The UK is set to send more missiles to Ukraine. This time the gift is of 650 multirole short-range missiles. [1] The missiles (LMM) are multirole but based on the wording of the press release are likely to be used for shooting down Russian UAVs. The fact is though that 650 missiles are not going to last long given Russia’s apparent capacity to launch dozens of UAVs in single attack which is then repeated at regular intervals. As a British citizen my feeling is that if we can afford to buy 650 fancy defence missiles we should be buying them for our own defence purposes. The share price of the manufacturer, Thales, has jumped by 0.38% today.
The fact is, and it is a fact, that, just as Putin has said, these missiles will simply be burned up in Ukraine. They are not due to be delivered until the end of the year. We can hope that it might be all over by then anyway; but if not, they will certainly be burned up – shooting down low-cost mass produced drones.
The essential problem doesn’t change. Because, (thank God), the West is not prepared to let Kiev target inside Russia with their strategic weapons, there is no chance that Kiev can defeat Russia. And so, it just rumbles on. There is a “cost” to Russia but that won’t mean that NATO-Ukraine wins. It just means that the bitterness and hatred will last even longer. And, again, just as Putin says, this just means prolonging the inevitable, at great cost in Ukrainian lives. These people must know that their policy is leading to a dead-end. I am not a military strategist, but, as far as I can see usual military strategy is to defeat the enemy by destroying his command and control, his HQ, the bases from which he launches attacks, and his military-industrial infrastructure. Kiev cannot do any of these.
At this stage it is looking rather like the Afghan war. They (Western leaders) have got involved in a quagmire. They cannot possibly win. (Unless they massively escalate, which they, thankfully, won’t). But they can’t admit that, once again, they have screwed up, overreached, overestimated the strength of their own intervention, underestimated the will of their opponent. And so this will just continue until either Kiev collapses, politically or on the battlefield, or the West finds a convenient political moment to exit. They don’t mind too much because their own positions are not threatened in any way and it is great business – one more opportunity to recycle taxpayer dollars to large corporations, which pay dividends for them and create jobs for the masses, which further protects their own positions.
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