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On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that?
Because everyone‘s avoiding being formally at war with Russia ?
Dude‘s made it clear he‘s not afraid to fuck up the entire planet over those territories.
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On August 14 2025 00:44 maybenexttime wrote: I think he meant seizing the assets, selling them and using the money to fund Ukraine. I don't think it's a straightforward matter. First, there's the question of legality. Secondly, the EU considers those assets an important bargaining chip in case of a negotiated settlement. You have to weigh that against the potential boost to Ukraine from additional funding, but Ukraine isn't struggling with funding. It's struggling with manpower, a steady supply of artillery munitions and anti-air interceptors, availability of certain types of equipment, and a fickle wannabe dictator in America. The problems with munitions/interceptors and equipment are being addressed by the EU/UK. Our military production is expanding massively. Europe can't realistically help with the manpower problems. As for Trump, our politicians are trying very hard to sway him to the pro-Ukrainian side. You'd find that with enough money you can buy not just munitions but also all the manpower that a military needs. Russia understood that quite early on.
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On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that? The very easy answer is that the video of those soldiers coming home in body bags topples governments.
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United States43374 Posts
On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that? Escalation management. They’re going to take losses and to defend them you’re going to have to fire into Russian territory.
It won’t necessarily scale out of control but it’s putting petrol near the lit match and hoping that everyone is smart enough to avoid an ignition. And if Russia was smart then we wouldn’t be in this position. Russia has repeatedly underestimated the will of the west to respond to provocation and overestimated their own strength in dealing with it. There’s a reluctance to put volatile chemicals in the same room as the idiot.
To compound that we have very little idea where Russia’s red lines are because they continually lie about them which is a very stupid thing to do. They opt for maximalist red lines so that they can claim the greatest possible area for themselves and insist it is all shielded by MAD. But they overclaimed past the red lines of others and in a way that wasn’t plausible and so the west shit all over a bunch of their red lines and made them look like total bitches.
But even though they’re total bitches who lie about their red lines they do presumably have some. We just can’t trust them to tell us where they are. Let’s say bombers attack a position held by Polish troops and Poland wants to strike the airbase they’re operating from. Russia claims it would be a red line, but western missiles launched by Ukraine have struck airbases in Russia before now, even though that was supposedly a red line. Is it a real one this time? How can we tell?
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United States43374 Posts
On August 14 2025 00:51 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that? Because everyone‘s avoiding being formally at war with Russia ? Dude‘s made it clear he‘s not afraid to fuck up the entire planet over those territories. I don’t think that’s clear at all. Russia has backed down at every point in which this might escalate beyond Ukraine. They still believe this can be resolved as a local conflict. That can all change of course, and maybe it would all change if Ukraine started to retake Crimea, but for as long as Putin believes he can win regardless he seems content to keep it local.
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On August 14 2025 01:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 00:51 Vivax wrote:On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that? Because everyone‘s avoiding being formally at war with Russia ? Dude‘s made it clear he‘s not afraid to fuck up the entire planet over those territories. I don’t think that’s clear at all. Russia has backed down at every point in which this might escalate beyond Ukraine. They still believe this can be resolved as a local conflict. That can all change of course, and maybe it would all change if Ukraine started to retake Crimea, but for as long as Putin believes he can win regardless he seems content to keep it local.
He can only keep it local because everyone‘s allowing him to. The message he sends is that having Russians settle down in any other European country is a security risk, he might invade them to defend their interests on foreign soil.
I don‘t know how his own military lets him do this. The costs and risks must outweigh the gains.
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On August 14 2025 01:24 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 01:20 KwarK wrote:On August 14 2025 00:51 Vivax wrote:On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that? Because everyone‘s avoiding being formally at war with Russia ? Dude‘s made it clear he‘s not afraid to fuck up the entire planet over those territories. I don’t think that’s clear at all. Russia has backed down at every point in which this might escalate beyond Ukraine. They still believe this can be resolved as a local conflict. That can all change of course, and maybe it would all change if Ukraine started to retake Crimea, but for as long as Putin believes he can win regardless he seems content to keep it local. He can only keep it local because everyone‘s allowing him to. The message he sends is that having Russians settle down in any other European country is a security risk, he might invade them to defend their interests on foreign soil. I don‘t know how his own military lets him do this. The costs and risks must outweigh the gains. They let him do this because anyone who disagrees finds themselves falling out of the nearest window.
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He's been a dictator for almost 30 years now, anyone who ever dared saying something he didn't like got purged a long time ago.
In that sense, Ukraine is kind of lucky, with the material, technological and man power advantages Russia had before the start of the full scale invasion if the army wasn't led by and full of sycophants they would have been in a lot more trouble.
The one general that he had that was, despite this culture decently competent Surovikin fell out of favor because he was the guy who saved Russian troops in Kherson, which Putin saw as a sign of weakness. He was then replaced by another sycophant Gerasimov who was subsequently fucking up consistently, namely by ignoring troop build ups around Kursk.
