No end to self-deception in the West. Colonel Reisner from the Austrian Bundesheer, in an interview today with German ARD Tagesschau (first state TV channel's main news progam):
https://www-tagesschau-de.translate...._x_tr_pto=wapp
Quote:
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ARD: But the West has supplied a lot in the past, continues to supply and support. Is more support even possible?
Reisner: With the existing arms production, we won't be able to supply what we really need. More effort is needed. And I don't want to use the word "war economy" here, but it will require more in-depth efforts.
From a neutral point of view, the situation is serious. The West must understand that. Is it prepared to support Ukraine? Then it must do more. If it is not prepared to do so, then it must communicate that. This miserable purgatory currently only brings more deaths, but no results.
ARD: About a year ago, you criticized the arms deliveries as being "too much to die, too little to live".
Reisner: I actually said that relatively soon after the war began. When it was clear that the Russians were beginning to recover from the shock of failure at the beginning. Even then you could see that all the preconditions for a war of attrition were being created. You can't fight a war of attrition on the side, you have to go "all in".
Think of the HIMARS system. Instead of the required 100 to 150 units, 38 have been delivered to date. Combat aircraft could also have been delivered earlier. In the case of the ATACMs, the oldest version is delivered in small numbers. More can be done, but there is a fear of escalation.
Now the West is coming to the sobering realization that it has to dig deeper into its pockets. But nobody dares to communicate this message to their populations at the moment because they are afraid of encouraging radicals.
ARD: The EU repeatedly emphasizes that it will stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary and support it in restoring the internationally recognized state borders of 1991, i.e. including Crimea and Donbass.
Reisner: Then you also have to do what is necessary. Despite eleven sets of sanctions, the Russian war industry is increasingly able to adapt. And Russia is not isolated, but has enough support from the Global South to be able to wage this war for longer.
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ARD: How do you think this slaughter can be ended? Russia doesn't want to negotiate - on the contrary ...
Reisner: It's a dilemma. There are many parallels with the situation in Korea. The Korean War was very dynamic at the beginning and then a stalemate developed. It then took two years and 473 days of negotiations to define an 18-page document that established an armistice that is still in force today. Both countries are still in a state of war.
But that would mean that Ukraine will no longer exist within its borders as we know them. And the dilemma is that Russia will be even less willing to negotiate as soon as it realises that the West is on its knees.
ARD: And what should the states of the European Union do now?
Reisner: The good times will probably be over for the time being. And we have to think about how to shape these new times. If we come to the conclusion that we are not prepared to provide Ukraine with the support it needs, then I believe we need to communicate this and possibly start negotiations.
But then Russia will have us exactly where it wants us, and Russia will continue to do what it wants. And that is the destruction of Ukraine.
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I stand by what I have implied in many of my comments since months and months: at the rate the war is going currently, and has been going for months, Ukraine will lose it and Russia will win it.
I will stick to this assessment unless there is a profound and highly dramatic change in the West's approach to the situation. Which I am not convinced will ever happen. The West is a post-heroic society, as they now call it. It simply does not understand anymore how wars are fought and possibly won: before anything with utmost needed brutality and determination. We are too civilized. Russia accepts and can afford to accept its high losses. By these it buys its military successes. And that is what in the West simply is not understood, becausu by our softy rationals if we were in the seat of the Russians we already would have given up the war to avoid these high losses of ours.
What Ukraine needs now is not the West, but Gandalf and his magic tricks. What I mean by this? That the war is probbaly already decided -
all what happens now is answering the question how much more time we need to admit to ourselves that we already have given it up. And that is certainly no compliment to ourselves.
Middle East and Far Est allies of the US will make their conclusions from this. They will not amuse us either.