It's not a sunk cost fallacy. We cannot let Russia run rampant over other sovereign nations. Make no mistake, there is 0 legitimate reason for them to be fighting Ukraine. Letting them do so sends the message to them that we are all talk no show, and also shows China the same thing.

However, we've lucked into a great situation. Ukraine fought back fiercely; the US can just proxy war Russia through money now. No cost of human life, we aren't exactly going balls to the wall in sending equipment either. The EU gets the same benefit.

Also, I don't know what you mean by the war is costing too many Ukrainian lives. RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. It isn't on the US to stop donating to force the Ukrainians to roll over and accept it? In what world do you tell the citizens to just lie down and take it for their own good? That's the most asinine thing I've seen.

@~~Ivan~~Skooby1, Ukraine didn't start this war, and Ukraine isn't the one continuing it. They have to fight or they'll lose their freedom and self-determination. Look again what happened in Bucha, where Russian forces had control.

Simply rolling over and letting Russia win won't save Ukrainian lives, it'll cost a lot more of them.

The only way this war ends is if Russia leaves, or loses. Any alternative goes against everything the USA and the west stand for.

So what’s your solution? Should the Ukrainians surrender and become a Russian vassal?

The government of Russia is still committed to this war, and as long as this is the case the sanctions against Russia and the military support for Ukraine just continue.

The fascists should not win this fight.

So if your country's neighbors decide to murder you and abduct your kids, what would you like the rest of the world to do?

Sunk cost fallacy implies that the West is supporting Ukraine for profit. They are supporting Ukraine because it’s the right thing to do.

More tanks are always good.

The sanctions are working. But in a sense of turning Russia into a bigger NK or Iran. They don't have inflation because they immediately restricted capital exchanges preventing any capital flight. They also increased their federal fund rate by a lot, which will prevent inflation but still hurt their economy.

Russia is suffering from ammunition shortages, which is why they are firing much less compared to the start of the war.

Ukraine made more progress in the last two weeks than Russia did in the last 6 months. It was always gonna be hard. Unlike with the Kharkiw counteroffensive Russia expects it and is dug in having built up defence in depth. It was always gonna be hard, specially in the early days. More like how the Kherson counteroffensive went which took over a month of heavy fighting to get going.

I'm not aware of Ukrainians just surrendering and refusing to fight. To me it looks like they are fighting quite effectively so far.

Lastly, if you are actually worried about the loss of Ukrainian live (which I doubt tbh) than maybe, just maybe you should instead support your Biden administration and encourage them to send more material so that Ukrainians can better defend themselves.

In April of 2022, people began to ask if Russia could run out of artillery shells. The arm-chair generals laughed, and said that Russia had enough shells stored up to keep this pace until December! Then October rolls around and the shelling decreases to a level just above their production.

At the start of the war, every day there would be long range missile barrages. Now they save up what they produce over the course of 2 to 3 weeks and shoot them all at once (which is a better tactic, overwhelm anti-air, too bad they aren't hitting anything of military significance).

At the start of the war, they were using brand new high tech tanks, and even having contests and parades using the old tanks. Now Soviet era tanks are on the front line. At the start of the war, when sanctions started, the Ruble went up! Now even Moscow is admitting a spending deficit. At the start of the war, Russian patriotically signed up to serve. Now Wagner can't even recruit prisoners with full pardons.

Ukraine has near-infinite weapons and finite people. Russia has near-infinite people and finite weapons. The looser of the conflict will be who runs out first: Russia's weapons or Ukraine's people.

The entire goal from the US perspective is to make this conflict last forever. It's a lot like when the US armed Afghanistan against the soviets. The whole point is to get Russia to waste as many resources as possible.

Just because you haven't been paying attention to developments doesn't mean things don't add up. You seem to be unaware that sanctions are only mildly effective, Iran and China and North Korea are helping Russia, Russia is losing ground and poised to lose all of their gains since this invasion and possibly even into the 2014-era holdings like Crimea, but they're also entirely committed to it and Crimea specifically is a peninsula that will be very hard to take from the outside.

Sunk cost fallacies don't apply when your side has achieved 80%+ of its objectives despite starting out in a situation where a full and immediate loss was expected on all sides. The sunk cost fallacy is actually on Putin's side: just because he had tanks occupying large parts of Ukraine doesn't mean that continuing to fight will ever result in substantial gains again. If anything he's poised to maim every soldier-aged man in his country for nothing.