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The Big Serge has a good overview of the RU-UA war. The TL;DR is that Ukraine has burned through multiple iterations of armaments and is now reduced to begging for active NATO matériel, hence Germany's reticence to send Leopards. One should understand that Europe's and even America's production capacities have atrophied badly over the decades. Losing hundreds of tanks - the number that Ukraine is asking for - isn't something you replenish within a year.
Serge's prediction that Ukraine will lose the war "gradually, then suddenly" seems plausible given Russia's attrition strategy. If we assume that Russia will win this war, then the question needs to be asked.. how much will actually change? Ukraine as a country isn't particularly important and the population is likely to be hostile to Russia, meaning that to integrate it into Russia proper will be difficult if not impossible.
I keep hearing hysterical rhetoric that the West must win this war or... something something bad. It reminds me of the flawed 'domino theory' that was used to justify the Vietnam intervention. While I don't think NATO will ever proceed towards direct intervention á la Vietnam, I can't help but think that too many of the West's elites have trapped themselves rhetorically where Ukraine's importance is overblown for political reasons (so as to overcome domestic opposition towards sending arms) and it has now become established canon in a way that is difficult to dislodge.
...what?
Ukrainian ammo shortage has been the story of Ukrainian requests for aid since the very start of the war, when Zelensky memorably asked for ammo, not a ride. The entire early war Western response was focused on trying to get Warsaw Pact equipment and ammo to Ukraine in the near term to enable to keep fighting for the long-term effort of an eventual shift to NATO-produced material. These efforts were why Europe did 'ring swaps' of having various countries give their Warsaw Pact gear to Ukraine in exchange for getting NATO surplus. This also came with the obvious point that, because NATO does not produce Warsaw Pact material, would have to gradually train up the Ukrainians to western equipment in order to sustain a meaningful war effort.
This has been a very long-running item since the initial 'will the Ukrainians last another month' phase of the war passed. This is not new, nor have the Ukrainians been 'reduced to begging' for active NATO systems. Transitioning to NATO equipment has been the point for months now.
There's certainly plenty that could be said about Germany's reticence, but it's not because Ukraine is begging from a position of weakness. Germany is reluctant because Ukraine is asking from a position of strength, and if it got the tanks it was asking for the German government position is that it's afraid the German tanks would be enabling Ukraine to beat the Russians so badly the Russians might escalate. Take the German position with a graint of salt, but it's nowhere near a position that Ukraine has burned through everything, it's a fear of the Ukrainians doing even better.
As for this overview being 'good'...
A very cursory look at this account is that 'The Big Serge' was one of the 'there is no Russian panic' sort of accounts during the Kharkiv offensive last September, which is memorable for just how paniced the Russians were and how much war material they abandoned to the Ukrainians. On 9 September, this person was writing how Ukraine could not and would not make meaningful progress towards operational objectives towards Izyum. This was after the Ukrainian breakthrough had begun, and two days before the Russians announced a formal withdrawal from Kharkiv oblast.
This was after a six-month retrospective piece which characterized the Russians as fighting an 'intelligent' war, typical revisionism of the scope and objective of the Russian advance on Kyiv at the start of the war, right down to the 'it was a feint, bro' narrative, and of course the 'Europe's economy is going to crash this winter' predictions. These were accompanied by predictions that the 'rest' of the Ukrainian capabilities were in the process of being attrited to the point that static defense would no longer be possible, and Western support would dry up in the near future... as of half a year ago. Ukraine would have no hope of waging a successful offensive, and of course "Ukraine cannot achieve strategic objectives - all they can do is trade the lives of their men for temporary tactical successes that can be spun into wins by their propaganda arm."
This writer has not, shall we say, had a good run of analyzing the war so far, or for staying clear of the pro-Russian propaganda tropes in the course of resisting pro-Ukrainian ones.
...what?
Serge's prediction has been that a Ukrainian attritional collapse would be happening any month now for over six months now, which is another way of saying that he's been saying it for over half the war now. Notably, Serge was claiming this before one of the largest Ukrainian resource infusions of the war at Kharkiv, as well as the successful Ukrainian attrition campaign at Kherson.
The Russian attrition strategy for months now hasn't been meaningfully based on attriting the Ukrainians at a military level, but the western support at an economic-warfare level. This was the crux of both the Ukranian power grid attacks- which, you might note, have decreased in effectiveness and frequency- but also the gamble on European winter energy. The gamble for some time has been that the Europeans would have to capitulate and seek concessions based on the winter energy crunch.
