Posturing. France doesn't want to engage Russia directly, neither does Russia want to engage France. The Manpower shortage concern is however serious. Russians on the other hand are minimalizing their losses through mass hiring of foreign mercenaries or throwing goat-chins into the grinder. NATO themselves admit they can't outproduce Russian factories even at surge mode. Forget the EU, currently not even the Americans are ready to match Russian production capacity for armor, ammo and missiles. American elections further complicate matters, with a potential change in regime may negatively affect Ukrainian war efforts. The factories in Norway produce less shells per day than the AFU has to fire just during lunch. Ukraine badly needs multiple squadrons of multirole fighters to push back. But almost 4 years in and NATO still can't figure out how to field F-16s from Kyiv. This screams either lack of seriousness and good-will or the simple fact that Europeans have been neglecting their militaries for so long, they are reluctant to share fighters. So EU as always, wants Americans to supply the jets. An effort that keeps getting blueballed and delayed for "technicalities' in US Congress. Ukraine also urgently requires 500-1000 tanks, which again if NATO wasn't caught with it's pants down, it could provide from storage. And I don't mean old PT-91s, Leo2A4s or Leo 1s. If Americans wanted they could refurbish and supply 1000 M1 Abrams tanks from storage. But the blueballing continues because the MIC keeps forcing to supply Poland instead because of the incredible amount of money flying in Polish defense deals lately. NATOs' precision strike and superior ISR capabilities are what keeping AFU afloat. The clown cars from Romania are worthless for anything other than dragging casualties back to safety.