1/ Regardless of what anyone desires or prefers, centuries of war experience and an acknowledgement of the true balance of power bt Ukraine & Russia indicates Kyiv will likely lose this war, no matter how much spt we give, as I explain @19_forty_five 19fortyfive.com/2023/09/how-uk… 2/ Historically speaking, an analysis of centuries of warfare indicates the side with the most troops available, most artillery, and in past 100 yrs the side w most tanks will win. Russia possess an advantage in all those categories.

Even I have been shocked by the lightning collapse of the AFG military - but not at their failure. It has been evident it was coming for years. There are two main culprits for this failure and loss to the Taliban. 1st, the excessive corruption of AFG officials, at every level... ...doomed every project we tried to develop to failure. John Sopko at @SIGARHQ has been pleading with ppl for almost a decade that the corruption was going to prevent AFG from emerging from under ISAF to stand on its own. He has been proven right. A close #2 is the senior US...