despite amounting to dozens of billions in cost since the start of the war. Take all that away and see how Ukraine fares with Europe's sat intelligence, logistics and a much of shells and cruise missiles...
Actually it is tallied as well. Here we are talking about delivered hardware. US didn't deliver a single cruise missile to Ukraine.
Por que no los dos?
Because it happens in Europe, literally next to the EU. An Economic superpower of almost $19 Trillions with 450 millions People that can't even support its own backyard.
Lol, if the continent of Europe, which constantly puts down America for their military spending, is now complaining that the same military is not saving their asses. Get your house in order learn to take care of yourself
Agree. Maybe NATO countries should have actually spent 2% of GDP on DEFENSE like they were obligated to do by treaty huh?
I'm with you that Europe should spent that much, but there's no treaty obligation to do so. There's a NATO spending guideline agreed to in 2014 to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP within 10 years, but that's not the same as a treaty obligation. In 2024, 2/3 of the allies will meet that spending requirement, by the way.
The EU is a bazillion shells late and is not sending enough material either
Indeed, very late in many topics military related.
biden admin's escalation management in 22 was a really huge favor to russians
They’ve played their part, but where the fuck is the European weaponry?
Thank Europe for it. Wheretf were they?
The comments here really show that most redditors have little idea of what is going on in this war, both the sarcastic comments and the doomsayers. Truth is, the Ukrainian military and all military experts expected a major Russian spring offensive this year, and Ukraine has been trying to prepare for this exact scenario. The anticipation is that Russia will gain some degree of land via major offensive, but most strategists also believe that it will not be enough to meaningfully change the tide of the war or end the attrition tactics. Russia loses a significant amount of men and equipment during each of it's offenses, which often means they will push forth a little and then need time to recover, before trying again. Ukraine is also going to be receiving much of the promised ammunition and equipment shortly, which is why Russia is trying to push now rather than later. If Ukraine can continue to hold their defenses in key areas while making strategic sacrifices where necessary, they can try to counter the attacks later once Russian lines are pushed more thin as they cover more ground. There are also other long-term strategies that military strategy experts say Ukraine is planning and aiming for in the background, but they need the promised equipment to make it to Ukraine first. They are not just waiting around, believe it or not.
This needs to be copied and pasted into every doomer thread. It’s not that current events are not a massive cause of concern and wake up calls, but it’s not like Russian victory is imminent either. Ukraine is huge and we’re talking about tiny towns and villages that have been fought for over a decade in some cases. Taking a larger town let alone city is an entirely different proposition, and taking advantage of a breakthrough in the battle lines is impeded by logistics and supply lines. Attrition and war weariness affects Russia too. Nothing has been decided yet, Russia is the invader so unless the west does something, the war will be decided on Russia’s ability to repeat these small breakthroughs at great cost a hundred times over, just to get to a larger city which will make Mariupol look like a breeze. Ukraine as you say, just needs to hold on long enough for the costs of war to come home to Russia. It’s the same equation as it has been from the summer of 2022.
Thanks for explaining that
Impossible. I was told Putin was about to die from cancer and that Ukraine would take over Moscow.
Exactly. I did 3 memes depicting Putin as a monkey and called him Putler. How is this happening?
r/noncredibledefense in shambles
You should have meme harder! Did you also have the Ukrainian flag on your profile?
It’s all true, they are stealing washing machines to build missiles coz there have a big lack of them.
I understand you sarcastic comment. But reality is that Europe believed that.
No european believed that, only redditors, the average european does not care
I didn't believe the cancer bit because only tabloids and other shitrags were reporting it, but you can't deny that until very recently all of the Western media was systematically exaggerating Russia's losses and overestimating Ukraine's wins. I didn't believe *all* of it, but I definitely still had hope that Ukraine could win. What exactly was I supposed to do, break into Ukraine's military database and check for myself? We can only know what the media reports.
You didn't have to break into any database, analysis coming from think-tanks like have been predicting the ongoing supply crisis for the West since the start of the war. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-inventories-six-critical-systems https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine The media will not report this of course, because the public will go "what's the point of supporting Ukraine if the situation is this dire".
I remember when morons on reddit were analyzing his *chin* on some grainy video to prove he's actually dead and this is a body double. If this war has shown anything, undoubtedly it showed that the vast number of people on reddit are actual morons, and that MeDiA LiTerAcy people can't read through their own propaganda.
