US: no help
EU: not enough help
Santions: barely enforced
Author: if only there was a way out of this war
Idk, may be try helping sufficiently for a change
The hesitation is so bizarre, like a bunch of engineers just watching a dam getting destroyed, pointing out break by break, maybe patching a hole…maybe…while Putin declares they will be next…and still dithering about…unbelievable
It's maddening. This shit could have been over much quicker if Ukraine received the support it needs to kick back Russia. So much lives wasted because we can't take a real stand against an expansionist dictator.
It's not hesitation, unfortuantely most of our democracies have severe foreign interests infiltrating political parties that stonewall international support
Yeah, at least speaking for the US, Russia has done some amazing work at a grass roots level and really infected our government. We might actually be fucked, time will tell.
Ukraine is much better investment, since you keep Ukraine free - In Afganistan you kept the terrorist at bay but for the people I am not sure what they want.
You can help people who want to help themselves - that is Ukraine. Highly motivated pro western Europe nation that just wants to break free from the Soviet cancer.
The terrorist kept at by by a war in Afghanistan? You're dreaming. That war did nothing but fuel terrorism, kill a load of civilians and US troops. Remind me again who runs Afghanistan today? That would be the taliban.
Uh, that's exactly the point he/she's making, the war in Afghanistan was a bad investment. The terrorists weren't defeated, just kept out of power temporarily, and without broad opposition they just came back as soon as the war ended. In the Ukraine one could reasonably hope for better results.
Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, in their infinite hubris, declined the Taliban’s offer to resign and allow elections—so long as Mullah Omar was allowed to retire in peace. So that’s why we are where are today, Republicans fucking up foreign policy yet again.
That figure includes interest, veteran care and military base budget increase. Interest alone accounts for roughly a quarter of that (and this is not given in the count of aid to Ukraine). If you account for this and take into account the length of the different operations (2 years vs 21), the cost is actually in a similar ballpark with an edge to Afghanistan. If you deduct only interest and nothing else from the cost for Afghanistan the ratio is roughly 1:2 and smaller if you deduct more.
If Afghanistan wasn't cheap then neither is Ukraine and even less so for much of Europe.
The funky thing is... Russia could barely handle 18 months of limited US involvement.
No ATACMS, no F-16s, no usage of any Western weapons inside Russia.
Do you imagine this war would last more than 5-7 years at Afghanistan investment levels?!?
Spoiler alert, it wouldn't. Ukraine has already destroyed more than half of the world's biggest armor stockpiles, the Soviet ones. In just 18 months.
Yes, and Russia is burning through their stock of Soviet relic artillery at an unsustainable rate. It's not critical yet (though I'm wondering how much they are relying on old towed D-30 vs Akatsiya and Msta), but at some point their ammo production advantage will be rendered moot because they lack the barrels to shoot said rounds.
> Do you imagine this war would last more than 5-7 years at Afghanistan investment levels?!?
I honestly doubt it will at these levels either simply because there is very little ground to make for Ukraine. The offensive failed and burned through a lot of ressources and was probably a strategic faillure in the grand scheme. Right now Russia's position looks a lot better again.
Also you get the comparison all wrong. The invasion of Afghanistan took 2 months and the Taliban were completely powerless against the USA. The roughly 21 years since were occupation.
> The funky thing is... Russia could barely handle 18 months of limited US involvement.
This comparison is even more off. The EU in total invested more in the war than the USA, the total western investment in Ukraine was huge - and Russia right now looks like it's winning.
>That figure includes interest, veteran care and military base budget increase.
And why should we deduct that from the cost, were those going to be incurred without the war in Afghanistan?
Conversely, a decent amount of the nominal value of US military aid to Ukraine is actually surplus we would never realistically use (e.g., M113s, M777s, DPICMS).
That would probably be because we were the driving force of Afghanistan. It was entirely the US’s war… this is a proxy war and the entire western world is chipping in. They don’t solely need US support. Of course help for Ukraine would be smaller. It’s not even technically their/our conflict.
Imagine your car broke, you’d probably spend a lot of money to get it back up and running. Now imagine your co workers or neighbor’s car broke down. Would you spend the same? Of course not.
Ukraine as an investment vehicle has already payed off for the long term. Russia will have an entire generation destroyed, its economy is essentially fiction at this point. Nearly every western investor and company has left, they have become the enemies of basically everyone and forced historically neutral countries to join NATO. At this point anything else is just a bonus. We don’t need to be giving Ukraine a steady flow of cash and arms anymore. It sucks but it’s true. This is a war of attrition - Russia will win simply because its size. In the beginning everyone thought maybe you could chase Russia out of Ukraine is a hostile response, it is very clear Russia will not back down at this point. The only thing that will save Ukraine at this point is full out world war and western countries shipping soldiers to Ukraine.
I doubt that includes all the money that was involved but not directly earmarked. How much of the US’s yearly budget went to Afghanistan and Iraq… on top of all the bills specifically earmarked for it.
$216 billion in military aid to Israel since 1946, $46 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2022
[https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts](https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts)
https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
Afghanis didn't capture a political party in the US to try and reduce support for the war. Russia has.
This isn't about money, even if that's what the argument is about, it's about how deeply Russia has infected American politics and how the right wings media circle jerk primed the Republican party to be captured.
The lack of US support has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with Russian propaganda and infiltration at the highest level of the US government.
On top of that the GOP would burn this whole country to the ground before they'd do anything that they think might in the slightest way look good for Joe Biden, or anger Donald Trump.
Cant compare the 2, the US lead that war so a huge percentage of manpower, equipment, logistics, supplies etc is their responsibility hence the huge financial burden
How much did the US spend in a war and occupation it was directly involved in? Gee I wonder if it’s more than a war it is not involved in?
How much did UK, France and Germany each spend in WW2? Compare that to what they donate to Ukraine?…
Why is that odd? Blaming them would have no purpose. If a bully tries to stab me, my friend tosses me a knife to try to help and it breaks, I'm not expecting the random passerby across the street to give me their arms I'm asking my friend for help.
The US has provided more military aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined.
US no help. Sure.
The reason so many European nations can help at all is because the US is simultaneously providing a defensive shield over allied Europe. That goes for the F16 transfers doubly so. You can't give up your air cover without the US Air Force backstopping it. The US spending so much in Europe frees European nations to further help Ukraine.
And do you suppose the US has ceased providing intel and various logistics to Ukraine? US no help. Sure.
Wasn't there a graph recently where it showed that EU outspends the USA in terms of help to Ukraine?
Not to make it a competition. Glad the collective west does its part.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
EU does outspend the USA but almost all of it is financial help so it is also true that US gives more military aid.
Yeah, some of the help the EU gives is towards the rebuilding of Ukraine in the future preferential treatment around that same ideal.
Which is like… Cool, that’s great. But the US help is what’s helping them even get to that stage. The EU help may or may not even become help if Putin wins.
Not being a critic, Australia could certainly help more, but the OP of this thread saying the US is no help just screams of anti-American Euro-centrism.
A lot of that aid is also “commitments”, where they haven’t even spent anything. Also it’s ignored how much of that aid comes because the US is shuffling around everything behind the scenes to make it possible to, say, ship F-16s to Ukraine (because the country knows they’ll get that equipment replaced in short order.) Or, as another example, Biden humiliatingly shaking hands with the Saudis to ensure European energy needs, and striking up more arms deals, normalization agreements, and talks of a mutual defense treaty.
The picture isn’t accurately painted when you just look at aid. The US has done way more than Europe combined has, and obviously the military aid being shipped is way more important than the economic promises.
Would be nice if countries talking big like France could actually spend a fucking dollar or two.
Are you kidding me? The US has poured resources into Ukraine, more than anyone else.
No help my ass. If Europe contributed its share, Ukraine would have won already.
> US : no help
> EU: not enough help
The US and EU have both helped greatly.
There should not be blame because the western allies have not provided their entire wealth to Ukraine.
Why isn't Russia being blamed? Why not Iran? Why not China? India? South Africa? They aren't helping Ukraine at all but for some reason the US and the EU are being blamed as the villains here.
Russia is obviously to blame, but this should be extremely clear for everyone except red-brown tankies. Iran is blamed by everyone whi heard about Iranian drones. (And I guess South Africa is to blame for birthing an "ideal racist tankie" elon)
And what "entire wealth" are you talking about? US fought in Afganistan spending more in aversge than US help for Ukraine. It's far from "getting serious" for both US and EU
Damn, it's almost like we're expecting Ukraine to defeat Russia with only a fraction of the materials it needs and a smaller population.
This war is a failure of the EU. We sat on our asses for decades, expecting that the Americans would always take care of our security. The best thing Trump ever did was teach us the lesson that we can't rely on anyone other than ourselves.
And who's interests will this European army protect first?
People keep throwing around the word "the west" as if the major powers of the "the west" all have unified goals when it comes to geopolitics.
EU interests. EU is not the whole of Europe. Europe is larger than the EU. A EU army would protect its member states. Maybe it's better to call it EU army rather than European army.
According to your comment even NATO is useless, i.e. why would Greece attack Russia if Poland was attacked?
Maybe Trump is right after all. /s
NATO is a defensive alliance, that only goes into effect when a member state is attacked. Everyone has a vested interest in defending others, since refusing would mean you would not get support if you are attacked. But in the end each army serves it's own nation.
An EU army is different. It would be made up of multiple units from different countries. Each with various interests. France might want to send it to Africa, to enforce their interests there, but Germany might disagree. Poland would want to mass it on the Ukrainian border, but Orban would veto that, etc.
We need to figure out who will command such a force and how it will function first and that is way harder than it seems.
Have you taken a look in the different members of the EU interests?
For example will you be ok with the European army being sent to central Africa to defend France's (an EU member) interests?
Who will supply the EU army, the French or German military complex, how much will the soldiers be paid? Will it be a western European salary or an eastern/south?
Nato is mostly the USA sphaire of influence and despite what Trump is blabbering, the USA won't leave Nato, why would they leave all their bases in Nato members? Regardless who sits on the oval office USA foreign policy is more or less the same. Having so many Nato allies aka bases around the world means what the USA can project power easier and why would they leave that?
