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How Western governments are getting military gear into Ukraine
- planck01 5y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220303092205/https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/03/02/how-western-governments-are-getting-military-gear-into-ukraine https://web.archive.org/web/20220303092205/https://www.econo...
- newsclues 5y agoTLDR over land
- tudorradubarbu 5y agoGlory to Ukraine!
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoI'm actually amazed the Netherlands found anything to give. It was generally assumed that war was over because Europeans had become civilized. Unfortunately the Russians never got that memo and remained barbarian. A few years ago Dutch soldiers had to yell "bang bang" at exercises for lack of ammunition. Dutch politicians have noticed this is looking a lot like 1940.
- watwut 5y agoNow, how do we define civilization is the question, given that quite a few of them were growing imperium.
- flipbrad 5y agoMy understanding is that military capacity across all EEA member states, and UK and Switzerland, would dramatically outweigh Russia's. Countries don't necessarily need to increase their military spend after this, especially with all the other economic issues we already have to grapple with, following both the great recession, covid, heavy inflation, the switch to green economy, and now all the economic effects being linked to the war in Ukraine.
- actuator 5y agoAs far as I understand, only UK and France have defence forces that can mount a proper fight and have operational experience, even their own nuclear triad. Rest of Europe is far weaker.
- baybal2 5y agoYes, NATO in Europe is US+UK+FR+TK, with some significant manpower commitment from Eastern European states, and that's all. It boggles my mind why Turkey keeps being ignored in this discourse. They have army big enough, modern, and powerful to alone defeat all Russian force in Ukraine.
- flipbrad 5y agoIs your suggestion that because Turkey has a large army, countries like the Netherlands need to increase their military capacity? Or reduce it? Or neither/other?
- baybal2 5y agoI suggest NATO launch war, retake Ukraine, and deprive Russia of 60% of its military for almost no cost. This will be followed by Putin having to spend the next 40% of its military on keeping order within Russia. If he will use nukes, he will obviously not be able to do so (NATO nuclear retaliation will destroy at least 50% of remaining Russian military.) Even if Putin will stay in power, sending military to police innumerable Russian cities, and towns will take him off the list of potential threats for next decade at least. Use the time won to remilitarise the West.
- ceejayoz 5y ago> This will be followed by Putin having to spend the next 40% of its military on keeping order within Russia. If he will use nukes, he will obviously not be able to do so. Initiating a nuclear launch is not a high-manpower operation.
- azalemeth 5y agoI think it's a lot more like September 1939 than 1940. Crimea was Sudetenland. Ukraine is Poland. And, at the moment, the other major world powers haven't joined in. Yet.
- littlestymaar 5y agoThis analogy isn't necessarily a good one. Especially since we've seen that the Russian army is way less capable than the Wehrmacht. Kraków felt 5 days after the invasion started, and the Germans controlled roughly two third of Poland by day 15, and so with vehicles two times slower than modern ones. Unlike Hitler, Putin cannot realistically contemplate the conquest of the entire Europe with the army he has, even without NATO intervention…
- TMWNN 5y agoCrimea is Sudetenland, but Ukraine is more like rump Czechoslovakia. I don't have problem with the principle that a country has broad latitude to handle internal affairs in its own way. Nor a country, within limits, seeking to project power in its neighborhood. The principle of self-determination, as articulated by Wilson's Fourteen Principles a century ago, is very difficult to reconcile with condemning too heavily the Russian majority of Crimea seeking to leave Ukraine and rejoining Russia. The current invasion of Ukraine is different. As for why Putin (I would have written Russia, except based on many news reports it seems like Putin made this decision alone, shocking/amazing everyone around him) invaded Ukraine: I don't know. Putin's own words indicate a goal of rebuilding the physical USSR, but there is a good case to be made that Russia was strengthened after 1991 by losing chunks on the outer edges peopled by non-Russian ethnic groups. (Chechnya being an example of a chunk that it really ought to have lost.) NATO expansion isn't a satisfactory answer, either. NATO has bordered Russia since Norway became a charter member in 1949. Russia wasn't thrilled about Poland joining NATO but it seemed to be able to live with it, and one is hard pressed to say that NATO is actually strengthened by having the likes of Montenegro as members. Everyone knew that Ukraine wasn't going to be allowed to join NATO as long as the Crimea and eastern Ukraine territorial situations remained, so in practice Ukraine was permanently blocked. So why this war? At least Hitler could cite lebensraum for rump Czechoslovakia, even without the ethnic Germans that had justified taking the Sudetenland. But no one thinks that Russia, whose population is shrinking anyway, needs more space. The only two things I can think of are: * Russia feels the need to expand its borders and build buffer zones as much as possible before its demographic crisis really hits in a few years and the country can no longer staff its military. (Peter Zeihan has talked about this for years.) * Putin really has, as Macron and others have observed/hinted, gone crazy.
