All Things Russia & Ukraine

[old salt]

Trump kept his powder dry for a while. And then caved to who the heck knows, and sent arms and training to Ukraine. It's clear as day that that's what prompted Putin's invasion: he invaded before Biden's promised coming aid that would bolster what Trump already sent.....took that option away from Putin entirely.

Putin began massing troops on the border in Apr '21. He made a big increase in Dec '21.
Biden held off sending aid until the CIA told him that Putin was going to invade, not bluffing.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/16/us ... delay-aid/
White House Delays Moving Military Assistance to Ukraine
And Congress is getting impatient.
DECEMBER 16, 2021,
Frustration mounts in the U.S. Congress over President Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ms-supply/

The U.S. has been rushing to arm Ukraine, but for years it stalled on providing weapons

February 27, 2022
The current rush by the West to send weapons to Ukraine is in stark contrast to years of hesitancy that often had as much to do with domestic U.S. and allied politics, and concerns about their own relations with Moscow, than with an assessment of the Russian threat to Ukraine.

Russia’s launch last week of a full-scale invasion, with land, air and sea attacks on Ukrainian cities and military installations, has been met with what U.S. officials have described as a surprisingly robust defense.
Ukraine has pleaded for more help, including additional Javelin antitank weapons, and Stinger antiaircraft missiles.

President Biden has authorized nearly $1 billion in military assistance over the past year for Ukraine, including $350 million in weapons such as antitank and antiaircraft missiles last week, and $200 million in drawdowns from U.S. arms stocks approved in December. The new package includes more Javelins, although Stingers are likely to wait until a further tranche, defense officials said.

Meanwhile, as Ukrainians prepare to face down tanks in the streets of Kyiv with molotov cocktails assembled in their basements, and rifles being distributed to every able-bodied civilian, there has been no shortage of revisionist history and finger-pointing in Washington.

While the Biden administration has moved quickly since Russian troops began massing on the border in December, its response was sluggish to earlier Russian deployments in April. Before the Russians finally moved into Ukraine in force on Thursday, Republican lawmakers and pundits accused Biden of appeasement in trying to secure a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Russia would never have dared to invade, several charged, if Biden hadn’t shown weakness by withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Former president Donald Trump, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “genius,” has said it never would have happened under his watch.

...2014... Ukrainian forces fought a series of battles against Russian-backed separatist rebels in an effort to regain seized territory. But while the West had sanctioned Russia and refused to recognize the Crimean annexation, then-President Petro Poroshenko’s request for U.S. military assistance, ranging from F-16 jets and Javelins to helmets and blankets, gave then-President Barack Obama pause.

At the time, there was a high sensitivity in the White House to avoiding a conflict that could lead to direct confrontation with Russia. Some senior Obama aides initially advocated taking a breather before deciding to arm the Ukrainian military, which only weeks before had been fighting pro-democracy protesters in the streets and was believed to be highly corrupt.

Obama became more convinced that providing high-end armaments to a far-off conflict was folly when, barely a month after Poroshenko’s June 7 inauguration, a Malaysian airliner was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over separatist territory in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. Western intelligence believed the weapon had been provided to the separatists by Russia.

After a year of internal debate, Obama declined to provide lethal aid, overruling most of his national security team. Still, the United States committed more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016, including body armor, night-vision goggles, vehicles and training.

But Obama’s refusal to provide lethal weaponry had by that point become a Republican talking point, leading then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to charge in 2015 that the “Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we’re sending blankets and meals.”
Four years later, Trump would echo that charge, claiming that while his administration had sent “antitank busters” to Ukraine, Obama had provided only “pillows and sheets.”

Trump first approved the sale of $47 million worth of 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launchers to Ukraine in December 2017. Delivered in April the following year, they were not deployed to the front lines of the still-simmering separatist war. Under the terms of the sale, they were kept boxed in a military storage facility far from the front lines, where they were to serve symbolically as a “strategic deterrent” to Russia.

In the summer of 2019, Trump froze an additional $400 million in congressionally approved security assistance to Ukraine, an action that later became a centerpiece in his first impeachment.
Trump released the frozen aid when his action, along with a transcript of the call with Zelensky, became public.
Recent days have brought increasing unity on all sides of the political spectrum to help Ukraine. But that has not prevented a partisan rehash of the past eight years.

“I don’t think we left Ukraine defenseless,” said Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistance secretary of defense for Russia and Ukraine from 2012 to 2015. “Could we have done more? Yes. Could everybody have done more? Yes.”
“But nobody foresaw what we see today.”

[old salt]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2023/0 ... d_brief_nl

Why War Pledges for Ukraine Fell Flat in Munich
Biden, Harris, and other world leaders pledged to help Ukraine fight for “as long as it takes.” So why does nobody believe them?

by KEVIN BARON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, DEFENSE ONE
FEBRUARY 23, 2023

MUNICH, Germany—One after another, leaders from the United States, NATO, and nearly every European country west of the Dnipro River stood up at the Munich Security Conference and declared that they would not abandon Ukraine. The West, they vowed, would arm, equip, and fund Kyiv’s fight against Russian invaders until the war is won.

“As President Biden often says: The United States will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will not waver,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, in her televised keynote speech on Sunday. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, at an invitation-only sideline luncheon immediately afterward, said Putin should know that “this help [for Ukraine] isn’t ending. It doesn’t end. As long as it takes.”

So why did nobody believe them?

After all, Harris gave Ukraine the full-throated support of the United States and the packed-to-the-rafters audience cheered. On Monday, President Joe Biden delivered more of the same—for “as long as it takes”—during a celebrated visit to Kyiv, and again to a massive crowd on Tuesday in Warsaw.

