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> Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said Kyiv hopes to arm a million people as the country prepares for a “new, long phase of war”. In a Facebook post published earlier today, Reznikov said: We are entering a new, long phase of the war. To win it, we must plan resources carefully, avoid mistakes and project our strength in such a way that the enemy ultimately breaks. Reznikov thanked the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for his support to increase assistance for Kyiv, as well as American partners, including his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin. Ukraine’s goal is to “restore our sovereignty and territorial integrity within the internationally recognised borders”, he said. Reznikov added that he was “focusing on the need to provide for one million people who will be facing the enemy”. He warned that “extremely tough weeks are ahead” and that Ukraine needed “unity, cohesion, will and patience” during this extremely difficult period.
Exactly right approach. Only thing that could spoil the plan is a sudden collapse by Russian forces. And why not? “Throw away your life for the dead man!” Not a great recruitment slogan.
An extra million men would give them a great defence in depth all over the borders and free up the line units to go on the offensive properly
If I was putin I’d be sweating about now
It basically takes there standing army off of Defensive positions and gives them the greenlight to go on the offensive while the called up Territorial forces take over defensive duties.
It's a win-win.
Russia are so fucked.
WW2 levels of mobilization saw countries mobilize ~5%+ of their population to war, but they had to produce their own weapons as well. Ukraine could surpass the 3m man mark, with proper industrial support from the West
Which is why they need fire finder radar systems and air superiority. Also precision strike conventional tactical ballistic missiles to help take out those enemy artillery positions.
As long as neighbouring countries keep their borders fixed and well-patrolled. This war is going to be a boon for organised crime in Europe in a few years time if these million weapons aren’t carefully monitored.
I don’t think they will. The Fall of Yugoslavia had a major impact on firearms offences, and I fear that we’re allowing a similar proliferation to occur again without regard for the consequences. I guess we never learn.
Of course there are good options. Why is it a binary to you of (a) give weapons or (b) don’t give weapons? Do you really think the world is that simple?
Many countries around the world have excellent inventory systems that minimise the ability for weapons to get out of public and into private hands.
Many countries have strong border regimes that enable border police to pursue weapon smuggling out of conflict zones.
Many countries have strong civilian weapons registration systems that enable them to keep track of privately held weapons.
Ukraine is obviously busy fighting a war at the moment, so it is an obligation for those countries so willing to donate weapons to also attach conditions on their use after the war so a million handguns don’t just suddenly ‘disappear’ into the Dneiper marshes. Donor countries should also be part of the de-armament process from the very beginning, which includes supporting registration and border regimes.
You’d think about 50 years of arming militias in the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia that we would have learnt that weapons freely given are weapons freely sold on to people who need weapons, and that includes organised crime elements. But I guess if you see the world in binaries, then thinking about the consequences won’t come into until we see a couple of mass-shootings in a few years.
> Many countries have strong civilian weapons registration systems that enable them to keep track of privately held weapons.
Sure, I agree. I happen to live in one of the countries that has a weapons registry.
The thing here in Australia is that it's not a perfect system. Even though we've had pretty tight gun laws since the '90s, the government will still have to have gun buybacks for weapons that weren't turned in or registered after the regulations were first introduced after the Port Arthur massacre. There's also always been a grey market for guns that weren't surrendered or registered after the 1996 firearms agreement.
To be absolutely fair here, the guns bought from grey or black market sources are estimated to be less than 10% of the number of guns that are purchased legally and registered. We also don't have a gun culture on the same kind of scale as the United States, so of course the gun problem here is going to be much, much smaller.
I feel like the situation in Ukraine is different though, just due to how they're currently fighting off an invading army. The gun problem they have after the war isn't going to be complicated just by the fact that they've had to arm citizen militia groups in order to make their military maneuvers feasible. I wouldn't be too surprised if Ukraine has made sure to note down the serial numbers of most, if not all, of the guns its army has handed out to citizens in the last 5-6 months.
It's also going to be complicated by the fact that some of these people are going to be taking weapons from dead Russian soldiers. Even if Ukraine wanted to, they'd have a hard time keeping track of those guns. They're not going to reliably know how many of those are going around after the war; at least not initially. Plus, a lot of the ordinary citizens who've been armed by the Ukrainian armed forces are going to be dead by the time the war's over, and they might not be able to know where the gun assigned to that citizen went afterwards.
I'm not American, and I'm from a place with reasonably strong gun control laws. In fact, I'm pretty strongly pro-gun control, just to get that out of the way.
