>>>It would be a very sad state of affairs if NATO basically used the Ukrainians to soak up as much damage as the Russians can inflict in order to weaken it
No one will openly state it but I'm confident this is the perspective in the US's halls of power. It's possibly the only thing the CIA and State Department have done right in the past ~25 years, and I think it's more a stroke of luck that the Russian military is surprisingly-incompetent than anything deliberate on our part. If Russia had performed as expected, this war would have been over in 72hrs and we'd be making excuses just like we did when our Afghan house of cards folded.
>>>Ukraine is currently well led by a capable democratic leader
>>>Don't know that they have the man power for that
Manpower isn't the problem. They don't have the munitions or the logistics to pull off such grand operational maneuvers. And moving large conventional forces into Russia itself would be a hugely destabilizing escalation. It would give Putin an excuse to actually mobilize his reserves, and give stronger justification for employment of tactical nuclear weapons (which people are already concerned he might use).
No one will openly state it but I'm confident this is the perspective in the US's halls of power. It's possibly the only thing the CIA and State Department have done right in the past ~25 years, and I think it's more a stroke of luck that the Russian military is surprisingly-incompetent than anything deliberate on our part. If Russia had performed as expected, this war would have been over in 72hrs and we'd be making excuses just like we did when our Afghan house of cards folded.
>>>Ukraine is currently well led by a capable democratic leader
democratic? this guy?
https://euobserver.com/opinion/152478
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-zelensky%E2%80%99s-...
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-medvedchuk-tv-channels-zelen...
>>>Don't know that they have the man power for that
Manpower isn't the problem. They don't have the munitions or the logistics to pull off such grand operational maneuvers. And moving large conventional forces into Russia itself would be a hugely destabilizing escalation. It would give Putin an excuse to actually mobilize his reserves, and give stronger justification for employment of tactical nuclear weapons (which people are already concerned he might use).