“One year into this war,” Biden said, “Putin no longer doubts the strength of our coalition, but he still doubts our conviction. He doubts our staying power. He doubts our continued support for Ukraine. He doubts whether NATO can remain unified. But there should be no doubt: Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.”

One year into this war, it turns out, Putin isn’t the only doubter. In the overcrowded halls of the annual security conference here—and later in receptions and dinners at beer halls across the city—many of the national security community and journalists gathered for this massive event sneered at the speeches and hissed at the moment. They did not celebrate the politicians’ pledges, which for many have proven too cautious, too little, and too late. Instead, they lamented the dishonesty within them. They wished that the speechmakers would just come out and say what we all seem to agree on: there is a cold-blooded reality facing Ukraine. Unless the West fights Russia out of Ukraine with drastically more advanced weapons and air power, and soon, reluctant leaders will only prolong the war and its body count. If that happens, then the only person who can end the war is Putin.

“I understand why politicians can’t speak that way,” said Anne Applebaum, of The Atlantic, sitting on stage with Finland’s Marin after Harris’ unsatisfying speech. But, she said, “The realistic truth is that the war will end when the Russians understand that it was a mistake.”

It seems we are still painfully far from that point. Applebaum predicted the end of this conflict would resemble the French withdrawal from Algeria in the 1960s after a decade of fighting, or the British giving up on Ireland. “The war will end when we come to that moment,” she said, not any ceasefire or frozen conflict. “It’s actually over and we begin to reconstruct Europe and Russia begins to redefine itself as no longer an empire.”

On the same stage, Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba went further: “My personal endgame is pretty simple…for me, the end of the war will be when the Russian president, whatever his name will be, will pay a visit to Ukraine, will [get down] on his knees in front of the monument to the victims of Russian aggression, and will beg for an apology. For me, this will be the end of the war. Everything between here and then is war, one way or another.”

What that should mean for U.S. and Western policymakers is that every conversation and news cycle in which they make more pledges of support, or debate the next best-weapon (yesterday, tanks; tomorrow, F-16s) is just a continuation of the war. There is so much further to go.

Leaders from NATO’s pending members Sweden and Finland shared the urgency we have always heard from Ukrainian and Eastern European leaders. “We should do more and we should do it faster,” said Marin.

“Don’t wait until it’s too late,” said Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who said he “basically, yes” agrees with Ukraine’s Kuleba. “This must not end in a frozen conflict.”

“Whatever we can deliver [for air defense] now, it’s needed in the short term… the more assets we can deliver to Ukraine for air defenses, the better,” said Czech President-elect Petr Pavel, a retired general who has served as chief of the military and chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

Estonia’s popular Prime Minister Kayja Kallas, who has long preached total victory, noted that NATO membership is the only reason member countries like hers are not fighting Russia on their soil, and that this conflict should teach them: “There will be no gray areas in Europe. Gray areas—they mean conflicts, they mean wars.”

On the same panel sat David Petraeus of “Tell me how this ends” fame. He was asked whether Ukraine was getting what it needed. “Not yet,” said the former commanding general of two wars, neither of which ended in clear American victories. In the near term, he said, Ukraine is trying to hold off “an intense and growing Russian offensive” and they need ammunition, precision munitions, and spare parts. In the medium term, meaning by June, Ukraine needs tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and drones to wage “combined arms defense” that will “crack Russian forces in the south” that support Crimea. Longer term, Ukraine needs long-range ground fires, like ATACMS, and Western aircraft, “and this is inevitable… this is a must… it’s time to get on with the decision to start training on F-16s” and other fighters.

In other words, even by Petraeus’s best-possible timeline, this war does not end by summer. And, he added, military aid may not break Putin’s will or make him realize the war is unsustainable for Russia in the way Applebaum described. Political leaders must accompany it with more aggressive non-military moves, from more sanctions to directly blocking vital supply lines into Russia, he argued.

Petraeus was channeling the frustrated audiences off-stage. They too believe strongly that Ukraine cannot hold Russia off forever, and Western funds, weapons and public support are finite. Some are angry that Biden and some NATO leaders still won’t go for the total victory, call Putin’s nuclear bluff, and swiftly escalate the fight to expel Russia’s exposed and weakened forces from Ukraine immediately and entirely. Others think overly-cautious Western leaders and their advisors are prolonging unnecessary death by giving Ukraine just enough to linger but not to win.

At some point, the fighting will stop. Despite every well-meaning, table-pounding leader’s call for total victory, if Putin survives, then Russia will not walk away empty-handed. The Russian leader has the will of a delusional madman and is armed with millions of potential conscripts and a Cold War-sized arsenal of nuclear weapons that, as of Tuesday, are no longer subject to inspection by outsiders. As Petraeus noted, Russia already is losing six times as many men per day as the United States lost in its worst month in Iraq. Putin heard everything Western leaders had to say at Munich, and two days later he recommitted Russia to swallowing Ukraine by force.

Nobody can see clearly how this ends. Nobody is satisfied with the way this is going. Nobody believes the Americans and Europeans will outlast Putin. Everyone has doubts.

For their part, leaders like Harris, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., knew what to expect in Munich. They came prepared and with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Estonia’s Kallas and others, they sold the war effort hard. They still need to convince their voters that this war is worth the cost and worth the risk to their military’s depleted arsenals. And they needed to convince those in the Munich halls that will support or undermine those efforts.

To their credit, NATO leaders mostly remain unified in message and voice towards continued support for Ukraine. Consider recent years when ascending movements like Brexit and Donald Trump’s America First movement threatened to undo international security architectures from within.

