Posted on 07/08/2022 7:08:28 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
Republican James E. Risch (Idaho) was in Ukraine, touring the country. He was escorted by Ukrainian forces because the State Department refused to provide him security once he crossed the Ukrainian border. He met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, and came away with the conclusion that the current U.S. strategy has not properly adjusted to the latest phase of the fighting.
Russian forces are pummeling Ukrainian civilian and military targets in the Donbas with their superior artillery. Ukrainian forces are still not receiving enough of the weapons that might give them the advantage — including long-range air defenses, longer-range artillery, heavy armor and fighter planes. The White House process of trying to parse which weapons would be “escalatory” is a recipe for a stalemate.
“If you are just giving weapons to fight to a stalemate, that’s not a good situation and that has consequences,” he said. “We need to be in or out. And if we are in, we need to give them what they need to win.”
In Madrid, Biden promised that the United States and Europe will support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression “as long as it takes.” But he didn’t say that he would give Ukraine the means to shorten that timeline. Even though the United States has pledged billions to support Ukraine’s military, only a fraction of those resources have arrived, leaving the Ukrainian military badly outgunned in the Donbas.
Privately, several administration officials told me that the delays are not a result of any problem with the actual delivery of weapons. The core problem is the protracted hand-wringing inside the Biden policy team over each weapons decision. Risch said this is caused by a misguided concern that if Putin starts to lose badly, he might escalate further.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Getting their butts kicked yet russian gains are incremental at best. If ukraine was truly getting their butts kicked they would have the entire coast, all of the donbass and kharkiv by now.
In real life, the real world, Russians are a week or two tops from totally rolling up the Donbass. After that there will be nothing but cow pastures between them and the Dnieper.
Look for Ukraine to surrender in about a month and a half and nato to be forced to disband a week or two after that.
The ukie-controlled part of the Donbass was like a very much larger version of Iwo-Jima, very heavily fortified and not subject to simply being stormed or anything like that.
ganeemead on 31st July “Look for Ukraine to surrender in about a month and a half and nato to be forced to disband a week or two after that.”
Wow, so in your fantasy world Ukraine surrendered in mid-September and NATO disbanded by October 2022?
you rival Cheech and Chong...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.