G.I. Joe

Possibly. More to the point, I wouldn't fly on a Russian airliner at this point in time if they paid me, even factoring out ethical, moral and political objections...the flight safety concerns are a big enough dealbreaker on their own.

"I've got a bad feeling about this..."
-Pretty much every Star Wars character at one time or another if we're counting the Expanded Universe.
I guess a lot of the leased (now stolen) Western aircraft in Russia must have had their maintenance contracted out to companies that are now sanctioning Russia. This makes me wonder if they're short of aircraft maintenance engineers. I know a lot of people who are qualified as both pilots and AMEs, and the skill and knowledge sets definitely complement each other, but even a pilot with good systems knowledge is not necessarily going to make a good maintainer. Knowing how something works in theory and how to operate it from the flight deck does not necessarily translate to knowing what the system looks like, much less how to fix it. I'm sure we all know (or in some of our cases no doubt are) someone who knows every trick in the book for using their laptop, smart TV or smartphone, but couldn't pull the thing apart to replace a fried component or a cracked screen to save their lives...same idea.

Do it. I would read it.

He got a bit carried away in few points:
- US sends a lot of cutting edge stuff too ( GMLRS, Javelins, M777)
- all that went in up to this point was donated. Lend lease deal should only be finalized that month (and hopefully will allow UA to get the good stuff like AFVs, F16 and ATACMS)

I  must confess to not knowing a thing about who @gummibear737 is but whoever they are, this is about as clear eyed a thread as it gets on how ruthlessly the US is going to benefit from the war in Ukraine. 

That´s some really low pass flying...
 
 

It is even more inaccurate.  A withdrawal is an operation in itself.  It comes with a lot of sub-plans like deception and passage of lines.  Further is is characterized by ceding control of terrain at the time and place of your choosing.  It has things like covering forces, feints and even tactical offensives.  Then there is the whole joint force angle, so air cover plan - the RUAF should have surged to cover the “withdrawal”.  
The end of Gallipoli was a withdrawal - this was more akin to the French and British in 1940, an operational collapse.  No screens or covering forces and enough hardware left behind to equip another army.  Even Dunkirk had an outer perimeter and some air cover - Kharkiv did not even have that.  
So, no, “in strict military terms” this was not a withdrawal, it was at best a retreat; however, the loss of equipment and POWs suggest it was a rout. 

Can't disagree with that. At the end, it is a team effort. There are better and worse performing players in this team of course, and some that flat out refused to play (oh, and we're led by Captain America  ).

While military aid is absolutely important, and its important to recognize that Polish assistance is awesome, its also important to recognize the wholeness of western aid to Ukraine, for example, France offered 25% of its active duty Caesar SPGs, something no other state has offered in terms of active duty, in-use military hardware, Germany offered essential hardware like long-range AD, and short-range AD essential to keeping VVS away from the offensive in Kharkiv, the UK is hosting thousands of Ukrainians for training, and news has arrived Denmark will be hosting troops as well, NATO aircraft are ferrying munitions from states like Pakistan, sneaking stuff from Iran thru 3rd parties, smaller NATO states like the Baltics, Norway, Finland, Macedonia, have contributed good stuff, like the Harpoons on trucks, air frames, etc.
It is also extremely important to understand that the EU, being the biggest trading partner to Ukraine, and bordering Ukraine, is a essential part of keeping the Ukrainian economy afloat. I don't think it can't be understated that if Ukraine's home front was not upheld by EU money and EU access, Ukraine would been having a extremely tougher time keeping her home front secure, and by extension, keeping her frontlines going. 
States that see war, see huge economic effects, usually negative as hell, and I'm sure Putin and those RU nationalists were relying on turning home front Ukraine into rubble and poverty as part of any threat to Ukraine, and it can't underestimated, that things like the Polish warmth to Ukrainian refugees, is assisted by EU economic aid to Poland and other states to assist refugees for example. 
I mean, money is important just for defense needs, Pakistan ain't giving away 152mm ammunition that is newly manufactured (nor should they, poor bastards, that flooding is horrible) for free, and I think its not the foreign reserves of the UKR central bank paying them either, its gonna be some sort of money from the EU or otherwise from the West getting those shells made. 
End of the day, its important for understanding that Ukraine ability to fight back is not just due to Ukrainian resolve alone, but Ukraine has done a great job harnessing the ability and resources of the West to equalize the playing field more against Russia, and I bet some of the reasons why the analysts were wrong on Ukraine pre-war, did not take into account stuff like the West backing Ukraine. Ukraine isn't fighting with just the Poles standing a little bit back, and the rest of Europe really far away, that is undermining the work Ukraine has done to ensure that the playing field is what it is today, where Europe is a safe harbor for Ukraine to dock in, and I think Putin absolutely did not consider Europe to be Ukraine's friend, and was expecting his efforts in Europe to make it much, much colder for Ukraine, and not a safe harbor where thousands of Ukrainian civilians can live safely from Russian missiles, and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers can train in peace and quiet, and where hundreds can be treated in safe hospitals. 

Another reason to welcome the Finns to NATO.
 

Only thing I would add beyond the solid replies so far is that Ukraine has a significant - some may say decisive - ISR advantage.  This means that RUAF aircraft are being spotted likely as they are rolling out the hanger doors, or in some cases as they are being prepped.  The multi-layer defence of the UA combined with better C4ISR means the UA can position point defence well ahead of RUAF sorties.
Clearly this is working as has been noted the RUAF is basically doing stand off attacks and almost zero CAS.  There were rumours that the RUAF had been effective in blunting UA offensives but no one ever had any proof of this, nor do the events of the last week and half support the idea. 
My guess is that we have a situation of air parity thru denial right now so both air forces have largely been held back or used in standoff attack roles. Kind of a "if it flies, it dies" parity.  The Western and UA answer is HIMARs and deep strike systems that are basically acting in the role of airpower at increasing ranges.  Russia does not have the same thing, its missiles are largely focused on terror attacks which are more often than not decoupled from operational or tactical objectives. 