“We have come together to stand for our common values and our common interests and our common humanity. I have no doubt that this unity will endure,” Harris said. Neither do I. But she also said, “I also have no illusions about the path forward. There will be more dark days in Ukraine. The daily agony of war will persist… but if Putin thinks he can wait us out, he is badly mistaken. Time is not on his side.”

“Sure it is,” one analyst whispered to me, later. Putin does not have to answer to voters.

The one clear consensus in Munich: if Putin is not stopped or convinced to stop, he will continue the war in Ukraine until he can walk away with part of it. For as long as it takes.

[old salt]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/ ... -ukraines/

America’s Interests Are Not Necessarily the Same as Ukraine’s

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, February 25, 2023

We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, but that support can’t be unlimited.

Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. A two-year anniversary is highly likely, and a stalemate much longer than that is entirely foreseeable.

The war has become as existential for Putin as it is for Ukraine. That complicates ending it.
So here is a question for you: Are you in for somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion a year, for however long it takes? According to U.S. estimates, the tab for Ukraine aid so far is $113 billion; the Zelensky regime, factoring in assurances it says it have been given, says the total is more like $196 billion. Are we willing to pay that much annually for another two or five or eight years? If so, what are we prepared to cut to persist in that level of aid? If we’re not prepared to cut anything, is the plan to have our children and grandchildren pay the freight?

We’re usually sticklers about this sort of thing at National Review. ...I was thus dismayed that our editorial marking the one-year anniversary of the Ukraine war omitted the hard numbers in its clarion call for “an end to the war as soon as is practicable so long as it’s on favorable terms to Ukraine".

What does that mean? My colleagues are not clear. That’s notable given that the editorial is a rebuke of President Biden’s (characteristic) lack of clarity, his obvious reluctance to spell out American strategy and objectives.

In sketching out what a conclusion favorable to Ukraine might look like, the editorial carefully limits its discussion about the disposition of territory to “antebellum” Ukraine. The bellum we’re talking about, of course, is the one that began on February 24, 2022. For all the soaring rhetoric about Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia’s lawless belligerence, the editors are not suggesting that Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine must be reversed if the war is to end “on favorable terms to Ukraine.” Moreover, the editors acknowledge that such “favorable terms” must factor in that “most wars end at the negotiating table on terms that do not provide all parties with full satisfaction.” That is, Kyiv has to be realistic and recognize that “favorable” terms may not include Russian “withdrawal from every inch” of territory that Ukraine held in early 2022 (to say nothing of 2014). Bottom line: Ukraine is not going to be made whole; the argument between hawks and skeptics is over what degree of annexation is tolerable.

On the other side of the coin, the editors vacillate between two possible outcomes — “total Russian defeat” and “Russian victory” — as if, in between, there were not an array of results that would be acceptable, if not necessarily desirable.

Acceptable to whom? Well, the editors rightly observe that what “should be most important and most fundamental to any American government [is] the interests of the United States and its people.” And thus the main problem with the editorial, and with most Ukraine-hawk journalism: It is written as if there were little or no daylight between the interests of the United States and an outcome that Ukraine would deem favorable. Yet, there are patent differences between what is vital to us and what Kyiv hopes to achieve. Indeed, our policy implicitly reflects this brutal reality — despite the price tag of well over $100 billion... There are no American troops in Ukraine... laud Biden for this, and for rebuffing Kyiv’s calls for a U.S.-established “no-fly zone.” No administration of either party would have dared to get the country directly involved in combat in Ukraine. It is not in America’s vital interests to be drawn into a war with Russia over Ukraine, even if that blunt fact will inevitably play in Russia’s favor in any settlement negotiations.

And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse.

I admire the pluck of the Ukrainian people’s fight. I admire the bravery and leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, and I don’t fault him for trying to make every supporting country conflate its own interests with Ukraine’s. Wartime leaders of imperiled nations must do nothing less. But I can’t pretend to admire Ukraine, a deeply corrupt country. And I can’t pretend to equate American interests with Ukrainian interests. Ukraine borders a thuggish aggressor with which there will be no stable settlement. That is not a problem we can fix.

We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and because we owe that much to Ukraine, having in 1994 and 2006 persuaded Kyiv to divest itself of its nuclear and conventional weapons on the fantasy that Russia was no longer a threat.

That support, however, is not without limits. As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should provide them with a level of matériel support that enables them to punish and deplete Russia without drawing us into combat. But we ought to stop the hyperbole about “Russian victory” and “letting Putin win.” Putin is not winning, and a Ukraine skeptic does not become a clandestine agent of the Kremlin merely by voicing what should be the incontestable point that Ukraine cannot be given a blank check — because we must reserve such checks for American national security, and nothing else. A disastrously punishing war in which Putin, after trying to take the whole country, is ultimately forced to settle for additional slices of Ukraine — slices where insurgencies will continue to drain him for the foreseeable future — is an acceptable outcome for the United States. And the sooner that happens the better, even if Putin tries to spin a paltry, uncertain annexation as a win.

The suggestion that this would only encourage China to seize Taiwan is mistaken. U.S. and allied support for Ukraine has been surprisingly strong, even if it does not satisfy zealous Ukraine hawks. Beijing can’t be encouraged by that. What it might well find enticing, though, is the alarming depletion of U.S. defense stocks, our reluctance to arm Taiwan to the teeth due to our other priorities, and our armed-forces-recruitment crisis. These are direct results of our unwillingness to make adult fiscal choices between national defense and other spending, and of the perception that progressive governance has turned our military into a woke seminar that many would-be warriors would find unappealing. If Xi Jinping decides the time is ripe to make a move on Taiwan, these will be the reasons — not Ukraine.

