(Reuters) - Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because Western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday.
Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack.
Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped.
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So honest question, with Zelenskiy himself saying that they are critically low on artillery, artillery shells, and armored vehicles, what strategic advantage is afforded by the long range missiles that have been in the news so much lately? What benefit does striking some random target hundreds of miles within Russia accomplish for Ukraine, who is slowly losing the ability to hold ground?
Long range attacks are about knocking out supplies, the ability to produce new supplies, and the ability to get supplies to the front line.
Say Russia is getting more newly made artillery shells to the front line. The best way to fix this is to blow up the factories.
If you can’t take out the factories directly, take out components that the factories need to operate: ore processing, fuel refineries, electricity grid, etc.
The problem is all the critical targets are a long ways from the front line and Ukraine currently has limited capacity to hit them.
Meanwhile Russia is targeting all of Ukraine’s internal infrastructure constantly.
Long wars are won by the production capabilities of the groups involved as much as the front line troops.
But Ukraine no longer has a meaningful domestic productive capacity. This war is entirely the result of foreign countries funneling weapons into the Ukraine and using it as a proxy against Russia.
That’s not a conflict Ukrainians can truly win, as Zelensky is no longer in control of the military assets he needs to guard his borders. At best, they can bleed Russia hard enough so that both countries lose (the tragic consequence of every long running war).
The problem is all the critical targets are a long ways from the front line
How would a Russian military respond in turn, if the targets in Ukraine have been exhausted. How long will the diplomatic shield of NATO protect supply lines passing through Poland or Romania?
If they were random targets, sure. But the messaging clearly included the wish to strike military targets at long range. Don’t have to lose people to a aerial bomb if the plane carrying it has been destroyed by a long range strike.
What benefit does striking some random target hundreds of miles within Russia accomplish for Ukraine, who is slowly losing the ability to hold ground?
The goal of the Ukraine conflict is to create a Pyrrhic victory for Russia so costly that it collapses from within. Long range missiles capable of destroying key domestic infrastructure and material reserves will (hypothetically) hasten that economic collapse.
If you can start hitting major financial centers, administrative offices, and social meeting spaces, you might even be able to decapitate some of the senior leadership and kick off a succession crisis in Putin’s government. Alternatively, you push these leaders so far down into hiding that they can no longer effectively govern the country and foreign-sponsored insurgents can take over.
That’s the theory of the war, at least. In practice, NATO leadership is still unsettled by the prospect of a Total War with a nuclear armed state. So they’re not quite ready to drop a long range cruise missile on the Frunzenskaya Embankment, for fear of what a retaliatory strike would look like.
What benefit does striking some random target hundreds of miles within Russia accomplish
They’re not random but attempts to make more strategic difference, and to expand the war beyond just the front
- how can Russian artillery keep shelling if their supplies are blown up, and the supplies for those? And how responsive can they be at re-supply if new supplies have to come from hundreds of miles?
- how can Russia keep feeding the meat grinder if fresh troops need to fight their way to the front, lose their supplies, and take losses even before they get there?
- how can Russian commanders work if they’re dead? And their commanders are dead? And someone is trying to make battle decisions from hundreds of miles away?
Think of the Russian Black Sea fleet. The surviving ships are so far away that they’re not making any contribution to the war. Now, imagine making the Russian Air Force ineffective, Russian Command ineffective, and the supply situation ever worse
It slowed the progress by necessitating the movement of invading troops back to defend. Ukraine also had a major propaganda win from the Kursk offensive.
Everyone talked about tanks as ww1 winners. But people don’t quite realise the stupendous artillery advantage the allies had. 2 or 3 to 1 by the end of the war in places. And significantly more shells. There’s a reason we are still digging then up today
Here’s an honest question : are they buying all the weapons and ammo? If so then the suppliers need to ramp up production. It’s money in their pickets.
If they aren’t buying all weapons and ammo, and some is being given to the Ukraine . Then maybe we need to change what is happening. No one can continue forever giving money to another person /entity. Sooner or later the money runs out.
The real question is, if it’s becoming a financially strain then maybe it’s time we change tactics and end this thing faster. Maybe it’s time to send NATO in. Yes I know Ukraine doesn’t want foreign militaries in there but if they haven’t won by now maybe a hard choice has to be made.
That doesn’t make any logical sense. You say it’s a financial strain to send equipment and propose sending NATO in to help. Where is NATO getting their equipment from?
ITS THE SAME EQUIPMENT.
