The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Ukraine is fighting.
[1] https://dset.tw/en/research/000491-2/
[2] https://www.technology.org/2026/03/17/japan-might-sell-weapo...
The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Ukraine is fighting.
[1] https://dset.tw/en/research/000491-2/
[2] https://www.technology.org/2026/03/17/japan-might-sell-weapo...
Poland is, of course, geopolitically positioned in a way that requires at least regional power status to survive if not thrive. A power vacuum in Poland is bad news for the security of Europe and Poland's immediate neighbors and regional partners as well.
As a result, an important component of long term Polish grand strategy has been the quiet building up of its logistical prowess and might and its supply chains for years. Current big names: the CPK/Port Polska megaproject which is designed with civilian/military dual use in mind; Euroterminal Sławków; expansion of the Port of Gdańsk and other ports. Regional projects include the Via Carpathia and the Via Baltica.
No, we're not ;) They are where they are because they lease the ground under a NATO base, WHICH is actually doing the job. Not the Polish government.
Whis has been a very unreliable partner for the last 4 years, constantly using their geographical position to push Ukraine into submission and leverage their own political interests for internal and external programs.
> geopolitically positioned in a way that requires at least regional power status to survive, if not thrive
As long as Ukrainian military power is there, the region is safe. That's why the Baltic and Northern countries are investing so much in Ukraine + constantly taking our war experience.
In general, are they being useful? Absolutely yes. Do we need to include them in any discussions? No, since they are already misusing their position. Plus telling everyone how useful they are. Like, in case anybody can forget.
Taiwan and Japan, though, aren't in Russia's line of fire. The cooperation with Ukraine is because Ukraine figured out how to stop Russia. Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.
alternatively, there's a Dennis Ross piece out pointing out that China's procurement patterns over the years suggests they are not seriously thinking of invading Taiwan, they just want everyone to think that way...
China will never invade Taiwan, but they will unite politically one day.
That's the thing with religious or ideologically driven dictators. They're nutjobs, not beholden to reality in their decisionmaking but to whatever their ideology prescribes - and thus are prone to making decisions that seem to (or end up being) utterly stupid / irrational.
With Yugoslavia, it was Tito's idea to force all the various countries into one common ethnicity. With Russia, it is Putin's dream of restoring "Greater Russia". With China, it's the dream of re-unification with Taiwan on one side, and reversing what is seen as a land grab by back-then Czarist Russia in Outer Manchuria. With Trump it is the desperate desire to be beloved (and the desire of his Project 2025 handlers to turn the US into an ethno-christo-nationalist state). With Ben Gvir and Smotrich in Israel, it is the desire to wipe out anything Palestinian.
And the result of these madmen was and is an untold amount of needless suffering. There is no reason at all to not believe what China is openly saying [1] and to prepare accordingly. Better be prepared than be sorry.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/31/xi-jinping-vow...
They might be wrong like any human, but they aren't cartoon villains.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/mirage-chinas-military-...
China could just bomb Taiwan into submission if it chooses to. I don't think it is a problem for China to build 20-30k ballistic missile and launch them at Taiwan. Or send a million drones over there just to be sure nothing survives them.
Taiwan is, unfortunately, in a very precarious situation should China decide enough is enough and reunification must happen no matter what.
2. Taiwan and Taiwanese allies also have agency. China doesn’t just get to fire 20-30k ballistic missiles at Taiwan with no consequences. The consequences would maybe be asymmetrical, but they’d no doubt be very painful for China.
China is constrained on this by near certain mutually assured economic destruction.
Even the food supply in China would basically be destroyed unless you believe that the population is going to just go back to a diet of largely rice with meat being a luxury.
20-30k ballistic missiles at Taiwan would cause a global depression that dwarfs the great depression. There would be almost no way the CCP survive this. That is why this subject is mostly people talking nonsense.
Reunification has to happen politically, persuasively, over time and without firing a shot.
