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What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news. Every optimistic story about Ukraine's war effort in the last year has failed to bear fruit. And nuggets of facts go unchallenged, such as the average age of Ukraine's soldiers now being 42.
The U.S. estimate as of August (according to Wikipedia) is that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed with another 120,000 wounded. I would treat this as a floor, personally. The Ukrainian forces at the start of the war were 200,000 regular soldiers and 100,000 paramilitary. I think it's safe to say these troops have been utterly gutted. The size of the Ukrainian army is reportedly 800,000 today but at this point it must be nearly entirely conscripts. Conscripts with an average age of 42. To channel George Carlin, think of the average 42 year old. How would they fare in a trench? Now realize half of Ukrainian soldiers are older than that.
Millions of people have fled Ukraine. The population (as of 2022) had already declined from 51 million to 36 million within the 1991 borders. It is likely much lower today. We will soon see the first instance in more than 150 years of a country losing half its population. (Either the Potato Famine or the Paraguayan War seem like the last potential candidates for this happening).
What people don't realize is how incredibly RARE this is. The population of other war-torn regions such as Afghanistan and Iraq has skyrocketed. You can't even see the conflicts on a population chart. Syria had a brief decline but has rebounded and is now higher than ever before. The population of Russia dipped during WWII by about 10% but by 1955 had rebounded again to an all-time high.
The combination of low fertility, huge emigration, and war deaths will depopulate Ukraine to a degree that hasn't been seen in modern times.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine? Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
But the deaths suffered by Ukrainian conscripts (and yes Russian conscripts too) are very real. We are trading the deaths of real people for theoretical future benefits. And we are destroying an entire country in the process. Why not go to the bargaining table and end this cruel and pointless war?
Do you think any of the concerns you've raised are relevant to why the West supports Ukraine?
No. I don't. I think the West supports Ukraine because it want to punish Putin and weaken Russia. And Ukraine is acceptable collateral damage.
Here's a better question:
"Why should the West still support Ukraine".
It’s likely cheaper for the west to fund Ukraine. While you might say Putin won’t go for more that’s not a guarantee and against a lot of his history.
The EU and the US would need to tie up significant resources in the area as a counterweight to Russia. Or they can just fund Ukraine today.
Every Russian leader for centuries has expanded Russian borders thru military conflict since the founding of Moscow. There is no guarantee that Moscow suddenly modernized and acts within the international order with their next leaders and every cultural indicator that the next guy would probably be like the last guy.
But there is nothing new here. The imminent demise of Ukraine has been predicted weekly in some communities since the start (looking at you Davis Sacks). You are right the west is slowing down on armaments which they should not be doing. They should be increasing them. Perhaps even sending in western troops to just end this thing.
The west is slowing arms shipments because it’s running low on them and America has a completely dysfunctional government that can’t make more. Not because it doesn’t want to.
It's hardly just America: the EU has fallen pretty far short of its promised artillery ammunition production, with what seems to be lots of finger pointing at whom should be footing the bills for expanding factories that may be shuttered as soon as the war ends.
As best as I can tell, American contributions are being limited by (1) a mismatch in kind of materiel: a war involving the US depends a lot more on air power dropping bombs and cruise missiles than millions of unguided artillery shells (ironically, both Koreas are equipped for this and have been quietly supplying their sides); (2) an unwillingness to share more advanced technology for fear of losing the advantage of its novelty: we're not giving stealth aircraft or tanks with classified armor because we'd prefer the exact performance be a surprise when we need it; and (3) because we want other parties, notably Western Europe, to increase their defense investments rather than expect Team America, World Police to show up every time they ask.
I think it's fair to add (4) that domestic American politics has reached a point where Ukraine support is no longer unconditional on the part of the opposition party, but subject to negotiations that are politically painful for the current government to concede and (5) that there are some categories of support that the US could draw from WW3 stockpiles, but refuses to (such as re-mobilization of much of the mothball-ground vehicle storage yards)
Of these, however, the most relevant are (1) (war material mismatch, particularly artillery), which is expected to start reversing in late 24/25, and (3) coalition considerations. One of the under-recognized aspects of the Biden Ukraine-supporting-coalition approach has been how much of it has been centered around involving the Europeans, as opposed to a 'fast but American-alone' approach that risked being both insufficient for the time and also giving the Europeans political pretexts to not get on board with the Ukraine support in earnest.' A particular example was the German tank issue- as frustrating as it was, if the US had delivered 'escalatory' western-armor out of the gate, there was a real and non-trivial chance the Germans would have refused to approve Lepord deliveries from anyone.
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Some of that is Republican blocking arms. Though I do think we have a lot of arms we could bring to the fight that are abandoned still. We have a lot of tanks, AFV, old F-18 etc that are being abandoned. Some things like artillery we do seem low on.
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