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Total aid, yes. Military spending no. In fact this war has highlighted that NO ONE was ready for the fight that came about. Skip the money for a moment. Ukra
by zer00eyz 3y ago
Total aid, yes.
Military spending no.
In fact this war has highlighted that NO ONE was ready for the fight that came about.
Skip the money for a moment. Ukraine right now is marginally fucked for one reason: 155mm artillery shells.
There isnt enough global production to have a war. The US is far and away the largest producer. EU can not keep up and did not bring on anywhere near enough capacity to defend itself in a future conflict.
I would also like to point out that without that humanitarian aid flowing INTO Ukraine those folks flee TO the EU. Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany and having to spend it there. After taking in so many refugees in recent history the EU is gunshy about another migration.
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- joakleaf 3y agoLooking at Military aid only [1]: The US has provided: ~$42.2B Germany + United Kingdom + Denmark + Norway + Netherlands + Poland + EU inst.: ~$51B [1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
- sekai 3y agoFrance is up there with UK, but they are not on the chart because they do not disclose all the transfers they do.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoSource?
- JAlexoid 3y agoEm... That's the point, we know that France transferred a lot of equipment(Cesar self propelled artillery is Franch). We don't know how much they transferred, there may be unofficial guestimated numbers - but there can be no source for "we don't know".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ivan_gammel 3y ago>Sending money there avoids bringing the problems to Poland and Germany I‘d argue that refugees, 50% of whom intend to stay, are the reason why EU is the only party to win something from this war. I actively support Ukrainian refugees by giving them some work and talk to people: those who will stay, want to integrate and they offer some relief to the job markets.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago"some relief to the job markets." I agree and have done the same with Syrian refugees.
- ivan_gammel 3y agoOh, yes, Syrians. Danke, Merkel, I found some good IT admins from there.
- piva00 3y agoIn Sweden two of my favourite doctors are Syrian refugees, they gave me more humane and personal care than many Swedish doctors I've been to. My landlord (and by far the best landlord I've had in Sweden) is another refugee doctor, a very laid back Iraqian pulmonologist, to the point I even invite him over to have some beers during summers.
- StockHuman 3y agoNATO already won; it has expanded and defence commitments are up, and that is besides the renewed raison d’être Russia has leased it. The US defence industry has seen a minor win, too. It will reap the long-term win of new NATO accessions. The EU got a wakeup call (not so much a win, but hey) to seek energy independence from belligerent petrostates, so that could be seen as a future win.
- ivan_gammel 3y agoI‘m not sure about NATO, at least while Trumpism exists in America. If U.S. voters will think that Europe has to be sacrificed in favor of bilateral Russian-American deal, NATO is effectively as dead as it was pre-war. U.S.defense industry will also depend on that. If Trump wins and commits to do everything he promised, they will be in a weaker position, loosing foreign markets one by one.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoArtillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war; I would expect more air force being put in play if the conflict escalated into the rest of europe. Even though Russia has got the bigger air force on paper (https://rlist.io/l/european-countries-with-the-largest-air-force https://rlist.io/l/european-countries-with-the-largest-air-f...).
- ethbr1 3y ago> [artillery shells] which for some reason has become the main tool Because Soviet (and ex-Soviet) armies were heavily built around massive numbers of lower-trained conscripts. It's difficult to conduct maneuver warfare without highly trained troops. It's a lot easier to throw a lot of artillery at the problem.
- xeonmc 3y ago> Conscript reporting. Da!
- mschuster91 3y ago> Artillery shells are but one tool though, which for some reason has become the main tool (? citation needed) in the Ukraine war The reason is that neither side has air supremacy. Ukrainian AA defense is good enough to keep the Russians at bay, but Russian AA defense is also good enough to prevent Ukrainians from taking out their frontline defenses. So with classic air forces being all but taken out, the only way either side can make progress is by using tanks and artillery.
- selimthegrim 3y agoCan’t we give Ukraine HARMs?
- piva00 3y agoThe USA seems unable to give any more support due to political deadlock. It definitely could provide much more to Ukraine if both parties were aligned to the common cause of sustaining America's hegemony by being a reliable ally, right now there's one party which the whole ideology centers on going against whatever the other party does and/or supports. Even if that means allowing Putin's Russia to gain more power and influence. I don't think the vast majority of Americans understand the long-term consequences of allowing the USA to become unreliable to its closest partners (the West in general). You will be feeling this over the next few decades, America's soft power is waning.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago"Military spending no." Country Military EU Total 49,67 United States 42,22 Germany 17,70 United Kingdom 9,12 Denmark 8,40 Netherlands 4,44 Norway 3,80 Poland 3,00 And if we take % of GDP the US looks worse on military aid. And if we take % of military budget, the US is last on the list.
- bitcurious 3y agoI’m not sure how the calculations work in other countries, but the US was/is heavily depreciating its donations, and funding/facilitating a much of European donations.
- lumost 3y agoThere's also ring trades where the us donates surplus gear to European countries to get them to donate hardware to Ukraine - somewhat inflating tallies. Greece got several c-130s in expectation that they would donate 152mm ammunition.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoYes, and Germany has ring-traded a lot of military equipment, e.g. several dozens of Leopard 2 tanks. Sure about the 152mm? Not 155mm?
- Arrath 3y ago> Sure about the 152mm? Not 155mm? I'd have to double check but its quite likely. 152mm being the popular Soviet/WP large artillery caliber which Ukraine no doubt has (or had, at the beginning) a lot of legacy Soviet-era heavy artillery.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoDid some searching, didn't find anything. The only thing I could find about Greece is Germany giving 40 Marder APCs to Greece so Greece could give 40 BMP-1 to Ukraine.
