[Right_Wing_Madman]

it is better to be analytical rather than over wrought when it comes to the Ukraine conflict.

Ready for the analysis.

Granted, proxy wars do not always unfold and progress neatly to an anticipated conclusion because proxies may have goals and purposes that conflict with ours.

But in this case, you would agree that the US and Ukraine have the same goals: Russia out of Ukraine, right?

Yet Ukraine is culturally European

It is? Have you been to Ukraine? Kiev is far more similar to Moscow than it is to Munich, Paris, or Vienna. Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union for 300 years. You don't just shake that off in 30 years.

The developing combination of modern main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and long-range strike capability are likely to give Ukraine the combat power needed to defeat Russia this year.

Have you crunched the numbers on that? Do you think 105 tanks and 60 Bradleys from NATO will be the difference maker? (I'm not going to count the 31 M1s from the US, those are 12-18 months away). Ukraine started this war with 2,500 main battle tanks and 4,000 other armored vehicles. Russia has thousands of tanks in Ukraine already.

Retaking or at least investing Crimea

And which Ukrainian units do you propose retake Crimea? Ukraine can't create any more brigades. They've mobilized everything. The guys they're pulling off the street now will be used as replacements in existing brigades, which are mostly at 50 percent strength.

would almost certainly prompt Putin's ouster and collapse the Russian military as an effective combat force.

And who is this Putin ouster I keep hearing about over and over in past the last year? Which party, which revolutionary force is going to overthrow the Kremlin? Is Trotsky staging a comeback? Putin was elected to a six-year term back in 2018. Do you know anything about Russia's political system?

The risk of a direct conflict between Russia and the US and NATO is less than it may seem.

It's really impossible to know. At this point, all the escalatory steps point to a direct conflict between the US and Russia.

Putin and his circle know that Russia would not survive such a clash, whether nuclear or conventional.

In terms of number of personnel, number of equipment, and capabilities, the US and Russian armies are about even. It would be a slaughter for both sides. As far as nukes go, the US has no defense for Russia's hypersonic missiles. None, zero, nada.

And over three quarters of a century of armed and tense peace, the US and Russia have avoided direct conflict even when proxy wars raged on.

Okay, this is true.

[Rockingham]

(1) The West and Ukraine both want Russia out of Ukraine.

(2) History aside, Ukraine is now strongly inclined not toward Russia but toward western and central Europe and their greater freedom, rule of law, democratic accountability, and higher standards of living. Moreover, a decade of aggression and now a general invasion make for great hostility by Ukrainians toward Russia and all things Russian.

(3) Russian tanks are markedly inferior to the US and NATO models of main battle tanks now beginning to flow into Ukraine. Moreover, Russian military organization, training, and doctrine are obsolete, reliant on brute force, rigid plans, numerical superiority, and on Soviet experience in WW II.

In contrast, Ukraine has adopted the US and NATO combined arms approach, which emphasizes speed, flexibility, and the coordination and application of military force from different combat arms toward decisive common objectives. For examples of how that works, review Germany’s invasion of France in 1940 and the US invasion of Saddam’s Iraq in the Gulf War in 1990-91. In both instances, combined arms tactics beat numerically superior forces, with small, fast, and smart beating big, slow, and stupid.

For Ukraine, the best approach to retaking Crimea is to destroy the Kerch bridge and the rail lines and roads that supply Crimea and to cut off the Russian water and electric supply there. The new extended range missiles approve for Ukraine will do that with relative ease. As the Russians try to use their best armor and mechanized units to relieve Crimea, they will be wrecked by a relative handful of Western model main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and well-directed artillery and missile fire of various types.

As with other autocracies, Russian history provides examples when economic distress and military defeat led to regime change, such as in 1905, 1917, and 1989. For Putin, the greatest risk comes from the oligarchs and from the Russian military and security services. Defeat in Crimea would almost certainly prompt Putin's ouster and collapse the Russian military as an effective combat force.