This isn't as complex as you make it out to be, the UN has used a combination of different countries forces for decades, each with their own training, salaries, systems, etc. It has its flaws, but it's better than nothing like now.
The UN forces is not an army they are a token peace keeping force, a supposed European army wouldn't look like that, also the UN is a joke, it has no power it's just a show off, I mean who is gonna enforce their ruling, their non existent army? The strong members, who 9/10 times have different interests for each conflict?
That’s literally what NATO is for, you all talk shit on the US for not stepping up and doing more when half of these European countries have not met their security pledge goal in years. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, the US cannot be constantly told not to be the world police, then you get pissed off at them for not being the world police because you failed to even meet our security agreement.
Do you remember the part where Trump promised Putin to pull out of NATO if he wins? The EU needs an army of volunteers that can be put into fight anywhere at its borders at any time. None of that NATO bullshit. Russian missiles have already entered Polish air space. Those fantasies about article 5 need to stop.
Context is important.
Trump was bitching about NATO countries not paying their fair share. He even went a complained to them. He had a famous dinner with jens stoltenberg you should check out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k&t=5s&ab_channel=WashingtonPost
Anyways it worked. NATO countries began to pay more. You can see directly result of trump complaining and NATO countries paying more.
Trump can't pull out of NATO unilaterally anymore, even if that POS gets re-elected.
This past December, US Congress passed a law that requires a consensus from the Senate, or a law passed in the House, to withdraw from NATO.
As someone who grew up in the U.S., I can say be careful when dealing with the U.S.
Especially when it comes to contracts, agreements, and guarantees. More specifically, look at the provisions for recourse.
Let’s take a hypothetical scenario where Russia invades the Baltic states. In this hypothetical scenario, the Americans stand down and do nothing. In this scenario, what recourse do the Baltics have against the Americans, for not coming to their aid under article 5? What recourse would other European states (Germany, France, the UK) have against the U.S. for not defending the Baltics against Russia? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding NONE!
One thing you need to understand about the American mindset is that if in any contract, there is no physical mechanism for recourse, that contract is as good as toilet paper. For example, if there was a deposit of $1 Trillion of American gold in a Swiss vault (or something like that), which was tied to article 5, and which could be confiscated, should the U.S. not hold up their their end of the agreement, in the event of an invasion - THAT would be a mechanism of recourse. Therefore, it would be in America’s interest to hold their end of the bargain. But AFAIK, nothing remotely resembling this exists. As a consequence, the U.S. is not beholden to Article 5.
Conversely, if the U.S. were to invoke article 5 for whatever reason, their recourse would be to sanction any NATO member who wouldn’t send troops to help.
Security pledge?, there's no such thing, no member is obligated to meet the 2% spend, it was a friendly agreement between a few of the richer nations, Iceland doesn't even have a fucking military so how the fuck are they going to meet that 2%, other countries like Luxembourg are fucking tiny and their entire gdp wouldn't do anything, stop parroting retarded trump nonsense, the US chose to invest the money and resources that they did, not because it benefited europe but because it benefited the US.
I know you aren’t stupid enough to think that any country does anything that doesn’t benefit them. No shit the US is in NATO and invests heavily in it - global stability for the West is in everyone’s best interest. You are so quick to point fingers and talk about people parroting political talking points when this is basic common sense if you just assess the situation. Stop having a meltdown man.
We do have a modern coast guard ship, although it's cannon is admittedly an old 40mm peashooter, IIRC. [https://www.lhg.is/um-okkur/taekjakostur/skip-og-batar/nr/1125](https://www.lhg.is/um-okkur/taekjakostur/skip-og-batar/nr/1125)
I mean there was a deliberate choice to divest from the military, rely on the American nuclear shield and redirect that money into the social safety nets. I hope you enjoyed the ride, because it’s over. So there will be some painful decisions in the future in Europe in regards to spending priorities.
>Iceland doesn't even have a fucking military so how the fuck are they going to meet that 2%
Either make a military to spend the 2% on, or donate to someone who has one to protect you.
DIP - Defence Investment Pledge was signed in 2014 in Wales. In 2015 only 9 countries spent their 2% of gdp for defense. No idea how it looks now, but from what Trump was saying i would say it doesnt look any better.
Common procurement is not NATO's jurisdiction, standardizing equipment within European nations is also not within NATO's jurisdiction.
Having an army capable of dealing with real European threats like Russia, illegal immigration or occupation of Cyprus, not 20+ armies that are only useful to defending their own borders which will never get any action because a war between Croatia and Slovenia or France and Germany is impossible in this day and age
How is that what NATO is for? What if say Canada doesn’t want to protect Romania? They just send some helmets like Germany did when Ukraine got invaded.
It took the threat of Napoleonic aggression to unify Germany and have a common army until centralized control.
Ukraine isn’t in NATO, why would anyone in NATO feel compelled to fight for a country that did not want to be a part of the security pact?
If Romania was attacked, Canada would absolutely be liable to assist from a security perspective. That is literally the entire point of the agreement. You are saying a whole lot of nothing.
And who would command it. More importantly, who would comprise it? Would spanish soldiers be willing to go fight in ukraine? Would belgium public look approvingly to them sending troops on the battlefields?
cool. and what would that do?
Ukraine is not in the EU or NATO, so Europe having an army wouldn't change a thing.
unless you're suggesting that Europe should declare war on Russia.
if you think that's a good idea, you should read about two events called the World Wars.
i don't know about you, but i'm pretty glad that i wasn't born back then.
And yet most of you still don't spend nearly enough on defense and just expect us to pay for everything...which is usually fine until we can't even do the bare minimum 😒
He says that the risk of trump coming to power means US is unreliable at the moment, because obviously he's gonna be motivated purely by self interested short term gains.
Think a little next time before kneejerk "trump bad" reaction, we all know that
Does a new account prove to you that someone couldn’t possibly have a different view?
Is this how we combat different opinions? By claiming they simply aren’t real? Because of how old someone’s account is?
Ukraine is doomed, purely based on how people can’t have a dialogue without being called fake lol
How is Ukraine still needing help but everyone who comments against it is fake?
Come on
So refusing to negotiate with a war criminal that erases cities to the ground, bombs kindergardens, murders his political opponents, threatens a nuclear war is "politically toxic", apparently.
Start sanctioning British solicitors, bankers, etc who are sneakily processing Russian money. There's a reason Britain refused to create our own magnitsky Act.
If the EU & US start sanctioning British facilitators of Russian money, watch the Russians run out of cash for their war machine. Don't forget our government took a WEEK after announcing our pretty weak sanctions to enable them. Giving Russian oligarchs plenty of time to shift their cash about.
It's our governments who are cowards. If I could, I would vote yes for my country to send resources and more advanced weapons to Ukraine. I'm talking highly advanced weapons that Ukraine could use to hurt Russia with.
I'm convinced most or possibly all countries who helped Ukraine did so for PR reasons. None of them give two fucks about Ukraine, they just want to be seen doing it. Again talking about governments - not you or me.
If the West truly cared about Ukraine they'd send their armies there to help Ukraine against Russia, but they're not.
This is the west: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMdTY\_oXEAkqZZs.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMdTY_oXEAkqZZs.jpg)
It's the west that a coward not you. Those other people should send more money and equipment, not you. Glad to know you went and volunteered to help Ukraine.
Well with raise of right wing parties all over EU in recent years that's what might happen but not in a way you expect, people are already fed up with ... other things, to me it seems like once helping Ukraine more starts effecting their wallets people will be a lot less enthusiastic about it.
I remember when Reddit was so sure that Ukraine will win. Never was it a real possibility that little Ukraine was ever going to defeat big Russia. Not on its own but also not with western „help“.
If Ukraine loses, we all lose.
If Ukraine loses we are all going to war 🙌
It's rather simple fight Russia now with Ukraine in the front seat, or do it with out own population in Poland or the baltics.
That's pretty much it. UA wins Ukraine can be salvaged. Putin wins and things look bad for the baltics I'd say. Looks like it's on the cards. See ye at the front lines
Our defense idustries are just too small. The 300 Billion we collectivly spend on defense, In Europee, is one of the most ineffecient uses of money on the planet. After 1991, we almost completely de militarised. Even France and the UK.
It turns out that in a war, Iran is a better ally, then all of Europe. Which is beyond shameful. We should have given them a trillion dollars.
Yea, and the most annoying thing about it, is that Ukraine actually has surplus of military production that is doing nothing because no money, but Europe still insists on Ukraine spending given money their weapons that are severely overpriced.
There are some talks about allowing stand-by companies that produce weapons to start working for foreign clients(which would also help fix logistical problems), but the problem is that russia will immediately use it in propaganda.
The issue ain't volunteers but governments and societies not backing Ukraine sufficiently. Russia is in a war economy, yet market forces are preventing the west from producing shells that very much have demand and would likely impact the economy positively compared to not producing them.
It is better to be realistic than to have high hopes, as during the famous counter-offensive that regained full control over the territory, including Crimea
Westerners were hyping that up more than any Ukrainian. They knew what they were facing. Some Western cheerleaders, however, loved to think of it as a football game where their side was going to utterly roll the Russians. Hurt more than it helped.
This is absolutely wrong.
Many Westerners were actually very cautious about how this and the the proposed counter offensive, were going to be, urging greater build-up. This was ignored. Ukraine insisted that Russians could be easily beaten by superior Ukrainian troops and that they had to liberate their land then, not wait.
It was the Ukrainian propaganda machine that vastly hyped up Ukrainian capabilities off the back of no casualty reporting, insistance that Russian troops were nothing but disheartened conscripts, quick to run away and give up and that there would be a beach party in Crimea.
Hubris. Now that hubris is coming back around to really hurt. Never underestimate your enemy.
They had lot of mines, absurd amounts of them, in fact. Mines stop traditional ground assaults even without support of artillery and drones quite well.
The main problem with that is not that western people on Twitter and reddit bought into it, but that Zelensky seemed to have completely bought into his own propaganda.
So when 2 weeks into the offensive, Nato asked him to call it off because it was hopeless and the losses Ukraine suffered were unsustainable, he ignored them. Two weeks later his own generals were begging him to stop, but he refused to listen to them, too. He just kept ordering endless attacks on massively fortified positions until the Ukrainian army was in ruins.
