We already started during this year. No sane leader trusted in a coin flip to guarantee our security. A possible Trump presidency was planned for.

The optimistic alternative is EU countries scale up their military production and cover the gap. We were already seeing a ramp up, but it’ll have to accelerate.

Downside for the US is later down the line, exports will go down as the EU will have more domestic manufacturing.

This is more about ramping up domestic arms production to fill the gap that is going to come from US production no longer going to Ukraine.

The funniest part is that in one of his dialogue trees, he reveals that he’s never actually been to the Semenine islands and his whole understanding of Semenese culture is based on stuff he’s read and heard on the radio. He legitimately has no real understanding of the culture he presents as superior, and no place in it.

I think Brexit has also been a significant factor in making UK way more xenophobic.

Personally, I don’t think it’s made the UK more xenophobic. A decent percentage of people supported Brexit due to xenophobia, and the success of the referendum made them more outspoken. Basically, Brexit is a symptom of xenophobia rather than the other way around.

"I’m another day older and deeper in debt.’

https://youtu.be/E5VMZqgVzRo

I knew exactly what song that’d go to, clicked on it anyway, was not disappointed. Love that song.

It’s a confirmed fact they ordered troops in fallback lines to shoot any fleeing Russian troops trying to pull back on some of the fronts.

FYI, I’m not Ukrainian. I’m Romanian. We have more skin in the game than Germany or France though. If Ukraine falls, Moldova falls 24 hours later, and allowing our brother country to go back under Russian domination is pretty unthinkable.

Even without that existential issue, allowing democratically minded Europeans trying to walk the same path we walked 25 years ago get invaded by Russia without as much help as we can give them seems horrific to me.

Thanks Austria, very cool. The domestic politics bump they got for being “tough on migration” sure was worth delaying our full Schengen status. /s

This period of war in Eastern Europe is pretty shit and I would like Western Europe to take it more seriously, thx

Those look like 3 random people to me. I’m not seeing the caricature. For them to not be caricatures, what would you expect them to look like?

They tried protesting at oil infrastructure, they stopped multiple oil terminals in the UK being used for weeks and caused shortages in various parts of the UK. Hundreds went to prison and everyone forgot about it after a week.

They throw soup at glass, 2 people go to a police station for a few days and people are still talking about it months later.

Unfortunately, they have to exist within the constraints of modern news media, outrage cycles and social media, and that influences their decisions.

Except when they did protests targeted at oil infrastructure, that was still apparently wrong and got far less coverage than much safer stunts like these.

Military stuff is out of the picture since they established their trade with CCP and NK for rockets

Not all rockets are made equally. The NK rockets, artillery barrels and artillery shells are much worse than they could manufacture with western components. A degradation in quality leading to less accuracy which lessens the battlefield impact is still a positive step.

It also means that China can take advantage of Russia to get much more than it could usually get for their gear. China is not helping Russia out of the goodness of it’s heart or some ideological reason. They’re taking advantage.

I wonder if sanctions targeting non-consumer products critical to producing them can lead to long pauses

Interesting question. I have no idea. I’m pretty confident all sanctions so far are for gas, oil, and military/dual-use technology.

Maybe. The point of the sanctions isn’t to cause unrest though, as I said, it’s to apply pressure to the state. If it happens to cause some unrest, that’s an unlikely side-benefit.

To piggyback on @Syntha@sh.itjust.works, the point of sanctions is to create an extreme economic cost to a state as a bargaining chip. Stop doing the thing we don’t like and you get your trade back. Unfortunately, states control the national currency (most of the time), which means anyone who uses that currency also gets hit. There is no way around that.

Politically speaking, a majority of Russians have been utterly disenfranchised from politics, repeating the refrain “I’m not political” like it’s a magic spell that will ward off the consequences of their government. Consequently I’m not that sad about them experiencing a bit of economic hardship. Maybe it’ll help them realize that politics isn’t just for politicians.

They’re not actually anti-EU, that’d be AUR. They’re more EU-agnostic imho. They’re heavily corrupt, regressive, and obsessed with “christian family values” though (as I’m sure you know).

True. It’s not surprising, it’s just annoying. We won’t have a change in politics until the older generation dies off. They already lost a lot of power when the DNA started actually enforcing anti-corruption measures, so they’ve gone from the only dominant force in Romanian politics to one of the dominant forces.

Ugh, she’s a member of PSD. Can elaborate if anyone cares, but that party is an anchor on the neck of Romania.

Also, she went to Dimitrie Cantemir University, which is a laughing stock here in Romania. It’s very much a diploma mill. I’m not even sure they’re allowed to give diplomas anymore.

Commentators I’ve seen blame the lack of defence on incompetent commanders that aren’t reporting losses, lack of construction equipment for preparing fallback lines and lack of communication between units. There are apparently many cases of electronic warfare units jamming Ukrainian drones because they don’t know what the drone unit is doing. In short: doesn’t sound like a problem that can be solved by just adding more bodies.

Disclaimer: fog of war, I’m reporting on what people have said about what people have said, this may not be accurate (but what source is perfectly accurate in the middle of a war?).