Doesn't Ukraine have a lot more to lose over time? Russia can just flatten the terrain, or ultimately nuke. The reverse isn't possible.
It seems most Ukrainians agree that the worst would be to live under Russian dictatorship. Maybe they have experience in this area.
As far as conventional arms go: Russia has quite a few planes, tanks, and artillery; however, so long as the USA wills it, the Ukraine will have more anti-air missiles, more anti-tank munitions, and more long-range rockets.
In any long-range fight, being able to locate your enemy is key; the pentagons ability to identify the location of Russian positions appears to be unsurpassed. So long as they are passing this intel to the Ukraine, along with long-range weapons to act on it, any attempt at a Russian advance will be done without access to local command/supply posts.
Edit: suppose the old man has properly lost it.
If Putin drops a tactical nuke on a Ukranian military position, will Nato really respond in kind? Seems like damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
It was a small but interesting news item, that a few days before the invasion, some of the US stealth bombers were moved to Rammstein air force base. So at any time there would be the capability of a forceful answer. But this also shows how ridiculous the claims were, that the NATO would seek to attack Russia, as that is the thing the NATO has tried hard to avoid so far.
Both countries can’t use nukes because the other has them too. India has a fast growing economy at stake and Pakistan may be an economic disaster but Pakistani elites have huge assets in the west which can be frozen.
Usage of nukes in the Indian subcontinent has easily calculable first order effects.
In Ukraine it’s entirely different. It is ridiculous to suggest that the US will welcome the destruction of the entire human race if Putin even nukes civilian centres in Ukraine. They won’t. But there are second and third order consequences of such actions which are not in favour of Russia and certainly not in favour of Putin and his friends.
The new Cold War will be sealed and it will be game over for his regime. He wants western apathy and social disorder to continue. And he wants a disaster zone in Ukraine as his personal entry point into Europe proper.
If that happens, US helps to Ukraine stops, period. I would expect Europe is left on its own and that may be a bad time for Ukraine and actually not only Ukraine.
I certainly hope all this is incorrect since I have family and life in Europe.
Just what Russians are waiting. HIMARS flying over Ukrainian border into Russia and Balarus. Get some other allies involved, declare it a WW3 as pretext to invade Baltics.
How does Russia plan to take the Baltics when they cannot even take a city less them 300km from their border in 6 months?.
I'm not sure what the western forces game plan is and i'm not sure they actually want to help Ukraine too much, I think they are walking the fine line of wanting to hurt Russia enough and see what happens, but they don't want to truly arm Ukraine because if Russia really loses, they might just nuke.
They could have done much more and given way more, why those are large numbers, it's still not on the scale truly needed to defeat Russia. They still hold back plenty.
They are obviously not going to say that directly in public, so public statements mean little.
All of this could change in a second if Pooty either messes with Moldavia/Poland/Baltics or uses um unconventional weapons. I would not consider measured responses to be an open invitation for silliness