Russia and the US did not make progress toward a peace deal for Ukraine during their talks, a senior aide to Vladimir Putin has said, hours after the Russian president issued threats that Russia was ready for war with Europe.
In remarks to Russian media, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that after a five-hour meeting with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the two sides were “neither further nor closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine. There is a lot of work to be done.”
The downbeat assessment of Tuesday night’s diplomacy follows combative opening statements from Putin as Witkoff and Kushnerarrived for talks at the Kremlin, in which he accused European powers of sabotaging peace in Ukraine and that “European demands” on ending the war were “not acceptable to Russia”.
You forgot that this ‘small country’ has the second largest military in Europe behind only Russia, and one that was trained by NATO since 2014.
When Ukraine was invaded it had an army of approx 150k troops. Several hundred tanks. A couple of hundred aircraft. A couple of hundred rocket projectors.
None of it newer than the early 90s.
Russia had nearly a million troops, 12,000 tanks, several thousand aircraft, thousands and thousands of rocket projectors and heavy artillery.
And nuclear weapons.
Tell us again how they were evenly matched?
By any normal metric, Russia should have steamrolled Ukraine. The fact it didnt, even with that huge advantage means that any major european power (UK/France/Germany/Poland) could fend them off quite easily, even alone. But we aren’t alone, Russia would be trying to take us all off the board.
And Russia sent in approx 150k troops.
Ukraine had a thousand tanks at the start of the war. At least half of them were modernized. In fact, the Ukrainian tank fleet was larger(!!!) than America had active if you leave out the National Guard!
Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom have less than a thousand tanks combined.
If you want to talk about artillery, Ukraine had around the same amount of SPGs that the US(!!!) has, in 2S3s alone.
Russia only had ~3000 operational tanks at the start of the special military operation.
With what? German broomsticks and tankless tank brigades? The ‘mighty’ French air force that has enough ammunition for a mere 3 days of combat? The British military that sent all of their SPGs to Ukraine resulting in them having to go to Sweden to beg for more? You think this force can prevent Russians from cutting the Suwałki Gap?
Out of all of EU, Poland is probably number one, and they sent half their tank fleet to Ukraine!
As much as we hate to admit it, I agree with you. Ukraine was better equipped and prepared than most European countries currently are.
If NATO fights together they will defeat Russia, but Russia could easily beat many of the small countries in Europe and then add their soldiers and production to their own and keep moving on if fighting one by one.
Russia currently produces more tanks, drones, and artillery per year than most European countries have total in their arsenal and more total than all of NATO combined produce per year.
And if you think I’m just some tankie, please see my post history and the links below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_main_battle_tanks_by_country
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/artillery-by-country
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-gears-up-for-a-tank-surge-1100-new-t-90m2-planned-in-secret-wartime-program-12403
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ammunition-ukraine/
https://news.sky.com/story/russian-suicide-drone-launches-quadruple-this-year-13463263