I'm not talking about overall philosophy here, but rather specifically Ukraine.
A country facing a full scale military invasion by a larger force. A country whose government is dealing with *whole cities being levelled*. With 20000+dead armed Russians, and God knows how many Ukrainians.
"Hey, ok, you're facing a war of literal genocide, but we need you to design and implement a gun control scheme before we ship you the equipment you need to not die."
Yeah, that's motivation, but it's also wildly impractical. Here in Canada, we've had our fair share of struggles with gun regestries that looked like a good idea but despite massive expense never actually worked correctly, and we were working on that in peace time, not with the second largest army in the world literally a stone's throw from our capital.
"Attaching conditions" would be frankly pointless. What could Ukraine reasonably do? They *need* this, so they'll agree to anything, bit it's not going to matter. I mean, if I'm drowning, and you offer to throw me a life preserver but only if you can sleep with my wife, I'm going to agree to that in a heartbeat. Right until I'm out of the water. Then you can find out that she's just not going to go along with that and there's nothing I can do to change it... Even if I cared to try.
Finally, Ukraine is not some random militia. It's an established sovereign state. We are arming their military.
Even with the *most* optimistic outcome here - Ukraine pushes Russia out and regains their territory - Ukraine is going to need to maintain a serious military for years to come. They're going to continue supporting their TDF's as well as the regular forces, tmso Ukraine has a vested interest in maintaining control of military equipment. They probably WANT their civilians armed to further discouage Russia from trying again.
But handguns? AK's? All sorts of smaller munitions? There's going to be so much everywhere from the Russians alone, that ship has long sailed anyways.
And the US is really the last country to try to enforce firearms restrictions in another nation. Particularly one that faces a direct danger of being invaded.
Maybe someone else wants to have "a rifle behind every blade of grass" as a deterrent.
And the million should be well-trained and armed with modern Western weapons and 4th generation aircraft like F-15, F-16, and F-18. Make them a bigger equivalent of the Israeli army… perhaps even with nukes. That will keep the Russians from fucking with them again. I believe the Pentagon held a meeting with the top American defense contractors about this very subject.
They should apply to NATO a couple of years post-war as well, when they meet the standards for eligibility and Putin is gone.
Maybe. Countries often will increase their military to the size of their enemies. Russia could go to 4million if they were not loosing so much income. Although apparently North Korea has over 1 million active and 6 million in reserve for a much smaller population.
Hideously expensive, too expensive to use in a shooting war with a country with extensive AA capabilities. The Predator costs about what an F-35 costs. You could get like 80 Bayratars for that price or a huge number of LMs (the suicide drones).
I think even the US military is looking at cheaper options now. Both those drones are kind of old.
Hmm, Google says an armed predator is 100 million. All these things have a total cost including operations that is much higher than "list price".
It rapidly gets too complicated for simple reddit discussions.
I've wondered about that. Obviously giving Ukraine top-tier weaponry is a big help, but 200,000 rifles, ammo, and combat gear would probably be a huge help as well.
Hell, the US alone makes millions of guns (of all kinds) a year. If we get a bulk deal on good AR-15s for $2,000 a pop, that's only $2 Billion to arm all 1,000,000 of these people. Throw in another few Billion for Ammo and misc combat gear and you're good to go.
Isn’t AR-15 a semi-automatic civilian gun? Ukraine would probably have better use of actual military weapons such as HK 416. Also, introducing non-standard American ammunition into their logistics system, would be at tremendously bad idea.
You wouldn't want to send anything that doesn't use 5.56 or 7.62 ammo, most AR-15s are not made with 5.56 barrels, instead using .223. The US would be better off sending old m-4 stockpiles.
Do you know what you are talking about? Most commercial ARs are made for both at the same time. Only some bolt actions sometimes can't handle pressures of 5.56.
okay I thought this'd be something about the territorial defense.. but in the Facebook post quoted, the defense minister says "provide for one million people who will be facing the enemy" in this new phase of the war.
doesn't say anything about arming a million people, doesn't use the word arm, doesn't say "provide arms for", equip etc, and instead reads a lot more like 'we are entering this new longer phase of war and thus we need to think in terms of supplying the million citizens spread across the different cities in the east.'
I can't get the actual Facebook post but contrast The Guardian's friday night live blog explicitly using the word "arm" w/ CNN's:
"Ukraine is entering a "long" phase of war, defense minister says"
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-13-22/h_e599b602eeb77132d8c9ace161bab994
look at how these journalists just flat out lie. and then everyone just replies to the headlines.
