US working with Poland to provide Ukraine with fighter jets

FT ^ | 03/06/2022 | Demetri Sevastopulo and Stefania Palma

[Spktyr]

I’ve seen estimates of between 100K-200K so I’m not sure how much credence to give that part.

I believe the Russians got some bad intel passed to them by the Chinese (as one report has it) and got additional bad intel from their allies and agents in the breakaway provinces.

I think they thought it was going to be a walkover or close to it and decided to send in the newbies to blood them or at least get experience. They had their force mix adjusted accordingly. I don’t think they were planning rope-a-dope because we’re not seeing their frontline units and gear yet, and I’ve not heard of any Russian exodus or even rotation from Syria, where they’ve got a lot of their recent gear and some of their better if not best troops. Remember, reports from *our* guys in Syria of the actual Russian troops (not the ‘mercenaries’) and gear there was that they knew what they were doing and they were nothing to laugh or sneeze at.

It takes time to move troops around and react to that intel failure.

Further, I don’t actually think Putin is stupid enough to want to take all of Ukraine and enter a long occupation. I still think this is a strike-decap-fall back operation where they want to collect what they see as perfidious government figures, certain items of interest, then fall back to the two breakaway provinces and hold those rather than try to hold all of the Ukraine. I think if he had wanted to take and hold the entire country that he would have brought up the heavy line battalions that they still have and run those in first. We would have seen T-90M Proryv variants from the Western Military District backed by older T-90s. So far, nobody’s got good photo evidence of *any* T-90s showing up in the Ukraine. Further indication that this wasn’t likely intended as a full occupation is the fact that none of the BTR-Ts or BMPT Terminators have been sighted, as their entire reason for existing is to escort and protect tanks in urban settings. I believe these indicate that Ivan isn’t (or at least wasn’t) planning to stick around in cities very long.

[Eleutheria5]

That’s their lookout. They asked for planes. The planes Poland offers are obsolete MIGs from the cold war era, which is all they have. Poland denies that they are offering this, Blinken says he’s trying to do the deal where Poland, in exchange for supplying Ukraine with these dinosaurs, gets some shiny new F22s. If I were Ukraine, I’d take what I can and “go get ‘em”. Israel did the same in ‘48, and had to fight Mesershmidts with small arms fired by the pilot in open-cockpit old relics, and “bomb” enemy positions with seltzer bottles. When your back’s against the wall, you do what you can. The pilots who get into these things have elephant balls, and probably will die in them.