There are multiple volumes to be written about how the Ukrainians have kept the Russian air force bottled up, and the info to write most of them is going to be classified until the war ends or well after. The thing I will state briefly is that the Russian air force is just not the the big growling bear we thought it it was. What on paper are pretty good airplanes, in fairly large numbers, have performed far below expectations due to some combination of technical problems, unskilled pilots, and a completely broken system for picking and prioritizing targets. One specific mistake was starting this war with perhaps a tenth, or even less, of the precision guided weapons needed. It is hard to overstate the size of this failure on the course of the war. Pretty clear someone, maybe everyone, stole a lot of money. they have lost this war because of it.

Some very positive news. Combined with vastly increased  exports by rail, it looks like UA food exports are completely back on track  
 
 

It will be essential this will be one of the nonnegotiable requirements in the postwar. Ukraine a fully-fledged member of NATO. Russia should be less relevant in European politics than Liechtenstein. My apologies to the nice people in Liechtenstein. 

Zelenski in Izium. Waiting for Putin to visit Kherson. There's a Polish word "kozaczyć", literally "to cossack", which means to act with bravado, to be audacious  >>> this guy.
 

Lets remember, guys, that by all rights Russia should have won the war. They should have corrupted the Ukrainian politicians, exhausted their army, run them out of tanks and artillery shells, aircraft and anti-tank missiles simply by throwing bodies at them until Ukraine had nothing left to shoot them with. The fact that they didn't is testament to the Ukraine people and the nations around the world who stepped up to assist. Russia may be a terrible army, but Ukraine is a terrible opponent to face, as well.

Here's the thing...Xi holds every single card here. Russian gas is badly situated for China's market and years/billions in investment away from being...even then...a pricey alternative to what they have. Russia doesn't have much of anything China wants and is a shrinking percentage of China's foreign trade...especially compared with the US and EU. Russia is also a would be competitor in Central Asia and has differing interests in Southwest Asia, Africa, etc. 
Russia's value to China was as a distraction to and a thorn in the side of the US and the EU. Xi needed the latter to have a big, dangerous security threat that could be activated to disperse their forces. In short, Russia was supposed to be Xi's pitbull. The dog might be still vicious but it's turned out to also be decrepit and the US is, through Ukraine, knocking its teeth out.
So what does Xi do? I think close to nothing. A Russia that is more Austria-Hungary than useful is not worth investing in. China will do the bare minimum to maintain Russia's territorial integrity while asking the world in return in terms of trade deals, diplomatic access to the -stans and ultimately economic control in the Russian Far East. Unequal Treaties can go the other way, in time.

It was a few  days ago that Russian soldiers in Kherson area were reported complaining about lack of food and water. Soldiers are able to withstand a lot of privations but no food and water will shut an army down fast.

Given the amount of data that has to be processed I would say it is impossible.  For the ground war alone - this is a Theater Intelligence Cell's job.  That will be a lot of people working in specialist areas - eg current battle, future plans, order-of-battle etc to feed the grown-up who's going to make sense of it and then brief it to the guy who's going to make the decisions.
I am that guy in Afghanistan - On average I read 500 individual reports a day and it takes me about three and a half hours to make sense of them all.  About an hour or so to write up the individual incidents of interest and about 45 minutes to 90 minutes to find and plot where they took place.  About 20 incidents is a busy day for me.  Databasing the incidents takes about 20 minutes.  On top of that it takes me about an hour and a half to write slightly more in-depth pieces for my daily summary.  In-depth collation or in-depth reading?  Forget it ... not enough time in the day.  This is small beer compared to the amount of reporting that's coming out of Ukraine.

Well, keep in mind that Apaches were almost never used in their intended primary role - quickly killing swarms of attacking armor. With the radars and fire-and-forget missiles I'm pretty sure they could still do a great job, staying outside of MANPADS (and even Osa/ Tunguska) range.
Poland is buying Brimstones for ground based tank destroyers, and these probably will be integrated with our Kruk (Crow - attack heli programm codename). Advanced versions of these can lock-on after launch, and have impressive range. I can bet that sooner than later Apaches will be integrated with some recon drones (2 man crews making it so much easier), creating a mean recon-strike platform that could operate without LOS of the target, perhaps from 10 or more kilometers.
Oh, and the 96 is only what's in the Letter of Request, realistically I'll be surprised if we get more than 32, unless Uncle Sam will present us some more.
 

And from my homefront we have a clear demonstration of the problem with pundits:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ukraine-shows-military-capabilities-but-russia-can-still-hit-back-hard-military-analyst-1.6064197
I know Walter Dorn, he was a prof when I was back in staff college - his expertise is peacekeeping (look it up).  And now one of our mainstream media channels (one of two really) is pulling him out as a military expert.  He is way outside his lane here but let’s slap him on the front page.

A certain large asian country likely has comparable EO capability at Mars to what Russia has over Ukraine.
They're not at parity with the west, but can realistically get there.  Successfully landing a functioning rover on Mars on the first time out (along with an orbiter to watch it and relay for it) is no mean feat.

Operators of 8th SOF regiment captured in Kharkiv oblast full set of Orlan-10 complex - drones, control station, antennas and documentation. UAVs belonged to 15th army aviation brigade of 6th AF/AD Army, Western military districst
I think, after some researches, our EW assets could be more easily to supress theese UAVs.