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United States43374 Posts
On August 14 2025 01:24 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 01:20 KwarK wrote:On August 14 2025 00:51 Vivax wrote:On August 14 2025 00:47 LightSpectra wrote: I'm not an expert on strategy or logistics, but I was wondering why the EU doesn't send some troops to defend Kyiv and the Belarus border so that the Ukrainian troops currently in those places can be freed up for the front lines. Anyone know the answer to that? Because everyone‘s avoiding being formally at war with Russia ? Dude‘s made it clear he‘s not afraid to fuck up the entire planet over those territories. I don’t think that’s clear at all. Russia has backed down at every point in which this might escalate beyond Ukraine. They still believe this can be resolved as a local conflict. That can all change of course, and maybe it would all change if Ukraine started to retake Crimea, but for as long as Putin believes he can win regardless he seems content to keep it local. He can only keep it local because everyone‘s allowing him to. Are they allowing him to?
The alcoholic former PM declared that Britain sending storm shadows would be an act of war. That the conflict would inevitably escalate to a global level if Britain did that.
Allowing him to keep it local would be refusing to send them. Britain sent them and the Black Sea fleet was forced to flee storm shadow strikes after taking a series of high profile losses. Russia then backed down on their rhetoric.
Britain didn't keep the conflict local, Putin did. Russia was forced to deescalate.
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The EU is the second largest economic zone in the world. I highly doubt this is the best they can do, with direct warfare being the next escalation. Especially when they call it an existential threat to the EU.
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United States43374 Posts
I guess it just depends if you believe there's any possible middle ground between the EU cynically sacrificing Ukrainians for their own benefit and the very best the EU can do.
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On August 14 2025 09:12 KwarK wrote: I guess it just depends if you believe there's any possible middle ground between the EU cynically sacrificing Ukrainians for their own benefit and the very best the EU can do. I think if you believe Ukraine should fight till the last man as it is the existential crisis for them. Then equally you should expect a lot more from the EU if they call it existential crisis for EU.
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On August 14 2025 10:00 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 09:12 KwarK wrote: I guess it just depends if you believe there's any possible middle ground between the EU cynically sacrificing Ukrainians for their own benefit and the very best the EU can do. I think if you believe Ukraine should fight till the last man as it is the existential crisis for them. Then equally you should expect a lot more from the EU if they call it existential crisis for EU. Nobody here said they should except the Kremlin clowns. If Ukraine were to surrender, its people would be forced to fight in Russia's next war. Russia is already forcing Ukrainians from the occupied territories to do that.
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he adores Vladypooh and his gang of bandits just way too much.
how they have whipped the populus into shape. and make it look easy.
running with the wrong crowd young and spry Donnie is, having grave misconceptions about certain strongmen role models.
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Speaking of security guarantees to Ukraine: Talks of European boots on the ground are resuming.
It's still a distant prospect, but it will be interesting to see if any country dares to setup a proper tripwire force. For all we know, they may all plan to only defend Lviv for the participation prize.
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On August 14 2025 08:47 ETisME wrote: The EU is the second largest economic zone in the world. I highly doubt this is the best they can do, with direct warfare being the next escalation. Especially when they call it an existential threat to the EU.
This war has caught EU with their pants down. Years of prosperity meant that a lot of the military power was reduced to bare minimum. Now they're trying to rectify and course-correct by increasing military spending, ramping up manufacturing capabilities etc. It's not something you can do overnight so my assumption is that EU isn't more involved because everyone is still waiting for all this to come to fruition so that in case of actual war between the EU and Russia they have the necessary means to actually engage in a potentially protracted war.
It's not that EU doesn't want to help Ukraine, they literally can't do much more because they weren't prepared for it and they can't just send everything or they would leave themselves defenseless (for most countries threshold there isn't very high since a lot of them already kept their military at or below bare minimum). There's also a lot of red tape involved for various reasons (contractual obligations for using non-domestically produced war equipment etc.). Like, if your country has some Leopard tanks you can't just cede them over to another country without getting Germany's approval and other stuff like that.
This all stems from the fact that EU countries decided peace lets everyone do better than war and military spending/complex doesn't really provide much value for the economy so they all kept reducing it.
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United States43374 Posts
Nah, if it was their people dying they’d have sorted this out. There are complications but all of them could have been resolved if the political will was there. But instead they argue over what money gets invested where for the benefit of which group etc..
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This "Europe would have issues if Russia invaded an EU country" thing is pretty wacky, Poland alone would be a tough cookie for Russia to crack, I get that Poland is the one EU military that took that shit seriously, but still.
Finland, similarly, has a large and trained reservist pool and a shitton of air defense and artillery.
You combine those two and there is 0 chance Russia could move past those, if we add in serious militaries like France or UK Russia gets crushed, even if we wind everything back to 2022.
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If Europe made a serious commitment in early 2022 to build/procure 1mn 155mm shells per month from jan 2023 and onwards the war would have stopped in late 2022. This was before drones, Russia would take one look at the follow through and go "nah bro if you care so much we out".
It would have been expensive and a massive effort but it's a fraction of what's been done twice in recent history so it's extremely possible. And of course in hindsight it would have been a lot cheaper then what we ended up with.
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