- dempseye 5y ago> Unfortunately the Russians never got that memo and remained barbarian. I don't believe referring to any group of people as barbarians is an appropriate comment for HN, or indeed for any place purporting to be a forum for civilized discourse.
- curiousgal 5y agoHe's also implicitly calling Yemenis, Afghanistanis, Palestenians and Israelis uncivilized too. I heard the same statement ("We are too civilized for war unlike other places") coming from Ukranian tv hosts and it left me dumbfounded.
- older 5y agoWhich ones of Ukrainian TV hosts?
- spacemanmatt 5y agoI was aware of same EU TV person, maybe a UK person, having majorly stepped in it along those lines. It's just incredibly narrow to presume that war-torn places were would choose that.
- fumblebee 5y agoThank you for calling this out; the comment serves only to heighten animosity against your average Russian. I'm sure OP aimed it at the Kremlin leadership, but being precise here is important.
- sharikous 5y agoVery inappropriate. You can argue that US supremacy was what kept European countries in peace after WWII. Hardly a cultural evolution
- jacquesm 5y agoFrom the outside, yes. But from the inside the EU is what kept the peace.
- sAbakumoff 5y agoThe Netherlands bought the weapon from Germany and shipped it to Ukraine.
- toyg 5y agoThe difference is that a war with Russia will not mean 5 years of struggle, but rather the loss of billions of people and (at least) three continents becoming void of human life.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoAt this point the war is only in Ukraine. I know you can never believe Putin but his internal and external communication was crystal clear: we want to retake control of Ukraine by any means possible. What is not clear, however, is how long the war will last. Given the deplorable state of the Russian army and tons of modern weapons delivered to Ukraine, it wouldn't surprise me if it took a long time.
- toyg 5y agoI don't disagree; I was just pointing out that the overall tone of the conversation, when bringing in 1939-1940, would logically imply that Western countries have to enter the fight directly. That would likely trigger nuclear war, which would be very different from the likes of the Battle of Britain - something that a lot of people tend to forget.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoPlease don't lump us barbarians in with evil like Putin. Russian people are awesome. I know people mean "the government" when they say Russia/Russians here in geopolitical context but really, we have to be more careful than that.
- azth 5y ago> It was generally assumed that war was over because Europeans had become civilized You mean the same "civilized" Europeans that conduct war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.? Those ones? Or is it ok to wage war on "third world" countries because they're not in Europe? As they say, out of sight, out of mind.
- jansen555 5y agoEvery civilians wear these can be killed legally. So, it works both ways. But chances are as thing get brutal (look up Grozny), they will be killed. A lot of people simply dont understand the consequence of this "good intention" assistance.
- jacquesm 5y agoThe Russians don't seem to care all that much about whether they can legally kill someone or not, they kill them anyway. The bulk of the casualties in Ukraine is not because of confrontations but because of massive shelling of cities.
- ceejayoz 5y agoSure, if you’re armed, you’re a target. I doubt many people picking up their AKs from the militia rally points are unaware of this.
- fabian2k 5y agoIf you carry one of these, you are a combatant and not a civilian. Which does mean that you have the same status as a regular soldier under the Geneva conventions. And while soldiers and combatants are legitimate targets in general, this war is not legitimate. It is a war of agression against a sovereign country, so you cannot really claim that killing soldiers is simply legal here. The responsibility for all the death and suffering caused here lies with Putin who commanded this invasion. But as Russia is bombarding cities with civilians already, and it is likely they will escalate these bombardments even further, you are anyway in very real danger of getting killed as a civilian.
