The growing strike capabilities and innovation in ambushing RU aircraft and hitting targets in Crimea are a necessary element for AFU to carry out a successful active defensive in 2024 and to defeating the Russians in time. But it is far from the sufficient conditions needed as you point out. The collective West needs to ramp up weapons and ammunition production immediately as this will not be easy given what is happening in Yemen now. The US in particular will be more distracted with its dysfunctional politics and now the Houthis.
This whole "Ukraine needs to spend 2024 rebuilding and preparing" had better be another Western Information War product designed to set domestic expectations low ahead of surprises on the ground to come.
Where I sit, it looks more like a convenient groupthinky excuse to not send Ukraine what it needs to win, a sneaky way to freeze the conflict because everyone in power in the pathetic "West" is so terrified of what Putin does when he loses. Self-deterrence taken to the logical extreme, which is exactly what Putin's Axis has been counting on since 2022.
The more I work through the bibliography from *War Transformed* the more obvious it is that the West is doomed. Underlying theoretical/philosophical assumptions are broken. Whole thing is an ego-driven ouroboros.
My money is on Ukraine establishing a bridgehead in Crimea by the end of this year.
Essential, but not decisive.
The growing strike capabilities and innovation in ambushing RU aircraft and hitting targets in Crimea are a necessary element for AFU to carry out a successful active defensive in 2024 and to defeating the Russians in time. But it is far from the sufficient conditions needed as you point out. The collective West needs to ramp up weapons and ammunition production immediately as this will not be easy given what is happening in Yemen now. The US in particular will be more distracted with its dysfunctional politics and now the Houthis.
This whole "Ukraine needs to spend 2024 rebuilding and preparing" had better be another Western Information War product designed to set domestic expectations low ahead of surprises on the ground to come.
Where I sit, it looks more like a convenient groupthinky excuse to not send Ukraine what it needs to win, a sneaky way to freeze the conflict because everyone in power in the pathetic "West" is so terrified of what Putin does when he loses. Self-deterrence taken to the logical extreme, which is exactly what Putin's Axis has been counting on since 2022.
The more I work through the bibliography from *War Transformed* the more obvious it is that the West is doomed. Underlying theoretical/philosophical assumptions are broken. Whole thing is an ego-driven ouroboros.
My money is on Ukraine establishing a bridgehead in Crimea by the end of this year.