In Ukraine, where Kyiv needs our support to continue fighting, our objective should be an end of the war as soon as practicable on terms favorable to the United States. As our editorial concedes, that won’t be total victory for Ukraine. Necessarily, that means total defeat for Russia is not in the cards, either. Let’s not confuse that with “Putin wins.”

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/ ... -ukraines/

America’s Interests Are Not Necessarily the Same as Ukraine’s

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, February 25, 2023

We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, but that support can’t be unlimited.

Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. A two-year anniversary is highly likely, and a stalemate much longer than that is entirely foreseeable.

The war has become as existential for Putin as it is for Ukraine. That complicates ending it.
So here is a question for you: Are you in for somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion a year, for however long it takes? According to U.S. estimates, the tab for Ukraine aid so far is $113 billion; the Zelensky regime, factoring in assurances it says it have been given, says the total is more like $196 billion. Are we willing to pay that much annually for another two or five or eight years? If so, what are we prepared to cut to persist in that level of aid? If we’re not prepared to cut anything, is the plan to have our children and grandchildren pay the freight?

We’re usually sticklers about this sort of thing at National Review. ...I was thus dismayed that our editorial marking the one-year anniversary of the Ukraine war omitted the hard numbers in its clarion call for “an end to the war as soon as is practicable so long as it’s on favorable terms to Ukraine".

What does that mean? My colleagues are not clear. That’s notable given that the editorial is a rebuke of President Biden’s (characteristic) lack of clarity, his obvious reluctance to spell out American strategy and objectives.

In sketching out what a conclusion favorable to Ukraine might look like, the editorial carefully limits its discussion about the disposition of territory to “antebellum” Ukraine. The bellum we’re talking about, of course, is the one that began on February 24, 2022. For all the soaring rhetoric about Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia’s lawless belligerence, the editors are not suggesting that Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine must be reversed if the war is to end “on favorable terms to Ukraine.” Moreover, the editors acknowledge that such “favorable terms” must factor in that “most wars end at the negotiating table on terms that do not provide all parties with full satisfaction.” That is, Kyiv has to be realistic and recognize that “favorable” terms may not include Russian “withdrawal from every inch” of territory that Ukraine held in early 2022 (to say nothing of 2014). Bottom line: Ukraine is not going to be made whole; the argument between hawks and skeptics is over what degree of annexation is tolerable.

On the other side of the coin, the editors vacillate between two possible outcomes — “total Russian defeat” and “Russian victory” — as if, in between, there were not an array of results that would be acceptable, if not necessarily desirable.

Acceptable to whom? Well, the editors rightly observe that what “should be most important and most fundamental to any American government [is] the interests of the United States and its people.” And thus the main problem with the editorial, and with most Ukraine-hawk journalism: It is written as if there were little or no daylight between the interests of the United States and an outcome that Ukraine would deem favorable. Yet, there are patent differences between what is vital to us and what Kyiv hopes to achieve. Indeed, our policy implicitly reflects this brutal reality — despite the price tag of well over $100 billion... There are no American troops in Ukraine... laud Biden for this, and for rebuffing Kyiv’s calls for a U.S.-established “no-fly zone.” No administration of either party would have dared to get the country directly involved in combat in Ukraine. It is not in America’s vital interests to be drawn into a war with Russia over Ukraine, even if that blunt fact will inevitably play in Russia’s favor in any settlement negotiations.

And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse.

I admire the pluck of the Ukrainian people’s fight. I admire the bravery and leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, and I don’t fault him for trying to make every supporting country conflate its own interests with Ukraine’s. Wartime leaders of imperiled nations must do nothing less. But I can’t pretend to admire Ukraine, a deeply corrupt country. And I can’t pretend to equate American interests with Ukrainian interests. Ukraine borders a thuggish aggressor with which there will be no stable settlement. That is not a problem we can fix.

We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and because we owe that much to Ukraine, having in 1994 and 2006 persuaded Kyiv to divest itself of its nuclear and conventional weapons on the fantasy that Russia was no longer a threat.

That support, however, is not without limits. As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should provide them with a level of matériel support that enables them to punish and deplete Russia without drawing us into combat. But we ought to stop the hyperbole about “Russian victory” and “letting Putin win.” Putin is not winning, and a Ukraine skeptic does not become a clandestine agent of the Kremlin merely by voicing what should be the incontestable point that Ukraine cannot be given a blank check — because we must reserve such checks for American national security, and nothing else. A disastrously punishing war in which Putin, after trying to take the whole country, is ultimately forced to settle for additional slices of Ukraine — slices where insurgencies will continue to drain him for the foreseeable future — is an acceptable outcome for the United States. And the sooner that happens the better, even if Putin tries to spin a paltry, uncertain annexation as a win.

The suggestion that this would only encourage China to seize Taiwan is mistaken. U.S. and allied support for Ukraine has been surprisingly strong, even if it does not satisfy zealous Ukraine hawks. Beijing can’t be encouraged by that. What it might well find enticing, though, is the alarming depletion of U.S. defense stocks, our reluctance to arm Taiwan to the teeth due to our other priorities, and our armed-forces-recruitment crisis. These are direct results of our unwillingness to make adult fiscal choices between national defense and other spending, and of the perception that progressive governance has turned our military into a woke seminar that many would-be warriors would find unappealing. If Xi Jinping decides the time is ripe to make a move on Taiwan, these will be the reasons — not Ukraine.

