I do find some parallels here with the Winter War of 1939-40, Stalin's incursion into Finland, which ultimately pushed Finland into allying with Nazi Germany.José M. Rico wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 2:15 am In the following twitter account you can find lots of photos of destroyed/damaged/captured vehicles planes and helicopters.
The Russians are having heavy casualties, there is no doubt about that.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons
Many also wonder why the Russian Air Force has not appeared over the battlefield en masse.
However at that time Ukraine was part of ''mother Russia'' - now the rump of Russia does not have the level of superiority in population, industry or resources, so I can't see the Russians winning.
With respect to a no-fly zone, most observers seem to be ignoring the one problem that makes it logistically very difficult to try to enforce. Ukraine is surrounded on three sides by Russia - unless the no-fly forces are based in Ukraine itself (where it can be attacked on the ground) it can only be enforced from Romania, as the other NATO countries are too far away. So how do you enforce no-fly over Kharkov with planes based in Romania? Yes, you can have ground batteries etc but then it would be much easier to give such weapons to Ukraine.
It is unfortunate that Ukraine doesn't have special forces that can go into Russia and attack their supply logistics....
I would think that Russian airpower is not attacking en masse because they don't have the logistical capability to do it. The only trump card Putin has to play are the threat of nuclear weapons as I would suggest that if conventional warfare goes into Poland or Romania the Russian ground forces stand to be slaughtered - if they can't roll over the Ukranians how can they stand up to Poland, Romania and Turkey backed by US airpower as well? What if Norway then comes in?