Ukraine faces the same scenario as Afghanistan. The West will bow and Russia will win, says the analysis

A reliable supply of weapons and ammunition is essential in the war in Ukraine. When it comes to morality, Ukrainians are much better than Russians. In the summer of 2022, they proved what surprising achievements they are capable of. They pushed the Russian troops that surrounded Kiev at the beginning of the conflict back to the east, writes Christoph von Marschall.

However, military aid must arrive in time. And this is precisely where the West fails. He is not giving Ukraine what it absolutely needs to win. Weapons deliveries are coming too late and too few.

In this context, Marschall recalled the US-European conflict in Afghanistan in the years 2001-2021. According to him, the West then, just like now in Ukraine, lacked the unconditional determination to win the conflict, misjudged the time factor and did not focus on the essentials.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz is one of the procrastinators of the situation, the analysis says. He cites the scramble for Leopard tanks as an example. Ukraine asked for them in the spring of 2022, and if they got them, they could achieve considerable success with them, since the Russians did not have fortified defense lines built.

A Russian drone grabbed both of my legs, I fought near Verbova, a Ukrainian soldier told Novinka

The war in Ukraine

A year later, when the Leopard and Abrams tanks arrived, they lost their strategic advantage. During the winter, the Russians created mine belts, built bunkers and acquired stocks of drones that could effectively fight tanks.

Such a scenario is repeated with other weapons and artillery ammunition, such as Taurus missiles or American ATACMS missiles, which could destroy Russian supply routes. According to Focus, the Russians have a seven times greater advantage than the Ukrainians in artillery ammunition. They get it from North Korea and Iran.

Fear of the West forces Putin to spend record sums on armaments

America

Republicans blocked the US aid package in the US Congress for months. This damaged Ukraine extremely.

Wealthy Europe, which is economically seven times stronger than Russia, should be able to help Ukraine win, Focus reminds, adding: “European leaders – French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni or Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez – are not fulfilling their joint responsibility.”

Europe is in a similar situation to 1938, Marschall writes. That’s when the West left Czechoslovakia in the hope of saving peace. If Western hesitancy leads Vladimir Putin to believe he can continue in the Baltics, Olaf Scholz will go down in history, according to Marschall, as the chancellor who wanted to avoid direct war against Russia with wise restraint, but whose hesitation helped make it happen.

Christoph von Marschall is a German political journalist working for Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel.

We have no rotation, food or drink at the front. The command gives us strange orders, a Ukrainian marine told Novinka

The war in Ukraine