Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

Volunteer units in an all volunteer force go the other way with it.  Rightly or wrongly.  You are special.  You're certainly worth more than dozens of hesitant conscripts who would rather be anywhere else.  You're not a burger flipper forced onto a bus, you're a professional soldier.  That's what you do.  Ukraine had to overcome their own conscript mindset at the outset of the war.  Jut like russia, ukraines military was a hallowed out shell.  Service wasn't honorable - it wasn't sexy.  It was for suckers and dum dums and grifters.  If ukraine had to go to war with their pre-2014 army this probably would be all over already.  One of the main avenues of domestic criticism of zelensky before the invasion was that he wasn't hooah enough, wasn't tough enough, wasn't service minded enough.  That he would seek to accommodate.  Mostly because he tried to do exactly that.

Yet another thing master strategist putin couldn't see coming.  I guess the idea that ukranians would rise up against an invader is something so far outside of his own expectations for his own people that the thought never crossed his mind.  Sure as shit, nobody lifted a finger to stop prigos march on moscow.

On the second paragraph: I was in a NATO training unit during some part of my military service. We had Georgian + Azerbaijani units training with us (infantryman mostly). So I know a little about how spirited they are. These are countries who had (and that’s already 20 years ago) newly gained their independence. So they have this spirit of nationhood that is very alive in comparison to older self-ruling nations like ourselves.
 

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So when they invaded Ukraine, I knew there was going to be resistance. But I expected to be another Syria or Chechenia-like situation, with all of us having to watch for a year or so how brutal force has the ability to crush people with more noble aspirations.
 
Also: Barrack Obama is said to have been sending his GI’s during the Syria conflict and have renounced to it at the very last moment. The French-German etc. are said to have been ready to support him but that he renounced at the very last moment. Instead he seems to have made some strategic decision which seem to have included Ukraine so that Ukrainians (this time) were completely prepared for what they knew was coming.
 

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So this whole work of preparation seems to have been done very carefully and that’s probably why we won’t have a WWIII this time.

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Also:

I found a nice video on the delivery of F-16’s to Ukraine. There is going to be a fleet of around 80 F-16’s at some time in the second half of 2024.





 
My problem is with that number. Of course there are issues of maintenance + weapons systems that work with these aircrafts (like smother airfield surfaces – Ukrainian Su-27’s and Mig Airplanes can take off from rougher and less maintained airfields). Also they will need a whole new logistical army to keep these plains operational. And these 80 airplanes will probably end Russian air-superiority. Still they will need more of them in order to break Russian defences in spring 2024.
 
Still, a typical NATO country has about 200 of these airplanes. Countries like the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway are sort of “getting rid of them” to switch to next generation fighters like the Eurofighter, F-35, French Mirage / Raffales  airplanes or Swedish JAS 39 Gripens.
 
My only worry is that these guys are working in concert. China is pushing on Taiwan, Iran is pushing on Israel and Russia is messing with Georgia, Moldova + Ukraine. So decreasing the number of these proxy-wars might be beneficial to us all.