Russia - threadbanned users in OP

That will come up in part 2!!! (if Tucker can be persuaded to come back..)

The contract is for $10 billion, quite a large figure. I would expect defense countries within Europe could develop a similar system seeing as how they can produce AA systems and cruise missiles.

So I suspect it's down to urgency and it's also battle tested. It's just a massive amount of launchers (~500) Considering the limited range of missiles Ukraine has been given, they can still hit anywhere on the frontline with just 8 launchers.

there is an arty shortage in Ukraine, 225K shells is well short of a thousand a day , dont Ukraine need to be firing 5-10K a day?

How do you envision this East/West Ukraine coming about? Do you think it would be an agreement between Ukraine and Russia?

I never said the 224,000 shells figure was a number for the annual supply to Ukraine. It looks to me like you are deliberately trying to miss represent what I have posted.The figure the EU has set as an initial target for supplying to Ukraine is 1000,000 shells per annum which equates to over 2,700shells per day.

Ukraine is also producing its own ammunition and there are other countries outside the EU supplying weapons to Ukraine to help them defend themselves from aggression from putin's forces. I can't answer your question on how many shells Ukraine needs to fire to defend itself from putin but it seems from what I have seen that they are more reliant on drones and the accurate use of more modern artillery and missiles which may get more effect from less numbers of units fired. Its not like they are copying the tactic of putin's forces of simply using dumb artillery shells to demolish towns and cities.

Just checked there and the figure Ukraine's armed forces have posted for artillery systems they have eliminated is 9475 so maybe it is putin's forces that now have an artillery shortage in Ukraine and since this is such a central part of their offensive strategy it makes further gains of territory by putin less likely.

it all shapes up that 24 will not be a good year for Ukraine, currently arty shells are selling for up to $8K each which is multiples of the production cost, which means there is too much money chasing too few shells, possibly Israel adding to the demand as well. These supply issues cant turn around quickly, it could be 12 to 18 months

I wouldn't think another aid package would be needed for these cluster shells to be sent to Ukraine. I read somewhere that the USA has decided they will not be using them anyway. They could just be sold to Ukraine for a nominal fee for disposal.

You are just ignoring what I have posted and repeating nonsense that numbers of dumb artillery shells is what will decide the outcome of putin's attempt to seize parts of Ukraine. putin's forces since the more widespread invasion of Ukraine two years ago are down nearly ten thousand artillery systems and large numbers of other weapon systems and huge numbers of their trained troops so increasingly they wont be able to do anything other than send waves of poorly trained new recruits to provide fertiliser for Ukrainian soils. Increasingly Ukraine is now also able to strike at putin's empire with their own longer range weapons making his empire building more costly and even more clearly a huge mistake that the people of the russian federation will take decades to recover from and could bring it as an individual economic area to an end.

Apart from UK and Germany

I'd be wary of trying to portray that the Russians are going to run out of stuff, in some shape or another thats been used since a few months after the war started but you could roll it up into the scenario that the lines dont move much from here. This is a war of attrition where one country has 4 or 5 times the population of the other. Ukraine need to minimise their own attrition by being fully in a fully defensive mode. The summer offensive was a waste and their stubbornness by trying to hold on to salients is likewise wasteful. They should round out their lines, fall back to better positions where appropriate and maximise the cost to the Russians of trying to advance, essentially try to ensure a stalemate

A lot of cloak and dagger stuff going on, so one wouldnt have full clarity , but a 155 shell is a 155 shell, as it is not every new shell made in Europe is going to Ukraine, they have to fulfill contracts for other countries, the US is most likely recycle shells from 3rd countries back to Israel

It saddens me to hear that kind of rhetoric. We all hope for a Ukrainian victory as soon as possible. But also hopefully with as little loss of life as possible. Those Russian imperialists you refer to are likely the exact same people as you, me and the men/ women they're facing off against in Ukraine. Ordinary people, dragged into a war, compelled to 'answer' 'their' nation's 'call'. Conscripted, poor, uneducated. Going by the rhetoric on here, if we were all Russian, sitting in Moscow, half of ye would be queuing to sign up for the war effort. I doubt very much that the grunts on the frontline in Ukraine have any imperialistic dreams. They most likely just want to stay alive, not be beaten or shot in the back by their commanding officers, get some food, try to stay warm, do as little as possible, keep their heads down and get home to their families.

This war, of one man's making, is a pure and utter tragedy. It's good to discuss it, good to keep up to date on developments, great to hope for positive news from the Ukrainian side. But lets not glorify the slaughter of fellow human beings.

I'm not aiming my anger at you. Aiming anger on an internet forum isn't going to achieve anything. If you look at your post history you'll probably find that most of your 'thanks' include one from me. This is a place for civil discussion, not throwing around ridiculous phrases like 'orcs' and RuZZians' as was common place up to recently. Mine is just an opinion. You're the second person to bring the whataboutery argument of "what if bad things happened to your family" into the equation. It's nonsense. I'm not going to cheer the slaughter of ordinary Russian grunts just because of "whataboutery". I can accept that in war, death is an inevitability. I can also accept that if I want a Ukrainian victory, it stands to reason that more Russian soldiers will need to die. But I don't need to revel in their death on an internet forum to prove how much I love my family and what a hero I'd be if whataboutery came to pass.

Again, this isn't meant as an attack on you. It was a general comment on what I've noticed a lot on here. A sense from posters that they have to exultate in the number of daily Russian deaths, as some kind of way of proving to the internet just how committed they are to the Ukrainian cause. When in reality the majority of EU citizens, at an individual level, have made precisely zero sacrifices or contributions to the Ukrainian war effort. "It's not my war to fight" as another poster stated the other day while criticising me for defending the right of people to opt out of taking up arms.