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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

They're probably both fighting at maximum capability already.

That said:

While we all know that Russia isn't fighting all of NATO, it does claim that it is fighting all of NATO.

Do they believe what they say? I don't know.

I think if Ukraine attempts Hail-Mary tactics, if you assume the hypothetical that Russia really does believe that Ukraine is only capable of such things with NATO support, it is still bad for NATO.

There's certainly Ukrainians who want nukes now, who think giving them up was a mistake. Some say it would only take them months to get nukes… and they said that months ago. If they do develop their own independent capability, and Russia just assumes it's an American or French or British nuke, that's still bad for the rest of us, even if Trump is shouting about how the USA didn't do it.

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    > They're probably both fighting at maximum capability already.

Absolutely not. In my view, NATO should be supplying 1M+ artillery shells per month, so that UA can unleash scorched earth tactics on Russian positions inside UA territories.

> In my view, NATO should be supplying 1M+ artillery shells per month, so that UA can unleash scorched earth tactics on Russian positions inside UA territories

Sure, but that's not Russia or Ukraine, that's us as outsiders.

If Ukraine has secret weapons to fall back on in the scenario that — as per the comment I'm replying to — the US stops giving them weapons, why aren't they already using them? Likewise if Russia has any significant number of other weapons they could actually use*, why did they not use them already?

* while Russia may have plenty of unused submarines, they're not going to be of any significance beyond the handful of SLBMs that might spook the rest of the world into thinking it's World-War-Three-O'Clock

Because the US would withdraw weapons access immediately and - there was a tit- for tat situation implicitly, you attack my refinery, i attack your dam. But moscow has run out of tat. They have destroyed all they can destroy, after the 20th its payback time.

This expression is often misused, it seems. It sounds so cool, 'scorched-earth tactics'... like 'medieval', 'fire-and-brimstone', 'kill it with fire', etcetera.

Maybe read up on the specifics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth

And BTW, there just aren't any 1M+ shells per month to send. Maybe in 2028 or something. Production takes time to build.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ammunition-ukraine/ (Aug-24)

Its russian colonial bias- none of the countries that start with "the" can amount to anything. All just farmers, peasants, runaway traitors. Its a sort of smear that ukraine CAN not do that alone.

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