The only reason Zelensky doesn't consider NATO membership as available is because he can't get it.
No, if you cared about impossibilities, you'd not claim Japan should invade the Kurils, or that Ukraine can take back the Donbass.
You just wanted to mischaracterize my point as badly as was possible.
No, I believe both are possible, if the will and focus is there.
I do not believe removing Russian troops from Ukraine is going to be a short affair, but I also understand that the current game is not the direct lines on the map, but the logistics nodes behind said lines, and the geopgraphical choke-points in the north of Crimea don't care about politics.
The naval war has been going Ukraine's way as well, but you seem to ignore the naval war aspect most of the time, as well as what the new Patriot batteries are doing to Russian tactical fixed-wing air.
At minimum it will go through till the Russian election, likely the US election as well. Places in Europe are pledging support through to 2027 and beyond, for a long war, because they know if US aid to Ukraine is cut, they are next, regardless. And even if Ukraine is able to force Russia to withdraw troops next week, the demining/anti-UXO work will take decades alone I expect, unless they just write them off like France did with the Zone Rouge's after WW1.
Crimea is attainable, and the Russian navy in the Black Sea is getting smaller every month, while the overland supply line is becoming less and less secure because of the 3 northern connections between Crimea and the south bank of the Kherson region, only one is actually truly overland, and that is the western most one.
The other two overland connections north out of Crimea are bridges over salt swamps/tidal flats, which are relatively easy to put out of action and keep out of action with enough long range artillery. Ukraine is spinning up homemade production of GLMRS rockets for the HIMARs launchers, Rheinmetall is building a tank factory for Leopards in Ukraine itself, while Russia's internal oil infrastructure is falling to pieces without western knowhow to maintain it.
The US public, including you Ab, have become far, far to accustomed to US combined arms dominance in modern warfare, and expect too much from Ukraine, too fast, instead of letting them both make tactical gains while gearing up industry to support and enable Ukraine to get the victory they want.
That's a game of chicken and politics, not an impossibility. If Japan was convinced Russians won't dare to use nukes over it, with how focused Russian military is in Ukraine now, conventionally they could punt Russia out of Kuriles so hard they wouldn't know what happened if they wanted to.
Also helps Russia resettled a lot of Ukrainian exiles in the Far East over the decades, including in that area.
If Japan wanted to rescue those Ukrainian nationals and evict the Russian squatters at the same time...
Matter of western support and time, not impossibility. If the West went full Lend Lease, absolutely possible. By which i mean Ukraine using about a hundred F-35's with few hundred other gen 4 planes, thousands of western tanks and IFVs and so on.
The decisive terrain is Crimea, not the Donbass, and if Russia loses Crimea, keeping the Donbass becomes very hard for the Kremlin. It also removes the off-shore oilfields found around Crimea from Russian control.
I was surprised when Ukraine mounted that first counteroffensive without F-16s for top-cover, and I think that was a mistake.
But I also understand letting the Russians dig in further may have only made everything harder in the long run, F-16s or not.
The naval war and the grain corridor are working, and the Patriots are helping deal with Russian tactical air as well as drones and high-end missiles.
The US Right should have been holding Biden's feet to the fire for Lend-Lease levels of aid and industrial spin-up from the second tanks rolled through Chernobyl.
), yet it mentions 315k killed OR wounded ...