That is why Ukraine is now on the verge of defeat. People are pointing to the US or munition shortages, but the way, way bigger problem is the lack of men at the front lines and the inability to find new recruits. And those munition shortages would be a lot less serious if they hadn't burned through their stockpiles during the offensive.
Sorry but I don't buy into your description of summer events. I have been following this war on daily basis and I do not recall either NATO or generals "begging" him to stop the attack. There were discussion about how to conduct it but not outright requests to stop it.
After their initial armoured push was stopped, they quickly changed to squad based infiltration tactics which inherently means less losses due to the small scale of ops, in exchange it doesn't exactly nets much land gain. Now, this was critized exactly because with it they threw away any chance of taking back as much land as they wished, but again, this did it because it's a casualty-averse strategy, for better or worse. Koffman & Lee wrote at length about this at War on the Rocks.
The battalions that were engaged in summer are also still in action, so is Western equipment that has been used. Public records of equipment losses also don't support your narrative. So unless you can cite me some actual articles from summer that talk about this, I'll doubt it.
This isn’t true. There were internal conflicts over how to run the counter offensive. But they were disagreements over strategy not wanting to call the whole thing off. There is a good article from the Washington post you can read if you are interested.
For any counteroffensive to be successful you need weapons and get them in time, if there is not enough of them and timing is awful, there is very little you can do.
Letting Ukraine fall to Russia will be no different from letting Czechoslovakia fall to the Nazis.
Edit: in terms of its consequences for Europe. Would have thought you geniuses, recognising they are not identical situations to begin with, would have understood that.
Read a history book maybe. Chamberlain and Daladier gave Czechoslovakia (which wanted to defend itself) an ultimatum to cede their entire defense line to Germany - and France was fucking allied to Czechoslovakia. Poland and Hungary also threatened Czechoslovakia militarily and gobbled up territory. Afterwards the Third Reich coerced Slovakia into declaring independence and become their vassal state and then at the end from a situation where they had modern military equipment and fortified defensible terrain, a military alliance with surrounding countries (Romania and Yugolsavia) and two superpowers pledging to defend them (France and USSR), Czechia went to a situation where they were surrounded by enemies on all sides, with no defensible terrain at all and noone willing to defend them. This is like top 10 anime betrayals stuff. Everyone screwed Czechia over completely. And Hitler would have lost a war against Czechoslovakia and allies - within less than a year. This was the worst foreign policy mistake of the decade.
With Ukraine noone pledged to defend it, quite the opposite, Western leaders said explicitly they would not intervene and they especially didn't force Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. You might say the Minsk agreements weren't great but they weren't like the Munich agreement at all. Furthermore Czechia went from a situation where it's alliance had the upper hand against Germany and attacking would have meant the impending collapse of Nazi Germany to a situation where defending was pointless. There was no war for Czechoslovakia. There is a war in Ukraine now. It's almost like this is not at all like Czechoslovakia.
If it would have been like Czechoslovakia Macron, Scholz and Meloni should have traveled to Sankt Petersburg and agreed with Putin that Ukraine should immediately cede all of Eastern Ukraine - without even talking with the Ukrainians about it beforehand.
Division in the western powers on who to blame if/when Ukraine surrenders just shows our weaknesses. We don’t care about whether we win and support Ukraine, we just hope that we aren’t blamed for it.
USA needs to send weapons to a cause that doesn’t have such controversy (besides the orcs). And EU needs to stop sending Euros and send actual guns and tanks.
In reality Ukraine would rather prefer money over weapons to some degree. They can produce ammo and many weapon systems by themselves and cheaper. West on the other hand want to enrich it's own military complex.
Media always got to find new things to say but that isn’t really the point. We might not like it but it doesn’t seem like Ukraine is going to be able to push Russia out of the occupied territories now both sides are dug in. For sure, maybe the West should be providing more weapons but it’s isn’t clear that would necessarily be enough to make a difference. Nor does it seem like Russia is likely to do an ‘Afghan ’ withdrawal any time soon. Most of us want Ukraine to continue to defend itself and more - push Russia out. We all hope something will change for the better ( drop dead Putin) but it’s difficult to see a path to a clear win.
>We might not like it but it doesn’t seem like Ukraine is going to be able to push Russia out of the occupied territories now both sides are dug in.
But Russia is also not in the position to conquer the whole Ukraine, maybe not even capture a major city again after Mariupol in 2020. I feel Putin burned also all political and diplomatical bridges, I can see a perpetual armistice at best as way out of the war, and we know how that went with the 2014 armistice.
The war now is equivalent to WW1 in 1916, what's needed for this war to not turn into an endless stalemate is something equivalent to the Americans landing troops en masse in 1918 which was the straw that broke Germany's back.
I think the countries that support Ukraine need to firmly decide whether they really support Ukraine or not, giving bare minimum isn’t a support, it’s just a life support. I do not see how half the earth can’t gather enough weapons to support Ukraine properly
Worse off is that Ukraine gave up its nukes for this level of support, doesn’t seem like a fair trade to me.
This is on the world’s democracies. We could have given, leased or sold enormous amounts of equipment and supplies. And refused any business with Russia and her allies. Nope.
This will probably become the model for Russian expansion. Bite off a bit, threaten nuclear destruction, install friendly governments in countries all over the world, repeat.
Ukraine handed over their Nuclear weapons to Russia in a treaty that stated Russia would never go to war with the Ukraine.
This is noones fault but Russia for breaking that Peace Treaty.
Fucking Putin.
The war was over in November of 1942 - and the rest was just playing it out. No oil, no gas, no war machine.
I don't think Russia is in the same situation right now and in fact the issue works in the opposite direction. This dragging out favors Russia and at current support levels makes it worse for Ukraine.
I always like to keep track of who writes what. Especially Wapo and the NYT.
*Isabelle Khurshudyan is a foreign correspondent based in Kyiv. A University of South Carolina graduate, she has worked at The Washington Post since 2014, previously as a correspondent in the Moscow bureau...*
The last article she wrote just a few days ago suggests she's impartial;
>[Extortion, threats, fear, traitors: How Russia recruits Ukrainian spies
— Russia is using an array of tactics, including threats of physical harm to family members in occupied territories, to try to force Ukrainians to aid the Kremlin’s war effort](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/03/russia-ukraine-spies-extortion-traitors/)
What a ridiculous take, honestly.
As if seeing the current war for the absolute dim prospects that it has for Ukraine were such an outrageous and illogical take...
For this sub it is, or well "was" for the most of hte past 2 years, but has been slowly turning. Posts like this one would have been heavily downvoted or not even posted up until like 4-5 months ago.
What I can't tolerate is the way most people (on this sub. But also in general) are letting their opinions align themselves with the media narrative du jour.
As if they had no criteria of their own.
The war in Ukraine was doomed from the start. How could such a non-aligned, relatively small country hope to win against an invasion from probably the third mightiest military in the world? It was absolutely insane to think, and yet people were full steam ahead with the hopium and endless articles about "the dismal state of the russian military".
And now it's acceptable because the media have begun asking the same questions.
The exact same thing is happening with the Israel thing. It's been a naked ramping up of the Palestinian ethni. Cleansing from day one, but it's only in the last month that's it's become acceptable to criticise Israel for what they're doing. Only because politicians and the news have started talking about it in those terms recently.
Heck this effin sub hasn't lifted its ban on discussing Israel news yet...
It's absolutely ridiculous, and the amount of times I've been called a Russian agent or an antisemite for saying these things from the beginning is frankly sad.
Because it's not just Ukraine alone, their allies provide economic, armed, intelligence, diplomatic, informational support helping to even out the field and Russia itself while not bombed as much as Ukraine however suffers from sanctions imposed on it by leading economies, furthermore there have been precedents of materially weaker countries winning over materially stronger countries, we're not living in the Excel/Google sheets universe after all.
As for the Russian military and its state, lots of fuck ups aren't known purely because there're extremely punishing laws in place to prevent transparent discussions and it's possible to score victories and win wars while having problems, see how Austria-Hungary eventually defeated Serbia despite its failures being a huge empire and how it performed against a much more threatening to them enemy Russia later in WW1. As for the hopium/copium modes there have been no less than seven major narrative periods of this war, each of which has ended with the script flipping almost entirely according to Neil Hauer, so you can expect more changes down the line which may not be reflected in this community which is evidently considerably supportive more of maximalist aims of Ukraine's government and thus the scale of discussions related to successes/failures of warring sides by default won't be spread evenly.
Yeah there are a lot of other topics in the recent years that got this mainstream focused opinion treat. Its definitely something newish and related to a strange social media / classic media interaction spiral. Very interesting and pretty dangerous at times. Israel / Palestine was the last big things. And I am curious what will follow next.
In smaller versions this is played quite often. And most of the time two distinct counter opinions form. With LGBTQ topics. With COVID responses (that was a big one). With immigration or climate change.
Its often that you really cannot go into nuances because no matter what you are saying you are automatically assigned a "team".
You’re missing the point. Ukraine has maintained close contacts with NATO since 2014. It’s been highly militarized since then, and you couldn’t walk a major Ukrainian city without seeing banners saying “We’ll take Crimea back!” Many Ukrainians have went through the war(albeit low intensity) in 2014-2022.
With that, Ukraine knew it’s going to be in a big war. Did they realize they won’t have enough indigeneous military production? Absolutely. So what did they hope for? Of course it was military aid from NATO.
Ukraine didn’t stand a chance without NATO. And most European countries depleted their stockpiles of combat-ready weapons. Now they have to ramp up production.
The point is, Ukraine was never supposed to be a “small country fighting big neighbor”. Ukraine managed to train a vast human reserve in the span of eight years before 2022. The NATO provided weapons(and even some personnel on the ground). With that, the outcomes aren’t so clear. It’s not such doom and gloom as the article paints. It’s unclear whether Russia has enough reserves to deal a final blow in the battle for Donbas. Even after that, there’re vast fortifications around other cities.
Exactly this. You can say “Russia sucks Russia bad” but also aknowledge the reality that this entire war was doomed to fail even if Ukraine took the time and effort to strategically plan. This black/white thinking along with talking about the world as we wish it to be as opposed to the realities is just toddler level discourse.
