Summary
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that if Ukraine falls to Russia, the conflict could spread to European cities, as Putin might target the EU next.
Kuleba emphasized Ukraine’s NATO membership as critical to preventing future wars, dismissing security guarantees as insufficient.
He criticized potential peace settlements at Ukraine’s territorial expense, stressing the need for Moscow to negotiate in good faith.
Amid escalating attacks on Ukraine, Kuleba defended counter-escalation using U.S.-supplied weapons, while Trump criticized Biden’s support for strikes inside Russia.
Against the US? No. Unequivocally not happening, no. Against just Russia? Pick three EU nations at random and their combined might would exceed Russia’s with only moderate effort. The EU has been fairly lackadaisical about putting in the effort, which is the main obstacle.
Yeah this war has revealed just how strong Russia is not. They thought they would take Kiev in 3 days and have still not done so after 3 years. Ukraine + Syrian Rebels = too much for them, let alone 3 European nations.
Russia can just put in the minimum effort for a long time
That’s what they are trying to do, but they are spending 33% of their federal budget on it. For comparison, the US spends 13% of federal budget on its defense department.
Russia has also lost anywhere between 100k and 600k soldiers’ lives. At the low end it is already triple their total losses from their engagements in Chechnya and Afghanistan combined. At the high end, estimates are that 2% of the entire Russian adult male population has now been killed or wounded in this war. For comparison, America lost less than 60k soldiers in the entire Vietnam War.
Ukraine is an extremely attractive prize for Russia but how long can they sustain these losses, and the crippling sanctions, to attain some prize? Not forever.
Of course we can always come back and say that Ukraine has lost a similar amount and can afford it less. But Ukraine is fighting for their very existence so they can “afford” any amount.
Personally I think that they will hold out as long as western arms support does. That’s really the only thing on the Ukrainian side that could falter. And that’s probably what Russians are holding out for. Trump will likely fold and I don’t think Russia will settle for its current gains when that happens. Either they will continue hostilities as they are, make some breakthrough gains and then settle, or settle now and come back in 2 years to stir shit again. Either way, with their currency on fire and their war effort stagnating,Trump is Russia’s great hope right now.
It’s not because of anything but the US sending money and weapons to Ukraine, otherwise, they’d be done.
Yes western armaments have been key. I still think it’s telling that Russia cannot dominate a much smaller foe that’s working with an on-again / off-again pastiche of foreign armaments they aren’t always trained for.
The EU as a whole has donated more to Ukraine than the US.
The main problem is that while the EU donations where to keep Ukraine economy afloat, a lot of the US ones were military aid, so Ukraine cannot do without either.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/these-countries-have-committed-the-most-aid-to-ukraine
Solo EU vs. solo US would lead to a stalemate, both sides quickly realising that the other party is on the other side of the Atlantic and that noone has a counter against stealth subs, which the US would be able to develop before the EU has time to build a non-negligible amount of aircraft carriers. Nukes won’t be an issue both sides have enough second-strike capabilities to turn the other side to glass, unless the US gets a foothold in France at which point the French would first strike. So don’t do that, especially when the stalemate is so comfortably an ocean wide.
Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus.
…I mean generally speaking you’re right but technically no.
I said “at random” for a reason. The likelihood of choosing all three of the least preparable nations is 1/1000. I don’t believe you chose randomly, and therefore would like to indicate that your mother is a hamster and your father smells of elderberries.
Lithuania Latvia Estonia.
And your father smells even more of elderberries in the morning than the evening
Ye cool. The point is you think a random function will choose Germany, France, Spain, Poland or Italy. When there is 27 countries in the EU, most of them utterly unprepared for war.
Continued notification game eh? Take the 1
But I could have chosen randomly, your post might be read by a billion people each rolling their own set of independent dice, and that’s why you don’t leave engineering to theorists.
…and it’s the three least populous nations, btw. Together about 2m people. About the average of Lithuania and Slovenia, a bit more than a tenth of Romania, or about 0.45% of the whole of the EU.
Truthfully, I realized all of this, including the specific countries someone might choose, and giggled at my coming retort as I wrote the comment. Get baited, nerd.
Europe has many stealth subs, I mean scary stealth, like pop up undetected in the middle of a US carrier group and “sink” a US carrier stealthy, several aircraft carriers, and four or five of the world’s top 10 arms exporter countries.
Missiles, Eurofighters, Rafales, Gripens, F35s, nukes, last gen frigates and destroyers…
Overwhelmingly superior in tech, generation, and number to what Russia has and Ukraine is being given. Also a tech and and manufacturing might vastly superior. Ukraine is not Nato. Even without the US, Europe would wipe the floor with Russia, and Putin knows.
That said, if combined with the US would really make it a special operation.
Also remeber that the USSR was able to defeat Hitler because of Allied material, especially US through Lend-lease.
But according to Lemmy and Reddit, the US needs to do more, send more money, because you know, we’re the World Police when other countries need us…
If the US wants the power, it takes the responsibility. If it doesn’t take the responsibility, it will lose that power.
Russia and China would be happy to take the position vacated. If the EU got it’s act together, it could also be a contender (but it’s not looking like it will at the moment with its own Putin backed popularists).
if you wanna be World Police, act as World Police…
The average internet person knows nothing. Myself included.