Ukraine ping
The West has provided a trickle of equipment nowhere close to denting the 10 to 1 big gun advantage in Russia’s favor. Western pols highlighted the dollar amounts, 90+% of which is humanitarian aid, to distract from the measly additions to Ukraine’s arsenal. In total, Ukraine has received less than 200 howitzers. In 1964, the first year of the Vietnam War, China alone handed over 1000 artillery pieces to North Vietnam, with 64,000+ in total supplied by 1974. Russia handed over MiG-17’s, MiG-19’s and MiG-21’s, with MiG-21’s being the state-of-the-art Russian airframe of the time. It would as if the US had sent F-15’s, F-35’s and F-22’s to Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War#Confronting_U.S._escalation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev#The_Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-17#Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-19#Vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Vietnam
Given the massive imbalance in firepower, sheer courage alone stands in the way of withering Russian shellfire. Unless they have a death wish, foreigners sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight would literally be more productive picketing the home of their local pol to urge them to send more howitzers and big gun ammo than volunteering in Ukraine.
No. None of the Russian provided equipment was their best. Od F-16 variants would be a good analogy. On the other hand, we are giving Ukraine our most modern artillery.
This is the Western way of war: Make an inadequate effort, stretch out the carnage and achieve higher casualties and damage on both sides, and then give up and pull out.
Just *why* this is the Western way of war is something of a mystery to me.
Maybe the wiser course would be to save our own and weapons of war for that war with China that’s common and the greater war with Russia rather than giving them away to be sold on the black market to Ukraine