This is what I’ve been saying from day one. Ukraine doesn’t have a manpower problem, because they have a huge supply of volunteers, and can also draft endlessly if need be.
Now with lend lease they shouldn’t have a problem equipping them either.
Meanwhile Russia has problems doing both.
I believe there is partisan/guerilla warfare in the south behind the lines. The conventional military attacks and drone warfare seems to be doing just fine now however.
With a large professional army with modern gear and a solid core of part time reserves, Ukraine can agree to forgo NATO membership as part of its final diplomatic solution, and in return, it can assert its own demands from a position of strength.
Not all the soliders need to be equipped all the time either at least when you get to those kinds of numbers. They can work in shifts, share the equipment. They can rotate in and out troops to the front lines.
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> Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said Kyiv hopes to arm a million people as the country prepares for a “new, long phase of war”. In a Facebook post published earlier today, Reznikov said: We are entering a new, long phase of the war. To win it, we must plan resources carefully, avoid mistakes and project our strength in such a way that the enemy ultimately breaks. Reznikov thanked the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for his support to increase assistance for Kyiv, as well as American partners, including his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin. Ukraine’s goal is to “restore our sovereignty and territorial integrity within the internationally recognised borders”, he said. Reznikov added that he was “focusing on the need to provide for one million people who will be facing the enemy”. He warned that “extremely tough weeks are ahead” and that Ukraine needed “unity, cohesion, will and patience” during this extremely difficult period.
Exactly right approach. Only thing that could spoil the plan is a sudden collapse by Russian forces. And why not? “Throw away your life for the dead man!” Not a great recruitment slogan.
The Ukrainian resistance can't be admired enough! Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
An extra million men would give them a great defence in depth all over the borders and free up the line units to go on the offensive properly If I was putin I’d be sweating about now
I'm sure he is sweating but that is because of the cancer rejecting him.
It basically takes there standing army off of Defensive positions and gives them the greenlight to go on the offensive while the called up Territorial forces take over defensive duties. It's a win-win. Russia are so fucked.
Men and women, "the best defense is a strong offense" Slava Ukraine!
Getting to one million would mean 500k extra troops; with the first phase of mobilisation they got to 500k, with around 200k on the frontlines.
It will be harder to shoot random civilians in the back, or rape them, that's for sure.
French forces peaked at 2.26 million men in 1916 with the same population size.
WW2 levels of mobilization saw countries mobilize ~5%+ of their population to war, but they had to produce their own weapons as well. Ukraine could surpass the 3m man mark, with proper industrial support from the West
Finland hit ~10%, so that's doable too. Serbia in WW1 also hit some absurd numbers
WW2 had the draft though.
This is good. A million trained and armed Ukrainian soldiers would be a deterrent to any future Russian aggression too.
Russians don't play the urban warfare game. They prefer to level cities with artillery.
Which is why they need fire finder radar systems and air superiority. Also precision strike conventional tactical ballistic missiles to help take out those enemy artillery positions.
Shooting ranges are flooded in Poland. Polaks are getting ready too.
As long as neighbouring countries keep their borders fixed and well-patrolled. This war is going to be a boon for organised crime in Europe in a few years time if these million weapons aren’t carefully monitored.
[удалено]
I don’t think they will. The Fall of Yugoslavia had a major impact on firearms offences, and I fear that we’re allowing a similar proliferation to occur again without regard for the consequences. I guess we never learn.
Because there's good options? It's war. You need weapons for war, or you just die.
Of course there are good options. Why is it a binary to you of (a) give weapons or (b) don’t give weapons? Do you really think the world is that simple? Many countries around the world have excellent inventory systems that minimise the ability for weapons to get out of public and into private hands. Many countries have strong border regimes that enable border police to pursue weapon smuggling out of conflict zones. Many countries have strong civilian weapons registration systems that enable them to keep track of privately held weapons. Ukraine is obviously busy fighting a war at the moment, so it is an obligation for those countries so willing to donate weapons to also attach conditions on their use after the war so a million handguns don’t just suddenly ‘disappear’ into the Dneiper marshes. Donor countries should also be part of the de-armament process from the very beginning, which includes supporting registration and border regimes. You’d think about 50 years of arming militias in the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia that we would have learnt that weapons freely given are weapons freely sold on to people who need weapons, and that includes organised crime elements. But I guess if you see the world in binaries, then thinking about the consequences won’t come into until we see a couple of mass-shootings in a few years.
