Losing Even If They Win?

Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost one year ago a major question has been how much military and monetary support should the United States and European countries be providing to support Ukraine?

The Kiel Institute has been tracking the military and financial aid that other countries have been providing Ukraine since the beginning of 2022.

The United States has been contributing the bulk of the military assistance.

Credit: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

However, this chart does not begin to show the full level of commitments the United States has made to Ukraine.

The chart above only reflects what was actually spent in Ukraine by November, 2022.

The fact is that Congress approved $113 billion of aid to Ukraine in 2022 that included almost $50 billion in the year-end Omnibus appropriations package in December.

Source: https://www.crfb.org/blogs/congress-approved-113-billion-aid-ukraine-2022

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine less than one year ago, Congress has approved more than $113 billion of aid and military assistance to support the Ukrainian government and allied nations. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 omnibus appropriations package included an additional $47.3 billion of emergency funding to provide humanitarian, military, and economic assistance to Ukraine on top of the $65.8 billion of funding already approved in three other emergency funding packages enacted by Congress.

This is the detail of all of the authorized amounts.

The bottom line is that about twice as much has already been authorized for Ukraine over and above what has already been spent.

This would suggest that the war in Ukraine is not going to end soon because of a lack of war funding. The United States is making sure of that.

The question remains as to whether Ukraine will run out of personnel to fight the war before it runs out of money.

Ukraine only has a population of about 44 million. Russia has 144 million.

Russia has over four times the male fighting-age population of Ukraine.

Source:https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-demography-of-war-ukraine-vs-russia

Even before the war started, both Russia and Ukraine had bleak demographic futures due to low fertility rates.

It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population.

Source: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-demography-of-war-ukraine-vs-russia

Based on these rates, the projection was that Ukraine's population would shrink by over half over the next generation or two and Russia would lose 25% of its population even before their young men began dying in this war.

The human toll that the war is having on Russia and Ukraine is only going to make matters worse for the future of these two countries.

Reliable assessments of casualties for both Ukraine and Russia in the war are difficult to come by. Almost everything out there is a raw estimate or guess.

The New York Times reported recently that senior American officials believe that Russia has suffered close to 200,000 dead and wounded in the conflict. Those same officials place Ukraine casualties at over 100,000 and another 30,000 dead civilians.

However, a Turkish paper citing Israeli intelligence sources, puts Ukraine's losses as much greater.

It puts Ukraine war deaths at 157,000 with another 234,000 injured.

That report estimates only 18,480 Russians have been killed in action.

Credit: https://twitter.com/MarkACollett/status/1622231862335897602

I would view that report skeptically as I would the other estimates.

Neither Russia or Ukraine is willing to share any accurate information.

However, it is clear that both Russia and Ukraine forces have undoubtedly seen a lot of blood shed over the last year in this conflict.

It is also clear that this war only continues because the United States wants it to continue.

Yes, the United States wants to assist Ukraine in defending itself. However, the United States is most interested in using this war to weaken Russia militarily and financially.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed last week that he attempted to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine early in the war but the United States stopped the efforts.

He subsequently walked back his comments after they got a great deal of attention by stating that he was not sure any deal could have been made anyway.

Add to this the reporting of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh who published a bombshell report this week that the Nord Stream pipeline explosions of last September were part of a CIA operation under the direction of Joe Biden.

Why would Biden do this?

Hersh explained it this way, " As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia."

The White House has responded to the reporting of Hersh by calling it "utterly false and complete fiction".

Has Hersh slandered Biden with false allegations or is Biden one step removed from being impeached for provoking a war with Russia?

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) suggests Biden may have huge problems ahead.

It is almost laughable to think that the Democrats impeached Donald Trump over a phone call with the Ukrainian President in which he released the entire transcript and then compare that to these allegations.

Hersh says Biden was concerned that if Nord Stream continued to supply Europe with cheap natural gas that they would not be willing to supply the money and weapons to defeat Russia?

The fact is that the United States has been supplying more of each to Ukraine than Europe has in any event.

A big problem for Europe is that it has little in the way of military weaponry to provide to Ukraine.

Let's look at the issue of tanks which is the latest hot button issue regarding military hardware to Ukraine.

Most European countries have been dragging their feet on providing tanks to Ukraine.

If you look at the data it is understandable.

Most European countries have spent very little on military hardware which is a point that Donald Trump made over and over to other NATO countries when he was President.

They neglected spending money on their own defense instead relying on the United States to be their defender of last resort.

Consider this graphic of "Combat Tank Fleet Strength by Country-2023".

How did countries like Germany and France think they were going to defend themselves against a Russian invasion with fewer than 500 tanks between them?

I guess they were counting on Poland's 569 tanks to put up resistance until the United States could get its tanks and troops in place.

The tragedy in all of this is that when all is said and done in this war it is hard to believe that Russia will not end up retaining Crimea and be in control of some of the Donbas region of Ukraine that borders Russia. This region was generally controlled by Russian separatists groups even before the Russian invasion. The people in this region also principally speak Russian.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60938544

Putin's pretext for the invasion was that Russia needed to protect these people from Ukrainian persecution. Before the war, a good number of the people in this region were considered pro-Russian. However, a Ukrainian opinion poll (take it for what it is) stated that 82% of those in the territories seized by the Russians early in the war now had a negative attitude toward Moscow.

The tanks that the United States, Germany and other European countries are going to supply to Ukraine is another escalation in the war.

It is certain that more death and destruction will follow as fighting intensifies with the coming of Spring in Ukraine.

Biden seems intent to keep upping the ante in Ukraine.

Perhaps we can expel the Russians from every part of Ukraine and depose Putin as a result.

That seems like a bad bet as I assess the odds.

However, even if Biden wins that bet, what will be left of Ukraine in the end?

All signs point to Ukraine losing even if they win.

How do they recover? How do they rebuild? How do they repopulate?

A mere pawn in a much bigger game of chess.