But despite the complexity of the situation, I am quite optimistic, and I'll explain why:
- Over the past 8 years, the Ukrainian army has felt real support from the state and the world community. The Ukrainian army is very motivated, since we are on our own land, + the salaries of military personnel have been raised four times. As a result, in just 4 days, on a voluntary basis, 100k people with real combat experience were at the disposal of the general headquarters, (there are currently about 400k reservists in ukraine with combat experience).
- We have problems with aviation and navy, but this is compensated by the fact that our ground forces are the equivalent of Russian ground forces (let's be objective, Putin cannot afford to expose his eastern flanks, on the border with China).
- 15 million people are engaged in logistics support for military personnel, this is probably the main reason why Russia never managed to capture almost a single major regional center. I think such cohesion is also connected with the fact that for the first time in the history of Ukraine we have a president who, even before the war, was able to unite both the Ukrainian-speaking population and the Russian-speaking people, (previously, the president has always been a person representing only one of the ethnic groups).
Thanks a lot for your first-person insights into this war, icopress! I am fascinated by the Ukrainian population's combined effort to effectively fend off such a supposed 'world power' as Russia, huge respect.
I am wondering: did you guys always have this conviction that your neighbour's army wasn't as strong as has so far always been asserted or did this awareness arise during the first days of the war? To me it always appeared that Russia had a comparable military as the United States; a huge superpower that a single smaller country couldn't compete with. While now it doesn't seem like that at all (not meaning to downplay your great achievements in the war!).