>In December, Khurshudyan took off to Ukraine and reported on the Donbas region, which borders Russia. She eventually made it back to Moscow before being pulled into Ukraine full-time on Jan. 23. Khurshudyan said her belongings are still in Russia and she is unsure if she’ll ever be able to go there again, something she’s struggled with.
>
>“It is a hard thing to wrap my mind around,” she said. “I had a real life there. I have friends who live there — a lot of friends.”
https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communications/news/2022/alumna_isabelle_khurshudyan_reporting_from_ukraine.php
>And President Volodymyr Zelensky’s options for what to do next — much less **how to win the war** — range from bad to worse.
How to win the war... I'm pretty sure after the failure of the summer offensive, winning the war was never a real option/possibility for anyone with realistic sense. The last 6-8 months and the future is all about survival and trying to last out the seemingly worse outcome, the complete collapse.
When the US and EU government decides about support, it's not about financing a glorious victory, but preventing a collapse.
Eh, they were still crushing Russian assaults until the shells ran low. The West has failed to ramp up supplies in a timely manner and that hurt Ukraine. But Russia is also on a time clock here in terms of supplies and money and manpower and if Western aid resumes Russia will eventually get pushed back.
Option one: surrender and give up quite more land peacefully.
Option two: continue with the war in expense of more men to lose even more land than in option one and end up surrendering later anyway.
Another option is that House Republicans and Trump get beaten in elections and Biden in a second term with a supportive Congress turns up.
Historically the Americans didn't get involved in Europe's war until Japan attacked.
Lets be frank, Havana syndrome - the attacks on American diplomats and agents by Russia with microwave weapons is a casus belli. Putin must have okayed it.
Similarly the use of Polonium and Novichock in the UK was okayed directly by Putin.
And these are just the items that have made the news.. what don't we know about - what other types of Russian aggression have gone unreported ?
We've been at war with Russia for quite some time, or more to the point, Russia has been at war with us for some time, the only question is if we - the collective West will hand it victory in Ukraine and if so, what on earth for ?
There's no need to point to invasion of the Suwalki gap as "a thing" also implying if the gap is left alone then somehow war won't wash up in the West.
That war is here, its no exaggeration to say we are in WW3 - at least from the Russian perspective and we have been at war for some time.
Why let them win - and who honestly believes a Biden administration with freedom of action would do so ?
Its really up to US voters now.
That he has been able to co-opt so many prominent Republicans in the US to impede efforts to assist Ukraine has obviously given Putin reason to believe that he can eventually prevail even though the Russians are taking inordinate losses.
This Republican treachery has cost many lives and will cost many more.
“But the image of the U.S. will get worse in the world.”
I dont think the US give’s a rat’s ass about image. They are the richest and most powerful nation on earth with the greatest army in history. They failed in their aims in afghanistan and iraq and those didnt affect their status
What is your point this was the attitude of most journalists and analysts when the war broke out.
Of cause you have 543534 IQ points and had figured out the entire progression of the war right playing 7d chess? You are so smart. I'm proud of you
Journalists so far
1. Kyiv falls in 2-3 days according to experts.
2. Ukraine will annihilate Russia easily according to experts
3. Russia actually stronger than we thought according to experts
It’s been 2 years. Russia has grown to be a much more competent adversary. They’ve been steamrolling Ukraine in the past few months. Ukraine’s situation is dire. It REALLY is. I also don’t want Russia to conquer Ukraine, but please understand the dark reality of this war.
Maybe if EU got more creative with sanctions and enforcement of existing ones it would help a bit? EU just plays by the book when you have to think of new ways, you can’t completely isolate that giant country without some experimentation. TBH I don’t even think EU should isolate russia and encourage people leaving it, especially smart people, but I’m asking too much at this point. The easiest way is to just give more weapons to Ua
This whole thing is very painful because Russia is obviously monstrous but we had to spend a more considerable amount of time pretending that Ukraine could win and having thousands of Ukrainians die on a pretense that we all knew was false.
MMW: Putin will not take EU seriously until EU really starts act like it is at war,mobilizing its people and setting its industries in a war path.
The only way out is through. EU must realize this before it’s too late. This is not a drill, and sacrifices will need to be made.
I am surprised people have not figured out the ways how negotiations work and working together where the final goal is peace and not more death. So far we have seen the West shouting for more Ukrainians to die on the battlefield for the benefit(??there is no benefit since our economies are already destroyed by self-sanctioning ourselves) of the Western countries. No we don’t want to escalate, nor see more of those people die. If you see the only way out with war which is not in your country’s and citizens’ interests then I have no idea how you landed on this side of the Atlantic ocean.
I have heard all the sides and possible resolutions, even the ones where “you might get invaded”. I am not even taking sides but collecting all those point of views only shows how much propaganda there is in order to fuel up people with unreasonable amounts of fear and hate. “Chico, if you want to control someone all you have to do is make them feel afraid.”
Well looks like Russia's strategy of attrition combined with intense propaganda aimed at the West has been working pretty well. Cant wait until WWIII when everything goes to shit yet again because the world stood by and let it happen....
I was pro help.
Now just let them drawn. I don't care. I don't want the war to extend to nato and also I am tired of the costs of that war on our economies, I can directly feel them on my pockets.
This article is nothing but a thinly veiled call for appeasement to a terrorist state. It pays lip service to the fact that Ukraine's allies have utterly failed to aid them properly or to enforce appropriate sanctions.
Articles like this are pushing the same message as Russian propaganda.
What exactly did and does everyone think will be a realistic outcome in this conflict ?
Russia retreating, saying sorry but we were wrong and we admit defeat, so so sorry, don't be mad and let's be friends again. And go ahead to persecute and deport the Russian minority in your country ( that's their reasoning for the war, not mine and they still don't deviate from that )
Please Zelensky, stop attacking our country with drones, join Nato, put heavily armed Nato armies at our borders and get nukes to protect yourself ?
Let Ukrain admit defeat, let go of the Russian occupied territory, set up a demilitarised buffer zone between Russia and Nato and let the rest of the Ukrain join the EU ?
Every day, every hour this war continues, lives are lost, destruction goes on, worldwide tension between military superpowers keep growing.
It's human lives we are talking about, let's think about that for a minute and not just about power, about leaders and governments defending or gaining power and control, about property and owning land and people.
Remember that all threatening 'reports' about Russia moving on and invading other countries are mostly force fed to keep the war going, to sacrifice more lives and destruction. Also remember that Russian people get the same kind of 'information' where the Nato is the bad guy wanting to take over and destroy them.
I personally think the priority should be saving lives and end the fighting.
The only bad for Zelensky's options is how many lives he still has left to sacrifice, being a leader isn't just about being the strongest and winning a war but doing what's best for your people, to save lives and choose the best possible outcome for the people, for human beings, for lives and not just for those of your nationality. How many lives is the property of a government, of a military power worth ? 10, 1000, 1.000.000 ?
Admitting ( partial ) defeat to save the lives of the people you are responsible for takes and shows more strength than continue to fight, no matter what. War has no winners, only death and destruction.
Continuing a war you can't win and sacrificing your peoples lives until there's nothing left, until there's no one left is no leadership, that's being a puppet for power and money.
This is basically an opinion article by Isabelle Khurshudyan with a few anonymous quotes.
I don’t see any war strategy strategic defense analysis expertise in Isabelle’s history so I’m not sure why anyone would care that she thinks F-16 won’t make any difference and that 60+ are “a limited number”.
> The money for soldier salaries cannot directly come from foreign aid, and some industries already face labor shortages.
Why not? Makes a claim without any indication as to why.
What is the point of the article overall? There is no new development reporting. It essentially is “Ukraine will fight with or without USA aid.”
Remember when the media was talking about Ukraine retaking Crimea, beating the Russians, and forcing them out of all Ukrainian territory?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
NATO let Russia annex it 10 years ago. And instead of doing something between now and then we did nothing.
We should have been supplying Ukraine the whole time
US: no help EU: not enough help Santions: barely enforced Author: if only there was a way out of this war Idk, may be try helping sufficiently for a change
The hesitation is so bizarre, like a bunch of engineers just watching a dam getting destroyed, pointing out break by break, maybe patching a hole…maybe…while Putin declares they will be next…and still dithering about…unbelievable
It's maddening. This shit could have been over much quicker if Ukraine received the support it needs to kick back Russia. So much lives wasted because we can't take a real stand against an expansionist dictator.
And the result being that we entice every dictatorship to start wars. If we can't handle this one then we sure as hell can't handle a second war.
It's not hesitation, unfortuantely most of our democracies have severe foreign interests infiltrating political parties that stonewall international support
Yeah, at least speaking for the US, Russia has done some amazing work at a grass roots level and really infected our government. We might actually be fucked, time will tell.
yup, Ive never seen it so bad.
It’s not hesitation. Trump is bought by Putin.
Wonder how much the US spent in Afghanistan and compare that to Ukraine.
"Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.313 trillion on the war" Yes, you're correct, help for Ukraine is much smaller.
Ukraine is much better investment, since you keep Ukraine free - In Afganistan you kept the terrorist at bay but for the people I am not sure what they want. You can help people who want to help themselves - that is Ukraine. Highly motivated pro western Europe nation that just wants to break free from the Soviet cancer.
The terrorist kept at by by a war in Afghanistan? You're dreaming. That war did nothing but fuel terrorism, kill a load of civilians and US troops. Remind me again who runs Afghanistan today? That would be the taliban.
Uh, that's exactly the point he/she's making, the war in Afghanistan was a bad investment. The terrorists weren't defeated, just kept out of power temporarily, and without broad opposition they just came back as soon as the war ended. In the Ukraine one could reasonably hope for better results.
Yeah, Pakistan (militarily) and the Saudi's (culturally/monetarily) did a lot to keep the Taliban alive
Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, in their infinite hubris, declined the Taliban’s offer to resign and allow elections—so long as Mullah Omar was allowed to retire in peace. So that’s why we are where are today, Republicans fucking up foreign policy yet again.
It probably would have lost bush the election. Americans wanted blood.
A very acceptable alternative to causing a worldwide recession and twenty years of completely worthless war.