- random_upvoter 5y agoArming Ukraine to the teeth, is that in the best interest of Ukraine?
- mvc 5y agoUkraine will not exist if Putin wins this war.
- mjburgess 5y agoUkraine as an idea, sure. Ukraine as a place won't exist if he loses it. Carpet bombing will be starting soon.
- phoe-krk 5y agoIf he does, neither will Russia. The new iron curtain has already risen, and committing mass murder and destruction of Ukraine will solidify it for the decades to come.
- yetihehe 5y agoThere will be help. Warsaw was carpet-bombed too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw With current levels of UE funding, Ukraine may be even better off financially than Poland at that time. We just need to tell them to skip building another Palace of Culture and Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science.
- random_upvoter 5y agoThere's different ways of not existing, either relatively unscathed or as a pile of rubble. I'm afraid the West for all its rhetoric is still in denial about the seriousness of Russia's intentions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%9...
- mjburgess 5y agoNope. It's interesting how the west has lost it's mind here, clearly the goal is regime change in Russia. We're using Ukraine to do it; by the time regime change is even on the table, Ukraine will be flattened. And we haven't established Putin is even likely to be deposed; it seems incredibly unlikely. This is just a gamble with ukrainian lives dressed up in noble regalia, provided by the west.
- hanselot 5y ago
- chinathrow 5y ago> Countries arming Ukraine “cannot fail to understand the degree of danger” that they are flirting with, says Russia’s foreign ministry. Lavrov being Lavrov here. Russia itself is flirting with danger at an unprecedented scale.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dimitar 5y agoOne problem they don't mention in the article is that Ukraine and the most of the rest of the former Soviet Union uses different rail track gauges. Which means that any trains must either stop to change wheelsets or the cargo must be unloaded and then and then loaded onto other trains. Russia uses trains a lot for logistics and has an advantage in moving heavy equipment to the front line. So that and the likelyhood of urban combat are probably the reason why most of the aid is composed of man portable weapons which contra the article are relatively easy to hide. The most vulnerable from the reported deliveries are the fuel and artillery ammo. I really hope a lot of that cargo is moved under the cover of night and doesn't stay in one place as it is vulnerable to missile attacks. They said that there are potentially Russian helicopters in the West of Ukraine, but that is probably not true and they are vulnerable to the MANPADs coming in from Poland and other places. Finally, there are Bayraktar drone deliveries from Turkey which are greatly appreciated.
- miki_tyler 5y agoSpain should donate some Talgo variable gauge trains to help with that. https://www.railway.supply/en/variable-gauge-axle-systems/ https://www.railway.supply/en/variable-gauge-axle-systems/
- rainworld 5y agoI hope nobody here suffers the illusion that the point of this “aid” is anything other than to prolong the war and increase the bloodshed. Ukraine can not and will not win this war. The longer this goes on the harder cities will be hit and civilian casualties will go up dramatically. Western leaders are perfectly aware of that, they depend on it.
- s_dev 5y agoThe article doesn't refer to it as aid. It refers to it as military gear. Ultimately Russia is the initial aggressor here so they're the ones who initiated and are prolonging the war. Russia cannot win -- even if they take Ukraine what's the end game? Never trade with the West again?
- rainworld 5y agoCold War 2 is here, no matter when and how this war ends.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoUnless Russian army turns around, drives back, and stops at the Red Square. But there are slim chances to that.
- ceejayoz 5y agoUkraine likely cannot win the initial conventional war. As the US learned over the past two decades, that’s not the end of the war.
- rainworld 5y agoThe idea of an Ukrainian insurgency is pure cope and only serves to prolong this war. Ukraine's strategic position is untenable, capitulation or complete defeat is a matter of weeks. And once again Western audiences will be dumbfounded, and they will learn nothing from it.
- random_upvoter 5y agoIn no way this invasion by Russia is justifiable but I'm getting some serious "Don't look up" vibe from the glibness with which the West is escalating.
- simonh 5y agoUkraine is an ally which many Western countries were already arming. We are simply continuing to do so, that's not escalation. All the escalation is coming from one side in this conflict.
- dfghdfhs 5y agoSoo.... one side has entered a country with soldiers and tanks, but the people responding by arming themselves against the soldiers and tanks are the ones escalating? Ok then.