Ukraine has (or had, prior to being invaded by Russia) about 10-15 guns per 100 civilians. "Estimates of the number of guns in private hands - including 2 million registered and an estimated 3-5 million unregistered firearms – suggest that in Ukraine there are between 9.9 and 15.8 firearms per 100 people.10 3 5 Based on data from the study which calculated the lowest estimates in this range, Ukraine ranked 14th in the world for the number of civilian firearms in its national stockpile, and 49th in the world for the number of civilian firearms per head of population." Guns in Ukraine — Firearms, gun law and gun control (gunpolicy.org) Ukraine actually has/had 'permissive' gun laws, where citizens could own pretty much anything we can in the US except for pistols, but of course its persuant to govt permitting, inspection, mental health evaluations, which was a likely contributor to the relatively low ownership per capita- they made it a big PITA. For comparison, we have around 100 guns per 100 civilians in the US (surely I don't need to cite that, you know its true ) It appears the Ukrainian government now thinks more guns = more defense: and it appears at least some elements within our govt agree: "The City of Miami, Florida announced on Tuesday a new gun buyback program dubbed “Guns 4 Ukraine” that is designed to “take guns off [American] streets.” Some of the guns collected will be shipped to Ukraine to be used in the nation’s war with Russia, the city said." Miami holding gun buyback event to 'take guns off US streets' and send them to Ukraine | American Military News (I doubt they're sending guns from 'US Streets' to be used by the Ukrainian military, so presumably these are for their civilians to use) So the question (that should be obvious) is: if more guns in the hands of patriotic Ukrainians equates to better defense of Ukraine, could they have perhaps prevented invasion by suitably arming the citizenry beforehand? If so, why didn't they? After all, its not like Russian military aggression wasn't anticipated...
K, so why are all the soldiers carrying rifles and why are they distributing rifles to civilians who will fight? Are they all just dumb then?
They anticipated urban warfare that is why the civilians were being armed. Of course soldiers carry rifles. One of my cousins who lives in Wester Ukraine far from the invaders did not want to be evacuated because he told me he has his 7mm hunting rifle and he was waiting for the Moskailiy to show up. He lives in the house where my dad and his dad grew up.
I said urban warfare was anticipated. There was not much street to street fighting. The Russians used and use tanks, artillery, massless, and bombs to soften up their targets. If KYIV was occupied then the resistance would have been with small partizan units are with rifles or carbines if they had a good supply. In the south east of Koursan there are partizan units fighting my guess is with small, RPGs , maybe mortars. Actually with weapons that are light and moble.
because Small arms are not much good against hypersonic misses, fighter bombers long range missiles attack helicopters. Well the Viet Cong got lucky at times and did hit some of our helicopters with small arms. And yes you can say that if you catch a chopper on ot near the ground you can take it out with small arms if you are close enough. If you notice in this type of war it’s the missiles taking out the choppers.
I know what rifles are for in warfare. Apparently so do you. Its just that your first comment suggested otherwise...
Ha ha good one. Never heard of anyone shooting down a Katyusha rocket that the Russians provided the Viet Cong. LOL. I was Air Force so the two attacks I experienced were a mortar attack and Katyusha. Even Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone couldn’t shoot a Katyusha down. If it got to the point where I would have had to use “my” 16 that would mean the Cong had gotten past the Army , Philippino , and Air Police security and I would have been royally screwed. When I got to Nam some Army guys after a few beers told me that they would prefer a fire fight with small arms than mortars or rockets. I chose the wrong fight.
I very much doubt it. Disorganised groups of largely untrained armed civilians wouldn't pose much of a threat to the Russia forces but probably would have encouraged them to be even more aggressive against civilian targets than they were anyway. I suspect the most significant distinction would have been even more death and destruction for limited impact on the scale or pace of the Russian advances. Another consideration would be that a significant minority of Ukrainians are pro-Russian, especially in the East of the country, so there'd be armed civilian on both sides in many places.
