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Russian “defence” spending is skyrocketing,

This is wrong, it barely keeps up with inflation: https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2020/r...

This is a whopping 9% of the yearly defense spending of the US.

The US is irrelevant for European defense though. They're no longer a reliable partner and nobody seriously believes we can rely on them if anything does happen. So we're down to France and Germany, and I'm not sure Germany's military is particularly competent. The way I see it, Russia is far more efficient at defense spending than most of the EU countries, so they're a legitimate threat even if they "only" match France in spending.

Yea The US's GDP is roughly 13 times that of Russia. It's not even close to the way it was during the Cold War.

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