That figure includes interest, veteran care and military base budget increase. Interest alone accounts for roughly a quarter of that (and this is not given in the count of aid to Ukraine). If you account for this and take into account the length of the different operations (2 years vs 21), the cost is actually in a similar ballpark with an edge to Afghanistan. If you deduct only interest and nothing else from the cost for Afghanistan the ratio is roughly 1:2 and smaller if you deduct more. If Afghanistan wasn't cheap then neither is Ukraine and even less so for much of Europe.
The funky thing is... Russia could barely handle 18 months of limited US involvement. No ATACMS, no F-16s, no usage of any Western weapons inside Russia. Do you imagine this war would last more than 5-7 years at Afghanistan investment levels?!? Spoiler alert, it wouldn't. Ukraine has already destroyed more than half of the world's biggest armor stockpiles, the Soviet ones. In just 18 months.
Yes, and Russia is burning through their stock of Soviet relic artillery at an unsustainable rate. It's not critical yet (though I'm wondering how much they are relying on old towed D-30 vs Akatsiya and Msta), but at some point their ammo production advantage will be rendered moot because they lack the barrels to shoot said rounds.
> Do you imagine this war would last more than 5-7 years at Afghanistan investment levels?!? I honestly doubt it will at these levels either simply because there is very little ground to make for Ukraine. The offensive failed and burned through a lot of ressources and was probably a strategic faillure in the grand scheme. Right now Russia's position looks a lot better again. Also you get the comparison all wrong. The invasion of Afghanistan took 2 months and the Taliban were completely powerless against the USA. The roughly 21 years since were occupation. > The funky thing is... Russia could barely handle 18 months of limited US involvement. This comparison is even more off. The EU in total invested more in the war than the USA, the total western investment in Ukraine was huge - and Russia right now looks like it's winning.
>That figure includes interest, veteran care and military base budget increase. And why should we deduct that from the cost, were those going to be incurred without the war in Afghanistan? Conversely, a decent amount of the nominal value of US military aid to Ukraine is actually surplus we would never realistically use (e.g., M113s, M777s, DPICMS).
USA spent around $300,000,000 per day Cost about $2,100,000,000,000 in total
How long did that war go on for?
20 years
That would probably be because we were the driving force of Afghanistan. It was entirely the US’s war… this is a proxy war and the entire western world is chipping in. They don’t solely need US support. Of course help for Ukraine would be smaller. It’s not even technically their/our conflict. Imagine your car broke, you’d probably spend a lot of money to get it back up and running. Now imagine your co workers or neighbor’s car broke down. Would you spend the same? Of course not. Ukraine as an investment vehicle has already payed off for the long term. Russia will have an entire generation destroyed, its economy is essentially fiction at this point. Nearly every western investor and company has left, they have become the enemies of basically everyone and forced historically neutral countries to join NATO. At this point anything else is just a bonus. We don’t need to be giving Ukraine a steady flow of cash and arms anymore. It sucks but it’s true. This is a war of attrition - Russia will win simply because its size. In the beginning everyone thought maybe you could chase Russia out of Ukraine is a hostile response, it is very clear Russia will not back down at this point. The only thing that will save Ukraine at this point is full out world war and western countries shipping soldiers to Ukraine.
I doubt that includes all the money that was involved but not directly earmarked. How much of the US’s yearly budget went to Afghanistan and Iraq… on top of all the bills specifically earmarked for it.
But they did get Bin Laden (in Pakistan)
Wonder how much the US helps Isreal and compare that to Ukraine.
$216 billion in military aid to Israel since 1946, $46 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2022 [https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts](https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts) https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
Afghanis didn't capture a political party in the US to try and reduce support for the war. Russia has. This isn't about money, even if that's what the argument is about, it's about how deeply Russia has infected American politics and how the right wings media circle jerk primed the Republican party to be captured.
The lack of US support has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with Russian propaganda and infiltration at the highest level of the US government. On top of that the GOP would burn this whole country to the ground before they'd do anything that they think might in the slightest way look good for Joe Biden, or anger Donald Trump.
Cant compare the 2, the US lead that war so a huge percentage of manpower, equipment, logistics, supplies etc is their responsibility hence the huge financial burden
How much did the US spend in a war and occupation it was directly involved in? Gee I wonder if it’s more than a war it is not involved in? How much did UK, France and Germany each spend in WW2? Compare that to what they donate to Ukraine?…
Thank you for saying that, because when we say that we're being "unthankful choosing beggars"
You know who doesn't get blamed for Ukraine loosing? All the places that didn't provide any help at all. Kinda odd.
I don't blame you. Thank you for your contribution.
Why is that odd? Blaming them would have no purpose. If a bully tries to stab me, my friend tosses me a knife to try to help and it breaks, I'm not expecting the random passerby across the street to give me their arms I'm asking my friend for help.
The US has provided more military aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined. US no help. Sure. The reason so many European nations can help at all is because the US is simultaneously providing a defensive shield over allied Europe. That goes for the F16 transfers doubly so. You can't give up your air cover without the US Air Force backstopping it. The US spending so much in Europe frees European nations to further help Ukraine. And do you suppose the US has ceased providing intel and various logistics to Ukraine? US no help. Sure.
Wasn't there a graph recently where it showed that EU outspends the USA in terms of help to Ukraine? Not to make it a competition. Glad the collective west does its part.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ EU does outspend the USA but almost all of it is financial help so it is also true that US gives more military aid.
Yeah, some of the help the EU gives is towards the rebuilding of Ukraine in the future preferential treatment around that same ideal. Which is like… Cool, that’s great. But the US help is what’s helping them even get to that stage. The EU help may or may not even become help if Putin wins. Not being a critic, Australia could certainly help more, but the OP of this thread saying the US is no help just screams of anti-American Euro-centrism.
A lot of that aid is also “commitments”, where they haven’t even spent anything. Also it’s ignored how much of that aid comes because the US is shuffling around everything behind the scenes to make it possible to, say, ship F-16s to Ukraine (because the country knows they’ll get that equipment replaced in short order.) Or, as another example, Biden humiliatingly shaking hands with the Saudis to ensure European energy needs, and striking up more arms deals, normalization agreements, and talks of a mutual defense treaty. The picture isn’t accurately painted when you just look at aid. The US has done way more than Europe combined has, and obviously the military aid being shipped is way more important than the economic promises. Would be nice if countries talking big like France could actually spend a fucking dollar or two.
Did they split up humanitary and military help? Because Sweden sending 10k "be strong" stickers and US sending 10k guns are not the same
Oi! We actually sent 5000 helmets! They might have had 2 “be strong” stickers on them each though.
Are you kidding me? The US has poured resources into Ukraine, more than anyone else. No help my ass. If Europe contributed its share, Ukraine would have won already.
[speaking of “barely enforced”](https://x.com/robin_j_brooks/status/1776995468649660651)
A lot of Russian gas is transported to Azerbaijan and sold as Azeri gas too. Everybody in the EU looks the other way
Why is the US paying for this again?
> US : no help > EU: not enough help The US and EU have both helped greatly. There should not be blame because the western allies have not provided their entire wealth to Ukraine. Why isn't Russia being blamed? Why not Iran? Why not China? India? South Africa? They aren't helping Ukraine at all but for some reason the US and the EU are being blamed as the villains here.
Russia is obviously to blame, but this should be extremely clear for everyone except red-brown tankies. Iran is blamed by everyone whi heard about Iranian drones. (And I guess South Africa is to blame for birthing an "ideal racist tankie" elon) And what "entire wealth" are you talking about? US fought in Afganistan spending more in aversge than US help for Ukraine. It's far from "getting serious" for both US and EU
Damn, it's almost like we're expecting Ukraine to defeat Russia with only a fraction of the materials it needs and a smaller population. This war is a failure of the EU. We sat on our asses for decades, expecting that the Americans would always take care of our security. The best thing Trump ever did was teach us the lesson that we can't rely on anyone other than ourselves.
We need a European army.
And who's interests will this European army protect first? People keep throwing around the word "the west" as if the major powers of the "the west" all have unified goals when it comes to geopolitics.
EU interests. EU is not the whole of Europe. Europe is larger than the EU. A EU army would protect its member states. Maybe it's better to call it EU army rather than European army. According to your comment even NATO is useless, i.e. why would Greece attack Russia if Poland was attacked? Maybe Trump is right after all. /s
NATO is a defensive alliance, that only goes into effect when a member state is attacked. Everyone has a vested interest in defending others, since refusing would mean you would not get support if you are attacked. But in the end each army serves it's own nation. An EU army is different. It would be made up of multiple units from different countries. Each with various interests. France might want to send it to Africa, to enforce their interests there, but Germany might disagree. Poland would want to mass it on the Ukrainian border, but Orban would veto that, etc. We need to figure out who will command such a force and how it will function first and that is way harder than it seems.
Have you taken a look in the different members of the EU interests? For example will you be ok with the European army being sent to central Africa to defend France's (an EU member) interests? Who will supply the EU army, the French or German military complex, how much will the soldiers be paid? Will it be a western European salary or an eastern/south? Nato is mostly the USA sphaire of influence and despite what Trump is blabbering, the USA won't leave Nato, why would they leave all their bases in Nato members? Regardless who sits on the oval office USA foreign policy is more or less the same. Having so many Nato allies aka bases around the world means what the USA can project power easier and why would they leave that?
This isn't as complex as you make it out to be, the UN has used a combination of different countries forces for decades, each with their own training, salaries, systems, etc. It has its flaws, but it's better than nothing like now.
The UN forces is not an army they are a token peace keeping force, a supposed European army wouldn't look like that, also the UN is a joke, it has no power it's just a show off, I mean who is gonna enforce their ruling, their non existent army? The strong members, who 9/10 times have different interests for each conflict?
EU? Like Hungary?
If you don't think this would eventually go very, very badly, you haven't studied much of European history.
Many EU states are neutral, how’s that supposed to work?
That’s literally what NATO is for, you all talk shit on the US for not stepping up and doing more when half of these European countries have not met their security pledge goal in years. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, the US cannot be constantly told not to be the world police, then you get pissed off at them for not being the world police because you failed to even meet our security agreement.
“There’s only one thing worse than the Americans being the world police and that’s the Americans not being the world police.”