2. Yeah, dunno about that, who will do what exactly to China? I also think that, since you mentioned it, Japan would intervene, China will pretty much use it as an excuse for retribution on what the Japanese did to the Chinese during WW2.
"Putin's list" is a dishonest meme, just like the "rules-based international order" that the Western nations supposedly embrace.
There is no such list, and there are no such rules. There is only deceitful propaganda used to justify geopolitical ambitions. Don't spread it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)
It was the failure of Russian logistics and the triumph of Ukrainian logistics that beat them back.
There were no 24/7 airlifts of criticql weapons and equipment at any point in this war.
Ukraine was expected to fall quickly, and any help it needed started arriving very reluctantly, very slowly, in small batches stretched over months and years of deliveries much much later.
You may be confusing European support and their lack of it (remember the famous time Germany just sent 45,000 old helmets?) with how the United States and United Kingdom helped.
For example this was published in April 2022. Some of this equipment had already been delivered to Ukraine via airlift before the war even started: https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2992414/fa...
Western support at any scale didn't arrive until later in the year.
- the two packages promised in March were delivered by April, all pushed via conventional transport through Poland and Romania (IIRC deliveries didn't start until at least mid-March, and by that time Ukraine was already suffering heavy losses, logistics collapses etc. )
- there's a nebulous commitment to <list of weapons> which we know barely trickled in as US committed, then withdrew, then commited, then withdrew support, then claimed Ukraine was too stupid to use these weapons, or that it would lead to escalation, or...
This is bullshit from anyone in the know.
There had been multiple YEARS of Western Special Operations inside Ukraine leading up to and during the opening phases of the war. Some were pulled back to defend Kyiv / Zelensky during the original search for him in the opening days of the war. Without UK SOF and their initial deployments of anti-armor weapons, there is a good chance Russia would have gotten much further.
Ukraine has had comprehensive intelligence, logistics, etc support for a long time, but it has been a fraction of what each country could contribute.
That is why Russia quickly reached Kiev, and Ukraine still can't win the war? Because there were inhales, screams MULTIPLE YEARS OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS?
> Without UK SOF and their initial deployments of anti-armor weapons, there is a good chance Russia would have gotten much further.
No one denies that there were Western Weapons in Ukraine. What is bullshit is that they were somehow airlifted 24/7 during initial phases of the war. They decidedly weren't. Neither before the invasion, nor during the first days. Nor, indeed during any phase of the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orbital
"In February 2022, amid a build-up of Russian forces on the Russo-Ukrainian border and concerns of an impending Russian invasion, the UK began supplying Ukraine with anti-tank weapons, including NLAW missiles. Teams of UK military personnel were deployed to provide training on how to use the weapons, within the framework of Operation Orbital.[10] Some 2,000 missiles were airlifted to the country by the Royal Air Force using C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft. RAF surveillance aircraft, including Boeing RC-135, were also involved with collecting intelligence on Russian ground movements."
Read about Operation Interflex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Interflex
---
Also:
"But when the president approved $350 million in military aid on Feb. 26 — nearly six times larger — 70 percent of it was delivered in five days. The speed was considered essential, officials said, because the equipment — including anti-tank weapons — had to make it through western Ukraine before Russian air and ground forces started attacking the shipments. As Russia takes more territory inside the country, it is expected to become more and more difficult to distribute weapons to Ukrainian troops."
"Within 48 hours of Mr. Biden approving the transfer of weapons from U.S. military stockpiles on Feb. 26, the first shipments, largely from Germany, were arriving at airfields near Ukraine’s border, officials said."
"The military was able to push those shipments forward quickly by tapping into pre-positioned military stockpiles ready to roll onto Air Force C-17 transport planes and other cargo aircraft, and flying them to about half a dozen staging bases in neighboring countries, chiefly in Poland and Romania."
