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Its really depressing watching Ukraine get ragged by a larger nation while all its neighbors sit on the sidelines and watch. Deploy troops to Ukraine it wont trigger nuclear war.

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What would troops even do there? Join the meat grinder?

Most Eastern European nations agreed on the first month of the war - Ukraine needs long-range weapons.

Russia must be stopped.

It would refresh the Ukrainian positions and allow troops to rotate more often. It'd also make it near impossible for russia to take more ground.

Or more usefully they could send some fighter jets over Ukraine to shoot down the incoming drones and missiles like they did for Israel.

Not a good strategy. The drones are cheaper 1:5 than AIM-9 missiles. They need some cheap low payload IR based interceptor if those engines run hot. Probably another fixed wing drone.

You're talking about APKWS rockets. 70mm rockets (practically free) equipped with a laser seeker.

> The drones are cheaper 1:5 than AIM-9 missiles.

Given the relative sizes of the economies involved, that's still perfectly fine.

Next to the cost of the aviation program for providing the platform to launch those from, it likely hardly registers.

> Deploy troops to Ukraine it wont trigger nuclear war.

I’m not as eager as you are to test the resolve of Putin re: nuclear weapons. Once the button is pressed, the game is over for everyone.

Putin isnt going to nuke over a defensive deployment of troops. As long as they dont cross over into russia its not an escalation. He has already broken this line by bringing in NK troops and EU spec ops have broken this line by operating in ukraine the past 4 years.

Is not the whole plan to put troops as meat shields and hope that Russia will be afraid to attack them? So yeah, Putin won't nuke countries that deployed troops but those troops are going to become targets as same as Ukrainian troops and mercenaries are now. And then what? Send more troops? More of the same result. Retaliatory strike on Russia? Nuke.

The more people on a front the harder it is to push. Currently ukraine is covering the entire front on their own. Having NATO troops to reinforce their lines would allow them to rotate more often and would change the calculation for russia. Currently russia knows that there isnt many people on a front and it can be broken. If they knew that NATO was there adding another 500k active troops the calculation of attrition would be in ukraines favor.

If Ukraine and russia can bare the losses there is no reason why NATO cant.

There's no way western militaries would just add troops to the front. If we're fighting a war with Russia - regardless of where it is - it would be no holds barred. And just adding more troops to the front is not the way an advanced tech-heavy loss-averse western military would do it.

The only way western troops are deployed en-mass inside Ukraine is as a peace guarantee with some level of Russian agreement. The moment there's footage of British/French/German troops getting hunted down by drones, the public will be crying for direct strikes into Russia and it'll be WW3.

You'd need the US and Turkey to send troops to get anywhere close to 500k. EU and UK might get 200k if they sent everyone capable.

> the calculation of attrition would be in ukraines favor.

I thought it already is, has not Zelensky recently said that Russia lost 1.6M vs Ukraine's 450k (and 700k vs 50k dead)?

>If Ukraine and russia can bare the losses there is no reason why NATO cant.

Very profound. I wonder if you can find not 500k but 5k NATO troops who could draw the borders of Ukraine or Russia on a map. Yet they will find no reason not to die over it? Okay.

France, Germany, UK alone have 500k + another 200k from poland. 500k doesnt mean you have to deploy 500k to ukraine. Just make it known that ukraine has that pool available to draw from. Even a deployment of 50k and equipment would change the tides significantly.

On the matter of attrition its not in ukraines favor at all. I follow it very closely and its closer to 1m to 1.5m. Russia can sustain far greater losses. They have a much deeper pool to draw from where as ukraine has already called up and drafted a lot of their able bodied men.

The propaganda makes it look closer than it is because we want to see ukraine winning but dont take that as thinking they dont need help.

>France, Germany, UK alone have 500k

You seem to believe that the entire armed forces consists of combat troops. This explains your ideas very well.

That is a count of active military for 3 nations. A deployment would never consist of only "combat troops" so you are nitpicking to try and save your point.

Oh, I see. Hundreds of thousands of various bureaucrats, secretaries, and other kinds of "active troops", who "serve" 9 to 5 in an air conditioned office is what going to change the balance on the front. Go for it, I hope you succeed in persuading your government to send those.

You have no other option, really. If you play chicken, you open yourself up to endless blackmail. If you're going to take a stand eventually, it's better to do it sooner than later, because if your adversary knows that you will eventually draw a line, allowing them to discover that line gradually encourages further pressure on you. Establishing the boundary early makes the threat more credible and reduces the incentive to test it.

It's like standing up to a bully the first time he pushes you, instead of giving in and calming yourself that one day you'll stand up to him. The Putins and Trumps of this world are simple creatures; such middle-school analogies describe them well.

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