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Originally Posted by castlebravo92
I think a National Guard division like the 36th probably could have defeated the Russian invasion by itself. Much less an active duty division, much less a full corps with air supremacy.
Ironically, I really think the outcome of this conflict is going to be the emergency of Poland as the dominant military land power in Europe. Their buying spree is impressive, and they are going for pretty much top of the line gear. They'll have an armored force about 6-8x the size of Germany's.
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And given Poland's history, who could blame them?
Since we're all commanding from our armchairs, I'll go out on a limb here.
The result of this war has already been decided, and Putin has lost. I just don't see a path forward for Russia where it becomes able to achieve it's operational/strategic goals, not with the losses they've already suffered.
Russia's best bet is to effectively force Ukraine to concede the land already occupied, but short of a major catastrophe, I don't see Ukraine agreeing to concessions anytime soon. As far as cards to play, Russia could and will resort to additional mobilizations, but without the supporting training, equipment, and leadership, those men are just being fed into a meat grinder. All accounts of Bakhmut are showing Russians using human wave attacks. That isn't a recipe for gaining operational momentum.
The west seems ready to keep supporting Ukraine with equipment for the long haul, and Russia's munitions are shrinking drastically. Reports are showing that they've already reached, and potentially surpassed, critical levels of long range missiles. Their armor forces seem to be gutted, with likely somewhere around 1800-2000 tank losses so far. Much the same with artillery systems. The aircraft situation seems nominally better, but Russia appears averse to flying sorties over Ukrainian airspace, probably doubly so now that Patriots are in theater. And Russia's ability to produce anything advanced has been cut off at the knees due to heavy sanctions and lack of microchips.
Anything can happen of course, but short of walking away with some of the already occupied territory (of god forbid, using nukes), I just can't see Putin achieving any kind of real victory in Ukraine.