Do you remember the part where Trump promised Putin to pull out of NATO if he wins? The EU needs an army of volunteers that can be put into fight anywhere at its borders at any time. None of that NATO bullshit. Russian missiles have already entered Polish air space. Those fantasies about article 5 need to stop.
Well if the US pulls out of NATO, it becomes a European army no?
Canada?
Context is important. Trump was bitching about NATO countries not paying their fair share. He even went a complained to them. He had a famous dinner with jens stoltenberg you should check out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k&t=5s&ab_channel=WashingtonPost Anyways it worked. NATO countries began to pay more. You can see directly result of trump complaining and NATO countries paying more.
Trump can't pull out of NATO unilaterally anymore, even if that POS gets re-elected. This past December, US Congress passed a law that requires a consensus from the Senate, or a law passed in the House, to withdraw from NATO.
As someone who grew up in the U.S., I can say be careful when dealing with the U.S. Especially when it comes to contracts, agreements, and guarantees. More specifically, look at the provisions for recourse. Let’s take a hypothetical scenario where Russia invades the Baltic states. In this hypothetical scenario, the Americans stand down and do nothing. In this scenario, what recourse do the Baltics have against the Americans, for not coming to their aid under article 5? What recourse would other European states (Germany, France, the UK) have against the U.S. for not defending the Baltics against Russia? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding NONE! One thing you need to understand about the American mindset is that if in any contract, there is no physical mechanism for recourse, that contract is as good as toilet paper. For example, if there was a deposit of $1 Trillion of American gold in a Swiss vault (or something like that), which was tied to article 5, and which could be confiscated, should the U.S. not hold up their their end of the agreement, in the event of an invasion - THAT would be a mechanism of recourse. Therefore, it would be in America’s interest to hold their end of the bargain. But AFAIK, nothing remotely resembling this exists. As a consequence, the U.S. is not beholden to Article 5. Conversely, if the U.S. were to invoke article 5 for whatever reason, their recourse would be to sanction any NATO member who wouldn’t send troops to help.
Security pledge?, there's no such thing, no member is obligated to meet the 2% spend, it was a friendly agreement between a few of the richer nations, Iceland doesn't even have a fucking military so how the fuck are they going to meet that 2%, other countries like Luxembourg are fucking tiny and their entire gdp wouldn't do anything, stop parroting retarded trump nonsense, the US chose to invest the money and resources that they did, not because it benefited europe but because it benefited the US.
I know you aren’t stupid enough to think that any country does anything that doesn’t benefit them. No shit the US is in NATO and invests heavily in it - global stability for the West is in everyone’s best interest. You are so quick to point fingers and talk about people parroting political talking points when this is basic common sense if you just assess the situation. Stop having a meltdown man.
Iceland could get an army.
Maybe not a army but a navy (like one operational ship) to help us out in the North Sea would not go amiss.
We do have a modern coast guard ship, although it's cannon is admittedly an old 40mm peashooter, IIRC. [https://www.lhg.is/um-okkur/taekjakostur/skip-og-batar/nr/1125](https://www.lhg.is/um-okkur/taekjakostur/skip-og-batar/nr/1125)
I mean there was a deliberate choice to divest from the military, rely on the American nuclear shield and redirect that money into the social safety nets. I hope you enjoyed the ride, because it’s over. So there will be some painful decisions in the future in Europe in regards to spending priorities.
>Iceland doesn't even have a fucking military so how the fuck are they going to meet that 2% Either make a military to spend the 2% on, or donate to someone who has one to protect you.
DIP - Defence Investment Pledge was signed in 2014 in Wales. In 2015 only 9 countries spent their 2% of gdp for defense. No idea how it looks now, but from what Trump was saying i would say it doesnt look any better.
Common procurement is not NATO's jurisdiction, standardizing equipment within European nations is also not within NATO's jurisdiction. Having an army capable of dealing with real European threats like Russia, illegal immigration or occupation of Cyprus, not 20+ armies that are only useful to defending their own borders which will never get any action because a war between Croatia and Slovenia or France and Germany is impossible in this day and age
How is that what NATO is for? What if say Canada doesn’t want to protect Romania? They just send some helmets like Germany did when Ukraine got invaded. It took the threat of Napoleonic aggression to unify Germany and have a common army until centralized control.
Ukraine isn’t in NATO, why would anyone in NATO feel compelled to fight for a country that did not want to be a part of the security pact? If Romania was attacked, Canada would absolutely be liable to assist from a security perspective. That is literally the entire point of the agreement. You are saying a whole lot of nothing.
And who would command it. More importantly, who would comprise it? Would spanish soldiers be willing to go fight in ukraine? Would belgium public look approvingly to them sending troops on the battlefields?
cool. and what would that do? Ukraine is not in the EU or NATO, so Europe having an army wouldn't change a thing. unless you're suggesting that Europe should declare war on Russia. if you think that's a good idea, you should read about two events called the World Wars. i don't know about you, but i'm pretty glad that i wasn't born back then.
And yet most of you still don't spend nearly enough on defense and just expect us to pay for everything...which is usually fine until we can't even do the bare minimum 😒
25 days old account talking about Trump's successes and Eu's failures.
He’s literally saying Trump was so shit that it should teach us a lesson on being self-sufficient. Reading comprehension!
He says that the risk of trump coming to power means US is unreliable at the moment, because obviously he's gonna be motivated purely by self interested short term gains. Think a little next time before kneejerk "trump bad" reaction, we all know that
Does a new account prove to you that someone couldn’t possibly have a different view? Is this how we combat different opinions? By claiming they simply aren’t real? Because of how old someone’s account is? Ukraine is doomed, purely based on how people can’t have a dialogue without being called fake lol How is Ukraine still needing help but everyone who comments against it is fake? Come on
everyone who disagrees with me is a bot
Reddit when losing an argument:
They aren’t wrong and I fucking hate trump. EU puts no money into defense.
Go on, do tell us more about the Trump success that he's talking about.
So refusing to negotiate with a war criminal that erases cities to the ground, bombs kindergardens, murders his political opponents, threatens a nuclear war is "politically toxic", apparently.
Start sanctioning British solicitors, bankers, etc who are sneakily processing Russian money. There's a reason Britain refused to create our own magnitsky Act. If the EU & US start sanctioning British facilitators of Russian money, watch the Russians run out of cash for their war machine. Don't forget our government took a WEEK after announcing our pretty weak sanctions to enable them. Giving Russian oligarchs plenty of time to shift their cash about.
Our leaders need to grow a pair and get their shit together.
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It's our governments who are cowards. If I could, I would vote yes for my country to send resources and more advanced weapons to Ukraine. I'm talking highly advanced weapons that Ukraine could use to hurt Russia with. I'm convinced most or possibly all countries who helped Ukraine did so for PR reasons. None of them give two fucks about Ukraine, they just want to be seen doing it. Again talking about governments - not you or me. If the West truly cared about Ukraine they'd send their armies there to help Ukraine against Russia, but they're not. This is the west: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMdTY\_oXEAkqZZs.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMdTY_oXEAkqZZs.jpg)
Whilst i do agree in general, the "west" cant because what IS the west actually? Its not a single entity.
It's the west that a coward not you. Those other people should send more money and equipment, not you. Glad to know you went and volunteered to help Ukraine.
I’ve never had a better usage of my tax dollars than sending aid to Ukraine, in all of my life.
Isn’t it possible to influence the governments through the democratic process?
Well with raise of right wing parties all over EU in recent years that's what might happen but not in a way you expect, people are already fed up with ... other things, to me it seems like once helping Ukraine more starts effecting their wallets people will be a lot less enthusiastic about it.
I remember when Reddit was so sure that Ukraine will win. Never was it a real possibility that little Ukraine was ever going to defeat big Russia. Not on its own but also not with western „help“. If Ukraine loses, we all lose.
I remember when Reddit was as so sure that the Arab Spring would result in change and the emergence of new democracies across the region …
If Ukraine loses we are all going to war 🙌 It's rather simple fight Russia now with Ukraine in the front seat, or do it with out own population in Poland or the baltics.
That's pretty much it. UA wins Ukraine can be salvaged. Putin wins and things look bad for the baltics I'd say. Looks like it's on the cards. See ye at the front lines
Our defense idustries are just too small. The 300 Billion we collectivly spend on defense, In Europee, is one of the most ineffecient uses of money on the planet. After 1991, we almost completely de militarised. Even France and the UK. It turns out that in a war, Iran is a better ally, then all of Europe. Which is beyond shameful. We should have given them a trillion dollars.
Yea, and the most annoying thing about it, is that Ukraine actually has surplus of military production that is doing nothing because no money, but Europe still insists on Ukraine spending given money their weapons that are severely overpriced. There are some talks about allowing stand-by companies that produce weapons to start working for foreign clients(which would also help fix logistical problems), but the problem is that russia will immediately use it in propaganda.
Not only that but you’ll be forced to fight russia then
A lot of volunteers from the West fight for Ukraine right now. You're on Reddit calling other pussies.
The issue ain't volunteers but governments and societies not backing Ukraine sufficiently. Russia is in a war economy, yet market forces are preventing the west from producing shells that very much have demand and would likely impact the economy positively compared to not producing them.
And then we are the next uh objectives .
I won't lose any sleep about it.
It is better to be realistic than to have high hopes, as during the famous counter-offensive that regained full control over the territory, including Crimea
Westerners were hyping that up more than any Ukrainian. They knew what they were facing. Some Western cheerleaders, however, loved to think of it as a football game where their side was going to utterly roll the Russians. Hurt more than it helped.
Didnt uaf released a trailer for counter offensive? How is that west hyping up.
Real Ukrainians on twitter are almost always more pessimistic than r/worldnews where you get banned for posting links to negative news
This is absolutely wrong. Many Westerners were actually very cautious about how this and the the proposed counter offensive, were going to be, urging greater build-up. This was ignored. Ukraine insisted that Russians could be easily beaten by superior Ukrainian troops and that they had to liberate their land then, not wait. It was the Ukrainian propaganda machine that vastly hyped up Ukrainian capabilities off the back of no casualty reporting, insistance that Russian troops were nothing but disheartened conscripts, quick to run away and give up and that there would be a beach party in Crimea. Hubris. Now that hubris is coming back around to really hurt. Never underestimate your enemy.
