After Crimea Ukraine should have gone full Israel. Everyone turning 18 serves 1-2 years in the military. Add a whole bunch of rifles and have them all in the reserves.
Since 2014 the Ukrainian Armed Forces have gone through a bunch of reform. They did not go "full Israel", even though to do annual conscription, and the populace is available for conscription when necessary. I think this is the right move on Ukraine and I will say way.
The reforms of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, particularly the Ukrainian Army, since 2014 have been widespread, but not focused on creating a large conscription army and giving everyone a rifle and a clip and throwing them out there to fight Russians. From the get-go, the Ukrainians asked for assistance from NATO in developing a reform plan. The idea was not to create a large conscript army, but to build a larger professional army with better training, better equipment, better organization, and better leadership. The Ukrainians agreed with this because the feeling was, even in former Soviet countries, that large poorly equipped and poorly training conscript armies could not fight against the better trained, better equipped, but smaller NATO armies. This is even reflected in the way the Russians have reformed their military since 2014, relying much less on conscripts and building a (relatively) more professional military since the fall of the Soviet Union. So fighting Russians isn't exactly the same as fighting conscripted Arab armies in 1967 or 1973. I don't recall the Israelis ever being saved by mass infantry assaults or defenses anyways. They won by heaving a better equipped and better trained professional tank corps, (including reserves), and a better equipped and better trained Air Force. They also had the advantage of terrain on their border with Syria. The Ukrainians have no benefits of defensive terrain other than the Dnieper River and urban areas.
Jezus. The IAF and Israeli tankers were nearly legendary for what they did in 1973 back in the '80s. They basically what that is was possible and became a prototype for how NATO would defend West Germany.
So the NATO advisors focused on not just a larger army, which doubled in size since 2014, and better equipping them and giving them better tactics, but overhauling the organization and command and control system from the old Soviet model that the Ukrainians had to a more NATO style. The idea being that the Ukrainian Army might suffer severe losses among leadership and command and control capabilities in the opening rounds of an defense against the Russian Army, and due to the Russian's cyber ability. So the most important idea was to teach decentralization in the Ukrainian Army. Give smaller unit commanders the training and knowledge to act on their own without orders from the Ministry of Defense of the nearest General. Developing Colonels, Majors, and Captains were the key to the NATO reform plan. So that surviving leadership, cut off from command, could act, survive, and fight. The Russians make a hole and smash through. If your remaining forces can organize and rally, they can stay in the fight and do that attrition you talked about.
The other aspect was equipment. You can't fight Russian T-80 tanks with rifles. The Soviets found out how that worked by sending human wave attacks against the Germans in 1941. So they need Javelin ATGMs to take out Russian tanks. They need Stinger MANPADS to attrit Russian rotary air power. (I'm having a flashback to Charlie Wilson's War). Not only do they need the equipment, but they need to be superbly training on how to use it tactically, in small groups if needed, while on the run and cut off from support. You can't do that with a conscript army focused on numbers. They need the most modern secure command and control systems at the lower levels to coordinate between small units and be able to think quicker, move quicker, react quicker, than the Russians.
So I think the Ukrainians made the best move possible, aided by NATO advisors, NATO training, and NATO equipment. Even then, the Russian army isn't a slouch. They still outnumber in infantry and have more artillery and armor. But the advantage has always been for the defender. The real weakness of Ukraine is their air power. They cannot stand against the Russian Air Force. Without air superiority, or at least a contested air space, no modern army can survive long. Establishing Air Superiority has basically been the American and NATO way of war since 1944. The Russians will have air superiority over Ukraine and can achieve it in days, if not a single day. From there the scenario is as I've mentioned earlier in the thread. The Russians pound the larger Ukrainian defensive positions to dust from the air or with superior artillery, then penetrate, and seize control of the rear and primary objectives.
The Ukrainians need air support, intelligence support, and logistics support. With that they can at least make it extremely painful for Russia. Would that be enough? I wonder if it is already too late. If Pooter commits to a full invasion, then even NATO coming in at a later point may not end the war because of the idea of sunken costs. Some people after listening to Pooter's speech last night are saying that he's unhinged, crazy. I'm unsure. I think a lot of people just can't understand bad men.