You are missing a step. Right now we are sending them equipment, and they are barely holding their own. If NATO goes in, then it’s a TON more equipment, plus a TON more troops. If Russia is barely holding their own against Ukraine, do you think they can hold back all of NATO?
That war would be over a lot quicker
Also, there is equipment that can’t be sent Ukraine, for example of the United States F 22, we literally can’t give that to the Ukraine. The law prevents it. But if NATO went in, that means the US would go in and the US could fly the F-22 into combat there.
then it’s a TON more equipment,
Then why isn’t it sent to Ukraine?
plus a TON more troops.
Ukraine has said they need supplies, not troops.
Some of it,such as the f-22, the US can’t legally sell or give to them by law. It’s literally against the law.
Also there is the cost of the rest of it. If the Ukraine government is paying for it then yes sell it, but some of it is not being paid for. Some of it is being GIVEN. That costs money from the US tax players. At some point that well runs dry. You can’t just keep giving and giving. It doesn’t work. So since this has gone on long enough maybe it’s time to end it.
As for Ukraine saying no troops. Let’s recap. If the Ukraine was paying for ALL of it then I’d say just keep selling equipment to them. Sooner or later one side or the other breaks. But some of it is not being paid for. The dollar amount is getting large of what congress has authorized so far. How long before our budget says wtf?! Sooner or later either we stop giving to save our economy or we send troops before we get to that point to end it faster.
Yes I know Ukraine is saying no troops but there is the other half that equation. Ukraine is going to have to make a tough call at some point, unless they figure out how to beat Russia before that point.
Money is a finite item, it is not infinite
Money is spent within the US and used to procure new stuff. At the same time the US sends their dated stockpiles to Ukraine. The US spends money maintaining stockpiles (keeping stuff operational is not free) and explosives have a shelf life, so once near expiration it needs to be either refurbished or disposed of and both cost money too.
Money is virtually endless in this aspect, as the amounts spent on this for help to Ukraine amounts to a small percentage.
The total spent is 177 billion since the start of the war, of which 107 billion is sent, the rest is used by the us military to cover the cost of the help (logistics, oversight etc.).
In the same period the US military had a budget of 817 billion a year… and we are in year… 3 so 60 per year out of 817 billion. And again the 107 billion is spent on buying replacement stuff from US defence contractors who employ US workers and pay US taxes. This is not as expensive as you think. The other 70 billion pays US military costs. So in essence it is an increase in us defense spending.
If your numbers are accurate, and it is just an increase in us defense spending at the end of the day, then I’m less concerned about it
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It was for what I explained above. This is money that is spent on top of the 817 billion us defense budget.
Sending NATO in fundamentally breaks the treaties upon which the organization was founded. NATO isn’t a joint military force to send to places for freedom and democracy, it’s a defensive organization. Without an explicit article 5 declaration from a current member state against a specific threat for a specific reason, a deployment of NATO would be undermining of the organization’s mission in itself, putting in question whether NATO is there to protect its members or just to be used as a cudgel for potential inconvenient threats because the alternative is a financial strain.
Interventions like this, such as the 2011 intervention on Libya to enforce UN resolution 1973 will fuel arguments that NATO is altering its mission from defending its members to participate in US led (or in this case also French led) interventionism. Upon such a time where threats are no longer direct as is the case of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, this will have implications on the future of the organization and questions will be made about its purpose, as it has happened before after the fall of the USSR. Ultimately NATO’s mandate must be upheld and strictly followed, for the sake of the treaty. At least that’s the opinion i share.
You have a very good point.
In that case instead of NATO, then maybe the world builds some sort of coalition to take care of the problem. Those countries that want to put an end to this war can. But at the end of the day, it’s up to the Ukraine to allow to happen, but we need to start looking at what exactly it is costing each year and ask if it’s sustainable
That would be possible but it would take a long time and one of the bigger issues that has persisted in this war is, will Ukraine last long enough that when a new coalition is made or even when new equipment is delivered, those efforts will still be there on time to be useful ? I think this has been the crux of the question for all delays we’ve seen on war support on this war.
I think most world leaders didn’t really believe Ukraine would still be fighting today back when the war started and didn’t want to deliver tanks and jets to a soon to be occupied Ukraine. This is why we’re in this hodgepodge of inefficiency. And we still don’t know if Ukraine will still be fighting in 2 years from now, but i feel world leaders are more confident on it than 2 years ago, so things should probably come to a more streamlined solution as time goes by.