This has not, shall we say, turned out as the Russians or pro-Russians like Serge were predicting in the summer and fall. European energy is rough, and the long-term impacts will be considerable, but there's a reason that questions of aid focus more on whether Republicans will be sufficiently overwhelmingly supportive in general to avoid embarassing trips rather than the capacity of Europeans to keep funding.
Appeals to the flawed domino theory tend not to address the fact that when Vietnam fell, there were successive communist successes in the region of SE Asia. Not just South Vietnam, but also Laos and Combodia did fall. If you want to analogize Russia and Ukraine to the Domino Theory historical results, it absolutely would imply that Russia keep going, and/or that other countries will seek nuclear breakout capability, whichever your historical metaphor target is.
A far, far more plausible explanation is that US is promising to give mothballed M1 Abrams tanks right now to those who give their Leopard 2s to Ukraine, which would lead to German companies entirely losing all those armies as customers and would be a great boost to US defence contractors.
Leopard 2 is a good tank, but against what the Russians have, it's only a very small part of a combined arms puzzle.
Something like HIMARS is far more impactful.
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Where would Russia go if Ukraine fell this year? I can only think of Moldova and maybe Georgia. Finland is part of the EU which has a common defence clause which in turn would automatically drag in NATO since most of the EU is also part of NATO. Baltics are self-explanatory. Moreover, this all assumes that UA's population would be passive which isn't at all my assumption.
If Russia were to win on the battlefield, they'd have to deal with a restive and deeply hostile population and perhaps even insurgencies. Hence my skepticism that winning the UA war is somehow a geopolitical necessity of titanic proportions, which is what the narrative coming from Western capitals and large parts of the media would have us believe.
This year? Home to lick it's wounds. The strategic defeat to Russia is already in place, due to Domino Theory warnings last year shaping last year's western support last year to Ukraine to the point that Ukraine tore the juggular out of Russia's offensive warfare capability. Russia has lost as many tanks/planes/precision munitions/ammo reserves because of the policy responses of the people who took domino theory seriously.
In the future? That depends on the context of how the conflict ends. Quite possibly back into Ukraine.
This is incorrect. NATO does not automatically drag in all members to any other member's conflicts, and the EU common defense clause does not invoke NATO assets or resources, not least because many key NATO countries are not part of the EU. This is the crux of the argument about European Strategic autonomy being duplicative and at the expense of NATO- the resources, and the burden for supplying them, are not shared by design.
While the Americans would very likely support an EU defense, it is far less clear that they would support activation of NATO into direct combat operations... not least because a failure in Ukraine will likely be a consequence of the very European leading countries who would be trying to involve the US having pressured/compelled a cessation of aid to Ukraine. My guess is that the Americans would provide intelligence, but otherwise work through the European belligerants and sell munitions and equipment to those like Germany who refused to supply the Ukrainians.
This comes down to 'what does Ukraine falling mean?' The linked source falls into the general theme of Russia Stronk propaganda that relies not only only a view of Russian cultural cohesion, but an assumption that the West, but especially Ukraine, are lacking in it. This derives from the Kremlin view that Ukraine is not a 'real country,' with what that means for the population indication to resist.
But this is where we get to the point of underlying assumptions contaminating the topic question. If there is a restive Ukrainian population to be filtered, there is a Ukrainian nation trying to resist. If the Ukrainian nation tries to resist, the only place a Ukrainian nation-state will not exist are the places where Russia is occupying. But Russia is not able to penetrate and occupy Ukraine, due initially to a lack of logistical capacity but now a lack of advanced warfare maneuver capability that has since been attrited. Attrition does not mean the Russians will wipe away the last Ukrainian defenders and there is nothing less- an attrition of Ukrainian capabilities means the Ukrainians start conserving ammo and start trading space for time to receive new supplies and generate new forces for defensive positions to fall back into.
Which means, well, Ukraine is not fallen, especially as the westerners can always supply more ammo. Which they've been doing for nearly a year now, with no signs of being unable to continue. Which defeats the starting assumption that Ukraine is falling.
This makes no sense on a structural level. There is no such thing as a 'geopolitical necessity of titanic proportions,' there are geopolitical dynamics that people might assign titanic weight to. That is a position completely unremoved from your skepticism- your skepticism is not a requirement for the emotional weight other people put onto it.
Nor is there any obvious division here. The way Ukraine would have a meaningful insurgency is if someone supplies insurgency weapons. These insurgency weapons will, for reasons of geography and interests, come from NATO neighbors. But if these NATO neighbors are willing to supply munitions to Ukraine for an insurgency, they could also supply munitions for Ukraine to continue fighting conventionally.
It's not somehow more in NATO's interest to fund a neighborhood insurgency than having a major Russian buildup on their borders nominally there to resist the insurgency they are supplying to keep the Russians occupied.
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