Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

Trump has been bought and paid for, for 30yrs. His businesses have failed over and over and it was Russian money that kept him afloat, particularly buying up his overpriced condos in New York, that could be bought with cash and the own could remain anonymous. Trump wouldn't be anywhere today if it weren't for Russia and now it's payback time.

The US is done and the EU needs to step up and replace the US without the global projection. Michael Martin waffling about acceleration of EU membership for Ukraine is the kind of utter nonsense we need to avoid. Being part of the EU protects no-one from foreign aggressors. The fear of getting your teeth rearranged is what deters an aggressor.

Russia are unlikely to be capable of such a move. I think it would be catastrophic for them if they tried it, huge losses.

What a time to have a major European election. If Merz becomes chancellor it looks he will be far less timid on Ukraine than Scholz. The other parties (SPD or even the Green) will form a coalition with the CDU if only just to keep the AFD locked out (& Scholz may also step aside as leader of the SPD). We know from his statements & platform that Merz favours more robust support for Ukraine. I have no opinion about his domestic policies for Germany. But Merz might be the jab in the arm that Europe needs right now. He may be able to better galvanise Europe on Ukraine & thwart Russia in a way that Macron has so far been unable to do. If so it couldn’t come soon enough with the chaos & mendacity of the idiot child’s administration over the next four critical years.

A leak from my computer would show I have designs in fuking Riley Reid but that doesn't mean it's gonna ever happen.

Belarus is a vassal state to Putin, it's practically low hanging fruit. Moldova is certainly vulnerable, even their leadership acknowledges this.

5 years ago a full-scale invasion of a European country by Russia was unthinkable

3 years ago all of Europe/US was united

Today we have multiple pro-Putin European leaders, the far right growing in Germany, a US president calling Zelensky a "dictator"

Just because today we think NATO is a certainty, doesn't automatically make it so in the future. We could have a different political landscape in 5 years.

Of course if we react strongly, then yes it can make these things much more of a remote possibility.

The whole European reaction to the Munich conference last week has been highly emotional. From the head of the Munich conference crying at the closing ceremony to the European leaders "throwing a temper tantrum" in the words of Fred Fleitz, who worked with Kellogg on the supposed peace plan last year. There has been a lot of chest beating about Europe going it alone, without the US.

So while serious people interested in negotiating peace met in Saudi Arabia the various Europeans interested in continuing war met in France for a big summit. And delivered embarrassingly little. France and the UK talked about sending a few thousand troops to Ukraine, everyone else ruled it out.

The whole idea of sending troops is ridiculous and only serves to show how weak the European militaries are. The UK is the premier military in western Europe. But it is in a shockingly poor state. Lord Dannatt, former head of the British Army, recently told the BBC that the British army couldn't lead any peacekeeping mission to Ukraine.

Our military is so run down at the present moment, numerically and as far as capability and equipment is concerned, it would potentially be quite embarrassing

Peacekeeping is not warfighting, but Lord Dannatt doesn't believe the British army can even carry out that mission.

Jack Watling is a British military analyst for RUSI and he has written an article in the Telegraph this week about the UK's premier warfighting division, the 3rd Division which is constituted for fighting conventional wars. It has all the tanks, all the armoured vehicles, all the heavy artillery. Despite that Watling's view is the 3rd Division is ill-equipped to actually fight the Russian army. He makes the comparison to the Ukrainian 2023 offensive by three Ukrainian brigades towards Tokmak which was defeated by the Russians, and says the 3rd Division actually has less equipment than the Ukrainians did. Apparently they have just 14 artillery pieces, no infantry fighting vehicles (hard to believe tbh), no spares for its tanks (about 40 operational) and no logistics or engineering equipment to support them. Further, it has less available ammunition for its MLRS systems than the Ukrainians did. Watling further makes the point that only two brigades in the 3rd division actually has tanks. The third is an experimental recce/strike brigade of dubious value. On top of that the 3rd Division lacks for drones, electronic warfare equipment, air defences and personnel trained to use them.

The 3rd Division is the dedicated warfighting division of western Europe's premier military, and yet it is no way prepared or equipped for deployment to Ukraine. The story in the rest of Europe's militaries is as bad, or worse. For the past 80 years, the Europeans have always assumed their militaries would act as auxiliaries to US formations and would never act independently so they never built the capacity to do so. They're not able to go it alone, and as in Paris this week they'll just embarrass themselves trying.

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Let’s not get worked up by this POS- @Europe keep calm and carry on - obviously Trump and Putin made a deal on Ukraine and Trump can’t keep his mouth shut so he’s putting down Ukraine to justify his future rape and theft of Ukraines natural resources and also to try and show how “good” his supposed “deal” really is.

People who lie all the time get defensive all the time - that’s all Trump is doing- he reminds me of Georgie Porgie - wait till the “boys” come out to play Trump !

I don’t suppose there’d be anything to be said about saying another mass? 😀

Hopefully sick and all that he is right now, the Pope is praying for “divine intervention”- it would be sweet justice I dare say

The Pope got absolutely hammered by Zelensky & Co. when he dared say Ukraine should be brave enough to seek peace. For all the complaining Zelensky does about not being invited to US-Russian negotiations, he did have at least three years to open negotiations and repeatedly rejected any advice to do so. People might not want to hear it, but Trump is only in office for a little over three weeks and has opened negotiations. Zelensky has been in office for six years.

Am I wrong to have the view that we here in the EU are way more entitled to any plunder from the Ukraine war than the Yanks.
Is that a **** take to have?

Maybe plunder is the wrong word. I’ll put it another way. Our ( the EU) entitlement to have Ukraine in our sphere of influence and our Free trade area and be a peaceful profitable EU member usurps any American entitlement to reparations from the Ukraine war. Americans didn’t have to take in huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees. They didn’t have to shut down hotels etc. We were way more impacted by the Ukraine war and our social welfare budget ballooned also. Did the average New Yorker or Kentuckian or Texan have any such impact on their lives since 2022? Are we the suckers ? The weapons donations by the US while absolutely crucial did not impact the average American to anything like the same degree. And now Trump wants to go in there and take his pound of flesh from Ukraine. **** that.

might is right here. Trump can ‘entitle’ himself to whatever he wants

I wonder what our US based posters make of the Ukrainian hustle? We haven't heard from them for a while.

Does it look as bad through a US lens or maybe Americans think, "fair play to Trump, he's getting the Europeans to pay for their war/defense".

Perhaps with all the Musk firings it doesn't even make the news over there?

POsters on here the last few days with countless suggestions on what Europe could do to support Ukraine and punish the States for their recent actions. Also, posters optimistic that Macron in conjunction with other European leaders would devise a plan. After two 'crucial' meetings the result is that Macron and Starmer will both travel to Washington next week to meet Donald Trump. A reminder, if we needed another one, just how such a modest role Europe currently plays.

I never said he was a murderer. Somebody who replied to my post said that.