Quote:
Originally Posted by sterlingice
Dammit. That was going to be a big deal.
And from what I saw, the US was like "here's some F-16s" to the EU countries get upgrades, Ukraine gets the planes they need, and everyone's happy.
SI
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How would that work, though? How would they even get to Ukraine? Zelensky has asked NATO for a "No-Fly-Zone" enforcement over Ukraine. That would start WWIII the second anyone engaged because presumably Russia is monitoring and ready to enforce its own No-Fly-Zone over Ukraine.
They took out the entire Ukraine air force. Let's say you could sneak planes in or have Ukrainian pilots sneak out of the country and "borrow" them. Then what? They engage for ten minutes and are destroyed.
Unfortunately, Russia has complete air and sea control right now. Challenging that means direct NATO engagement, no way around it. Even getting the essential anti-tank weapons in there would be a miracle at this point. Russia is setting up siege-like offenses. Maybe they don't work because their own supply lines aren't good or they are underestimating the Ukrainians. But that's what they're doing and if the threat of isolation is failing (hard to even try because everyone depends on Nordstream I) because of China, I don't know how this ends up. If Putin can stomach what he's asked his forces to do to Kharkiv in the last couple of days, we're just not dealing with a rational human being - unfortunately one with far too much control.