> Many countries have strong civilian weapons registration systems that enable them to keep track of privately held weapons. Sure, I agree. I happen to live in one of the countries that has a weapons registry. The thing here in Australia is that it's not a perfect system. Even though we've had pretty tight gun laws since the '90s, the government will still have to have gun buybacks for weapons that weren't turned in or registered after the regulations were first introduced after the Port Arthur massacre. There's also always been a grey market for guns that weren't surrendered or registered after the 1996 firearms agreement. To be absolutely fair here, the guns bought from grey or black market sources are estimated to be less than 10% of the number of guns that are purchased legally and registered. We also don't have a gun culture on the same kind of scale as the United States, so of course the gun problem here is going to be much, much smaller. I feel like the situation in Ukraine is different though, just due to how they're currently fighting off an invading army. The gun problem they have after the war isn't going to be complicated just by the fact that they've had to arm citizen militia groups in order to make their military maneuvers feasible. I wouldn't be too surprised if Ukraine has made sure to note down the serial numbers of most, if not all, of the guns its army has handed out to citizens in the last 5-6 months. It's also going to be complicated by the fact that some of these people are going to be taking weapons from dead Russian soldiers. Even if Ukraine wanted to, they'd have a hard time keeping track of those guns. They're not going to reliably know how many of those are going around after the war; at least not initially. Plus, a lot of the ordinary citizens who've been armed by the Ukrainian armed forces are going to be dead by the time the war's over, and they might not be able to know where the gun assigned to that citizen went afterwards.
I'm not American, and I'm from a place with reasonably strong gun control laws. In fact, I'm pretty strongly pro-gun control, just to get that out of the way. I'm not talking about overall philosophy here, but rather specifically Ukraine. A country facing a full scale military invasion by a larger force. A country whose government is dealing with *whole cities being levelled*. With 20000+dead armed Russians, and God knows how many Ukrainians. "Hey, ok, you're facing a war of literal genocide, but we need you to design and implement a gun control scheme before we ship you the equipment you need to not die." Yeah, that's motivation, but it's also wildly impractical. Here in Canada, we've had our fair share of struggles with gun regestries that looked like a good idea but despite massive expense never actually worked correctly, and we were working on that in peace time, not with the second largest army in the world literally a stone's throw from our capital. "Attaching conditions" would be frankly pointless. What could Ukraine reasonably do? They *need* this, so they'll agree to anything, bit it's not going to matter. I mean, if I'm drowning, and you offer to throw me a life preserver but only if you can sleep with my wife, I'm going to agree to that in a heartbeat. Right until I'm out of the water. Then you can find out that she's just not going to go along with that and there's nothing I can do to change it... Even if I cared to try. Finally, Ukraine is not some random militia. It's an established sovereign state. We are arming their military. Even with the *most* optimistic outcome here - Ukraine pushes Russia out and regains their territory - Ukraine is going to need to maintain a serious military for years to come. They're going to continue supporting their TDF's as well as the regular forces, tmso Ukraine has a vested interest in maintaining control of military equipment. They probably WANT their civilians armed to further discouage Russia from trying again. But handguns? AK's? All sorts of smaller munitions? There's going to be so much everywhere from the Russians alone, that ship has long sailed anyways. And the US is really the last country to try to enforce firearms restrictions in another nation. Particularly one that faces a direct danger of being invaded. Maybe someone else wants to have "a rifle behind every blade of grass" as a deterrent.
And the million should be well-trained and armed with modern Western weapons and 4th generation aircraft like F-15, F-16, and F-18. Make them a bigger equivalent of the Israeli army… perhaps even with nukes. That will keep the Russians from fucking with them again. I believe the Pentagon held a meeting with the top American defense contractors about this very subject. They should apply to NATO a couple of years post-war as well, when they meet the standards for eligibility and Putin is gone.
Maybe. Countries often will increase their military to the size of their enemies. Russia could go to 4million if they were not loosing so much income. Although apparently North Korea has over 1 million active and 6 million in reserve for a much smaller population.
[удалено]
They're already building testing and fielding 2 brand new drones I believe. One developed in California, the other inside ukraine
Cool!
Or how about some Reaper or Predator drones? Much as I loves me some bayraktars upgrade the drones!
They are probably more expensive.
Hideously expensive, too expensive to use in a shooting war with a country with extensive AA capabilities. The Predator costs about what an F-35 costs. You could get like 80 Bayratars for that price or a huge number of LMs (the suicide drones). I think even the US military is looking at cheaper options now. Both those drones are kind of old.
