NATO has a population 7 times greater and an economy 25 times greater than Russia. There is no reason other than being asleep at the wheel for why nato can't even match Russian shell production
They have been asleep at the wheel for years. That's the whole point! The British government are also shockingly bad at planning ahead. They've been cutting the size of our Armed Forces and failing to meet their needs/equip them properly for years, while Russia has been throwing its weight around in Eastern Europe. Other Western European NATO countries, like Germany, France, Italy and Spain, have been just as bad or even worse.
Russia is manufacturing 100k shells a month and are trying to ramp up to 200k a month, so nato should be able to do 200k to 300k easy
Britain buys its 155mm artillery shells from BAE Systems (a privately owned Arms manufacturing company), many/all other NATO member states also purchase them from private companies. Because the pursuit of profit is the very reason for a private company's existence they cannot suddenly massively increase production of shells (as they don't have huge fully equipped munitions factories and qualified workers standing idle, since that would be ferociously expensive). Therefore, to do that they have to repurpose/build factories and acquire/train new employees requiring a huge initial investment which they will only make if they have been given a cast-iron government contract to produce X million shells within a period of time too short for their existing facilities.
One advantage of being a militaristic dictatorship is that you instinctively keep munitions production high (and usually under direct state control) and you maintain surplus unused production facilities (built for previous wars), just in case you need them, which would be impossible in a peacetime liberal democracy.
The only way to manage the "lag phase" between ordering a huge increase in munitions production from private companies and receiving them is to be really on-the-ball and thinking far ahead, which is something that successive British governments and other Western European NATO governments have shown themselves to be incapable of doing.
Do you think most men who are now fighting on the front lines started out with any more training than you have now?
Yes, actually, they had military conscription in Ukraine up to 2013 and then re-introduced it in 2014 (after the Russians took Crimea and destabilised the Donbass). Therefore, most Ukrainian men will have had basic military training in the past before being called-up for this war. Clearly, the same cannot be said for the average Brit.
Furthermore, being Ukrainians they will speak Ukrainian fluently and most speak Russian fluently too (which is obviously rather useful when fighting a war between Ukraine and Russia). Again, the same cannot be said for the average Brit.
I'd be happy of Ukraine accepted peace talks - whatever ends the fighting - because my position is simplistic, I want the war to end so the world economy can begin to recover, so people stop dying, and so that the risk of a nuclear war is lessened. That's it.
What an incredibly naïve analysis. Putin violated the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk Agreements, so what makes you think he would obey any new peace agreement with Ukraine when he thinks he has the upper hand? He would just use a pause in the fighting to re-arm and then attack again when he is ready. He only respects force and has no honour.
Fighting him to a standstill and maintaining strong forces capable of preventing any more attacks into Ukrainian territory is the only way to stop Russia. Pushing Russia out of Ukraine entirely would be much better, but it is clearly not possible thanks to the way modest/obsolete weapons systems and inadequate ammunition have been slowly drip-fed into Ukraine.
(Edited to make it clear that I meant that new manufacturing capacity would be required for a large increase in shell production. A smaller increase could be achieved by using the existing munitions factories more efficiently.)
