What makes you so certain that providing military weapons to Ukraine would result in nuclear annihilation? Both the US and Russia have been exporting all kinds of military hardware across the world for decades. Nothing new.
Ukraine becoming a slave-state of Russia would create the highest chance of NATO involvement, with the possibility of nuclear war. The reason is Ukraine will never capitulate to Russia, even if it becomes occupied by Russia. Ukraine will continue to resist. If you think the conventional war is bad, wait until it becomes an insurgency. It will become even bloodier for everyone involved than it is now. That in turn may lead to further involvement directly from NATO member states like Poland, who sitting idly by will become politically untenable for it's government.
Why would Russia respond to military aid with nuclear weapons? They don't want nuclear annihilation either.
Russia has already expressed that they see no role for nuclear weapons in the Ukrainian conflict... If you believe them. But if they are lying and do intend to use them, what would prompt them to do so. Loosing the conflict? They might already do that, just a lot of killing of people and civilians between then and now. So in that risk, they may already use them and no reason to not give Ukraine weapons. Giving Ukraine weapons speeds up the end of the war and less people (civilians) die.
The other reason Russia would use nuclear weapons, and the reason in which they already publicly stated they would, is if the Russian state's existence is at threat. I.e. NATO tanks rolling in towards Moscow. This is the outcome everyone is trying to prevent. And is the outcome that could well happen if Russia is not defeated militarily, quickly. There is a very real risk of other European countries getting directly involved if Ukraine becomes a giant concentration camp where the entirety of it's people are exterminated. Why wait for this eventuality?
If Russia is defeated militarily inside the boarders of Ukraine, this is the best and most stable outcome for peace in Europe and the world. Russia would be unable to do anything about it, short of nuking the west out of frustration. Unlikely, but why would we capitulate to Russia because of this? Might as well just hand over the United States sovereignty to Russia right now, lest they get angry with us and try to Nuke us...
Both the Russians and the west have probably communicated to one another what their red lines are and both sides are trying to avoid setting off the other side's trip wires. The speed at which the MiG-29 deal unraveled tells me Russia made it clear that was a red line.
Russia is currently being defeated inside Ukraine. Their losses are staggering and they will probably lose most of their conventional army in this war.
Ukraine needs all the assistance the west can give, but it has to be just shy of what is going to trigger a nuclear response from Russia. Against a non-nuclear power, NATO would probably have rolled into Ukraine by now. A nuclear armed adversary changes the calculus a lot.
Despite knowing what happened in Bucha is unfortunately not all that unusual in war. It's happened in recent wars too, it just didn't appear on social media a few hours later (and the victims weren't white) so it didn't have the impact this had. Much worse butchery happened not only in WW II, but some of the ancient wars were sickeningly brutal.
Yet knowing all that intellectually, what happened in Bucha still sickens me emotionally. I want Russia to be decisively defeated in this war, but I don't want it to escalate. I'm pretty sure Russia made it clear what sort of arms would be considered escalation on their part.
Sending F-22s is definitely off the table. There are only 187 operational and production stopped in 2011. As someone pointed out when I said I was skeptical that the Ukrainians could transition to the F-16 in 2-3 weeks, the ground crew training is important too. American aircraft are different from Russian aircraft and ground crews would have to learn an entirely new system. Sending Ukrainian ground crews to the US for training would take them out of front line service keeping the remaining MiGs in the air.
I've actually looked at the logistics of transitioning from one aircraft type to another or other equipment in wartime during WW II when weapons systems were a lot simpler than today. The US kept a lot of clearly obsolete weapons in production because of a few factors. One was the down time of production lines, which is not relevant here, but also the transition time for units in the field. Changing an aircraft type from the obsolescent P-40 to the higher performance P-51 was done in some places, but where units were stretched thin like in the CBI (China-Burma-India theater), the P-40s remained in frontline service to the end of the war because the units couldn't be spared from the front to retrain on the newer aircraft type.
When a unit did change out aircraft type, they were stood down for a month or more. The bigger the changes, the longer they were out of service. And the ground crews would need to learn a new aircraft type too. Though in the case of US aircraft there were enough similarities between the way things were done that transition from one type to another was not a major hassle.
