Let's talk about Ukraine's "second army." I wrote earlier about part of NATO's April 2022 "blank check" that convinced Zelensky to denounce the Istanbul peace agreements. Along with advanced weapons like HIMARS, NATO provided mountains of basic hardware to rebuild the AFU.⬇️ Before I begin, a word about terminology. The AFU has undergone several distinct organizational phases in this conflict, characterized by an ever-increasing reliance on Western equipment and an ever-decreasing quality of manpower. I generally refer to these as separate "armies," even though it's really the same organization. As such the "first" Ukrainian Army was their prewar military that was partially defeated in the first month of the war. The "second" Ukrainian Army, dealt with in part here, was the force reconstituted with mass conscription and large donations of ex-Warsaw Pact equipment as well as some advanced NATO capabilities, which launched a strategic counteroffensive from June 2022 onwards but was largely expended as a fighting force at the conclusion of the Battle of Bakhmut in early 2023. The "third" Ukrainian Army was the force purpose-built by NATO for a planned war-winning offensive in mid-2023, which was defeated in the Hundred Days Offensive in Zaporozhie and subsequent operations. The Russians are thus now facing the "fourth" Ukrainian Army, an increasingly ramshackle force of press-ganged conscripts fighting with the dregs of NATO's depleted stockpiles. To return to the "second army," Ukraine received a lot more than just HIMARS in April 2022 with which to regenerate and supercharge its combat power - it also received, on an emergency basis, an enormous amount of ex-Warsaw Pact equipment courtesy of Eastern European NATO members. How large is enormous? Poland handed over half of its tanks. The Czech Republic donated 75% of theirs. Although the exact timeline and quantity donated is somewhat fuzzy, together these two countries alone (both run by extreme Russia hawks at the time) appear to have handed over the keys to almost five hundred Warsaw Pact-era T-72Ms in a matter of weeks in April-May 2022. That's enough to have immediately reconstituted the armored components of sixteen mechanized brigades. And bear in mind other NATO members contributed! God knows how much in the way of Soviet-era artillery, APCs, soft vehicles, etc. was also handed over by NATO in these few critical weeks - among other things they weren't tracked as closely as tanks in the media, and the ex-Warsaw Pact countries generally kept theirs far closer to the Soviet factory configurations than the prestigious tank fleets. As such they would have blended seamlessly into the AFU's own ex-Soviet stock. * A word on my methodology - fortunately, Wikipedia keeps old versions of pages online and prior to the war maintained detailed and fairly trustworthy listings of equipment stockpiles on hand in NATO forces. Both the Polish and Czech Army's large prewar T-72M fleets have entirely disappeared, and it was widely reported in April 2022 that hundreds of tanks were being handed over with Polish and Czech machines appearing on the battlefield in force by May. As for Ukraine's actual ability to reconstitute its own forces organically, a different data point is illuminating. Per the by-now extremely public domain Teixeira leaks, the Ukrainians could only undertake to stand up three new brigades ahead of the 2023 Zaporozhie Offensive, and in fact it's somewhat dubious to me as to whether those "all-Ukrainian" units ever actually materialized. Nine of the twelve brigades generated for that operation - one of critical importance as a potential war-winner - were built lock, stock, and barrel by NATO. Ergo, Ukraine's ability to reconstitute its forces from its own resources is actually fairly limited, despite its considerable Soviet patrimony, and despite an ocean of European money and considerable technical assistance aimed at building up domestic Ukrainian production. When new Ukrainian units have shown up in this war, they have generally done so mounted on foreign equipment, and this has been so since Boris Johnson's infamous trip to Kiev in early April 2022. Which means that not only is NATO propping up the AFU now, but that this has always been the case.