Europe (EU?) doesn’t have any boots by design. For the same reason any member is free to do so on their own.
Any resulting conflict with Russia will not trigger the EU’s security pact or NATO’s article 5.
Or just stop being so freaking stingy withholding weapons.
What are they waiting for? The UK to declare war on France? NO, they stockpiled all these freaking arms for Soviet aggression or fascist threats, and now its at their doorstep.
I don’t understand what good Grippens and Typhoons, tanks, missiles sysstems and such do rusting in storage when they could do exactly what they were built to do, right now.
Remember that occasion where a Danish warship found itself in contact with pirates or Houthis or whoever, and it turned out half the weapon systems are not functional or something?
This is what they don’t want to show. That any military rusts, so the initial moments of those countries’ participating in any war will be full of shame. The first weeks of Russia’s invasion are a good example of such. No, EU doesn’t mean this won’t happen. Yes, defense-related corruption exists everywhere. No, European militaries are not full of supermen somehow magically superior to Russians and Ukrainians.
It’s very simple. The moment that happens, some people may find themselves under scrutiny for clear failures in their area of responsibility. So they resist. This is normal.
NATO does drills and excercises, and I’m sure everything is inspected before its sent. They can just quietly throw away what doesn’t work and dodge that bullet.
And in functioning democracies this well result in a report known to parliament where it gets exposed. You cannot and should not have the executive do things “quietly” in a democracy. Mostly for better, in rare cases for worse.
They can.
Hopefully everyone is holding their breath for another 6-7 days and then we can deliver what’s needed without troubling the US election 😔
Shouldn’t they be in a rush, instead?
They basically have 7 days (or really till January) before NATO could be destabilized and delivering weapons becomes far more complicated.
Removed by mod
Blood for the blood god?
Fuck off. Russia considers itself at war with the democratic world. It’s long overdue the democratic world responds in the only way Russia recognizes: brute force.
If that means active engagement from NATO or even individual nations like Poland or France, then so be it.
You go first.
I believe the war Russia is fighting against NATO has so far not killed a single NATO soldier, but thousands of Russians. If this is the war Russia wants to fight with NATO, NATO would be stupid not to keep it going. At this point the Soviet era weapon stockpiles are nearly empty, they need to buy shells from North Korea, the Russian economy is pretty much a full on war economy, which means collapse as soon as the war ends, while Russia debt auction run into serious problems and the sovereign wealth fund is running empty.
The only thing the West needs to do is to keep sending aid to Ukraine for another two years or so. That will kill Putin’s Russia. It might even happen earlier.
The strain on Ukraine is immense though, as the article states. Ukrainian men are told to fight. They’re being bundled into vehicles by military recruiters (it’s often vatniks making this point, but that source is a US-government-funded media company).
I would absolutely like for Russia to withdraw entirely from Ukraine, but surely the human cost needs to be taken into account. I don’t think Ukrainians should be forced to fight. And maybe potential soldiers would be more willing to fight if Western support was better than it currently is - Zelenskyy is always requesting more weapons and the West just drags its feet.
It’s possible to fight a modern war without boots on the ground.
Nuke these savages, who needs 'em! Right?!
I think there’s been enough Ukrainian dead. If those countries are Ukraine’s allies, not just partners, then they don’t seem to send enough troops.
