Not only was (past tense, because they’ve been gutted) their effectiveness dogshit, their tech is F’n laughable … actually laughable. Their supposed two crowning achievements were their hypersonic missile (which were intercepted by patriot missile batteries from the mid-90s) and their “stealth” SU57 (which has a radar footprint of a f’n blimp, but oooooooooooo it makes a scary noise when it flies). The Russians are trash dude …
So they're gutted and advancing on every part of the front line? Sure thing. The reason they're not begging for a peace deal isn't because Putin's crazy. It's because they're winning. It won't change with F-16s. It won't change with more ATACMS. The biggest mistake they made was overextending themselves trying to take Kyiv and other cities in northern Ukraine. It's largely been a success for them otherwise. Their economy is doing well despite the sanctions. They'll grab more land and are perfectly capable of holding it despite their equipment losses. Ukraine tried taking back Zaporizhzhia, and they got decimated by organized Russian defenses. This idea that the Russians are idiots who don't what they're doing at this stage is a dangerous underestimation. Ukraine (and the West) has fallen victim to believing its own propaganda.
Yes, a lot of what they say is bluster, and they know that they don't have a chance of matching the US in the air directly. It's irrelevant. We can brag about it all we want to, and they'll keep advancing in Ukraine. If your solution relies on us going to war with Russia, several thousand nuclear warheads in all, over an Eastern European country, it's not a solution. It's delusion. Now, if your solution involves Ukraine winning back territory or 5-10-20 years, I can believe it, but it's not happening via the war of attrition we're seeing now. Ukraine simply doesn't have the men.
In your best case scenario where Ukraine wins back all of its 2014 territory, what happens if the people there simply don't want to be part of Ukraine? That's not hard to believe, and it may be reality. Do you think Ukraine is going to willingly let Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea break away after they lost hundreds of thousands of men to retake them? Nope, so what's going to happen? Nobody bothers asking the question.
If they're trash, great, there's no problem at all. They're not a threat, and that's the end of the story. No need for us to dumb billions of dollars into a losing conflict; this isn't another Soviet Afghanistan (which wound up biting us in the ass anyway). I hope people eventually realize that we don’t need to fight every bad guy everywhere.
Morally, I'm against anyone who rightfully criticizes the callousness of Vladimir Putin while gleefully sending a generation of Ukrainian men to die as long as the US defense industry benefits. Ukraine should have seen how disposable it was when the American attention span shifted from their fight against Russia to helping Israel, F35 fighter jets, Merkava tanks, M109 artillery and all, kill Muslim guerillas armed with AKs and RPGs.
