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Massive swell of people to make any progress to have something to campaign with for Putin’s re-election. Ukraine has been generally running low on artillery and can’t fully capitalize on countering large unit offenses. The Ukrainians have a lot of western equipment but are low on funds to supply them.
You can’t reload Western equipment with funds, and the West’s ammunition production capacity has proven to be lacking compared to Russia’s.
Tbf, Russia has been sourcing ammunition from North Korea.
and on top of sourcing ammunition from DPRK, Russia now has a massive advantage over the west in being able to produce it domestically as well https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners
Nothing shows how bought out the Republicans are to Russia more than the statement on how they didn’t want to send weapons to perpetuate war. That’s all these assholes want to ever do. The one time they don’t and it’s for daddy Putin. Half the issues with populism in the US seem to stem from the level of destructive populism Russia enjoys.
People just keep parroting this nonsense about money being allocated to Ukraine being the problem when the actual problem is lack of industrial capacity in the west to produce weapons and ammunition at the rate they’re being consumed. The west has now largely run through the existing stockpiles, and lacks the capacity to produce more in time. Mainstream western media now openly admits this https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners
Allocating more funds for Ukraine isn’t magically going to make stuff like artillery shells appear out of thin air.
Well allocating more funds for Ukraine is kinda the solution. The issue is that, even now, arms spending is not that hot. And the arms industry are “afraid” to scale up production if they don’t have long term contracts. Aka they want to profit as much as they can. So allocating funds and signing large long scale contracts will make the arms industries ramp up their production, solving the ammunition scarcity and so on.
Allocating funds is not the solution when you lack industrial capacity to convert those funds into actual weapons and ammunition. Here’s what actually happens in a scenario where you allocate funds and supply of a commodity is limited:
In October, NATO’s senior military officer, Adm. Rob Bauer, said that the price for one 155mm shell had risen from 2,000 euros ($2,171) at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to 8,000 euros ($8,489.60).
The reasoning is that arms manufacturers are not willing to “take the risk” with expanding their industrial capacity, hence their demand for long term contracts. When they start supplying the war will end and their profits will diminish.
Exactly, they’re taking all the chances to earn more money on the war.
So far, there’s been very little actual expansion of military production. There’s been a bit in the US and practically none in the EU. The reality is that even if companies committed to this, it can’t be done overnight. You need trained workers skilled in trades, you need to build factories, you need secure supply chains, and so on. All of that takes years to implement. Real life isn’t like video games.
Yeah lol. Our ammunition manufacturer could potentially triple their output with a small additional building, but they “lack the economy” to do so. Other arms manufacturers here gives the same reason. The issue is apparently not labour but profit and as you said, supply chains. They European shells manufacturing takes place in several different countries and they have issues cooperating. At least the explosives aren’t scare as that would make it by far more difficult to solve
😂
That’s interesting. In one breath The Guardian is saying money but I guess what you’re showing me is The Guardian indicating it’s more of a production issue. I guess I could read the new link you’re sharing but I’m going to guess it doesn’t really cover how Russia is outpacing the western world.
The whole thesis of the article is basically that western private industry driven industrial complex can’t compete with Russian state driven industry because it’s not profitable for companies to do so. Russia was able to do things like plan for surge capacity and to keep large mothballed factories ready for use even though it didn’t make financial sense to do so. Western military defence contractors are not willing to do this because it affects the bottom line negatively.
Furthermore, as it becomes increasingly evident that Russia is winning the war and the whole thing isn’t going to last that much longer, the companies have zero incentive to invest into building large new facilities that will only be used for a short time.
This war is basically invalidating the whole free market model.
So basically another version of guerilla warfare, right? The US is trash at guerilla warfare. Thinking Afghanistan and Vietnam, off the top of my head. We don’t even fuck with Central America on the ground. Just economically. It sounds like Russia’s figured out a way to fight outside of the free market … which is honestly funny as fuck when I think about how shitty the defense contractors in the US are for perpetuating death for cash. And here’s Putin, perpetuating death for lesser.
The idea of running some sort of an insurgency has been floated around a lot. I agree that it’s a dumb idea and I imagine it will backfire spectacularly because Ukrainian nationalists will be resentful of the west when the war is lost. They will blame the west for not full supporting Ukraine and for using them as a battering ram against Russia. Europe might end up seeing a sharp rise in terrorism in the near future. Also worth remembering that a lot of the weapons sent to Ukraine ended up on the black market, and likely in the hands of far right cells across Europe.
Winning the war, that’s just fantasies. Even now when Ukraine can’t shoot close to what they need the Russians can’t make any remotely decisive offensives. They just don’t have the capability for that. Best they can hope for is to keep what they have gained and mine the hell out of all ground in-between the lines lol
The Russians don’t need to make decisive offensives because those are very costly as Ukraine discovered last summer. What the Russians are doing is a slow push of attrition all across the front using their superior artillery and air force power. Ukraine and the west are very clearly not able to keep up with that. Now we’re already starting to see the signs of the Ukrainian army breaking under pressure with the loss of Avdevka being a prime example of that.
Not really though? You’re not taking several other factors outside the actual battlefield in consideration with that arguing. Important things to consider if you’re aiming for grinding your opponent down is for how long you can keep up. Both economically and with your citizens. Now Russia has the benefit of not needing to adhere to its populations will to the same extent as Ukraine but there will be a point where the economic suffering of the Russians will reach a point where they demand change, just like in 1917.
And the ukrainans has shown time and again how they manage to beat the Russians without having the same numbers of tanks and guns. I mean just look at Ukraines fleet, they have none but are still winning the war to sea? What they consider the main hindrance for actually succeeding with their offensives is the lack of air support, so even if those F-16’s never get delivered the Russians can’t make decisive victories and are left with hoping for a frozen conflict, and that is not winning a war.
Now imagine if the west actually starts to deliver the arms Ukraine begs for. That will be the end of Russia’s occupation.
If you bother reading the article I linked in this very thread, it answers all those questions for you. The Ukrainians also have not shown anything of the sort. They’ve literally lost every engagement so far.
“Why won’t Russia just admit they’re losing already?!”
But you see, a bazillion Russians were killed during meat wave assaults with nothing but shovels to take this city that only has symbolic significance.
Which has one said about this city, only about Bahmut – which is a strategically irrelevant city. This city however is pretty important.
Nevertheless, Putins meatgrinder is still running extra hours and thousands of Russians are dying for his imperial ambitions every month. But it seems like unless the supporters of Ukraine send more weapons, the meatgrinder will grind more Ukrainians and not only Russians.
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