I have read some of your articles and we don’t align politically. But sometimes an opponent/rival or even an enemy can speak some truth.

Yes the Russian military is incompetent, in fact all the way back to Napoleon it has been. WW2- incompetent, WW1 incompetent is too kind a word, 1905 against Japan- incompetent, Napoleon- incompetent. By and large, you could probably go back to Ivan the terrible to show real competence with the taking of Kazan and Astrahan and breaking the back of the Turkic horde, allowing Russia to expand.

But in the push into Siberia all to the Pacific, who did you Russia use for that? Who did Catherine the Great give generous land concessions to, to move to the Kuban river and found the city of Ekaterinador, now Krasnodar? Who did Russia use from there to expand the Russian empire into the Caucasus? Who harassed and destroyed much of Napoleon’s fleeing army?

^^^ All of the above was not done by Russians, but by Cossacks. A great irony that he vast majority of Russian empire expansion was not done by a Russian army full of Russians, but Ukrainian Cossacks.

Since WW2 would be the most contentious of the above to discuss. Let’s look at some numbers. 80% of German casualties were on the Eastern front against the Soviets. Yet total German casualties against everyone were a quarter of Soviet losses. Furthermore, the American Lend lease program gave the Soviets the equivalent of $130 billion today. Enough to equip a whole army from scratch and have change. The Germans were having fuel shortages- much because of Hitler’s incompetence of insisting on taking Leningrad and Stalingrad rather than going around them, especially Stalingrad when they could have been in the Caucasus oil fields. Plus Germany was having its factories bombed, again because Hitler switched from bombing airfields to bombing London and so lost the Battle of Britain.

Stalin was smart enough to move his factories beyond the urals and got to the point they were producing 100 tanks a month.

And seeing the tactics around Bakhmut, it is quite clear to me what is going on. They are trading bodies for meters, exactly what Stalin did. You don’t need competence for that. You just need cannon fodder. It’s less an army and more a horde.

So that’s the opponent. What about us? No western analyst, not even myself, and certainly not Russians or Putin- predicted Ukraine lasting this long and fighting back. It’s one for the history books. I expected Russia to lose but lose eventually, after 5-15 years of a bleeding occupation at least of half of Ukraine. Fighting Afghans etc is bad enough, as both the Soviets and US found out. But fighting an enemy that looks like you, can speak your language, with a partisan tradition backed by a Cossack national myth and on their home soil- Russia was never going to win against that.

So when Ukraine did hold on, they got some supplies. When they held on longer, those supplies got better. But when they started winning, coz we all love a winner, that’s when the chèque books opened. Much of what Ukraine has achieved is on them, despite us. The biggest contribution has been the HIMARS for sure as well as Javelins early on. And the artillery shells, this war has used a crazy amount of them.

But there is a huge difference between defensive positions, with gains made in opportune ways, and a full offensive. And even now, Ukraine doesn’t have what it needs for a serious offensive. Quite possibly Russia doesn’t have either but a frozen conflict is the worst outcome for everyone. The East of Ukraine is WW1 trench warfare.

The longer this goes on, the more chance we turn to something else in the news cycle, the more chance supplies dry up. The rate of expenditure is not even sustainable by the west. Our manufacturing is not on a war footing. Tens of thousands of various munition types are being used that we only produce a few thousand a year of. Some, like stingers, haven’t been manufactured in a decade.

So yes, Ukraine is not being given the tools to win. They are given the tools to bleed Russia a lot. But we can see in hundreds of years of Russian tactics, Russia doesn’t care about its soldiers, they are tools for purpose and there are plenty more.

I think Putin’s calculation has been that he just has to wait out the attention span of the west, he is probably surprised as I am, that the west has paid attention this long. When the west gets bored and tired of the war, the supply of weapons will dry up and then Russia’s numbers will overwhelm to victory. That’s his plan I think.

Indeed, it could be argued, that not giving Ukraine what it needs for victory yet giving it hope, is a form of cruelty. All for us to say we were so generous and at least we tried.

So yes the Russian army is incompetent and the Ukrainian army has shown it is more than competent. But none of that especially matters and doesn’t change the outcome in of itself.