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Comment by ramon156 | Hacker News Reader

I don't like dabbling in politics, but can anyone confidently say "give them x and y and this war is over"

Because I would have no idea how to determine what would be needed to bring peace

If a couple squadrons of modern NATO aircraft were employed, It would mean total air superiority, All Russian tanks Artillery antiaircraft and apcs destroyed within a week, absolutely no supplies going to the troops on the ground.

I'm a strong supporter of giving more material to Ukraine, but unfortunately a couple squadrons wouldn't make much of a dent. For air supremacy where you can do whatever you want in the air, you need to destroy enemy air defenses; even if you don't have complete air supremacy you need to create localized air supremacy to do missions. SEAD and DEAD (suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses, respectively) is extremely difficult and there's really one one country that has the means and requirement to do so, the US. Currently most aircraft in Ukraine on both sides are engaging in standoff attacks because getting anywhere near the front exposes you to massive amounts of air defenses. If the US could donate several squadrons, including specialized electronic warfare craft, and could train Ukrainian pilots on SEAD/DEAD then there'd be a chance to roll back Russian air defenses, but that's unlikely to happen even in the best case scenario. It's important to keep sending planes to Ukraine to prevent them from losing the air war, but I doubt there's anything that can be done for Ukraine to win the air war

The squadrons I'm suggesting who would supply or contract would be modern us planes, which to your point are the ones would be necessary to gain complete destruction of air defenses.

The question was what weapon would significantly turn the tide.

So we are actually kind of in in agreement.

Give Ukraine rockets to attack all of Russian oil revenue. Then they can't fund it anymore.

Russia also sells oil below profitable internally and to friendly countries to keep them happy.

So you don't need to destroy them all of the time. Their oil companies are already non profitable.

The main problem here is that the US doesn't want oil prices to rise and that's why it's barely done by Ukraine.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/09/27/gazprom-drops-from...

The economy is on the brink of disaster, it's almost all war fueled now. Russian military capacity is evading day by day ( tanks, men, ... ). It won't be a threat to NATO anymore in 2-3 years, if it's funded by domestic means ofc.

Putin won't attack with nucleair missles. The problems would increase a lot ( eg. Because of the nuclear assured destruction, china would stop immediately helping Russia).

Probably Russia would collapse further like in 1991.

There are no guarantees in war but giving Ukraine sufficient advanced weapons to kill a few million more Russians would likely bring peace. Russian manpower reserves are deep but not unlimited. And even if that doesn't work it will at least weaken Russia enough to significantly reduce the threat to our NATO allies in Eastern Europe. Don't think that Russia will stop with conquering Ukraine. They'll keep advancing as long as they have the means.

From what source do you base your certainty?

For example, Jeffrey Sachs has a very different opinion than you. From whom can I hear the steel man case for your statements?

I claimed no certainty. As I stated above, nothing in war is certain.

Jeffrey Sachs is just some guy. He has no more expertise in this area than I do so you can take whatever opinion you like.

Are you serious? Jeffrey Sachs is not just some guy... I think he's about as qualified in geopolitics as anyone can be.

Nah. Sachs is just an economist (i.e. a practitioner of pseudoscience). He has no particular expertise in geopolitics. But he speaks with great confidence, which some credulous people mistake for actual expertise.

Russia cannot issue a general conscription, their regime would collapse. You can see this because they are choosing mercenaries and ethnic conscription, and north Korean soldiers.

Russia was already suffering a demographic cliff, this was effectively the last generation of men that could be thrown at a war.

Russia is a racial hegemony of the Caucasian Rus ruling over central Asian ethnic 'stans. Think chechnya and Georgia at a minimum.

So if too many Russians are conscripted and die, they cannot be used to keep the other provinces in line. The entire Russian state collapsed.

Consider that each conscription round entails as much or more population flight from the country, do you raise 100,000 soldiers, 250,000 more flee the country.

Jeffrey Sachs is an economist and he's been criticizing the war for the entire time , repeating points that I'm pretty clearly are direct Russian propaganda parroting, but fine one mans propaganda is another mans opinion.

Putin has shown the usual authoritarian contempt for peace, treaty, and diplomacy. Negotiating a cease fire at this point is appeasement, "peace in our time" foolishness.

Putin thinks Europe is weak and cowardly, and now he thinks the US is working in his interests and will not honor article 5 of NATO.

From everything russia has been doing for the past 35 years

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