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[Lord Shonus]

I would caution against overconfidence in NATO's military power - a similar overconfidence in Russian military power is partly to blame for the Ukraine invasion after all - but on the other hand I don't really doubt that the larger and wealthier NATO could prevail against a Russia which is getting little or no aid from the international community.

The weapons Ukraine is tearing Russia apart with are NATO's leftovers.

[Strongpoint]

I would caution against overconfidence in NATO's military power - a similar overconfidence in Russian military power is partly to blame for the Ukraine invasion after all - but on the other hand I don't really doubt that the larger and wealthier NATO could prevail against a Russia which is getting little or no aid from the international community.

The weapons Ukraine is tearing Russia apart with are NATO's leftovers.

It is not even that.

Airforce is a king (or queen) of the modern battlefield. With cruise and ballistic missiles being a nice helping hand for flyboys. Ukraine has NO NATO airforce and NO NATO cruise\balistic missiles. No leftovers, simply NO NATO systems of this kind. Oh... if we had leftovers like F-16s and old Desert Storm era Tomahawks...

Everyone expected that Russian airforce is like American just somewhat lagging behind and will achieve total air superiority really quickly against a country with a very outdated airforce and air defense. Everyone expected Desert Storm Russian style. It never arrived. Instead, Russia is waging some weird hybrid of modern war and WW2

The USA won't need artillery (even as good as HIMARS), tanks, infantry...
F22s, F35s, B2s, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles are enough to destroy the Russian ability to wage any serious war. And that is only with American assets already available in Europe.

[Lord Shonus]

That's entirely correct, and the US has built everything around their air and tank forces. HIMARS, Javelin, Stinger, that's all stuff meant to deal with shattered remnants or whatever managed to sneak through.

[EuchreJack]

Good points, you all have earned your Jimmy Olsen designation for the week. Thanks for calming me down and explaining things.

[King Zultan]

I'm waiting for the moment when we find out that all Russia's nukes were cardboard cut outs the entire time.

[Magmacube_tr]

I'm waiting for the moment when we find out that all Russia's nukes were cardboard cut outs the entire time.

You know, a year before, I would've taken this as a low-effort shitpost and just forget about it in 5 seconds.

But now, I am not sure anymore.

[Loud Whispers]

The weapons Ukraine is tearing Russia apart with are NATO's leftovers.

It's also a bit worse for Russia than that. A lot of NATO's leftovers are being supplied to Poland and the Baltic states who in turn send their leftovers to Ukraine. So it's more like NATO's leftover hand me downs. We've seen stuff like the supplying of contemporary anti-air missile defences and artillery in response to Russia's escalation, but NATO still has much more room to escalate conventionally, like sending Ukraine modern jets. Or sending NATO troops, jets and planes themselves to target Russian assets

[EuchreJack]

To be clear, the official reason of not sending more sophisticated NATO equipment was because it would take more time to train the Ukrainian troops. The tanks and airplanes that Ukraine is using are mostly better-maintained older Soviet/Russian equipment. We're not really even seeing what NATO tanks/planes could do yet. And Russia's wasted large amounts of their best stuff already.

[Loud Whispers]

To be clear, the official reason of not sending more sophisticated NATO equipment was because it would take more time to train the Ukrainian troops. The tanks and airplanes that Ukraine is using are mostly better-maintained older Soviet/Russian equipment. We're not really even seeing what NATO tanks/planes could do yet. And Russia's wasted large amounts of their best stuff already.

The UK just took in 10,000 Ukrainian troops to train in the UK using new NATO stuff and that's not counting the efforts of other countries, or the efforts of US/UK/Canadian/Australian instructors working in Ukraine proper. This chappy suggests that you could cut corners and get experienced pilots trained to use western jets in weeks to months, with some high risk caveats

[martinuzz]

BBC hosts a documentary made by a young couple in occupied Kherson.
"Occupied"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJSzVW6ZYOA

[Ganondworf]

Russia, in its quest for bullshitting the world, uses Slovenian photo from 2010 as proof of Ukrainian dirty bomb.

https://twitter.com/govSlovenia/status/1584936237806206976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[heydude6]

I mean, this is truly insane conspiracy shit. I have no idea how desperate Russia must be to resort something like this. I wonder if Russia is trying to use this justify a potential first strike 

[Lord Shonus]

If that was their plan, they wouldn't have downgraded their claim from "Ukraine's going to set off a nuke and blame us" to "Ukraine is going to set off a dirty bomb and blame us". They greatly underestimated the amount of backbone North America and the rest of Europe possessed, and are desperately trying to find some propaganda claim that will weaken said backbone.

[Devastator]

Strange coming from the guy that gave free IT support to the Ukrainian Army. Less strange when you read articles that it was basically useless.

Wasn't free.  He's getting paid.

[Devastator]

To be clear, the official reason of not sending more sophisticated NATO equipment was because it would take more time to train the Ukrainian troops. The tanks and airplanes that Ukraine is using are mostly better-maintained older Soviet/Russian equipment. We're not really even seeing what NATO tanks/planes could do yet. And Russia's wasted large amounts of their best stuff already.

There's been at least one long interview stating that Ukraine doesn't really want relatively small numbers of NATO tanks, (mentioning 40 as not enough at one go) they just want all the T-72s and such they can get their hands on.  Poland's sent 200 so far.

As for planes, I think the US is doing the right thing.  They're training Ukrainian airmen.  Cracking the Russian air defenses the US way (all in one day) would take hundreds and hundreds of planes, and that's not really viable to do without using actual US squadrons.  I suspect the reason they haven't received western planes is because they still have some of their own left, enough to use when they have the chance.  Planes not yet in Ukraine are perfectly safe from being bombed.

As for usefulness of real NATO stuff, we've gotten a lot of good feedback.  They love the Geopards from Germany, and the Cesar and Pz 2000 SPGs from France and Germany.  And they love the US missile systems.

Do note those aren't just leftovers.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with those SPGs, they're perfectly modern.