In Ukraine, where Kyiv needs our support to continue fighting, our objective should be an end of the war as soon as practicable on terms favorable to the United States. As our editorial concedes, that won’t be total victory for Ukraine. Necessarily, that means total defeat for Russia is not in the cards, either. Let’s not confuse that with “Putin wins.”

“Not necessarily”…. That’s not a definitive statement….. means our interest could be…..

[a fan]

“Sure it is,” one analyst whispered to me, later. Putin does not have to answer to voters.

You think a Republican is going to run for POTUS with a platform of: let Putin have what he wants? In 12 months????

It KILLS me that military and policy wonks.....who rarely, if ever, get these calls right......are pulling down mid six figures at some think tank. And THIS is what they come up with?

McConnell just cast the die for the Republican party. There's no turning back now. We're looking at 2028, at best.

[Seacoaster(1)]

“Sure it is,” one analyst whispered to me, later. Putin does not have to answer to voters.

You think a Republican is going to run for POTUS with a platform of: let Putin have what he wants? In 12 months????

It KILLS me that military and policy wonks.....who rarely, if ever, get these calls right......are pulling down mid six figures at some think tank. And THIS is what they come up with?

McConnell just cast the die for the Republican party. There's no turning back now. We're looking at 2028, at best.

This is the stupidest paragraph of a stupid, ideology driven bit of nonsense by Andy:

"And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse."

Democrats support Ukraine for the same reason McConnell does: because a rules-based order with meaningful tools of enforcement is important for the world. Remember McCarthy's baseline? Here:

https://twitter.com/AMcCarthyNY/status/ ... 1026161667

Old pilots need to just walk their dogs and STFU.

[cradleandshoot]

“Sure it is,” one analyst whispered to me, later. Putin does not have to answer to voters.

You think a Republican is going to run for POTUS with a platform of: let Putin have what he wants? In 12 months????

It KILLS me that military and policy wonks.....who rarely, if ever, get these calls right......are pulling down mid six figures at some think tank. And THIS is what they come up with?

McConnell just cast the die for the Republican party. There's no turning back now. We're looking at 2028, at best.

This is the stupidest paragraph of a stupid, ideology driven bit of nonsense by Andy:

"And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse."

Democrats support Ukraine for the same reason McConnell does: because a rules-based order with meaningful tools of enforcement is important for the world. Remember McCarthy's baseline? Here:

https://twitter.com/AMcCarthyNY/status/ ... 1026161667

Old pilots need to just walk their dogs and STFU.

Just like old lawyers should sit by the fireplace in a comfy chair and read a book. STFU is never an option for ANY lawyer because they all love to jibber jabber about any and everything. I guess they never get tired of hearing themselves bloviate.

[youthathletics]

The Matrix....

https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/stat ... 08224?s=20

[Typical Lax Dad]

The Matrix....

https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/stat ... 08224?s=20

Old man probably tripped over the steps.

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/ ... -ukraines/

America’s Interests Are Not Necessarily the Same as Ukraine’s

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, February 25, 2023

We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, but that support can’t be unlimited.

Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. A two-year anniversary is highly likely, and a stalemate much longer than that is entirely foreseeable.

The war has become as existential for Putin as it is for Ukraine. That complicates ending it.
So here is a question for you: Are you in for somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion a year, for however long it takes? According to U.S. estimates, the tab for Ukraine aid so far is $113 billion; the Zelensky regime, factoring in assurances it says it have been given, says the total is more like $196 billion. Are we willing to pay that much annually for another two or five or eight years? If so, what are we prepared to cut to persist in that level of aid? If we’re not prepared to cut anything, is the plan to have our children and grandchildren pay the freight?

We’re usually sticklers about this sort of thing at National Review. ...I was thus dismayed that our editorial marking the one-year anniversary of the Ukraine war omitted the hard numbers in its clarion call for “an end to the war as soon as is practicable so long as it’s on favorable terms to Ukraine".

What does that mean? My colleagues are not clear. That’s notable given that the editorial is a rebuke of President Biden’s (characteristic) lack of clarity, his obvious reluctance to spell out American strategy and objectives.

In sketching out what a conclusion favorable to Ukraine might look like, the editorial carefully limits its discussion about the disposition of territory to “antebellum” Ukraine. The bellum we’re talking about, of course, is the one that began on February 24, 2022. For all the soaring rhetoric about Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia’s lawless belligerence, the editors are not suggesting that Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine must be reversed if the war is to end “on favorable terms to Ukraine.” Moreover, the editors acknowledge that such “favorable terms” must factor in that “most wars end at the negotiating table on terms that do not provide all parties with full satisfaction.” That is, Kyiv has to be realistic and recognize that “favorable” terms may not include Russian “withdrawal from every inch” of territory that Ukraine held in early 2022 (to say nothing of 2014). Bottom line: Ukraine is not going to be made whole; the argument between hawks and skeptics is over what degree of annexation is tolerable.

On the other side of the coin, the editors vacillate between two possible outcomes — “total Russian defeat” and “Russian victory” — as if, in between, there were not an array of results that would be acceptable, if not necessarily desirable.

Acceptable to whom? Well, the editors rightly observe that what “should be most important and most fundamental to any American government [is] the interests of the United States and its people.” And thus the main problem with the editorial, and with most Ukraine-hawk journalism: It is written as if there were little or no daylight between the interests of the United States and an outcome that Ukraine would deem favorable. Yet, there are patent differences between what is vital to us and what Kyiv hopes to achieve. Indeed, our policy implicitly reflects this brutal reality — despite the price tag of well over $100 billion... There are no American troops in Ukraine... laud Biden for this, and for rebuffing Kyiv’s calls for a U.S.-established “no-fly zone.” No administration of either party would have dared to get the country directly involved in combat in Ukraine. It is not in America’s vital interests to be drawn into a war with Russia over Ukraine, even if that blunt fact will inevitably play in Russia’s favor in any settlement negotiations.

