Sobering look at the withdraw from the city of Avdiivka. Although a lot of the reporting is showing that Russian won this battle at a huge cost, the cost is also huge for Ukraine in equipment, personnel, strategy and more. Lot's of talk about the lack of weapons but as this article is pointing out, a lot of poor strategy and decision making is really hampering Ukrainian offensive and defensive positions.
https://kyivindependent.com/image-draft-avdiivka/
I also read another article about the choice the government is going to have to make here very soon with regards to additional manpower. Most of the best troops from Ukraine have been injured, killed and are facing exhaustion like no other from brutal fighting conditions.
There are enough reports of places like Kyiv being filled with young men and women just hanging out, having a good time in the bars and restaurants while other's are on the frontline paying the ultimate sacrifice.
If Ukraine is to actually push further and further out and regain enough land to be in a solid position to negotiate a a peace deal, they are going to need to have people, training, the best of the best equipment and more. They may need to do the unpopular position and draft and rotate about as many people as possible to assist in any way, shape or form. Everybody has a role to play in this battle and can assist.
I used to be extremely hopeful that Russia would actually flat out lose this war, Ukraine would win, good would prevail, democracy would win. Etc Etc. The more and more I see the more and more it looks like Ukraine will lose significant areas, vital land, have it's population and economy in taters and the western leaders will brag about how well of a job everybody did in supporting Ukraine and how Kyiv never fell to Putin.
Short of a miracle, how will we insure that Ukraine and the west get's over the hump in this? We can point to a lot of current and past issues with deadlocked Congressional support, EU dithering, Biden professing no need for F16's years ago and more but the reality is, the west is trying to get half pregnant with this whole thing and it's kind of starting to show.