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Ukraine ping

Bagwell: [Ukraine has clearly been an incredible nation in so many different ways and I mean that very, very sincerely— not only the resilience of the entire nation to just keep going but to be able to effectively dull a country of so much greater size, aggression, military might, and hold them at bay. It is unbelievable. In many ways, they’re their own worst enemy, because actually it means we don’t see how desperate the situation is because everyone thinks Ukraine is having great victories and there are times when they have, but actually, they are still under extreme pressure.

And I think that half the problem is trying not to oversell how well Ukraine have done, even though they have done extremely well. They’ve clearly been able to match the Russian Air Force to a large extent on the terms that they can. Yes, some of these longer-range missiles are harder to attack. And yes, some of that is done through surface-to-air systems rather than air-to-air systems. I’d like to believe Ukraine will find a way no matter what. So, it isn’t a deal breaker, but I don’t want to say that because I don’t want people to give the impression that yes, well, they’ll probably be fine. Because I think the risks are too high of them losing if we don’t help them to the maximum extent.]

Bagwell has plenty of astute observations, but the one he makes in the above excerpt stands out. “No good deed goes unpunished” is how I’d summarize it. It is astonishing that Ukraine is holding the Russian hordes back based on $50b a year in aid. We spent that amount every year for 20 years in Afghanistan, and it never looked like the Afghans could hold the Taliban back without US ground troops for most of it.

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2018-10/54219-oco_spending.pdf#page=20

And the Taliban were a bunch of rifle- and RPG-equipped part-time guerrillas lacking the fighter jets, bombers, cruise and ballistic missiles, tanks, APC’s, howitzers and even mortars that the Russians have.