Arguably the biggest issue for Ukraine is the long-kept secret of the West’s dire arms and production woes. More and more we become privy to just how badly NATO was demilitarized in its futile attempt to subjugate Russia.
A growing number of officials are sounding the alarm of the US’ own shrinking stockpiles and the grave danger this poses for its national security.
The CNN article above reveals that the real reason behind Biden not using the remaining billions of dollars in drawdown authority is concerns over the US’ dwindling stockpiles:
In April, Congress gave the Biden administration an additional $13.4 billion to use specifically to send Ukraine weapons and equipment drawn from US stockpiles. But the Defense Department hasn’t been able to use it all because of a lack of corresponding supply that it is willing to part with without risking the US’ own readiness, officials told CNN.
Recall what I had just written recently about ATACMS? At $1.5-1.7 million each, sending just another 100 missiles would wipe out almost an entire aid package, like those below:
Since then, however, the value of each military aid package to Ukraine has been significantly smaller, with none exceeding $400 million and most in the $125 million to $250 million range. In 2022 and 2023, the Pentagon regularly announced packages worth between $600 million to $800 million, with the highest being $2.85 billion in January 2023.
Now, Jake Sullivan has even gone on record with the biggest bombshell of this crisis. Listen very carefully below, as Sullivan explains that the US was forced to literally scrounge the entire world to desperately plug critical gaps in Ukraine’s missile defense:
What further proof do you need that NATO is being far more demilitarized by this conflict than Russia, as they so often claim? This is particularly in light of alarmism surrounding the latest strikes on Russia’s Toropets arsenal. I wrote this yesterday on X and will repeat it here:
Fun fact: The Toropets arsenal “has 41 newer bunkers that can hold up to 240 metric tonnes of ammunition each, and 70+ sheds hold up to 120 tonnes each, not factoring large areas of open-air storage, that’s over 19K metric tonnes”. Thus, the arsenal holds *up to* 19,000 tonnes of munitions. The Russian army uses upwards of 10,000 – 15,000 tons of munitions per day. So, even if Ukraine were to have destroyed the entire arsenal, this represents a single day or two of Russian expenditures at most. We know they didn’t come close to destroying the whole thing, nor that the arsenal was even “full” at capacity. Thus, Ukraine may have destroyed about 12 hours worth of Russian munitions expenditures in the SMO. Gamechanger?
I had added that the above report is already a year old, and the Russian SMO force has grown by 20-25% from about 450k to 570-600k since then, with the daily munition tonnage growing correspondingly. Thus, it’s possible Ukraine may have destroyed the equivalent of as little as 12 hours’ worth of Russian ammo or less in the Toropets strike.
In fact, Putin just signed the decree to increase the Russian Armed Forces to 1.5 million, a 180,000 increase of the Army, which would put Russia at number two largest military in the world:
US generals are again saying—like Christopher Cavoli months ago—that the Russian Army is now bigger and better than even before the invasion:
Russia’s military is bigger and stronger than it was prior to invading Ukraine in February 2022, the commander of United States Air Forces in Europe and Africa cautioned Tuesday.
“Russia is getting larger, and they’re getting better than they were before. … They are actually larger than they were when [the invasion] kicked off,” Air Force General James Hecker told reporters at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
This comes amidst a spate of regime media articles warning to switch tacks and stop underestimating Russian might:
“Washington Post: The US and EU no longer believe that Russia will lose on the battlefield or that its economy will be destroyed by sanctions.
The publication notes that the stalemate, which has been going on for three years now, has become a strategic disaster for Moscow, but Russia can still outlive Washington and its allies due to its enormous mass of forces and resources. The publication also states that this is precisely why the partners are now more inclined to negotiate and are giving Ukraine various hints about this.”
The above article by the way finally comes around to making a big admission, which we’ve been talking about here for a long time:
Much has been made of Ukraine’s impressive success in sinking or crippling a chunk of Putin’s Black Sea Fleet. But with a couple of exceptions, the Chatham House study said, the ships destroyed or disabled were “very old or limited” vessels. The Russian navy “has lost none of its blue-water combat capability,” the paper concluded, and Moscow’s “global power projection capabilities are undiminished.”
‘The war will not end this year. The Russians are strong, they can fight for a long time’ Dutch Defense Minister Brekelmans said that Europeans need to be prepared for long-term spending on the war in Ukraine: ‘I don’t see it ending next year. Of course, we have to support Ukraine militarily as much as we can, but we also have to be realistic. The situation on the battlefield is very difficult. That means we have to do more, but we also have to be realistic. We have to make sure that the Dutch and other Europeans are prepared to support Ukraine in the long term. So we must not create any false expectations, because then people might be disappointed. The Russians are strong. We see on the battlefield that they are capable of continuing this war and fighting very intensively for a long time. If you look at the projections of what they can produce there, the military industry is capable of producing a lot. So we have to take the threat from Russia very seriously.’
Where are the Anti-War screwballs why isn’t the UN doing anything a bout this I thought the UN was there to prevent wars not encourage them