Trump would be hated in Ukraine and in some eastern European countries for that but he would be lauded everywhere else and it would be a massive win for him domestically. I just can’t see Ukraine agreeing to give up any of its territory unless they think they are in a losing position already.
I think you get NATO wrong when you think they are in the business of giving nukes to anyone. Among the NATO members only the USA, the UK and France have nuclear weapons (or nukes, if you prefer). Ukraine will never get nuclear weapons from any other country, but if they were admitted in NATO they would get the protection that Article 5 provides to all members of the alliance. That would include the promise by the three NATO nuclear powers that they would use neclear weapons to defend Ukraine if they consider it the adequate response in a given situation. This is vague on purpose, and because it cannot be any other way.
Manpower is the bottleneck, not EW systems. And despite what you might infer from NK soldiers’ presence, Russia has many more.
Except for who is doing the telling and who is doing the listening you might be right.
But I think it’s more like this:
Putin tells trump to leave NATO and abandon Ukraine. trump does so, de facto if not de jure. Putin tells NATO: “I get all of Ukraine or I start in on destabilizing all of you.” US-less NATO dithers then accedes. Ukraine is cut off from all significant Western aid and is decisively defeated and overrun over the next year-ish. Or surrenders which amounts to the same thing.
Can’t see the US pulling out of NATO. Even if Trump would like to.
With a pliant MAGA congress anything is possible.
Which is immediately followed by Putin starting in on destabilizing all of them.
There might be a few NATO countries that idiotic, but certainly not all of them.
ISW has analysis of Putin’s recent statements since the US election.
He seems to expect sanctions to be removed before any serious talks begin.
The article is quite interesting. It also goes into the current situation and problems inside Russia.
Link Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 8, 2024 | Institute for the Study of War
Never Mind, I’ll create a new thread.
Posted in the news thread. Any discussion was immediately shut down.
This is a pivotal decision. Ukraine finally has the ability to strike back. The target list should be ready whenever Ukraine picks the right time to strike.
Hopefully other countries like Britain and France will give permission.
Of course this won’t immediately change anything. Except Russia will lose more munitions storage and command centers. Russia has excellent air defense and many missiles will be shot down.
They might get a couple, but I wouldn’t say “many”. The ATACMS isn’t a slow cruise missile or drone puttering along at a couple hundred MPH, it’s a ballistic missile that comes in at Mach 3, making it pretty hard to hit.
Agreed. They’re not going to be shooting down any, much less many, ATACMS.
Oh, they’ll shoot down all the ATACMs. They always have. The problem for Russia is, all that pesky debris keeps falling onto the target, setting it on fire and blowing it up anyway.
Another unfortunate accident happens to a critic of Putin in Russia. It’s just a mystery, I tell you! I guess we’ll never know the truth.
Ballet dancers are known for their clumsiness, right?
Naah, just their suicidal depression. Firearms being hard for Russian civilians to obtain, jumping off tall buildings’ balconies or out their windows is Russian society’s go-to can’t-miss method of suicide.
/sarcasm
They have certainly lost the devastating effectiveness they had in the early days, but they are still a big problem for Russia
The problem now for Russia is that the ATACMS decision opens the door to France and the UK to allow Ukraine to use the SCALP missiles in a similar way, and they seem to be extremely effective in reaching their targets (though the Russians claim otherwise).
Didn’t take long for Washington to back-pedal. Dammit. I thought Joe had finally grown a pair.
The Republicans position on Ukraine seems pretty clear.
Has been for over 8 years now. Even though the hot war is only 2-1/2 years old.