They’re gonna learn all about it in the next few weeks.

Again, if the goal is to weaken Russia then a protracted war is precisely what US would be interested in. It’s also a fallacy to frame this as a war between Ukraine and Russia given that all of NATO is propping up Ukraine.

I notice you haven’t answered my question there. The title RAND gave it is “An Unwinnable War, Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine”. So, you tell me why US needs an endgame in Ukraine if the proxy war is going as planned.

While the article indulges the common tropes about Russian army not being able to dominate Ukraine, it is ultimately advocating for freezing the conflict. If RAND believed that Russia would not win a long conflict against the west, then they would be advocating the opposite. The whole point of the proxy war as RAND explained in this article in 2014, was to weaken Russia. So, if that goal was being accomplished through attrition in Ukraine, then why would RAND all of a sudden advocate looking for an offramp?

That’s the crumple zone, the first out of five defence lines is kilometers away from that. At the rate of depletion, the offensive will burn out before it even gets to the first fortified line.

Meanwhile, US is only able to produce 20k artillery shells a month, while Russia is producing around 200k right now. It will literally take years for US to ramp up industrial production. Pretty much everything in the latest package to Ukraine is on order, it’s not coming out of existing stocks anymore.

Meanwhile, Russia hasn’t committed much to this either so far. What happens if US increases its support is that Russia will increase its efforts in turn.

Don’t take it from me though, here’s what Obama said in 2016, pretty sure he’s more informed on the subject than you are.

Obama declares Ukraine to be not a core American interest and that he is reluctant to intervene in the country, because Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”—President Obama

It’s really not given what we plainly see happening. Ukraine is entirely dependent on the west at this point, and this support will run dry eventually.

No, it’s not possible that Ukraine makes any sort of lasting breakthrough or that Russian frontlines will magically collapse. These are deranged fantasies that are resulting in thousands of people dying every day.

The reality of the situation is that the west has basically sent all it has to offer to Ukraine at this point. The new round of air that US just authorized is not coming from existing stocks anymore, it’s contracts to companies to produce these things which will take years to do.

Even if Ukraine managed to achieve a break through, it’s going to come at the cost of the army that the west managed to cobble together for Ukraine. In the first five days of the offensive, Ukraine has already burnt through incredible amounts of men and machines to achieve no actual breakthroughs. They haven’t even made it to the first line of the multi line defences that Russia has created. This is very obviously not sustainable.

There are far more internal political tensions in every western country right now than there are in Russia. It’s far more likely that western countries end up looking at regime changes in the near future than any kind of breakup in Russia. Anybody who thinks that Russia can be balkanized by the west is absolutely delusional.

I recommend actually reading the report before commenting.

lol no, it’s straight up occupation