Ukraine had to do it first. Insted they further fortified positions.
It was a quid pro quo. Everytime Ukrainian troops moved away, unbadged Russian soldiers took advantage to seize more territory. So since Russia didn't play ball, why should have Ukraine sabotaged itself to please their enemy?
Your position is that Ukraine should have capitulated immediately and entirely and given Putin everything they wanted including the return of massive corruption against which the population rose up several times.
It's like self-determination means nothing to you. With that mentality you should still be subject of the British Raj.
France is an imperial power. Ukraine is not. And 700,000 were trained men, not your regular joe TDF.
Nope, the majority of the Ukrainian troops are precisely "regular joe TDF". There's a reason why European countries set up a program to train Ukrainian troops after the full-scale war started.
Thing is a number of Ukrainian troops were trained by the eight years of comparatively low-intensity war in the Donbas where Russia was just casually shelling people and shooting down airliners while pretending not to be doing it. So... it's entirely Russia's fault if Ukraine had motivated veteran troops to resist Russian invasion.
That's it... Invade Donbas.
Ukraine cannot invade Donbas, for the simple reason Donbas is Ukraine.
What they can do, however, is expel a horde of rapists, murderers, thieves, and other criminals that have been put in a position of control over this territory by an aggressive, hostile foreign power.
Even with all those problems, they are still defeating Western tech.
Only because they have sheer numbers (including gargantuan reserves of Soviet materiel, which they are currently emptying with great alacrity) and Western aide has so far been dispensed under the operating principle of "too little, too late, we don't wanna escalate too fast".
Things would have been very different, and a lot less Ukrainian blood would have been spilled, if they had received the tanks (still waiting for the Abrams, by the way), cluster munitions, long-range missiles, and fighter jets (also still waiting for them) last year.
So yes, Western tank treads are not immune to mines. It's going to be hard to make mine-proof, shell-proof vehicles without a convenient source of Unobtainium. On the plus side, when western tech is defeated by Russia, the people inside generally survive and can evacuate relatively safely. Whereas when Soviet/Russian-design tanks are defeated, the crew gets vaporized as the turret tries to reach orbit.
Ukraine has so far reclaimed 300 km² of its territory since June. If this is a defeat, then what to say about Russia? Again, the only victory they've managed after the end of the "blitzkrieg" phase where they seize much of the south, once the Ukrainian forces managed to reorganize and regroup and hold the line, has been Bakhmut. And currently, Ukraine is getting in a position to reclaim this martyred town, and it looks like it won't take them the ten months it took for Russia.
Despite Russia's gigantic firepower advantage in artillery, armor, and air superiority.
No, they are not. Their economy was attacked and it still weathered the storm. And they are earning enough forex to pay for militarisation. It's literally free money that they dig out of the ground.
The Russian economy is in shambles, but they're hiding it. Their export revenues have considerably decreased since before the full-scale war, and when they triumphantly claim their export (by volume) has increased, it just tries to mask that their export (by revenue) has decreased. Meaning they sell more but for less.
Russian society is corrupt. So is the rest of the Third World. But what's that go to do with France and Germany faking talks?
I still hold that this is a baseless reading of history. The whole "those meanies tricked me into not attacking Ukraine in the hope that I wouldn't attack Ukraine, so I had to attack Ukraine before I couldn't attack Ukraine anymore" whining is just beyond belief in its stupidity.
Russia is not the Third World, you know? They were the Second World. They counted as a developed, industrial country. They were, and still are, a colonial power with a vast empire. At the end of the Cold War, they should have joined the First World; but instead they fell into Third World status.
Maybe there's some questions to ask about why. And I know that according to Russia, the blame lay at the feet of everyone else in the world (but mostly The Evil West) while Russia itself is just an innocent little naïve and defenseless victim that never wronged anyone; but maybe, just maybe, this is bull dung?