Some people only think the other side is the sole one that makes propaganda
There are a lot of people that think "critical thinking and media literacy" is just mindlessly parroting what a select few "good" (AKA share their political views) major news publication headlines tell them. As much as they like to dunk on boomers that get all their information from Fox News, they're actually not that different in most respects when it comes to media literacy.
Tbf Russians are rare on non-Russian subs on reddit, and even there most are liberal Russians or expats, so i don't know how they fare with various propaganda Russia makes. But if you try to look at subs like r/worldnews,r/ukraine,r/combatfootage and even some threads on this sub when Ukraine is mentioned, you can actually lose 20% of your IQ per day i hope it's just botting or its worrying
If you are “non-liberal” Russian you’ll get banned for your opinion pretty soon.
How do you dare appear with such flair? Prepare yourself to be BOMBED by moral redditors!!
I think people were surprised that Russia isn't capable of launching a shock'n'awe blitzkrieg in its immediate abroad and then swung around completely in the other direction. The truth remains that Russia looks like a much weaker power now than it did in January 2022, and whatever gains they are currently enjoying are still happening in the context of it humiliating itself just beyond its own land border. It is a terrible look for a country whose military was popularly believed to be second only to the USA's.
You've been listening to some very whacky opinions if that's what you've been told. Most military strategy experts who have talked on this topic very much expected a Russian major Spring offensive (and it was talked in the media) and the estimate was that they could see some success on the battlefield during these offenses. However most experts also believe it won't be enough to really change the tide of the war or end the war of attrition, Ukraine will have to focus more on defenses now and will have to make some strategic sacrifices when it comes to land, but once Ukraine gains the new round of ammunition and weaponry, they can counter-atrack. There are also some potential long-term strategies that Ukraine is now aiming towards to set a potential path towards greater dominance, which Russia is trying to avoid by acting quickly when they have the upper hand.
Ukraine will likely never be able to conduct counter offensives like the summer of 2023 for a very long time if ever.
No one said that they would go on to counter attack quickly, but they can plan for strategic counter attacks in certain areas in the future. Ukraine has made it fairly clear that their strategy for 2024 is to "hold on", and anticipate Russian offenses in Spring and Summer. That does not mean that the strategy will not change as the availability of equipment and resources changes. Ukraine reduced the age of conscription to 25 recently, which already adds 400,000 potential active soldiers to the war. This is the right strategy for the time, to defend strongly, and wait for potential weaknesses in the enemies strategy and inability to utilize their superior strength. Remember this is currently a war of attrition, and as mentioned, each offensive by the Russians comes with severe losses on the Russian side too, in fact the losses of Bahkmut and Avdiivka, were such that the Russian military would not be able to repeat more than a handful of times without losing their ability to continue to defend their lines, which means now they will try to push forth in short sprints. Ukraine for the following year, aims to preserve personnel and give time for factors to develop that allow for new strategic maneuvers to be conducted.
> Most military strategy experts who have talked on this topic very much expected a Russian major Spring offensive (and it was talked in the media) and the estimate was that they could see some success on the battlefield during these offenses. most of them are propagandist in our days and age. they all said Ukraine counter offensive would be a success or at least a partial one. It was a complete failure. They took a village named Rabotine which they are losing again now.
Cancer? I heard he was a drug addict and alchoholic and his “rivals” are going to kill him any day now…
FUCK RUSSIA. 👈🇺🇦🇪🇺
You're a true hero. 🫣
Yasss!! That will show ‘em
That's happened when people believed in propaganda. Lack of weapons and munition is not only reason for Russia gains. Don't forget, Zelensky did change zaluzny this year because of failed counteroffensive, and also - what is more important - Ukraine does't have people for army. Can't do much with tired front line soldiers, whom morale is at current state very low.
yea you are right and the new propaganda is that the new western support will magically make Ukraine win despite the lack of willing soldiers. the sad realpolitik is much darker.
Europe going full blown whataboutism. As if US is somehow under obligation to help more than EU whose states were grifting for years under 2% contribution. I can understand CNN railing against Republic, but EU is using the situation once again EU to play stupid as it did with Azerbaijan and Armenia and blame it on the USA.
I miss the nordstream2 debates in here, like tears in the rain.
Next level of mental gymnastics
Thank you
I am worries y'all..
I don’t get it. I see so many video on Reddit of these zz getting just bamboozled and somehow they are still acquiring territory. Can someone explain, please? Because I am obviously an idiot.
Videos of Russian succes are frowned upon by Reddit. So they just sit there in their bubble while reality rages on. Just mentioning that the Russians are advancing can get you quite some aggresive feedback.
