Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

Interestingly, German news channel ntv Nachrichten is also talking about an additional Patriot battery over the ones already promised and delivered. I’ll be honest, I have no idea where the Luftwaffe has dug out that particular battery, unless they had more in their depots than was publicly known or they deactivated one of their own operational batteries in Germany.

Even harder given the Russia occupation by Ukraine.

Maybe Putin is taking up Zelensky’s offer.

Hungary won’t veto it if Putin puts in a call.

Quite a lot of Western financial support for rebuilding Ukraine has already been quite publicly pledged (e.g. Italy's pledge to rebuild the Theatre of Mariupol) and IIRC, Zelenskyy was quoted quite recently as saying money wasn't the immediate issue - arms are - they have enough funding to continue the war until the end of 2025 right now.

Anyone I know who's visited has commented that the Ukrainian people are very industrious (they were, afterall the arms factory of the USSR) and you can guarantee that arms industry - in particular their drone tech - is going to be in high demand around the world (particularly in other nations who share a border with Russia). Add in their mineral wealth, status as a huge producer of grain, war-time refugees returning with new skills and language abilities, and a pretty much guaranteed path to EU membership and I'd be stunned if we don't see a "Ukrainian Tiger" economy within a few short years of the war ending.

@Jizique - on the demographics, this is the reason the Ukrainian government has been so hesitant to conscript their young men. Certainly, they'll lose some people to other EU countries but no more so than they already were to an extent - a good friend of my wife's is a Ukrainian lady who's lived in Ireland for almost 20 years at this stage and raised her children here (as an aside: her husband was a former soldier who rejoined the UAF within weeks of the invasion and has rather miraculously survived both the battles of Bakhmut and Avdiivka!).

Their eldest lad is currently doing a Masters in aerospace engineering of some sort with the intention return to Ukraine once the conflict is over. They literally had to hide his passport to stop him enlisting for the first year or so of the invasion. I believe it was only during his father's first leave and hearing his horror stories that he understood his father was fighting so he wouldn't have to. I hadn't realised myself until hearing some of those stories just how barbarically close quarters some of the fighting in Bakhmut got - at one point he ran out of ammo during a trench clearance and literally had to rip a Russian soldier's throat out with his teeth! He's obviously traumatised and will likely need a lifetime of therapy if he survives the rest of the conflict; something his wife has admitted to mine that she's long since given up hope of. Sorry, got a bit side-tracked there but I'll leave it in my post as I think their story is worth the telling…

Back to the demographics: I'm sure you're right that Ukraine will have their demographic issues post-war but I think the important thing is that they'll be nothing on the scale of the demographic issues Russia is already facing and that's the important factor here: which nation will rebuild faster once the guns stop firing? I think any bookie would give you very long odds on it being Russia.

What baffles me (although on reflection doesn't baffle me all that much…considering who we are talking about) is the push to snatch a load of urbane young folk from Russia's main cities. These are potentially folk who's main hardship so far might have been the need to shovel snow from their house-front. Replace that snow-shovel with an AK47 and slap on some decaying Soviet winter gear…and you still don't end up with a soldier.

Yet again Putin is just fishing in more cannon fodder instead of trying to develop a professional fighting force that has a shot of returning home. I wonder if the Russians ever learned this their lesson from this? They did the exact same thing in WWII, and in that case it worked for them….*eventually*

You neglect to point out that Ukraine still has 60% of the Russian land they took months ago. Which, makes an absolute mockery of Russian military abilities. Always glass half empty with you. Except here, when it's in fact 60% full!