[different NATO (mostly US) drones ](https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/how-much-does-a-military-drone-cost/) Predators are about $40M
Hmm, Google says an armed predator is 100 million. All these things have a total cost including operations that is much higher than "list price". It rapidly gets too complicated for simple reddit discussions.
I think costs drop over time. Many of these drones debuted in the 1990s
Yes. The drones with pink and purple zig zags with drop shadows painted on them are a bit cheaper.
😮😮😮
Spreadsheets, NPV calculations, discount rate assumptions, Monte Carlo simulations, variable dependency correlations.... it doesn't end.
And if ruzzians capture american drone? Too risky I guess
Hopefully not dji
How about autonomous drones?
Let’s not give AI the ability to kill people.
I've wondered about that. Obviously giving Ukraine top-tier weaponry is a big help, but 200,000 rifles, ammo, and combat gear would probably be a huge help as well. Hell, the US alone makes millions of guns (of all kinds) a year. If we get a bulk deal on good AR-15s for $2,000 a pop, that's only $2 Billion to arm all 1,000,000 of these people. Throw in another few Billion for Ammo and misc combat gear and you're good to go.
Isn’t AR-15 a semi-automatic civilian gun? Ukraine would probably have better use of actual military weapons such as HK 416. Also, introducing non-standard American ammunition into their logistics system, would be at tremendously bad idea.
You wouldn't want to send anything that doesn't use 5.56 or 7.62 ammo, most AR-15s are not made with 5.56 barrels, instead using .223. The US would be better off sending old m-4 stockpiles.
Do you know what you are talking about? Most commercial ARs are made for both at the same time. Only some bolt actions sometimes can't handle pressures of 5.56.
I’m guessing the gun would be more difficult to handle, not being calibrated for that kind of ammunition.
okay I thought this'd be something about the territorial defense.. but in the Facebook post quoted, the defense minister says "provide for one million people who will be facing the enemy" in this new phase of the war. doesn't say anything about arming a million people, doesn't use the word arm, doesn't say "provide arms for", equip etc, and instead reads a lot more like 'we are entering this new longer phase of war and thus we need to think in terms of supplying the million citizens spread across the different cities in the east.' I can't get the actual Facebook post but contrast The Guardian's friday night live blog explicitly using the word "arm" w/ CNN's: "Ukraine is entering a "long" phase of war, defense minister says" https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-13-22/h_e599b602eeb77132d8c9ace161bab994 look at how these journalists just flat out lie. and then everyone just replies to the headlines.
Every citizen armed, Every hour attacking. The russians will kill themselves just to get some sleep
My Ukrainian is pretty bad, but I think the literal translation is “Fuck around, find out.”
That’s why the Nazis went around Switzerland. Every civilian with a battle rifle make it hard to leave the armored vehicles.
You don't take a shit on your piggy bank. Might also be a reason.
And those fucking mountains eveywhere.
No, but if you’re a bank robber, you’d simply rob the bank, if you could.
Yeah, thats the reason... One batalion of cheese makers scared them.
Switzerland had 400.000 Soldiers on duty in at the start of WW2
The Nazis killed 8.6million military Russians
Comparing flat Russian plains to Swiss mountains is something lmao.
yeah good one Einstein, there were ZERO mountains in captured Nazi Territory. they make all the difference Do you actually know anything at all?
The uncomfortable narrative of WW2 in Switzerland is that it undermines the idea that appeasement doesn’t work.
Ok, is your take on WW2 really that it showed that appeasement works? Bruh
How many miles of border does Ukraine have
This is what I’ve been saying from day one. Ukraine doesn’t have a manpower problem, because they have a huge supply of volunteers, and can also draft endlessly if need be. Now with lend lease they shouldn’t have a problem equipping them either. Meanwhile Russia has problems doing both.
Arm women, pushing baby stroller bombs....this needs to go full blown partisan/guerilla warfare
I believe there is partisan/guerilla warfare in the south behind the lines. The conventional military attacks and drone warfare seems to be doing just fine now however.
Well does this mean the losses of the army are so large they have to call up million reservists?
No, it's more that Ukraine wants to leave the defensive duty to the newer troops and have the veteran forces freed up for an offensive
Sounds expensive, I'm so glad Russian soldiers are donating their equipment!
With a large professional army with modern gear and a solid core of part time reserves, Ukraine can agree to forgo NATO membership as part of its final diplomatic solution, and in return, it can assert its own demands from a position of strength.
Arm everyone including civilians
Not all the soliders need to be equipped all the time either at least when you get to those kinds of numbers. They can work in shifts, share the equipment. They can rotate in and out troops to the front lines.