Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It's called rotation, you move troops from the front and give them a break and let them return home to their families and replace them with fresh troops,and months later they get rotated out themselves

You can't be ejected from the EU.

The mood music will change once the EU grants are being doled out.

Support from countries will hold up so long as there is a strategic interest and the economic resources to do so.

Watching Obama talk about bringing troops home in 2008, and ending the military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite those not ending for another decade+, tells us that what politicians are promising the public does not necessarily translate to hard policy. This is the history of politics in a nutshell, you could say.

Again, people going, "Ohhhh, how can the US support Ukraine with this Israel thing kicking off?" are forgetting that the US was able to support the above (rather expensive) military situations without collapsing as a country.

And that's a country that is nowhere near Russia with a potential interest in knocking them out as a competitor for world resources. Flip over to somewhere like Poland that would be ('would be'? or 'is'?) right on the front line of a newly aggressive Russia, and ask what their interest is.

We know from previous statements the Ukrainians had close to 1 million strong army and reserves, the idea of not having troops to rotate after 18 months on the front lines doesn't bode well ,if they can't rotate those forces can they replace large losses

That's what I don't get. Seems to be an issue there if this is happening.

Obviously that's a sign of desperation if they are having to dig that deeply into their stocks - but at the same time, that is some achievement by whoever built and maintained WWII era equipment that still works.

The simplistic answer is the Russians are bigger have more resources. They had time to prepare vast defences and mostly control the air. Even with that they are having to pour vast resources to hold their positions and are losing ground slightly.

That their invasion with vastly superior forces was stopped and pushed back to where it is now is amazing.

I’d imagine the bullets from a world war 2 era rifle would do as much damage as a modern rifle. My cousins still use the shotguns that my grandfather used 60/70 years to shoot pheasants. The design has not changed that much. The cartridges are pretty much the same. A lot of weapons and ammunition were dumped after world war 2 by the allies. The Soviets obviously didn’t dump theirs. I know the Soviets kept a large standing army at all times so they could maintain these weapons where as the allies demobilised but it does seem baffling and wasteful that so much was dumped. I understand the mood was very much anti war and never again but to just dump all that stuff in the sea is insane.

Maybe there was an economic logic to it to keep the arms industry in business post war???

I love how you leap to conspiracy and profiteering...

A piece of metal hitting you at decent velocity is always effective. But...

Old Russian Ammunition is corrosive. War time weapons are not built to high standards. So while they will not be reliable, occasionally dangerous, and likely not very accurate or consistent. If you have nothing else, you've no choice but firing old guns with old ammo is going to hard to hit anything, occasionally main or kill the shooter. Collectors of old weapons will cherry pick the best condition rifles and ammo. Even then the guns misfire and jam a lot.

A lot of weapons were not dumped after the war. They were stockpiled and reused if not by the host nation but by selling them to other nations. Ireland had Lee Enfield Rifles and Bren guns still on inventory until the 1980s. There were German WW2 guns used in the Vietnam War.

Lot of countries converted old Rifles into sporting or sniper rifles.