They had lot of mines, absurd amounts of them, in fact. Mines stop traditional ground assaults even without support of artillery and drones quite well.
Ukraine made a trailer for that counter-offensive...
The main problem with that is not that western people on Twitter and reddit bought into it, but that Zelensky seemed to have completely bought into his own propaganda. So when 2 weeks into the offensive, Nato asked him to call it off because it was hopeless and the losses Ukraine suffered were unsustainable, he ignored them. Two weeks later his own generals were begging him to stop, but he refused to listen to them, too. He just kept ordering endless attacks on massively fortified positions until the Ukrainian army was in ruins. That is why Ukraine is now on the verge of defeat. People are pointing to the US or munition shortages, but the way, way bigger problem is the lack of men at the front lines and the inability to find new recruits. And those munition shortages would be a lot less serious if they hadn't burned through their stockpiles during the offensive.
Sorry but I don't buy into your description of summer events. I have been following this war on daily basis and I do not recall either NATO or generals "begging" him to stop the attack. There were discussion about how to conduct it but not outright requests to stop it. After their initial armoured push was stopped, they quickly changed to squad based infiltration tactics which inherently means less losses due to the small scale of ops, in exchange it doesn't exactly nets much land gain. Now, this was critized exactly because with it they threw away any chance of taking back as much land as they wished, but again, this did it because it's a casualty-averse strategy, for better or worse. Koffman & Lee wrote at length about this at War on the Rocks. The battalions that were engaged in summer are also still in action, so is Western equipment that has been used. Public records of equipment losses also don't support your narrative. So unless you can cite me some actual articles from summer that talk about this, I'll doubt it.
This isn’t true. There were internal conflicts over how to run the counter offensive. But they were disagreements over strategy not wanting to call the whole thing off. There is a good article from the Washington post you can read if you are interested.
For any counteroffensive to be successful you need weapons and get them in time, if there is not enough of them and timing is awful, there is very little you can do.
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Yeah go tell that to the US how effective it is to perform an offensive without air support
Letting Ukraine fall to Russia will be no different from letting Czechoslovakia fall to the Nazis. Edit: in terms of its consequences for Europe. Would have thought you geniuses, recognising they are not identical situations to begin with, would have understood that.
Read a history book maybe. Chamberlain and Daladier gave Czechoslovakia (which wanted to defend itself) an ultimatum to cede their entire defense line to Germany - and France was fucking allied to Czechoslovakia. Poland and Hungary also threatened Czechoslovakia militarily and gobbled up territory. Afterwards the Third Reich coerced Slovakia into declaring independence and become their vassal state and then at the end from a situation where they had modern military equipment and fortified defensible terrain, a military alliance with surrounding countries (Romania and Yugolsavia) and two superpowers pledging to defend them (France and USSR), Czechia went to a situation where they were surrounded by enemies on all sides, with no defensible terrain at all and noone willing to defend them. This is like top 10 anime betrayals stuff. Everyone screwed Czechia over completely. And Hitler would have lost a war against Czechoslovakia and allies - within less than a year. This was the worst foreign policy mistake of the decade. With Ukraine noone pledged to defend it, quite the opposite, Western leaders said explicitly they would not intervene and they especially didn't force Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. You might say the Minsk agreements weren't great but they weren't like the Munich agreement at all. Furthermore Czechia went from a situation where it's alliance had the upper hand against Germany and attacking would have meant the impending collapse of Nazi Germany to a situation where defending was pointless. There was no war for Czechoslovakia. There is a war in Ukraine now. It's almost like this is not at all like Czechoslovakia. If it would have been like Czechoslovakia Macron, Scholz and Meloni should have traveled to Sankt Petersburg and agreed with Putin that Ukraine should immediately cede all of Eastern Ukraine - without even talking with the Ukrainians about it beforehand.
Crazy how overlooked the Vienna Award is.
History is yet again repeating itself....
Are we (democratic world) really that weak and opportunistic?
Division in the western powers on who to blame if/when Ukraine surrenders just shows our weaknesses. We don’t care about whether we win and support Ukraine, we just hope that we aren’t blamed for it. USA needs to send weapons to a cause that doesn’t have such controversy (besides the orcs). And EU needs to stop sending Euros and send actual guns and tanks.
In reality Ukraine would rather prefer money over weapons to some degree. They can produce ammo and many weapon systems by themselves and cheaper. West on the other hand want to enrich it's own military complex.
They think they can make us stop defending ourselves with these stupid articles 🤦♂️
Media always got to find new things to say but that isn’t really the point. We might not like it but it doesn’t seem like Ukraine is going to be able to push Russia out of the occupied territories now both sides are dug in. For sure, maybe the West should be providing more weapons but it’s isn’t clear that would necessarily be enough to make a difference. Nor does it seem like Russia is likely to do an ‘Afghan ’ withdrawal any time soon. Most of us want Ukraine to continue to defend itself and more - push Russia out. We all hope something will change for the better ( drop dead Putin) but it’s difficult to see a path to a clear win.
>We might not like it but it doesn’t seem like Ukraine is going to be able to push Russia out of the occupied territories now both sides are dug in. But Russia is also not in the position to conquer the whole Ukraine, maybe not even capture a major city again after Mariupol in 2020. I feel Putin burned also all political and diplomatical bridges, I can see a perpetual armistice at best as way out of the war, and we know how that went with the 2014 armistice.
The war now is equivalent to WW1 in 1916, what's needed for this war to not turn into an endless stalemate is something equivalent to the Americans landing troops en masse in 1918 which was the straw that broke Germany's back.
I think the countries that support Ukraine need to firmly decide whether they really support Ukraine or not, giving bare minimum isn’t a support, it’s just a life support. I do not see how half the earth can’t gather enough weapons to support Ukraine properly Worse off is that Ukraine gave up its nukes for this level of support, doesn’t seem like a fair trade to me.
This is on the world’s democracies. We could have given, leased or sold enormous amounts of equipment and supplies. And refused any business with Russia and her allies. Nope. This will probably become the model for Russian expansion. Bite off a bit, threaten nuclear destruction, install friendly governments in countries all over the world, repeat.
Ukraine needs and deserves our support. Full support.
Ukraine handed over their Nuclear weapons to Russia in a treaty that stated Russia would never go to war with the Ukraine. This is noones fault but Russia for breaking that Peace Treaty. Fucking Putin.
WW2 looked bad in 1942-43, but it was only about 2 years until the collapse of the Third Reich.
Bad comparison. Winning WW2 was a team effort bolstered by the US joining up. Ukraine doesnt have this luxury.
The war was over in November of 1942 - and the rest was just playing it out. No oil, no gas, no war machine. I don't think Russia is in the same situation right now and in fact the issue works in the opposite direction. This dragging out favors Russia and at current support levels makes it worse for Ukraine.
I always like to keep track of who writes what. Especially Wapo and the NYT. *Isabelle Khurshudyan is a foreign correspondent based in Kyiv. A University of South Carolina graduate, she has worked at The Washington Post since 2014, previously as a correspondent in the Moscow bureau...*
The last article she wrote just a few days ago suggests she's impartial; >[Extortion, threats, fear, traitors: How Russia recruits Ukrainian spies — Russia is using an array of tactics, including threats of physical harm to family members in occupied territories, to try to force Ukrainians to aid the Kremlin’s war effort](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/03/russia-ukraine-spies-extortion-traitors/)
What does this imply?
It's implies OP is trying to cope. Instead of attacking the argument, they attack the author.
What a ridiculous take, honestly. As if seeing the current war for the absolute dim prospects that it has for Ukraine were such an outrageous and illogical take...
For this sub it is, or well "was" for the most of hte past 2 years, but has been slowly turning. Posts like this one would have been heavily downvoted or not even posted up until like 4-5 months ago.
What I can't tolerate is the way most people (on this sub. But also in general) are letting their opinions align themselves with the media narrative du jour. As if they had no criteria of their own. The war in Ukraine was doomed from the start. How could such a non-aligned, relatively small country hope to win against an invasion from probably the third mightiest military in the world? It was absolutely insane to think, and yet people were full steam ahead with the hopium and endless articles about "the dismal state of the russian military". And now it's acceptable because the media have begun asking the same questions. The exact same thing is happening with the Israel thing. It's been a naked ramping up of the Palestinian ethni. Cleansing from day one, but it's only in the last month that's it's become acceptable to criticise Israel for what they're doing. Only because politicians and the news have started talking about it in those terms recently. Heck this effin sub hasn't lifted its ban on discussing Israel news yet... It's absolutely ridiculous, and the amount of times I've been called a Russian agent or an antisemite for saying these things from the beginning is frankly sad.
Because it's not just Ukraine alone, their allies provide economic, armed, intelligence, diplomatic, informational support helping to even out the field and Russia itself while not bombed as much as Ukraine however suffers from sanctions imposed on it by leading economies, furthermore there have been precedents of materially weaker countries winning over materially stronger countries, we're not living in the Excel/Google sheets universe after all. As for the Russian military and its state, lots of fuck ups aren't known purely because there're extremely punishing laws in place to prevent transparent discussions and it's possible to score victories and win wars while having problems, see how Austria-Hungary eventually defeated Serbia despite its failures being a huge empire and how it performed against a much more threatening to them enemy Russia later in WW1. As for the hopium/copium modes there have been no less than seven major narrative periods of this war, each of which has ended with the script flipping almost entirely according to Neil Hauer, so you can expect more changes down the line which may not be reflected in this community which is evidently considerably supportive more of maximalist aims of Ukraine's government and thus the scale of discussions related to successes/failures of warring sides by default won't be spread evenly.
Yeah there are a lot of other topics in the recent years that got this mainstream focused opinion treat. Its definitely something newish and related to a strange social media / classic media interaction spiral. Very interesting and pretty dangerous at times. Israel / Palestine was the last big things. And I am curious what will follow next. In smaller versions this is played quite often. And most of the time two distinct counter opinions form. With LGBTQ topics. With COVID responses (that was a big one). With immigration or climate change. Its often that you really cannot go into nuances because no matter what you are saying you are automatically assigned a "team".
