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(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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Ukraine will fall this year, due to the loss of NATO material support
That along with running out of trained soldiers. People are even harder to replace than equipment.
haven't they been asking citizens abroad to come back to fight?
Yup, and European countries might actually start deporting Ukrainians back too. However, that wouldn't actually solve the problem. You can't just grab a person off the street, shove a gun in their hands, and get an effective and motivated soldier. The problem Ukraine has is that it lost much of its experienced and motivated core of the military. That's what's holding the whole army together.
That's an optimistic prediction. I think the support is decreasing but i don't see it going away entirely. As for how long the conflict will drag on that depends on how long Russia decides it wants it to drag on. If they were looking to end it this year they probably could but they may be calculating that NATO and US hegemony will be damaged more severely by a longer Ukraine conflict. Looking at the overall economic and military trajectories of Russia and the West that does seem to be the case. But because the West have no good way out of it they will continue to pour resources that they desperately need elsewhere into the Ukraine black hole. This is to the advantage of the entire global south and opens up a lot of opportunities to score even more victories against the West and its proxies.
I wonder what the comparative "costs" are for each side. If the west is only wagering Ukrainian lives, and its older military surplus, then it could end up being more of a drain on Russia (in lives and military expenditure) than on western governments.
Russia's armed forces are now bigger, better armed and more experienced than when the conflict started. Its military industries are in high gear and its civilian economy has actually been helped by the sanctions to start producing more domestically rather than relying on western imports. Unemployment is at an all time low in Russia.
Meanwhile most of the West is entering into a long term recession. It has been largely unable to ramp up military production despite the political promises to do so, and it is running out of surplus to send. The US is already looking for a way to extricate itself out of this trap so that they can focus on other more important fronts, but i'm not sure that they can.
They would like to shift the whole thing onto the Europeans but even some of their most loyal lackeys in Europe seem reticent to continue supporting Ukraine if the US pulls out. And i see no way to make it politically feasible to simply cease all support for Ukraine, that would be an even more humiliating defeat than their pullout from Afghanistan.
For now they are stuck with Ukraine. And the conflict in the Middle East is also going very badly for them. Their empire has never been more overextended and more vulnerable than it is now.
If NATO is no longer giving them material support, how will the war damage NATO? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
As i said, i do not believe that NATO will stop supplying Ukraine with weapons. They may deliver less and less as time goes on, but they can't just stop completely. They have trapped themselves politically and psychologically.