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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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