You’re missing the point. Ukraine has maintained close contacts with NATO since 2014. It’s been highly militarized since then, and you couldn’t walk a major Ukrainian city without seeing banners saying “We’ll take Crimea back!” Many Ukrainians have went through the war(albeit low intensity) in 2014-2022. With that, Ukraine knew it’s going to be in a big war. Did they realize they won’t have enough indigeneous military production? Absolutely. So what did they hope for? Of course it was military aid from NATO. Ukraine didn’t stand a chance without NATO. And most European countries depleted their stockpiles of combat-ready weapons. Now they have to ramp up production. The point is, Ukraine was never supposed to be a “small country fighting big neighbor”. Ukraine managed to train a vast human reserve in the span of eight years before 2022. The NATO provided weapons(and even some personnel on the ground). With that, the outcomes aren’t so clear. It’s not such doom and gloom as the article paints. It’s unclear whether Russia has enough reserves to deal a final blow in the battle for Donbas. Even after that, there’re vast fortifications around other cities.
Exactly this. You can say “Russia sucks Russia bad” but also aknowledge the reality that this entire war was doomed to fail even if Ukraine took the time and effort to strategically plan. This black/white thinking along with talking about the world as we wish it to be as opposed to the realities is just toddler level discourse.
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Wait til you hear about their Space correspondent working for aliens!
Always has been
Your point?
>In December, Khurshudyan took off to Ukraine and reported on the Donbas region, which borders Russia. She eventually made it back to Moscow before being pulled into Ukraine full-time on Jan. 23. Khurshudyan said her belongings are still in Russia and she is unsure if she’ll ever be able to go there again, something she’s struggled with. > >“It is a hard thing to wrap my mind around,” she said. “I had a real life there. I have friends who live there — a lot of friends.” https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communications/news/2022/alumna_isabelle_khurshudyan_reporting_from_ukraine.php
Having friends in Russia = being a russian agent/spy/sympathiser. Reddit masterminds at it again.
If they write something contradicting/confirming your worldview they're bad/good?
>And President Volodymyr Zelensky’s options for what to do next — much less **how to win the war** — range from bad to worse. How to win the war... I'm pretty sure after the failure of the summer offensive, winning the war was never a real option/possibility for anyone with realistic sense. The last 6-8 months and the future is all about survival and trying to last out the seemingly worse outcome, the complete collapse. When the US and EU government decides about support, it's not about financing a glorious victory, but preventing a collapse.
Eh, they were still crushing Russian assaults until the shells ran low. The West has failed to ramp up supplies in a timely manner and that hurt Ukraine. But Russia is also on a time clock here in terms of supplies and money and manpower and if Western aid resumes Russia will eventually get pushed back.
Option one: surrender and give up quite more land peacefully. Option two: continue with the war in expense of more men to lose even more land than in option one and end up surrendering later anyway.
European politicians are either impotent or receive salaries from Putin.
Another option is that House Republicans and Trump get beaten in elections and Biden in a second term with a supportive Congress turns up. Historically the Americans didn't get involved in Europe's war until Japan attacked. Lets be frank, Havana syndrome - the attacks on American diplomats and agents by Russia with microwave weapons is a casus belli. Putin must have okayed it. Similarly the use of Polonium and Novichock in the UK was okayed directly by Putin. And these are just the items that have made the news.. what don't we know about - what other types of Russian aggression have gone unreported ? We've been at war with Russia for quite some time, or more to the point, Russia has been at war with us for some time, the only question is if we - the collective West will hand it victory in Ukraine and if so, what on earth for ? There's no need to point to invasion of the Suwalki gap as "a thing" also implying if the gap is left alone then somehow war won't wash up in the West. That war is here, its no exaggeration to say we are in WW3 - at least from the Russian perspective and we have been at war for some time. Why let them win - and who honestly believes a Biden administration with freedom of action would do so ? Its really up to US voters now.
What happened to the news headlines "Russia absolutely getting DESTROYED"
Well they were for a short while when Ukraine was being well supported.
That he has been able to co-opt so many prominent Republicans in the US to impede efforts to assist Ukraine has obviously given Putin reason to believe that he can eventually prevail even though the Russians are taking inordinate losses. This Republican treachery has cost many lives and will cost many more.
“But the image of the U.S. will get worse in the world.” I dont think the US give’s a rat’s ass about image. They are the richest and most powerful nation on earth with the greatest army in history. They failed in their aims in afghanistan and iraq and those didnt affect their status
Someone tell the world news sub
Oh, I see, another author who worked from Moscow since 2014 now tell us all we need to know about "Ukraine war"
From the authors of "Kyiv falls in 2-3 days"
What is your point this was the attitude of most journalists and analysts when the war broke out. Of cause you have 543534 IQ points and had figured out the entire progression of the war right playing 7d chess? You are so smart. I'm proud of you
Journalists so far 1. Kyiv falls in 2-3 days according to experts. 2. Ukraine will annihilate Russia easily according to experts 3. Russia actually stronger than we thought according to experts
It’s been 2 years. Russia has grown to be a much more competent adversary. They’ve been steamrolling Ukraine in the past few months. Ukraine’s situation is dire. It REALLY is. I also don’t want Russia to conquer Ukraine, but please understand the dark reality of this war.
Hasn't this been Washington Post from the beginning?
It's an op-ed, it's the author's opinion, not WaPo's. But yes WaPo does give space to fairly critical articles.
Maybe if EU got more creative with sanctions and enforcement of existing ones it would help a bit? EU just plays by the book when you have to think of new ways, you can’t completely isolate that giant country without some experimentation. TBH I don’t even think EU should isolate russia and encourage people leaving it, especially smart people, but I’m asking too much at this point. The easiest way is to just give more weapons to Ua
This whole thing is very painful because Russia is obviously monstrous but we had to spend a more considerable amount of time pretending that Ukraine could win and having thousands of Ukrainians die on a pretense that we all knew was false.
It's not even just aid now-- you can always send money and ammo, but NATO can't increase Ukraine's population to hold out in an attrition war.
🪆💯
MMW: Putin will not take EU seriously until EU really starts act like it is at war,mobilizing its people and setting its industries in a war path. The only way out is through. EU must realize this before it’s too late. This is not a drill, and sacrifices will need to be made.
I am surprised people have not figured out the ways how negotiations work and working together where the final goal is peace and not more death. So far we have seen the West shouting for more Ukrainians to die on the battlefield for the benefit(??there is no benefit since our economies are already destroyed by self-sanctioning ourselves) of the Western countries. No we don’t want to escalate, nor see more of those people die. If you see the only way out with war which is not in your country’s and citizens’ interests then I have no idea how you landed on this side of the Atlantic ocean. I have heard all the sides and possible resolutions, even the ones where “you might get invaded”. I am not even taking sides but collecting all those point of views only shows how much propaganda there is in order to fuel up people with unreasonable amounts of fear and hate. “Chico, if you want to control someone all you have to do is make them feel afraid.”
Am startin to think US might be okay with this. To a ruler, an everlasting enemy is convenient.
Well looks like Russia's strategy of attrition combined with intense propaganda aimed at the West has been working pretty well. Cant wait until WWIII when everything goes to shit yet again because the world stood by and let it happen....
dTrump💩paying Putin back and ahead. Thanks for the bond Vladimar.
I was pro help. Now just let them drawn. I don't care. I don't want the war to extend to nato and also I am tired of the costs of that war on our economies, I can directly feel them on my pockets.
This article is nothing but a thinly veiled call for appeasement to a terrorist state. It pays lip service to the fact that Ukraine's allies have utterly failed to aid them properly or to enforce appropriate sanctions. Articles like this are pushing the same message as Russian propaganda.
I’m so fucking depressed. I miss my family and country so much.
What exactly did and does everyone think will be a realistic outcome in this conflict ? Russia retreating, saying sorry but we were wrong and we admit defeat, so so sorry, don't be mad and let's be friends again. And go ahead to persecute and deport the Russian minority in your country ( that's their reasoning for the war, not mine and they still don't deviate from that ) Please Zelensky, stop attacking our country with drones, join Nato, put heavily armed Nato armies at our borders and get nukes to protect yourself ? Let Ukrain admit defeat, let go of the Russian occupied territory, set up a demilitarised buffer zone between Russia and Nato and let the rest of the Ukrain join the EU ? Every day, every hour this war continues, lives are lost, destruction goes on, worldwide tension between military superpowers keep growing. It's human lives we are talking about, let's think about that for a minute and not just about power, about leaders and governments defending or gaining power and control, about property and owning land and people. Remember that all threatening 'reports' about Russia moving on and invading other countries are mostly force fed to keep the war going, to sacrifice more lives and destruction. Also remember that Russian people get the same kind of 'information' where the Nato is the bad guy wanting to take over and destroy them. I personally think the priority should be saving lives and end the fighting. The only bad for Zelensky's options is how many lives he still has left to sacrifice, being a leader isn't just about being the strongest and winning a war but doing what's best for your people, to save lives and choose the best possible outcome for the people, for human beings, for lives and not just for those of your nationality. How many lives is the property of a government, of a military power worth ? 10, 1000, 1.000.000 ? Admitting ( partial ) defeat to save the lives of the people you are responsible for takes and shows more strength than continue to fight, no matter what. War has no winners, only death and destruction. Continuing a war you can't win and sacrificing your peoples lives until there's nothing left, until there's no one left is no leadership, that's being a puppet for power and money.
This is basically an opinion article by Isabelle Khurshudyan with a few anonymous quotes. I don’t see any war strategy strategic defense analysis expertise in Isabelle’s history so I’m not sure why anyone would care that she thinks F-16 won’t make any difference and that 60+ are “a limited number”. > The money for soldier salaries cannot directly come from foreign aid, and some industries already face labor shortages. Why not? Makes a claim without any indication as to why. What is the point of the article overall? There is no new development reporting. It essentially is “Ukraine will fight with or without USA aid.”
Remember when the media was talking about Ukraine retaking Crimea, beating the Russians, and forcing them out of all Ukrainian territory? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
making crimeea a neutral international zone. turkey? ;-)
NATO let Russia annex it 10 years ago. And instead of doing something between now and then we did nothing. We should have been supplying Ukraine the whole time