"Now it is being turned back against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, part of a vast airlift that American and European officials describe as a desperate race against time, to get tons of arms into the hands of Ukrainian forces while their supply routes are still open. Scenes like this, reminiscent of the Berlin airlift — the famed race by the Western allies to keep West Berlin supplied with essentials in 1948 and 1949 as the Soviet Union sought to choke it off — are playing out across Europe."
"In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other major cities. So far, Russian forces have been so preoccupied in other parts of the country that they have not targeted the arms supply lines, but few think that can last."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/us/politics/us-ukraine-we...
Something tells me that "trip by land to Kiev" is not "airlifted 24/7 into Ukraine" but exactly what I said several times already
> No one denies that there were Western Weapons in Ukraine. What is bullshit is that they were somehow airlifted 24/7 during initial phases of the war. They decidedly weren't. Neither before the invasion, nor during the first days. Nor, indeed during any phase of the war.
---
Article:
> In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons,
I don't see anything to discuss here tbh.
>> In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons
Please do go on quoting literally the same sentence:
--- start quote ---
NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other major cities.
--- end quote ---
Strange how the totally prepared FOR YEARS special operations were left scrambling to deliver enough weapons before projected logistics collapse.
All I know is Russia has over a million dead troops, a dying economy, and fuck all to show for it.
They got to Kyiv and did nothing. Their plans were shit. Their intel was shit. And now they're throwing their people into the meatgrinder with no hope for them in sight.
Fucking embarassing. "2nd best military". Sure.
https://youtu.be/NVnbtbtgu2Y?is=2lMFmF2kQ0SXqIw0
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/03/russia-pla...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/26/russia-provoca...
Polish news: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/09/8043294/
---
The head of Poland's Foreign Ministry noted that he cannot comment on intelligence data but stressed that Russia has long been waging a hybrid war against Poland and France.
He said this involves cyberattacks on state systems, attempts to gather information on critical infrastructure using shadow fleet vessels, arson, sabotage on railways and drone attacks.
Sikorski also recalled that before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia allegedly prepared false flag provocations to create a pretext for starting the war. At the time, American intelligence warnings helped thwart those plans.
"Today you must believe us – not just me, but other countries too – that we have credible information that the Russians are planning something again. The purpose of these warnings is to discourage them from carrying out these provocations," he said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, for his part, confirmed that Paris is also recording increased Russian hybrid activity.
To stay within its borders. And that counts for the others on this planet, too.
Oh no, the poor innocent Russia that is currently in year 5 of its totally innocent blameless war it's waging. "Hitler did nothing wrong" vibes.
All Russia has to do to stop its soldiers from dying and its economy from being destroyed is to get the fuck out of Ukraine.
Go back to their fucking home and stop dying by the millions would be a good start.
Their success in the conflict is not guaranteed.
Wars of this kind never have winners. Russia also lost too many soldiers to celebrate anything.
Not to lose sight of the very real cost, down to every man and family destroyed. Many may even argue that life under subjugation is still at least life. But many more have walked the walk into the fire, in defiance of that notion. I see no way of arguing the opinions of the living outweigh those of the dead when it comes to opinions on what's worth fighting for.
I would add that this isn't advocating for blindly and endlessly throwing meat into the meat grinder. But to the extent that a country tells you, not from the top down but from the men on the very frontlines of war, that they're willing to die, to win... I'd say believe them when they say they understand the costs, and yet consider it a win not in spite of those costs, but in the face of them, defiantly.
This is a known Russian talking point. Begone with thee.
You act like this war is just happening in Ukraine. Ask UK, France, Germany, US, Poland, etc how that is going inside those countries.
Ask North Korea about their troops.
It could be a naval blockade until Taiwan runs out of food/fuel/medicines and they surrender. Or it could be "we will take the island no matter what" and if somebody survives OK, if not, also OK.
If I were Xi, I wouldn't do that; I would just blockade them. You can get the same capitulation (hopefully) without firing a shot.