Posted on 03/14/2024 6:13:00 AM PDT by dennisw
Russia went to war in Ukraine two years ago with twice as many artillery pieces as Ukraine had. But it isn’t the advantage in howitzers that really matters – it’s the advantage in shells.
The Czechs found, for Ukraine, nearly a million shells precisely when Ukraine needed those million shells the most: at the peak of Russia’s winter offensive. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Czech artillery initiative probably saved entire Ukrainian cities, by giving the Ukrainian army the firepower to resist a much bigger Russian army.
It’s no secret how Ukraine got into an artillery bind late last year. In early 2023, according to The Washington Post, the United States quietly brokered a deal with South Korea – a country with sprawling artillery factories – to purchase, likely for billions of dollars, a whopping one million shells in the standard Nato 155mm calibre, now also the standard artillery round of Ukraine.
Those million shells, heaped on top of ammunition Ukraine was getting directly from the USA and European countries, freed Ukraine’s 3,000 or so howitzers to blast away at a rate of at least 10,000 rounds a day – matching, for the first time, the daily firing rate of Russia’s 6,000 howitzers.
For months, the Ukrainians at least achieved firepower parity with the Russians. While many analysts rate Ukraine’s mid-2023 counteroffensive, which liberated just a few hundred square miles in southern and eastern Ukraine, as a profound disappointment, even modest gains are preferable to losing ground.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
“ The Czechs found, for Ukraine, nearly a million shells precisely when Ukraine needed those million shells the most”
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Good… let Europeans do what they want. Just NO MORE BILLIONS of American taxpayers’ dollars and debt!
No , struck your nerve.
Fact; Russia invaded the free (albeit corrupt) nation of Ukraine.
Be careful, there. Some will get the drools ...
And, of course, THANK YOU to the Czech Republic!
The Czechs believe the Czechs.
The Czech government is far-right by Euro standards, right there with the previous Polish government. They organized this.
This is not about US party politics. Other people are doing things on their own, somewhere else.
This news of the shells is on Euro news sources.
This stuff, “borders, culture and language”, is what has been generally used to justify political nationalism since it was invented in 1789. It was the essence of the politics of the 19th and 20th century.
It has created at least a hundred countries.
It is all fitting and proper to do this because Uke Azov Nazis tore down Russian language signs. Then they forbade the use of the Russian language. Then they persecuted and even reinitiated a genocide against Russian speakers, Jews, Romas and Poles. This was the reality. I realize you have so much invested in a fantasy world where Ukrainians walk on water and their ghosts fly aircraft in the sky. Unfortunately...
Putting aside the usual name-calling on Ukraine-related threads, there are questionable factual points in this fervently pro-Ukraine author’s article. Artillery is in fact important but he makes it sound like it’s the whole ball of wax. The Russians have been dismantling Ukraine’s air defenses for two years and the current big story IMO is the Russia’s air force dropping lots bombs, and specifically launching enormously powerful glide bombs from quite far away. As I understand it, these bombs pack a much larger punch than artillery shells. Also, he talks about the Russians losing tens of thousands of men taking Avdiivka without citing any source for that. Certainly, the Ukrainians have been making “meat wave” claims of vast Russian casualties for a very long time yet there is no independent evidence backing this up. In fact, the independent pro-Ukrainian mediazona / Washington Post project tracking Russian causalities through the review of social media and obituaries… are not backing up these claims at all. At the same time, we have President Zelensky claiming ridiculously low Ukrainian casualty figures (that contradict prior US and EU numbers). Finally, the article’s theory that getting the Ukrainians more artillery shells is just a matter of money (and therefore is the fault of Donald Trump) is just silly. The limiting factor is shell production, not funding. The anti-Russian coalition is just not able to make shells as fast as the Russians are, not even close. Now, that may change in the next few years, but for now, it’s not as if the USA could just write a check and magically conjure up lots more shells. And there’s lots of technical flaws in the article as well, such as where he claims that firing double the shells from a single artillery piece is just as good as having two artillery pieces — that’s just false as barrel wear and wear & tear on the guns are real things, and two guns are twice as difficult to destroy as one. The article is basically just ideology, not anything real in terms of military analysis.
Zeepers are a good morning laugh.
“Then you don’t mind the Eastern half of Ukraine joining Russia - since they want Russian language and Russian borders?”
Would you mind Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Texas joining Mexico because there are a lot of Spanish speakers there?
L
That’s the same language the Ukrainians used when they slaughtered the Poles where half of my family came from.
Avdviika was not the most vulnerable. It was the most hardened and well-defended making the Ukraine loss even more devastating.
Would you mind Russia or China establishing secret spy and military bases on the US border? supplying offensive missiles to Mexico? Organizing a political coup in Mexico to make sure they controlled an actively anti-USA government there?
There's a simple in rule in life, or in international politics - as you give, so shall you receive.
Yes, good catch. This article is pretty much a Democrat Party campaign piece. Look at this BS:
“The simple truth is that disgraced ex-president Donald Trump, who is running for the presidency this year and is weirdly fond of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, voiced his ambivalence toward Ukraine. And Johnson translated that ambivalence into a one-man Congressional blockade of US support for Ukraine.”
What a load of cr@p.
More TDS bull malarkey:
“Ukraine began running out of ammo because that’s what Trump wanted.”
Only a corrupt leftist scumbag would believe this crap. It’s so obvious that David Axe and his cohorts want this war and the killing to continue because of the money it generates for quite a few ghoulish, unsavory characters.
Trump, like most true Americans wants a settlement to be made so that the bloodshed can stop. So that Ukraine can start to rebuild their infrastructure and restore as much of their natural resources and their industries as they can. So that we, the U.S., can stop being pressured to support the continued grift by Biden and Ukraine’s government with our (unaudited) tax dollars.
I have to wonder about FReepers who put such leftist garbage out here, coupled with a taunt like that in Post 3, somewhat daring us to disagree with Biden and the Democrats.
Count me as one who dares to do so.
And the best part of their NATO membership? Rather than Ukraine contributing 2% of their GDP for a mutual defense, American taxpayers will contribute their portion because...wait for it....they have no GDP!
maybe... but only if we could get guarantees from Mexico that they would take Tuscan and perhaps Albuquerque... ROFL
perhaps we could trade them for baja california...
:-)
Tucson arizona “autocorrected” on my submit button click.
You people are insane. We don’t get to have boarders, culture and language. We are being invaded yet you crazy zealots want for Ukraine what we are not allowed and on top of it you want to spend 100s of billions to help them achieve what we are called names for. Freaking circus with BS front and center of the three rings. Corruption of the left, graft on the right. The stands/audience filled with the corpses of 100K-250K dead Ukrainian men. I will tell you this Z will try to throw women into his meat grinder but that will be his end.
You Zeepers are insane. We have an active invasion in our country but Russia Russia Russia is more important to you people are so illogical it would be humorous if not deadly. .
“they have no GDP!”
They will have, and with Trump at the helm the NATO nations will all be on notice to get their defense spending up to the NATO consensus percent of GDP.
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