And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse.

I admire the pluck of the Ukrainian people’s fight. I admire the bravery and leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, and I don’t fault him for trying to make every supporting country conflate its own interests with Ukraine’s. Wartime leaders of imperiled nations must do nothing less. But I can’t pretend to admire Ukraine, a deeply corrupt country. And I can’t pretend to equate American interests with Ukrainian interests. Ukraine borders a thuggish aggressor with which there will be no stable settlement. That is not a problem we can fix.

We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and because we owe that much to Ukraine, having in 1994 and 2006 persuaded Kyiv to divest itself of its nuclear and conventional weapons on the fantasy that Russia was no longer a threat.

That support, however, is not without limits. As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should provide them with a level of matériel support that enables them to punish and deplete Russia without drawing us into combat. But we ought to stop the hyperbole about “Russian victory” and “letting Putin win.” Putin is not winning, and a Ukraine skeptic does not become a clandestine agent of the Kremlin merely by voicing what should be the incontestable point that Ukraine cannot be given a blank check — because we must reserve such checks for American national security, and nothing else. A disastrously punishing war in which Putin, after trying to take the whole country, is ultimately forced to settle for additional slices of Ukraine — slices where insurgencies will continue to drain him for the foreseeable future — is an acceptable outcome for the United States. And the sooner that happens the better, even if Putin tries to spin a paltry, uncertain annexation as a win.

The suggestion that this would only encourage China to seize Taiwan is mistaken. U.S. and allied support for Ukraine has been surprisingly strong, even if it does not satisfy zealous Ukraine hawks. Beijing can’t be encouraged by that. What it might well find enticing, though, is the alarming depletion of U.S. defense stocks, our reluctance to arm Taiwan to the teeth due to our other priorities, and our armed-forces-recruitment crisis. These are direct results of our unwillingness to make adult fiscal choices between national defense and other spending, and of the perception that progressive governance has turned our military into a woke seminar that many would-be warriors would find unappealing. If Xi Jinping decides the time is ripe to make a move on Taiwan, these will be the reasons — not Ukraine.

In Ukraine, where Kyiv needs our support to continue fighting, our objective should be an end of the war as soon as practicable on terms favorable to the United States. As our editorial concedes, that won’t be total victory for Ukraine. Necessarily, that means total defeat for Russia is not in the cards, either. Let’s not confuse that with “Putin wins.”

“Not necessarily”…. That’s not a definitive statement….. means our interest could be…..

That whole piece is stupid.

“Please, pretty please believe I’m agnostic, thoughtful and correct.”

[Farfromgeneva]

“Sure it is,” one analyst whispered to me, later. Putin does not have to answer to voters.

You think a Republican is going to run for POTUS with a platform of: let Putin have what he wants? In 12 months????

It KILLS me that military and policy wonks.....who rarely, if ever, get these calls right......are pulling down mid six figures at some think tank. And THIS is what they come up with?

McConnell just cast the die for the Republican party. There's no turning back now. We're looking at 2028, at best.

This is the stupidest paragraph of a stupid, ideology driven bit of nonsense by Andy:

"And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse."

Democrats support Ukraine for the same reason McConnell does: because a rules-based order with meaningful tools of enforcement is important for the world. Remember McCarthy's baseline? Here:

https://twitter.com/AMcCarthyNY/status/ ... 1026161667

Old pilots need to just walk their dogs and STFU.

Just like old lawyers should sit by the fireplace in a comfy chair and read a book. STFU is never an option for ANY lawyer because they all love to jibber jabber about any and everything. I guess they never get tired of hearing themselves bloviate.

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-a ... ing-mirror

[youthathletics]

The Matrix....

https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/stat ... 08224?s=20

Old man probably tripped over the steps.

look closer, at the guy behind Zelenskyy.

[Typical Lax Dad]

The Matrix....

https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/stat ... 08224?s=20

Old man probably tripped over the steps.

look closer, at the guy behind Zelenskyy.

The Boy From Brazil…..Thanks. I didn’t notice it before.

[a fan]

“Sure it is,” one analyst whispered to me, later. Putin does not have to answer to voters.

You think a Republican is going to run for POTUS with a platform of: let Putin have what he wants? In 12 months????

It KILLS me that military and policy wonks.....who rarely, if ever, get these calls right......are pulling down mid six figures at some think tank. And THIS is what they come up with?

McConnell just cast the die for the Republican party. There's no turning back now. We're looking at 2028, at best.

This is the stupidest paragraph of a stupid, ideology driven bit of nonsense by Andy:

"And by the way, something to think about regarding ...already-softening support: ...Democrats do not support Ukraine’s fight because doing so is in our nation’s geopolitical interests. They support it because, despite their decades of Soviet sympathies, followed by years of portraying Putin as a worthy strategic partner, Democrats pivoted in 2015 to the Trump–Russia “collusion” scam. This ploy, manufactured by the Clinton campaign, dictates that Democrats pose as anti-Russia hard-asses. Their ostensibly intense support for Ukraine flows from (a) their transmogrification of Ukraine into an avatar of anti-Trumpism, and (b) the happenstance that the White House has been inhabited since the war began by a Democrat (one who signaled that he’d be fine with a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine).This is not going to last. If Iraq and Vietnam have taught us anything, it is that if a Republican (who will not be Trump) wins the presidency in 2024, the new administration’s support for Ukraine — in a war then entering year three — would be pilloried by Democrats as an inept enterprise that enriches U.S. defense contractors at the expense of Americans whose social safety net is on the verge of collapse."

