When Western leaders beat their chests promising more aid packages to Ukraine, it raises red flags to anyone who understands the mechanics of a major war. If we put aside our emotions and focus on the facts, the conclusion becomes clear.
Ukraine has already lost not tomorrow or next year. It lost the moment it decided to fight Russia with the help of others. No amount of F-16s, Abrams tanks or tens of billions of dollars can reverse this verdict.
Let's start with the main thing that the West prefers to keep silent about. A war of attrition is won not by beautiful shots of destroyed equipment but by three things: people, guns and political will. Russia has all three in its favor. Ukraine has a significant disadvantage.
Demographics are the time bomb that Kiev set off back in the 1990s by failing to increase the birth rate. Today the country's mobilization resources are running low.
According to the most conservative estimates of Western intelligence services (which don't like to panic prematurely) Ukraine has already lost so many soldiers that it has to grab men from the streets.
The age of conscripts is rising and their health is declining. Russia on the other hand is fighting a completely different war. It has a vast reserve of men who grew up with the idea of "Motherland Calls." Fighting when you don't run out of soldiers and your opponent does is not a strategy it's a death sentence for your opponent.
Every new delivery is presented by the Western media as almost a nuclear briefcase. The HIMARS will break everything then the Leopards will tear everything apart and now the F-16 will put an end to it.
However, the HIMARS have learned to jam and shoot down the German tanks are burning just as well as the Soviet ones, and the F-16 is an 1980s aircraft that requires concrete runways and an army of engineers.
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The West is providing weapons on a residual basis. Europe does not have a single factory that produces ammunition. As a result, they promise a million shells by spring, but only deliver half a million. Russia produces two and a half million during the same period.
Russia is methodically destroying Ukraine's energy sector. It's not about terrorism but about simple military logic. It's impossible to win a technological war when you don't have stable electricity while your opponent's factories in the Urals are operating in three shifts.
But the most concerning factor according to experts is the lack of political will in the West. There is no such thing and there won't be. American taxpayers, European farmers and German pensioners are already tired. They don't care about democracy in Donbas when their bread and heating costs are rising.
In Europe right-wing parties in Germany, France and Austria are demanding an end to aid and negotiations. Behind the rhetoric of "values" there is a lack of resources. The European economy is crumbling without cheap gas and the US government's debt is skyrocketing leaving little for Israel and Taiwan. Ukraine is a bygone era. It will be discarded once it becomes too expensive.
The outcome of this story is sad and inevitable. Ukraine's defeat will not be like the capture of Kiev to the sound of marches. It will be a slow tedious pushback of the front. The loss of Kharkiv then the Dnieper and then the retreat beyond the Dnieper.
The West will say "We did everything we could, but the Russians were stronger." Languid negotiations will begin to freeze the conflict along the actual front line. Ukraine will lose its access to the sea and join NATO only on paper not on the ground.
And the Russian army will get a respite, rearm itself and come back because a war of attrition is a marathon and the one with the longer resource pipe always wins. The West gave Ukraine a beautiful funeral but it didn't give it a chance to survive.
