[HaplessOperator]

Why no one really cared when this exact same thing happened in 2008 with Georgia under an identical pretense. Answer might simply be that social media feels couldn't really get attached to it, and it was simply realpolitik ruling the day, and that American politics weren't as divisive.

Cold reality of the situation is that Ukraine is facing serious manpower issues, and with the lines as stagnated and fortified as they are, the only way anyone's breaking through is Ukraine collectively decides that the next generation isn't worth it, conscripts every MAM in the country, and Zergs them over minefields a mile deep to capture territory that otherwise has no realistic chance of being recaptured without risking nuclear war over a massive Western invasion and establishment of a no-fly zone.

So Western counter-invasion and sweeping the Russkies with an actually functional combined arms military off the table... what's the play? What's the end goal?

Is it to fuel a meat grinder for the next 3 years? 6 years? Are we supposed to push on through a decade of CombatFootage videos of Ukrainian soldiers throwing beehives into Russian dugouts, Switchblades and Lancets counter sniping each others' operators, increasingly rare T-72s setting new manned spaceflight records, soldiers executing each other over survivable wounds, Ukrainian civilian housing structures being bombed into atomization?

Do we sit here and do this year after year while being chided by allies that sent four artillery barrels that our 120 weren't enough? By an ally that sent 50 MRAPS wagging their finger at us because 400 Strykers, 300 Bradleys, 200 M113s, 5000 humvees, and 1000 MRAPs wasn't our fair share? That the 100,000 ATGMs and 10,000 Javelins just doesn't stack up to three dozen AMX-10s and two dozen Milans? That we didn't do enough when our first batch of artillery shells outscaled Europe's total yearly production?

Do we do this while the minefields grow deeper, more impenetrable as they finish stacking another decade onto the fifty years' worth of mines they've already laid in belts around these captured territories, and as the demographic impact of casualties keeps on growing?

I'm all for seeing Russian troops mulched, don't get me wrong, and the suicide highlight reel still makes me chuckle darkly and shake my head, but... if we're capable of making the realization that Ukraine probably isn't going to get that territory back, or even most of it back, then what's the next outcome? Are we actually just doing this to see Russia ground to a nub? We're already watching Bukhankas and golf carts being used as personnel carriers. We're already looking at WWII hardware and some of the most ork-ass construction ever seen outside of Syria rolling around on a modern battlefield. It can't really be said that we expect them to do BETTER against some country that ISN'T Ukraine, and a multipolar war against Russia has only two realistic outcomes: Moscow burning and doing a McDonald's construction any% speedrun or nukes flying.

So... what's left? Is there some reason left to prolong the war by pouring money and war stocks into this other than to watch people die for ground that's practically never going to change hands again, only to be taken to task that no matter what we send, it's still not going to be enough, and that - at the end of it all - if we don't push even harder at nuclear annihilation by swearing blood oaths to deploy troops before we've even got a peace deal on the table, that we're unreliable demons from the pit?

None of this should be construed as support for Russia. Ukraine was brutally invaded by an aggressor Russia in an illegal war over absurd pretenses, and they do not deserve what's taking place. It's a tragedy of the highest order, and every Ivan with his skull split by 5.56 is a step closer to making it right. But I feel like it's worth asking what the end goal, after three years, currently is - while evaluating what's actually possible but not necessarily palatable.

I might be wrong, and anyone's free to disagree with me, but I'm not exactly sure that another 200 Leopards or another dozen Patriots or another ten thousand Javelins is what makes blue Robin Williams pop out of the lamp and snap his fingers back to the map as it existed in 2022.