Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

I don't recall seeing this mentioned previously:

Norwegian think tank calculates Europe’s binary choice.

Russia wins, Europe pays €1.2-1.6 trillion. Ukraine wins, Europe pays half. That’s the stark math in a new report by Corisk and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. The choice: spend more now to help Ukraine win, or spend far more later to defend a Europe without Ukraine.

The findings challenge the prevailing political narrative that Europe cannot afford to increase its support for Ukraine.

The report arrives as a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan, which the authors argue misreads what is required for a stable Ukraine and Europe. A Russian partial victory would force Europe into a massive rearmament program to deter further aggression, amounting to €1.2-1.6 trillion over a four-year period. Equipping Ukraine to win would cost €522-838 billion over the same period—roughly half of that amount.

https://ukrainetoday.org/norway-did-the-math-arm-ukraine-to-win-or-pay-double-when-russia-does/

Poland should take note. They are on a massive spending spree for their own defences but less so when it comes to assisting Ukraine directly. Norway just gave Ukraine a nice Xmas present;

Ukraine's air defense can count on quite significant strengthening with missiles of various types from Norway. The country’s government announced provision of another tranche of military aid to Ukraine in the amount of 3.2 billion Norwegian kroner (about $313 million) for these purposes.

According to the announcement, this amount includes purchase in the U.S. of ammunition for F-16 fighters for a total amount of about 1 billion Norwegian kroner (about $97.8 million) under the FMS program. Which specific ammunition will be purchased is not mentioned, but given the direction of the package and available armament, this could concern AIM-120, AIM-9 and APKWS missiles.

The latter option is indicated by the fact that within this tranche, inexpensive systems with good availability, large production volumes and relatively low prices are being purchased. By the way, finally an F-16 was spotted in Ukraine's skies,which most likely was armed with them.

Another 0.5 billion Norwegian kroner (about $48.9 million) the Norwegian government is directing to anti-aircraft missiles for the S-300 system. The source of procurement of these missiles is not named, and finding ammunition for it now is undoubtedly a super-difficult task, because their manufacturer is russia, and the stocks of all obvious donors should have been depleted quite a long time ago.

But as we know from some posters, Europe is doing nothing to assist Ukraine, leaving aside all those joint effort Ukrainian arms factories starting up in the UK, Denmark, Romania (?) and other places. Rhinemetal are going to build the worlds most advanced military explosives factory in Bulgaria and their ammunition plant will soon open in Ukraine.

Well worth a look:

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/britain-and-ukraine-launch-joint-drone-production-venture/

If that doesn't give you a big lift. Shadow fleet struck again. Outside the black sea. Potential GRU casualties (including a head of hybrid warfare in Europe). Finger in the eye of India. Two fingers to Putin. And two fingers to the orange goon.

He and Krasnov are well matched, both swimming in and splashing everyone with the sh​it of their own creation and expecting everyone to just swallow it.

I think he's been taking lessons from Lavrov.

Check out the Ukrainian reconnaissance drone videos in that post. They were all over that thing!

how much will be skimmed off the top of that 90bn once it reaches Ukraine i wonder?

Rumours the head of the Russian military intelligence (of such a thing exists) was killed on that drone strike on the tanker. Along with several high profile GRU members.

All rumours, but damn if true, he's a close confidant of Putin.

Fingers crossed.

Furthermore, if it's confirmed that the Kremlin is posting GRU/military/paramilitary personnel on civilian vessels, that makes all those vessels legitimate military targets. One could argue that they might be used as a platform for launching, oh, I dunno, "military grade" drones into the flight path of a Ukrainian presidential 'plane. Hypothetically.

It's something so thats good.

It's amazing how much influence Russia can exert even when they're on their knees. The West will come to regret this.

The EU should tough it out for 3 years and hope the next US president is on board.

The only ones who see it as an EU 'failure' are those who want to see it as such, and wish to the EU generally to 'fail'. Many of them would probably also have been complaining if the EU had actually decided to use the frozen assets.

It's a bit of a messy compromise, and it's open to the criticism that they caved to Russian intimidation, but the bottom line is that Ukraine gets enough money to stay afloat for the moment, and they get to fight on. In six months' time, if the war is still in full swing, will anyone even remember last night's events?

Clearly a typo there for a start as the assets obviously remain frozen. How he thinks the EU stumping up 90bn for the Ukrainian war effort means they will 'agitate for peace…quickly' is beyond me. The rest of it is just a word salad with a lot of /'s.

"The Coalition of the Waiting" as I heard them described

Seems the new Chech Republic government are ex KGB members.

Total change from the last government who coughed up 1.8 million shells.

Expect no help from them. Russias influence in the world knows no bounds it seems .

As an Australian, I find Irish people criticising the EU for how little it's done for Ukraine, or how badly it's done things, sick making.