Is The West Sending Enough Aid to Ukraine?

Ukrainian servicemen fire a 130 mm towed field gun M-46 on a front line, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, near Soledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, November 10, 2022. Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Reuters / Friday, November 11, 2022  

Eliot Cohen, The Atlantic: Western Aid to Ukraine Is Still Not Enough 

Ukraine’s friends have poured a considerable amount of weaponry into the nation’s fight for survival. The United States alone has provided more than $25 billion of matériel, including 160 modern artillery pieces, 38 medium-range HIMARS rocket systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, and tens of thousands of advanced munitions of all types. Allies such as Poland and the Czech Republic have done even more (in relative, not absolute terms), supplying hundreds of Soviet-model tanks, an array of modern artillery systems, and all kinds of nonlethal support. Even hesitant Germany has sent a score of advanced guns and missile launchers, some antiaircraft systems, and more. In total, the West has sent more than 320 tanks, 2,400 other armored vehicles, 450 artillery pieces, and more than 135 air-defense systems to Ukraine, and more is on the way. 

This is still not enough.  

Read more ....  

Update: US military spending in Ukraine reached nearly $50 billion in 2022 – but no amount of money alone is enough to end the war (The Conversation)  

WNU Editor: I sometimes wonder if I am living in an alternate reality. On the one hand I read opinion pieces like the one above by Eliot Cohen from the Atlantic that says Russia is suffering disastrous defeats. Its economy is in a shambles and near collapse. And that if Ukraine is given even more weapons and support their victory is assured. 

On the other hand I talk to my friends and family members in Ukraine and they tell me a different story. They confirm to me reports that Ukraine's military has suffered 100,000+ deaths and over 250,000 injured, stats that EU President Von der Leyen herself confirmed two months ago .... Von der Leyen statement about death of 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers cut from speech (Voice of Ukraine). And that while Ukraine has approximately 700,000 men in uniform, the vast majority are like cousins and their sons, they are in uniform but they are nowhere fit for combat. 

And as for the Russian side. If the economy is collapsing I am certainly seeing no evidence of that. And on the military side, even Western sources are admitting that Russia has deployed or is in the process of deploying over 500,000 fresh combat troops and reservists near or in Ukraine itself for an expected offensive in the coming weeks. 

Bottom line. 

You can send a trillion dollars in Western military aid to Ukraine. But if you do not have the numbers and trained troops to use it, and the Ukraine military has been bled dry after 11 months of war, this aid will be destroyed or discarded on the battlefield.