cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/21457087
President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Ukraine’s partners “are afraid of Russia losing the war” and would like Kyiv “to win in such a way that Russia does not lose,” Zelensky said in a meeting with journalists attended by the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv’s allies “fear” Russia’s loss in the war against Ukraine because it would involve “unpredictable geopolitics,” according to Zelensky. “I don’t think it works that way. For Ukraine to win, we need to be given everything with which one can win,” he said.
His statement came on May 16 amid Russia’s large-scale offensive in Kharkiv Oblast and ongoing heavy battles further east. In a week, Russian troops managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers in the northern part of Kharkiv Oblast, according to Zelensky.
They should have done this from day one instead of this piecemeal bullshit. “oh no…we might upset Vlad, better not (close the skies | supply long range weaponry | give them F-16’s | etc. etc.)”.
Give them everything they need to win. Everything. Anything less is asking for more land grabbing adventures by Russia and other states that are watching and wondering if they can get away with it.
Yeah, but a lot of the west doesn’t really care about Ukraine.
Strategically? Sure. But they don’t really care about the people, nation, or heritage of Ukraine.
The goal here is to drag this out and learn what can be learned from Russia and their allies prosecution of the war.
A no-fly zone, enough air defenses to stop the missiles and drones, and enough artillery to turn back the meatiest meat grinder approach at the very outset of the war would have closed the door on Russia.
Russia wouldn’t still try to commit planes if they had 100% loss rate in the early days. But a smaller loss rate over a longer time will drain their resources more, because they’ll keep trying to send planes. The West wouldn’t have considered drones as heavily in their next set of war plans, nor would they have real world testing of jamming, counter jamming, jamming defeat measures, and other strategies to defeat or succeed with drones. If Russia faced an impenetrable wall, they wouldn’t be standing at a half million dead soldiers and the foment that will cause as their demographic crisis worsens. They would have cried ‘no fair’ in the early days and locked down what they could lock down, or retreated fully.
I know the U.S. is a clown show, but it would have found other reasons to self-limit its commitment of help. The goal is to bleed Russia dry, allow Ukraine to become dependent on western military tech, and when the war ends, assuming it ends in roughly the same place it began, the west’s financial institutions will be very happy to lend capital to Ukraine for rebuilding, and western businesses will be happy to spin up factories that will take advantage of economic issues and their own burgeoning demographic problems to underpay workers for goods that can be sold in the west.