August 23, 2024: The NATO alliance supporting Ukraine in its battle against Russian invaders believes that Ukrainian victory is inevitable. This is based on the fact that the NATO alliance provides Ukraine with far more military resources than Russia produces and can do it for a longer time than Russia can handle. The NATO coalition represents a huge economic capacity equal to nearly half the global GDP. Russia is on its own, is dealing with economic sanctions and their only allies are equally sanctioned outlaw states North Korea and Iran. While Russia has nuclear weapons, so do several NATO members as in the Americans, Britain and France. If Russia used nukes the retaliation would be much larger and Russia would cease to exist while most of NATO would still exist. Few Russians are in favor of national suicide, so nukes are not an option.

This means Russia will lose in Ukraine despite its optimistic press releases. As a result the NATO coalition is preparing to accept Ukraine as the 33rd member of NATO. The large quantities of military aid Ukraine has been receiving from NATO will continue, but at lower levels depending on the level of threat Russia provides. While doing this Ukraine will continue to replace Soviet era Russian weapons and equipment and replace it with European or American items that NATO members use. Standardization is one of the key elements of being a NATO member. It means that NATO members can use the same or similar weapons and equipment as well identical ammunition. Tactics and military organization are similar throughout NATO. While not a participant in the Ukraine War, massive NATO supplies of weapons, munitions and economic aid enabled Ukraine to stop the Russian invasion and now force them out of Ukraine.

NATO has been aiding Ukraine for ten years. The assistance began in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and positions of two eastern provinces from Ukraine. There was low level fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in those eastern provinces until 2022 when Russia invaded in an effort to seize all of Ukraine, not just the 25 percent they grabbed in 2014. In 2021 Russia believed a full scale invasion of Ukraine would work because they believed the Ukrainians were demoralized by years of futile fighting. The Russians miscalculated and the unexpected fierce resistance of Ukrainian forces in 2022 caused Russia to lose most of its tanks, many of its combat aircraft and several hundred thousand troops. The Russian attacks and heavy losses continued into early 2024 but now the Russians realize they are out of troops and will soon be out of tanks and artillery.

Russia still insists it will prevail in Ukraine and reunite their conquest as a Russian province. Even the Russian minority in Ukraine does not want to be part of Russia again. Many Russians agree that their government started a war that Russia can’t win. Russian leader Vladimir Putin started the war and, so far, he refuses to acknowledge the possibility of defeat. Now that defeat is a reality, Putin is trying to improvise some reasonably convincing story about how Russia actually won. If he can’t do that, Putin risks seeing his 24 year-long rule of Russia come to an end.