- Ukraine destroyed columns of waiting Russian soldiers with HIMARS, a Ukrainian commander said.
- He said Ukraine targeted them as soon as it got permission to use allied weapons across the border.
- Military experts say Ukraine’s ability to use Western-supplied weapons in Russia is aiding its fightback.
I wish they didn’t have to wait for things like this. It sucks that Ukraine is at the whims of other countries while it’s trying to fight to maintain its sovereignty.
That’s Putin’s doing. His bluff was strong and he had a big pile of material, so the West is using a Russia technique known as the salami slice method, by slowly escalating and gauging the reaction from Putin. It means no world war 3 scenario, no allies that have to come to his defense and also not letting Putin taking whatever he wants with just bluff and threatening speeches. It is costly in lives and material though.
And we (the US) have so much support that we could be giving to them but we’re not. We’d rather enable genocide elsewhere.
The US has too many bases to defend simultaneously to engage with Russia directly. It would be the 18th Anglo-French Wars all over again but with the possibility of a spicy nuclear conclusion at any given moment.
Keeping the conflict contained to the Ukrainian theater means western states get to “bleed” Russia in a protracted conflict without drawing the rest of their assets into a firefight. But we’re already seeing the US/Russia conflict leak into the central African states, the Korean border, and recently the coast of Florida.
Americans don’t actually want this to become a full blown World War. That drives up our defensive costs significantly and skews the “Stupid Russians Lose Again” headlines with a bunch of “Brave NATO Soldiers Fucked By Insidious Russian Treachery” articles.
This is patently untrue, look to Syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham or Africa https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-extra-troops-east-africa-sudan-evacuation-rcna80678 for examples of this. The US is able to project power globally in a way that Russia has tried to and simply cannot counter. https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/02/what-russias-endgame-syria or https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/5/24/how-russia-tried-to-colonise-africa-and-failed
Even Ukraine is projecting power in Sudan and Syria as a direct belligerent in opposition to Russian interest. https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-sudan-syria-cnn-russians-1907835
The United States spends in a year, what the rest of the world spends in 1.2 years. https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison There is no historical analogue to the power of the United States military. Unfortunately, this is what we spend our money on instead of Universal Healthcare or our infrastructure, or our schools etc. etc.
It makes me so depressed thinking about how many thousands of Ukrainian lives could’ve been saved by just giving Ukraine full and enthusiastic support immediately instead of dragging it out this long.
This was done on purpose so the crisis didn’t escalate. There’s no world police to prevent Russia from nuking everyone. It’s better for outside actors to focus on de-escalation anyway.
Also, Putin is not doing this because of Ukraine. I mean that’s part of it, but he is doing it for domestic appeal. He wants to appear tough to Russian citizens. Two situations allow that: beating Ukraine easily, and losing to NATO forces. He knows NATO will not risk invading Russia, so he’s in no real danger from the second one.
NATO is intentionally not intervening because it makes Putin look weak domestically. Russia has created their own problem and the war will not end until the people of Russia demand it.
The only thing that modern diplomacy teaches nation states today is that they need to get nukes as quickly as possible
