Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDaddy
If I were American I'd say it's a good use of my tax dollars, degrading Russia's armed forces and tying them up in Ukraine for the foreseeable future for about 1.5% of the military budget and not one drop of American blood spilt
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The thing is - are they getting degraded? Or is Russian military capability actually improving based on increased combat experience and the ramping up of the wartime economy?
I’d be pretending if I claimed to know enough, but I suspect most of the western assumptions to date have been flawed and the calculations on what resource Ukraine needs to bog Russia down have been massively underestimated. This resets the question somewhat - a far greater level of investment is needed into a military with a recent track record of failure, already making its way further down the conscript list of women, older men and even some with disabilities initially exempt.
Short of NATO boots on the ground it’s hard to see how Ukraine can meaningfully gain territory back to the 2021 borders, never mind fantasies over Crimea.