Democrats support Ukraine for the same reason McConnell does: because a rules-based order with meaningful tools of enforcement is important for the world. Remember McCarthy's baseline? Here:

https://twitter.com/AMcCarthyNY/status/ ... 1026161667

Old pilots need to just walk their dogs and STFU.

McCarthy has "forgotten" (he knows) that the Iraq War doesn't happen without Dem votes. Hillary and BIden both voted to Invade. Why? Because they're freaking Neo-cons, and govern center-right. Anyone who paid any attention to Biden knew all of this was coming...and I said as much in my convo with OS before the invasion. Biden is a neo-con. A global cop. As is the vast, vast majority of Dem and R leadership. The peaceniks like me? We're a TINY minority both in the real world, as well as in Congress.

The problem here, of course, is that FoxNation has been telling its viewers for 20 years that Dems are far left nutjobs. Which is a flat out lie designed to keep any legislation from arriving to the American working class, lest it be perceived as socialism....and to keep shoveling money to 1%ers-----which includes Trump, Biden, McConnell, Pelosi and the bulk of Congress. It's worked for 2 decades, and counting.

McCarthy knows the above paragraph is a lie.

[a fan]

The war has become as existential for Putin as it is for Ukraine. That complicates ending it.
So here is a question for you: Are you in for somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion a year, for however long it takes? According to U.S. estimates, the tab for Ukraine aid so far is $113 billion; the Zelensky regime, factoring in assurances it says it have been given, says the total is more like $196 billion. Are we willing to pay that much annually for another two or five or eight years? If so, what are we prepared to cut to persist in that level of aid? If we’re not prepared to cut anything, is the plan to have our children and grandchildren pay the freight?

Old Salt....what was your party's reaction to invading Iraq for the Iraq War? How did we pay for that $2 Trillion tab...with the meter still running here in 2023.

Do you remember? What did Bush do to pay for that?

Yeah sure, you and McCarthy are REALLY worried about money, and handing off your bills to your grandkids.

Whooo. Good one.

[MDlaxfan76]

Andrew McCarthy

'nuff said.

[old salt]

afan (who still hasn't figured out how to use the quote function, after 14.5k posts) thinks all wars are the same. It's not possible to support, tolerate, or oppose each one separately, based on their own merits. It's all based on political party.

Amusing to see the reactions to smarter, more accomplished lawyers.

[MDlaxfan76]

afan (who still hasn't figured out how to use the quote function, after 14.5k posts) thinks all wars are the same. It's not possible to support, tolerate, or oppose each one separately, based on their own merits.

Amusing to see the reactions to smarter, more accomplished lawyers.

McCarthy???

[old salt]

Democrats support Ukraine for the same reason McConnell does: because a rules-based order with meaningful tools of enforcement is important for the world. Remember McCarthy's baseline? Here:

https://twitter.com/AMcCarthyNY/status/ ... 1026161667

Old pilots need to just walk their dogs and STFU.

It's just so frustrating to idealistic lawyers that we can't dictate terms to nations & societies older than ours, halfway around the world.
We're creating an impressive axis of Russia, China, Iran & N Korea.

Biden won't ok Dutch F-16's for fear that Xi will provide 122mm & 155mm munitions.
We'll just fund marching more human cannon fodder into a stalemated meat grinder civil war between Russian cousins.
Huzzah for the rules based order.

[old salt]

Helpful primer on what should be expected if & when the Ukrainians get western fighters.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why ... ine-f-16s/

Why the West is reluctant to give Ukraine F-16s
5 February 2023

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine almost a year ago, the questions of if, when and how to supply the Ukrainian Air Force (UkrAF) with western fighter aircraft have been a matter of fierce debate. President Zelenskyy has made repeated and impassioned calls for American-made F-16s in particular, as have UkrAF leaders and pilots.

Russia has a dense and highly lethal network of ground-based surface-to-air missile systems

A significant majority of people in Europe and the United States want to see Ukraine emerge victorious and at peace on its own terms as soon as possible. Therefore, it is natural that many are wondering why it is taking so long for western countries to give Ukraine’s pilots the formidable combat aircraft used by the United States and its allies to such devastating effect in every conflict since the end of the Cold War. After all, it is a truism in western militaries that air superiority is a prerequisite for battlefield success. Recent announcements by the Dutch and Polish governments have hinted that they might transfer F-16 Viper multirole fighters to the UkrAF, but senior leaders in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany have all stated that they will not for the time being. There are several likely reasons for this reticence.

First and foremost is the problem of Russia’s dense and highly lethal network of ground-based surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. The skies over the frontlines in Ukraine are covered by multiple layers of air defence threats from large, long-range systems like the infamous SA-21 ‘Triumf’ (known in Russia as the S-400) to more numerous and mobile medium-range SAMs like the SA-17 ‘Buk’ and short-range SA-15 ‘Tor’. In addition, Russia has also deployed exotic long-range sensors like the 48Ya6-K1 ‘Podlet’ all-altitude-radar, which can further increase the distances behind the frontlines at which the longer-range Russian SAMs like the S-400 can shoot down Ukrainian jets and helicopters.

