It makes sense that they won't allow their own skin to be ravaged (United States, Britain, Germany, France etc), but why not the Baltics and Poland, at this point?
I'm surprised they haven't done so, after these long months
It makes sense that they won't allow their own skin to be ravaged (United States, Britain, Germany, France etc), but why not the Baltics and Poland, at this point?
I'm surprised they haven't done so, after these long months
It helps to reframe what 'winning' means for NATO. It does want to weaken Russia. But kicking Russia out of Ukraine as fast as possible wouldn't achieve that goal. In a war of attrition, imperialists can keep drip feeding weapons to Ukraine (bought with loans that will later be used to asset strip the country) and slowly bleeding Russia. (What NATO didn't account for is that Russia would win the war of attrition, but that's another issue.)
The longer the conflict, the more the US can prop up it's domestic military employment figures. It doesn't want to send soldiers to fight and die so much as it wants to create jobs in a way that lets the state funnel billions of taxpayer money (here, Ukrainian taxpayers' more than USians') into the military industrial complex. In other words, the longer the war, the more they line their own pockets.
Plus, thankfully, no other neighbour has been stupid enough to think it could defeat Russia in a conventional war on its own turf. Remember that Ukraine had one of the best militaries in the world before this fight, with recent, active military experience and a decade to stockpile arms and prepare for war with Russia. Imagine being tiny Latvia with 1.8m total population. Russia's active military is over 1m and rising. Latvia wouldn't stand a chance except as part of a whole NATO offensive. Even then, I would expect it to immediately consider withdrawing and becoming neutral to avoid being obliterated in that event.
As for Poland. Got to wonder whether Belarus would become engaged at that point. And if Poland gets involved, the war is going to get very close to Germany. And its politicians are cowards who are happy to send others to their deaths but have no interest in fighting themselves.
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Good point. Also got to keep the war going long enough for German industry to collapse.
Speaking of. Comrade @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml, what's the state of war propaganda like in your neck of the woods? I heard of the army size increase and some things that smell of preparation for annexing western Ukraine, but not much else.
About a state of reality, i can't be certain, everything looks rather like just the typical mindless russophobic drive Poland always get aboard when happening, just this one is the farthest going yet. very much doubt if Poland will do anything drastic without USA approval, and i'm unsure if all the escalations are born in Warsaw or rather in the Washington. Saberratling is definitely local but Polish government had deserved reputation of being cowardly. Army size and arms increase is ongoing, but Polish army was tragicaly weak before and everything is mired in corruption and inefficiency.
About propaganda, i seen a mirror in toilet in market display proukrainian propaganda at me, it's everywhere. It's also month from parliamentary elections, the most important ones in Poland.
Thank you.
Oh, nice. Now I know when to keep my ear to the news from Poland.
Regardless of who win the elections (i guess it's PiS again, they will either just win or falsify it) i don't see any change in bootlicking USA and UA, but if PiS lose, the actual intervention, not to mention annexation of Lwów is way less probable.
Later used to asset strip the country?
More like currently stripping assets. They started almost half a year ago.
Why do you say that Ukraine had a good military? I was under the impression that it was a poor military before the war began.
i think he meant because of the civil war, so there were a lot of battle tested people, and the soviet equipment and war doctrine they inherited.
i don't entirely agree with him tho, the country was riddled with corruption, this probably hurts the effectiveness of army and the nato factor, ukranian personal were trained by nato, which led to a mishmash of training, war doctrines and equipment
Ukraine started off as the most well-armed European army besides Russia. Thousands of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery pieces, hundreds of jets, large stockpiles of artillery ammunition and small drones, etc. This was all backed by years of ideological hardening and training and the willingness to conscript right off the bat.
All of that has been whittled down and the delusion nurtured both by Ukraine and the Western media to dominate the (English-speaking) information sphere. This has the effect of the West sending minimal replacements for the equipment spent and lost because they believed they only had to kick in the door for the whole rotten structure to fall apart.