I’m not sure about the US, but the UK is providing arms to Ukraine under bilateral aid agreements. The exact terms of these agreements aren’t public, but traditionally bilateral aid agreements heavily favour the country giving, as the country receiving is desperate. Thus, the weapons are not being donated, they are being provided as a long term loan.
It’s almost inevitable that Ukraine won’t be able to pay back this loan. This means the UK will probably have to write off this debt, eventually. However in the meantime the books can be balanced (or at least it makes it look like the government hasn’t raped the country as much as it has) and the write off will be a future government’s problem. Also, whatever amount Ukraine will still pay should help ensure the country remains on the back foot, should it survive its invasion from Russia.
No real surprise from a government in bed with Russia over the years leading up and into the invasion.
Suffice it to say, the war machine money printer go brrrr.
Daily reminder to the reminder - the U.S. has to replace those supplies with new stuff which does cost money.
One thing we can do is push for our government to not replace it
Or to not replace it with as much hardware
We’ve got quite the excessive stockpile currently
I love fueling the fountain of blood!
Suggesting the defender in a war should just stop fighting, or that helping them is bad because if they did not have the ability to defend themselves, they’d quickly be unable to fight and the war would end with their defeat, is not anti-war. It is appeasement, and that is ultimately pro-war, because it creates a situation in which starting wars of aggression can benefit the ones who start them, which inevitably leads to more wars being started. To be against war, in the long term, one must support a situation in which starting wars is against the self-interest of those in the position to do so, and one of the clearest ways to do that is to try to ensure that those who begin wars of conquest or other such aggression, lose them.
OMG YESSS ICE DRAGON COOL!!!
Anyways, you have the right idea about it being unjust that those who start wars of aggression reap benefits from starting them. That is why it is best for both Russia and Ukraine to resolve this using peaceful negotiations, as the reason why america is pouring military hardware into the latter is to bolster its own war of aggression against Russia motivated by cynical geopolitical interests.
This current conflict has a long and bloody history stretching way back from 2014 till now. It is called the “Russo-Ukranian war” and started with the Euromaidan incident when the EU used far right groups to antidemocratically depose a pro-Russian Ukranian president and plant someone who is more aligned with their agenda so that they could put pressure on Russia, as Russia was starting to get unfriendly towards the American trading bloc.
As such, the true nature of this conflict is an awful proxy war between Russia and NATO (america), where innocents suffer and the rich get richer.
Therefore, I think we would both agree that it is not good for america to send more weapons to Ukraine as this would be fulfilling america’s own selfish geopolitical interests using the lives of innocent Ukranians.
Nice profile too btw
While in principle I do get the idea that a negotiated peace is preferable to a situation where the two parties in a conflict simply fight themselves until one side physically cannot, I do not see a way in which that can reasonably be done in the case of this conflict without one side being beaten militarily, because the goals of each side are not comparable. Russia has been trying to annex territory from Ukraine, but as far as I have seen, Ukraine has not sought to take land from Russia (if you take only the current phase of the conflict, one might suggest that they are seeking to retake Crimea, but as you yourself pointed out, the conflict itself has been ongoing for longer than the current large scale war has been going on, and as such, even if the Ukrainians managed to take it somehow, that would not represent the addition of new territory not in their possession before the conflict started). The problem this presents is that, if one were to negotiate a “white peace”, that is to say, just put the border back to how it was before the conflict started, then that effectively represents Ukraine accomplishing pretty much all of its major goals and Russia none of it’s own. As such, Russia has no particular reason to accept this, unless physically forced to by virtue of military defeat, which would kind of defeat the point of a negotiated settlement in the first place as that would simply represent a Ukrainian military victory anyway. But on the flipside, ceeding any of the disputed land to Russia represents a situation where Russia wins- maybe not anything like as big a win as they would like, but they would in that scenario have started a large scale war (regardless of how exactly the conflict itself began, Russia did take the step of turning it from what it was into a full-scale war, by invading Ukraine), and then ultimately gained territory from it, which is exactly the sort of precedent that we’ve already established needs to be avoided. What then, is left for such a settlement to be?
UA, and by that I mean its state, has been a naked pawn since 2014, responding to Western interests to stoke and prolong civil war by the Russian border, target ethnic Russians with discrimination and violence (and Roma, and LGBTQ+ people, etc), and generally toy with joining NATO, a highly aggressive anti-Russian military organization.
The dominant Western propaganda narrative is to try to get everyone to forget the breathless reporting their media outlets did on Ukraine from 2013-2022 and to instead use absurd little terms like, “unprovoked invasion”, which I would guess is also where the idea of UA being simply defensive comes from. Yes, they were invaded by Russia, but they’ve also been ratcheting up pressure on Russia for a decade through various cynical moves, beginning with a coup against a government that was becoming slightly friendlier with Russia. The most notable events just prior to the RF invading was a huge ramping up of shelling of the Donbas, including civilian population centers.
Anyways, yes it is bad to keep pushing the “escalate and fight to the last Ukrainian button”. It would be much better if Ukraine were forced to negotiate peace and were not acting as a pawn against Russia rather than a state protecting its own people.
I’d like Ukrainians to be alive and not in a war.
Where did I claim to be smart? I am merely pointing out that, if you give those who start wars what they want, they have an incentive to go and start more of them.
Ah yes, because a war of defense is the same as a war of offence. /S
Helping an ally defend themselves from an aggressor is based
Saying they should fend for themselves is fucked.
Yeah the Wagner Group and their enablers can fuck off.
Or are you saying that you drank Russia’s Kool Aid of their justification for their invasion of Ukraine?
Edit: Apparently the comment this was a reply to isn’t here anymore or this got slapped onto the wrong comment somehow? But this was a reply to someone saying that Nazis don’t get to use self defense or something close to it.
Time for Hawaii to get a bunch of Abrams and Bradleys.
this but unironically, so that they can decolonise and drive the worldwide terrorist authoritarian yankoid empire from their lands
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