The US has supplied significant numbers of the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) to the UkrAF, and these have been ingeniously integrated onto Ukraine’s existing Soviet-made Mig-29 and Su-27 fighters. Anti-radiation missiles like the HARM (and Russian Kh-31P that has been fired in large numbers against Ukrainian SAMs during the war) detect and home in on radar emissions from enemy SAMs when fired. However, if the SAM crew detects the missile being launched, they can generally avoid being hit by turning their radar to passive mode so it stops emitting energy that the missile can detect. Russian (and most Ukrainian) SAMs are also mobile, and so will reposition if they are fired upon in addition to stopping their radar emissions. The result is that while a lot of anti-radiation missiles have been fired by both sides, comparatively few have actually achieved direct hits on SAM systems. They can force SAM operators to stop transmitting with their radars and relocate temporarily, and so have a suppressive effect when used, but HARM has not come close to removing the threat from Russia’s air defences against Ukrainian jets.

This matters because any western jet that might plausibly be supplied to Ukraine will face the same major threat from Russian SAMs. Even the full might of Nato air power would require a serious campaign at scale to degrade Russia’s integrated air defence systems, and would take losses doing so. Such suppression and destruction of enemy air defences requires hundreds of combat aircraft, with very complex mission planning, weaponry, aerial refuelling tankers, sophisticated surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, and specialist training and practise to be viable. The relatively small number of western jets that Ukraine is likely to receive and be able to operate sustainably at some point in the next year or so will not come anywhere close to the required level of capability.

Instead, western jets like the American F-16 and F-18 or Swedish Gripen, would have to fly at very low altitudes in Ukrainian service when within tens of kilometres of the frontlines to reduce the effective range at which they could be detected and tracked by Russian ground-based SAM radars. Uneven terrain like hills and river valleys, and even the curvature of the earth, allows pilots to ‘terrain mask’ by putting solid ground between them and enemy ground-based radars at longer ranges. However, in the largely flat terrain of eastern and southern Ukraine there is a limit to how effective terrain masking can be, and in any case flying at very low altitudes would seriously reduce the effectiveness of combat aircraft in many key missions.

In the West, we have relied heavily on multirole combat aircraft like the F-16, Typhoon and Rafale to provide responsive and precise firepower in support of troops in counterinsurgency and intervention campaigns since the 1990s. However, this form of close air support requires fighters to fly above around 15,000 feet, outside the range of anti-aircraft fire and shoulder-fired MANPADS missiles. The fighters then use targeting pods with powerful cameras to find, identify and then designate targets for guided bombs and missiles. This is not possible in the range of enemy SAM systems, since fighters orbiting over the frontlines at medium altitude would be quickly shot down. At very low altitudes, pilots have an extremely short period of time – merely seconds – to actually see potential targets, due to the flat angle at which they approach and the high speed and evasive flying manoeuvres required to reduce the risks from gunfire and MANPADS. Using targeting pods and accurately delivering laser-guided bombs or missiles to hit moving targets on a battlefield is, therefore, extremely challenging. GPS-guided bombs or standoff missiles can be used, but these can generally only hit fixed targets and the precise coordinates must be known before a weapon is released.

Ukrainian pilots would, therefore, be unlikely to be able to provide any significant close air support to Ukrainian troops in the battles that will define the war this year, even if they receive western fighter jets. Instead, western jets are needed to provide a crucial improvement to Ukrainian pilots’ ability to engage Russian jets and cruise missiles in the air-to-air role. Against cruise missiles western fighters could operate, as the Mig-29 and Su-27s already do, at medium level in safer areas of Ukrainian airspace away from the frontlines.

Against Russian fighters and ground attack aircraft, western fighters flown by Ukrainian pilots would probably still need to stay at low altitudes to avoid being engaged by long-range S-400 SAM systems. However, if equipped with missiles like the latest American AIM-120C/D AMRAAM variants or the European Meteor missile, western fighters could much more credibly threaten and thereby push Russian aircraft away from the frontlines. As Ukrainian SAM systems continue to take slow but steady losses and risk running short of Soviet- and Russian-made missiles to use as ammunition, the provision of western fighters will become critical to keeping the Russian air force from regaining an ability to bomb Ukrainian forces effectively.

Whatever western fighters are ultimately supplied, it will be a significant logistical and training task to create the ground-based support infrastructure and personnel to operate complex modern aircraft under fire from Russian missiles. Western contractors will undoubtedly be necessary at first to help guide and train Ukrainian maintainers, and any fighters supplied would be priority targets for Russian missile attacks on their bases, so would have to move regularly. This imposes a significant degree of political risk. Retraining pilots who are already qualified on Ukrainian fighters is less challenging, however, as western jets are actually significantly easier to fly than their Soviet-made equivalents, although they are more complicated to operate as weapons systems.

Escalation is also overplayed as a concern, as due to the Russian SAM threat, western fighters would be almost purely defensive weapons in Ukrainian hands, unless deliberately supplied with long-range stand-off cruise missiles.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the opportunity costs, however. Western logistics and military personnel capacity is far from infinite, and so the danger with starting to supply western jets now is that the people, resources and supporting infrastructure needed to make it work will be diverted away from support tasks that are more urgent – most notably providing western tanks, armoured vehicles, ammunition and ground-based air defence equipment at scale for the major ground battles to come.

Ultimately, neither the Russian nor Ukrainian armies are designed to rely on air support like Nato forces. Instead, they are primarily artillery and armoured land forces. The Ukrainian Air Force undoubtedly needs western fighters to improve its air defence capabilities and give it more strike options to complement ground based capabilities like HIMARS. However, the question is if the resources needed to make this work are better used elsewhere for now, given that western fighters will not significantly shape the land battles over the coming months.

WRITTEN BY Justin Bronk
https://twitter.com/Justin_Br0nk?ref_sr ... r%5Eauthor
Justin Bronk is the Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology in the Military Sciences team at RUSI. He is also Editor of the RUSI Defence Systems online journal.