Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

Thank you for today's propaganda hour.

Didn't Ukraine only receive only one tenth of what the US had committed up to now?

There's plenty of NATO stock in Europe to be passed on.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that. Trump will certainly not stop US companies selling weapons to Ukraine, and surely the Europeans will step in to buy them if its a question of money. If its a question of Zelensky angering Trump over the past day or two, then Zelensky will surely grovel and beg forgiveness. One way or the other, US companies will be allowed to sell weapons to Ukraine for so long as Ukraine can pay for them up front.

The ATACMs transfers and strikes seem to have stopped for whatever value they had. That seems to be over.

No mention of this on websites such as Reuters.com, do you have any other sources?

Back in Feb 2022, thats what the world were saying about Ukraine then too….yet Ukraine is still here and functioning,,it will take some time for the shortage of US supplied weapons to be felt, and in that time, Europe and the other suppliers will have to step up their game.

Agreed as it would probably take that amount in weapons to actually liberate Ukraine. As of now Ukraine won't be getting those lucrative areas back so might as well trade it for weapons.

They might call his bluff however especially if he isn't willing to supply such weapons.

Not seen MSM yet but I believe it's based off these comments

Remember Biden told Putin if Russia uses a nuke in Ukraine, the Black Sea fleet will be sank?

What’s to stop Putin using a Nuke in Ukraine now?

Thats the issue.

There is no political will in Europe to face Russias aggression head on.

They are weak and Putin knows this.

Ukraine is part of Europe and they have been meeting putin's terrorists head on for a number of years now. They are not going to come out publicly and say, its fine for the USA to stop sending them weapons, but they have massively built up their domestic arms production and other EU countries have done similar with a number of joint ventures started between EU arms producers and Ukraine. If Trump is serious about backing putin then the EU will have no choice but to get behind Ukraine as the strongest military force in Europe.

There is no political will though. Back in 2011, Obama announced the US pivot to Asia/the Pacific. This pivot has been the continuing policy of the US at all times under all Presidents- Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump again.

In the intervening 14 years, armed with this knowledge and knowing the US is stepping back from European involvement the Europeans have done nothing useful to prepare for this pivot and to develop a capability to act independently. In 2025 they still pretend to be shocked and surprised by a policy the US warned them about 14 years ago. If anything European militaries and industrial capacity is much less than it was in 2011.

As described by Mario Draghi's report on EU competitiveness in 2022-23 the 27 member states of the EU placed 63% of their defence orders with US companies. A further 15% of orders went to other non-EU suppliers. Only 22% of EU defence orders went to EU suppliers, being by and large orders from national militaries to national suppliers. They're incapable of getting over national rivalries to co-ordinate for scale: Draghi called out that EU member states operate 12 different types of tank, whereas the US only produces one. Only 18% of EU defence equipment expenditure was collaborative, far below a modest target of 35% agreed under the EDA framework. There is no comparison in terms of research - in 2022-23, the US spent 13 times what the entire EU spends on R&D for weapons, and 5-6 times what the entire EU spends on its space program.

And this is 14 years after Obama warned them what was coming. People need to be realistic about what is and what is not possible. European voters are going to want spending on things that matter (health, education, housing, pensions, police) to them long before they back spending on fantasy armies.

If Trump is going to act the bully with Europe when they are under attack from putin then I'd see there being no shortage of know how in Ukraine and the EU to reverse engineer the US weapons they already have to set up their own production lines for parts and consumables to keep what is in Ukraine operational and if needed find ways to substitute their own components where an exact copy of the USA made parts are not practical. Still can't see the US arms industry allowing Trump shoot their export markets in the foot.

Big time.

Just Poland alone has gone nuts: 48 Patriot missile batteries, 100's of foreign tanks, plus plans to produce around 1k S Korean tanks locally, 100's of howitzers, a mass of Himars, 5th gen fighters, almost 100 Apache helicopters.

Germany went through it's inventory and has realised it was not in good shape, so there's a big revamp going on there.

The Baltics as I've previously mentioned have massively upped spending. The Nordics are gearing up further.

That said, it's important not to get carried away - Russia has been a vast arms producer for decades. Absolutely churning out volume. And he is currently rapidly rearming. They might be hitting the Ukrainians with mopeds and meat-wave attacks - but this is Russia, it doesn't mean they aren't adapting and rearming in the background.

The key is to unify - that's critical. Ironically Trump is driving Europe closer than ever, possibly even more so than Putin.

Europe was built on a foundation of "keep Putin happy to get the cheap oil, oh don't make him mad"