Transition from British to American and vice versa was more difficult. The USAAF 31st and 52nd fighter groups were equipped with Spitfires when they went into combat in the Mediterranean because there was a shortage of US built fighters that could fight the Luftwaffe. They kept operating Spitfires until April 1944 even though the supply of P-47s and P-51s were getting abundant before that. Enough new units equipped with P-51s had arrived in Italy by April 1944 to stand down these two units and convert them to P-51s.
RAF units that flew American aircraft usually had longer transition periods too.
In peacetime, giving Ukraine F-16s and Abrams would be doable. But the people who would need to train on the new equipment are in combat now and would have to be taken off the front lines to train on the new equipment. The next few weeks are critical in this war. It's clear Russia is going to make one final push to take at least the Donbas before May 9. The Ukrainians have an opportunity to inflict a mortal wound on their army.
Russia's army is stretched to the limits right now. They have taken staggering losses, their supply situation is poor and getting worse, and they have orders from above to pull off one last offensive. An overstretched army trying to do an offensive is a ripe target for the other side. The Ukrainians could inflict their most devastating damage yet if they have their forces in the right places in time.
One thing the Ukrainians haven't gotten (that I've seen at least) are military trucks. With a fleet of western military trucks they could keep their army better supplied when pushing the Russians back. Any weapons the west can provide that don't require a large learning curve and won't trigger a nuclear response from Russia should be sent ASAP.
Calling for sending dream team weapons isn't going to happen. Ukraine doesn't have the time to retrain.
People might say China will prop up and bail out Russia, But apart form cheap food and Fossil Fuels Russia has very little to offer, the Chinese will soon find money spent in Russia doesn't achieve a high ROI.
Siberia does have a lot of untapped mineral wealth as well as a lot of trees. China would like to see both developed further.
The second point makes sense to me, but the first doesn't.
Putin will declare a major victory no matter what happens on the ground. Russian media will enthusiastically agree. Most will believe, the rest will "believe".
There is only so far lies can go. He can try to claim a major victory, but if the reality is too stark he's going to have trouble pulling it off.
They are not burning through reserves. Many reserves were seized on day one, every day since they've rebuilt them by running a trade surplus.
They have been doing everything they can to prop up the ruble short term at the expense of long term stability. My partner was reading an article from an economist who saw what they were doing and made the argument that it was only a short term solution with long term consequences.
They can throttle back 20% without damaging fields. If they do need to shut in they'll start with dying wells that need rework anyway. Heck, they'll dump oil in the ocean before they damage their fields.
People need to get real. Russia will not "collapse" as long as they can export enough to pay for the small fraction of imports which are absolutely necessary. They ran a trade surplus even when oil prices were much lower. At current prices they can survive exporting to China and India alone, even if Europe somehow eventually manages to cut off all oil and gas imports. This is just arithmetic.
Only a massive battlefield defeat can stop Putin. The west has only given Ukraine enough support to avoid defeat and prolong suffering. They can only win if we dramatically ramp lethal aid and overcome our extreme reluctance to provide "offensive" weapons. Yes, that involves risk. But it's the right thing to do and it will pay off in the long run.
It's going to be more than 20%. Their oil supply system is built to ship oil to Europe. They have a couple of ports to export oil, but the largest is closed down due to the war. Europe is actively looking for other sources of supply now and their demand for Russian oil is going to decline.
Ukraine has stopped Russia and inflicted deep wounds on their army. The Ukrainians are bleeding the Russians every day.
Mark Hertling, a retired US general has said "amateurs study tactics, pros study logistics". I am concerned about the Ukrainians ability to supply their army on the offensive. However, the Russians logistics are abysmal. They have been since day 1 of this war. They started out with a weak logistics system and it's only gotten worse. It's collapsing on them.
Russia can't win this war. They could nuke Ukraine to ash, but that's their only offensive play left.
Even if Russia settles in for a war of attrition that favors Ukraine. Russia has lost, they just haven't admitted it yet.
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