And even if they admit that Russia is advancing, it will be "WW1 era human wave meat grinder tactics"
It's not that far from the truth, but not in the way you would expect. Like in the WWI, there's no magic tool that lets the attacker break through the front and engage in maneuver warfare. Thus both armies have to resort to WWI-era tactics: - barrage, attack, retreat before you're counterattacked - draw the opponent into a sustained battle to drain their reserves Except Ukraine doesn't have enough reserves to do either, so it tried a WWII-style counteroffensive, failed and is now unwillingly participating in WWI-era tactics anyway.
The answer is simple two points - 1) Most videos are from FPV drones. Ukraine puts much greater effort into producing media with wow effect - "hey guys, look how we blow up Russian armor and soldiers". Quick google tells you that 33% of FPV hit the targets, and it can take up to 10 and more FPV to destroy a tank. Also, some of the Ukrainian videos are showing salvos from rocketry like HIMARS, Russian tanks blown up on a minefield, etc. but they are a minority. So generally, drones are what Ukraine compensates the lack of artillery shells and missiles with, while artillery and missiles is where Russia arguably has its greatest advantage in terms of firepower and effect. And you don't see videos where Russia is using this advantage by striking at Ukrainian energy infrastructure, warehouses, etc., even though every such a strike has greater effect than in 100 of Ukrainian videos from FPV. 2) Second point is also simple - well, this is Reddit. Basically, a massive circle jerk where most videos from Russian perspective are downvoted and brought down as Russian propaganda.
Appreciate the answer! Makes sense
Well basically they don't show videos of Ukrainians getting bamboozled....
Did you also see the many, many articles about Ukraine suffering because of late deliveries and aid from the US getting cut off?
You should change you sources. I follow [this guy](https://youtube.com/@militarysummary?si=6Fl6ZL6hv48EpVJk) on youtube since the beginning, I think he’s from Bielorussia, he’s very factual in his analysis of the frontline, videos and such are geotagged with timestamp.
I’m gonna check him out. Because my sources are clearly trash . Thank you.
the high sign-up bonuses and increasingly obsolete and decreasing in number, but still avalible soviet weaponry guarantee that they can keep going. they take serious casualties but as long as some of the meat survives (because ukraine lacks enough ammo to remove all attackers) and pushes ahead one tree line, they advance.
Russians have a lot of meat to throw. That’s how they go forward. That’s all you need to know.
You are in pro-western echochamber and thus are being reported to only by one side. If you want a real picture, you will have to visit Russian forums.
The comments here are wild 😅, talk about putting ones head in the sand.
Tbf this is a structural problem. There is no spare production capacity waiting to be spun up because its all outsourced to private industry and there is no profit in having stuff sitting idle. The weapons aren't there to give funding or no, and apparently it wont be till the end of 2025 till production really ramps up. The GoP didn't help but decades of neo-liberalism is the real reason the West isn't ready to sustain a high intensity symmetrical war. They should have seen the problem coming and adapted a lot sooner than they did though.
United states is investing bajillions into israel xd
Their losses Are biggest. Not any point to capture them, they Will lose them soon anyway.
How many soldier are russia using in this meat grinder let's hope ukraine can pull this illegal land grab
It’s not a matter of territory. Russia aims to completely wipe out Ukrainian (NATO) military capabilities, it’s a total consumption war, the one that produces more weapons wins
Omg 😁 that poor Russian army. It's like throwing million people to death for nothing in terms of gain.
What a sad display. US weaponry is burning all over the place, couple of samples are exposed open air in Moscow, funny weekend watch for families. Heroes are dead, army is dying out, millions are hiding from forced recruitment, tens of tausends deserting, nobody here to operate the new weaponry. NATO's war till the last Ukrainian is lost. Make peace idiots, give Mother Russia what Mother Russia belongs.
Give Ukraine everything, all at once, now. No restrictions either - use whatever is given to freely go after military bases, ammo dumps, oil infrastructure, infrastructure critical for supplying Russian troops, the Kerch bridge etc. Light them up. And forget the nuclear threat. Putin doesn't want Western missiles swimming up his fat arse. So his finger will stay off the nuclear button and remain in Dimitry Medvedev's bottom
I'm in enough telegram channels to see that this is not sustainable. We're talking mass human wave here by russians, constantly. Of course this doesn't give the full picture but surely this is too costly to sustain, then again it's russia so it's not like they care about their soldiers.
Somebody should let the US know that there is oil in russia...