Better than defanging is real world testing.

What worked as expected, what didn't, how we can make it better etc.

It's not often you get to deploy these weapons.

They should go sign up to fight on the Russian front lines then

But if you can reframe Ukraine as sticking it to those democrats who don't like military, they might be on board.

They are not afraid of Russia they are enthralled by Russia. They serve Putin because they are indebted to him.

Besides. Ukraine gave up nukes because we promised to protect them. There's a tremendous cost to going back on our word for soooo many reasons.

Hopefully Ukraine keeps “disposing” all of our ammunition in the general direction of the invaders.

Don’t forget that the old gear has to be replaced. That’s good American jobs right there.

Now hold on, is funding the IRA on the table?

It's hard to say, that it's prooved. Probably even the US Ministry of Defence has no totaly exact lists.

But there are good estimations based on reports and leaked footage.

For example oryx has a list with destroyed vehicles and equipment based on photographic or videographic evidence. The real numbers are probably significantly higher.

After this list the russian army lost more than 2000 tanks. Ukrainian sources says that the Invasion started with more than 3000 tanks.

Ca. 1000 of the 2000 lost tanks were T-72 (the most common tank in the russian army). According to estimations russia has 2000 T-72 in active service and maybe 10.000 or more as reserves. The reserves are mostly remnants of the soviet Union and old models that are never modernized. Satellite pictures show that a big part of this reserves are stored in open depots with no weather protection. Maybe russia could make some of this vehicles usable, it will cost Billions to repair and modernize them.

So, no there is no proof, that the ukrainian army destroyed 50% of the russian forces. But there are proofs that russia lost a significant part of its active forces (probably something close to this claim) and that they definitly lost much more value than the americans, the europeans, ect. invested in the ukrainian army.

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/tanks-russia-how-many-putin-military-ukraine-leopard-2-abrams-2108097

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-72

They’re conservative about planes and attack helis but have enough. Money is good, oil good, cash reserves ok debt to GDP more than good. Workforce very big but affected

But still... They’re low on tanks, artillery shells, Combat experience, Air defence systems,

Russia as a whole is doing fine attrition wise but they’re equipment is being blown back 40 years. On top of that Ukrainians are doing very well and are cost effective. Russia spends multiple $ for every $ sent to Ukraine.

It's worded in such a way as to be meaningless - half of what? The original number of Russian soldiers, the original number plus Wagner and other extra troops, the current number deployed with/without mercenaries? Plus Russia's numbers don't look like US numbers, don't quite look like Ukraines numbers.

That said heres the first source I found:

Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

...

Russia has almost triple that number, with 1,330,000 active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops — most of the latter from the Wagner Group.

Those numbers refer to the current number of deployed and undeployed Russian soldiers plus mercenaries, which is clearly not the numbers the ad is using.

To be clear, I fully support Ukraine and fully support the US guaranteeing missile manufacturers that we will buy new missiles even if the war ends tomorrow to incentivise greater production. I just think the ad played with the numbers until they said what we want them to say.

Source for both quotes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html