I swear to God there are so many users here that think F-35s, Abrams,himars, leopards, challengers all grant some kind of magical divine powers while the US avoided as much as possible sending Bradley's or Abrams to go as far as to tell Morroco to supply 100 t-72s to Ukraine than there own equipmentwhich they have plenty of. If western equipment did grant magical divine powers than they would have been used early in this war than contemplating rather or not to use them later.
Edit: based on Ukraines entire force fighting Wagner I don't think they even give a shit about ukraine at this point but are sending t-90s and t-14s to be sent to poland in case poland attacks later. We already have Ukrainians well known for making shit up like the Wagner losses in which if that was the case Wagner would have to regroup for reinforcements but instead they are launching offensives more than one place and not just Bakhmut so someone is bullshitting.
Nearly a year later and you still don't get it. I'll try one more time, but I doubt it's going to make any impact on you. I've come to terms with that reality.
The West does not think its equipment is magic, nor does it think that a relatively small number of Western weapons are going to change the entirety of the war. You don't build 6500+ Bradley fighting vehicles if you think they're some wonder weapon, because only a small number of them would do just fine if they were indeed "magic". The reason that the ramp up in Western weapons will help Ukraine is because many of them are legitimately, technologically superior to most things that Russia can field in significant numbers. Not everything, of course, but most things. Beginning to transition Ukraine away from Russian made equipment that they have a finite supply of, with no recourse to procure more of, will allow the West to continue to supply Ukraine throughout this war.
The same logic applies to countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Morocco. They want to be aligned with the West and they'd rather have Western military equipment than Russian made equipment. Therefore, it makes sense that they would send all of the their legacy Russian / Soviet made kid to the battlefield, where somebody else (Ukraine) can use it, while replacing what they send with kit from allies such as USA, France, Germany, UK, South Korea, Sweden and others who make military equipment. The cheapest, easiest, way for the West to help Ukraine in the short term, is to convince allied countries to give up all their Russian / Soviet made equipment, as it will serve, in the short term, as adequate replacement for the existing Ukrainian equipment that is being chewed up (as is perfectly normal in war) during confrontation with the Russians.
There are tens of thousands of Ukrainians being trained outside of Ukraine in the early parts of 2023. Thousands in Britain, Poland and throughout the Baltics, as well as thousands more that will train in Germany, under American leadership, starting in late January. The plan now is to send these soldiers to "Basic training", then get them specialty, combined arms training using Western weapons that will be supplied to Ukraine as Ukrainian soldiers become competent in their operation. You're going to see hundreds of Bradleys join the fight before this war concludes. You're going to see a couple hundred Leopards join the fight before the war concludes. You're going to see a couple hundred more pieces of Western artillery joint the fight before the war concludes. You're going to see significant upgrades to Ukraine's air defense capabilities before the war concludes. The list goes one and on...
But, as always, you're missing the point. The goal of the West was not and has not ever been to help Ukraine achieve a quick, decisive, victory over Russia. The goal has always been the following.
1). Use the Ukrainian willingness to bleed in defense of their nation to deeply impact the capabilities of the Russian Army and deeply impact their ability to project power in the future. You can pretend it's not happening all you want, but the reality is that there is a huge cost for the Russians in order to achieve progress in this war. They're chewing up their own supplies as an extremely rapid rate and they DO NOT possess that industrial base to replace what they're losing, at the pace that they're using it. The tempo at which they can project power is dwindling. Meanwhile, the West has BARELY sent Ukraine anything of value from it's own industrial base. Russia has immense manpower and can throw lots of meat into the grinder in Ukraine (and they will), but they're already pulling out kit that should have been mothballed years ago, because it's what they have left... Not even one year into the war. Ukrainian access to quality kid is rapidly increasing, while Russian access to similar quality kit is decreasing at an enormous rate.
2). Destroy Russian economic ties with the rest of Europe, deeply hurt their access to Western technology and set their people (and thus their government) back many years. This is about power projection and the ability to project that power globally. Russia will leave this conflict (regardless of the outcome) a much less powerful player on the world stage, because they will have alienated themselves from the overwhelming number of people that they share a continent with. Ensuring that the people of Russia suffer a much lesser standard of living and much lesser global acceptance, is a win for the West and NATO in particular. The less that the world trusts Russia, the more likely it is that they will be open to Western diplomacy.
3). This is, BY FAR, the cheapest price NATO and its allies will ever pay to fight a war (in this case a proxy war) with Russia, something we've WANTED to do for a long time. There is very little collateral for the West in this equation, because our soldiers are not the ones on the battlefield fighting and we don't have to send our best, most expensive equipment into combat. Instead, we can fund Ukraine's willingness to fight. Remember, the West froze $350 Billion worth of Russian assets at the beginning of this conflict. They've barely liquidated any of those assets to this point. Therefore, this war is largely being funded, in aggregate, by the asset value of the property, items and investments frozen by the West, in Western countries. If, by the end of this conflict, the war costs NATO and its allies $500 Billion USD (a number I just made up) that's literally a drop in the bucket compared to what the West spent on the Covid-19 pandemic, as an example. Right now the West has spent in the neighbourhood of $50 Billion, so there is an enormous amount of funding for Ukraine to go before helping bleed Russia out financially will become to high of a price to pay. Just wait until Russia actually has to PAY an army of 500,000-1,000,000 mobilized men. They're quickly approaching a point in which they are spending money that they don't have and won't have access too. A broke Russia, at the conclusion of this conflict, makes them a substantially weaker nation on the global stage.