- fjfaase 3y agoI wonder if there is such a clear cut between aid and military spending. Most of the aid of Europe is send to Ukraine government such that the government can spend that money. I understand that about 90% of the USA military spending stays in the USA and is actually stimulating the economy. This war is also a display of weapons produced by defense industries in the USA and increase the spending of foreign countries in the USA. So, the netto effect might be actually turn out to be possitive, if it were not chilled by the current position of the USA in not providing weapons. This is definitely not making European countries happy and might actually result in the EU on putting substantial effort in developing it own weapon systems in the coming decades and reduce the spending the USA.
- throwaway14356 3y agoIt is quite hard to think about things knowing that countries can hold multiple contradicting ideas simultaneously. Nothing is entirely correct or incorrect. for example, true or false: The US started a war against Europe and Russia by blowing up the pipeline. If we look at it like that it is a great success? Why would that perspective be entirely wrong?
- m4rtink 3y agoI think South Korea does pump out more 155mm shells than most other countries, including US ?
- Log_out_ 3y agoAnd Europe doesn't order there due to french veto. If you can not deliver personal, delivery is fine as long as no cannon go hungry.
- Paradigma11 3y agoCongratulations for picking with 155mm shells one of the few items that Europe has far outproduced the US with an estimated capacity of 650k shells/year pre war and a ramped up actual production to 1 mill/year in the next few months.
- SergeAx 3y agoUS also right now possesses the largest stash of 155 munition. Small fraction of that trove would've save Avdiivka.
- mynameisnoone 3y agoYep. And the so-called "aid to Ukraine", 80% of it would be spent within the US on current stockpiles and new equipment. It's curious that the US military-industrial complex isn't falling all over itself attempting to send Ukraine lots of expensive gear and supplies it didn't even ask for. I guess there are too many Putin sympathizers in US political circles able to buy, engineer, and install influence.
- adventured 3y ago> It's curious that the US military-industrial complex isn't falling all over itself attempting to send Ukraine lots of expensive gear and supplies it didn't even ask for. I guess there are too many Putin sympathizers in US political circles able to buy, engineer, and install influence That's an absurd premise. That gets endlessly repeated on Reddit and elsewhere with absolutely zero proof. If so much of the US Government (the world's richest nation and the only superpower) is purchased by a weak and poor enemy nation (Russia), where's the proof of that? Not supporting a war isn't proof. So a US politician against the Israeli war is bought and paid for by Hamas or Iran? It's laughable and quite obviously so. Nobody would dare float that premise, but somehow for Ukraine it's the go to propaganda. Why isn't the Biden DOJ + FBI + CIA + FBI + NSA running a large sting operation against all these bought and paid for US politicians that Russia owns? Because it doesn't exist. It'd be a huge win for the Biden Admin to bring those people down and get them arrested. And yet, crickets. All you really have are US politicians that are opposite of Biden looking to jab him any way they can, because it's a partisan battle and they're looking to score points. It's no more complicated than that. They're taking up position opposite of Biden. And with the military industrial complex, the issue is nobody is paying for that gear. Ukraine is a hyper poor nation, they are barely surviving. Anything advanced has to get Biden Admin and or Congressional approval. Ukraine isn't getting the very best US weapons (eg F35s) and should not.
- borissk 3y agoNorth Korea was ready... Good thing Bulgaria is able to supply Ukraine with plenty of 152mm shells for their old soviet artillery.
- senderista 3y agoUkraine is fucked in the long term by demographics and economics, not by the lack of any particular weapon or munition. Now that the war has settled into an attritional phase, it's a question of who will run out of fighting men and war materiel first. The answer is unfortunately clear.
- brabel 3y agoPeople down-voting this, care to explain how this is wrong?? I've thought about this a lot and as far as I can tell, this is the only reasonable expectation I can come up with as well... it seems quite possible to me that the reason Europe and the USA are turning up the "Russia will soon attack us" rhetoric is to justify higher military spending in the short term, and sending boots to Ukraine in the medium term, given that if you look at the reality of the situation, the Russian military has been stopped by a weak (compared to NATO) Ukrainian military, hence you would have to conclude that the possibility of Russia actually even thinking of attacking NATO in the next few decades should be very much zero under any circumstances. It's like thinking in the 60's that if we don't stop North Vietnam, they will come for the rest of Asia :D it just doesn't add up to any reasonable, rather than passion/hate-filled analysis (which is what we mostly see in the media, unfortunately).
- tw04 3y agoSure: he's flat out wrong. This has been played out again and again - "winning a war" is meaningless if you can't retain the territory. Unless the world is going to stand by and allow Russia to commit genocide of the entirety of the Ukranian population, this will move from a traditional war to a guerilla war. Ukrainians can fight guerilla warfare longer than Putin is going to be alive and able to maintain support of the Russian population. They couldn't conquer Afghanistan drawing from more than double the population. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFG/afghanistan/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFG/afghanistan/popula... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072400/population-us-ussr-cold-war/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072400/population-us-us... https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/UKR/ukraine/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/UKR/ukraine/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population
- jlmorton 3y agoUkraine's primary artillery for 155mm shells are the French CAESAR and US M777. There is no need to fire tens of thousands of shells with this equipment, and no one would ever do that. These shells cost thousands of dollars each. The upside is that they are incredibly accurate, with an error radius of something like 100m at 25km, using the standard dumb shells. (Things like Excalibur are markedly more accurate, but cost $100k each). Add in counterbattery radar, and there's just no reason Ukraine would ever need to fire 25,000 shells a day like Russia does. Clearly Ukraine needs more 155mm ammunition, but there's no reason to directly compare the numbers of shells launched by Russia and Ukraine.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoAlso Archer, Pzh2000 and FH155/FH70.