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Comment by bananapub | Hacker News Reader

> As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas to themselves

I agree, but it's not about accepting or saying it's a good idea, it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.

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I don't know if EU would be able to match the current support the US gives to Ukraine (maybe it already does? Or maybe it exceeds? I don't know either way) but what I'm sure off is that Europe won't stop trying even if it wouldn't be enough.

how sure are you? I think the economic struggles + losing US support would make every incumbent leader lose their jobs until UE is full of Trump supporters

Fairly confident, at least for the countries I frequent and have friends in. As an example, public opinion of NATO in Sweden was really negative up until ~2013 (Crimea occupation) where it kind of was equally positive/negative and then fast forward to today where it's at 64% positive. https://www.gu.se/en/news/opinion-on-nato-record-shift-betwe...

Being a Swede myself, and knowing how apathetic Swedish people are about basically anything, something having that large of support is pretty uncommon and signal a strong will to make NATO and EU defenses stronger, if anything.

Even people I know who been historically anti-"anything military" in the country have quickly turned into "We need to defend our Nordic brothers and sisters against the Russians" which kind of took me by surprise.

> UE is full of Trump supporters

That won't ever happen. Even right-wingers (Europe right, not US right) are laughing at Trump and the Republicans.

To be fair, we do have a couple of hundred years of history where Russia was always the big bad. Pretty much the only large-scale scenario the Swedish military trains and prepares for is a Russian invasion. The enemy always comes from the east.

Even right-wingers (Europe right, not US right) are laughing at Trump and the Republicans.

Any examples you can point to?

If you add up all the aid from the US and compare it to aid from the EU plus European nations, I think the share of contributions is roughly equal. But if that’s right (and I did the math in my head while scrolling a huge spreadsheet on my phone), then the loss of support from the US is significant. The US ability to produce armaments is also unparalleled in the West, so a loss of that supply is also a huge issue. Then you have the loss of the US as a military backer which may free Putin to be more aggressive - dirty bombs, tactical nukes, blowing up a nuclear reactor, assassinating Ukrainian leadership, who knows what. It’s a huge problem for Ukraine if they lose the US. But will they? It’s hard to know for certain.

Thanks a lot for doing that, even thought kind of ad-hoc :) Some data for guesses is better than none!

I'm guessing that if US pulls their support, EU will try to add as much to cover up for it as humanly possible, as most compatriots see Ukraine as the frontline of something that can grow much, much bigger which because of remembering history, we'd obviously like to avoid.

Europe is great at producing armaments as well - but there are a lot of useful armaments that are only produced in the US. If you had to choose either EU or US support, the US is the better option as they can give you things that the EU cannot even though the EU has more people than the US and a good economy.

The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine needs more of it yesterday.

> The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine needs more of it yesterday.

Are you talking about SAM capabilities or something else? Because there are plenty of SAMs produced by European countries; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surface-to-air_missile...

The full setup for missile defense. This includes radar, computers and so on.

The European system often contain some American components. Perhaps the French a bit less so.

This has turned out to be a major problem, as the US has used their re-export restrictions on components to block very significant parts of planned European military aid to Ukraine.

I speculate that there will be (already is) some extremely heavy investments in military tech R&D to remove/reduce dependence on American components going forward. As a continent, we can't have our hands tied like this in future conflicts.

> it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.

Your economy is nearly 10 times the size of Russia.

If Russia can continue, then you can almost 10 times more easily.

It's not a "can" issue. It's a "are you willing to do more than absolute minimum?" issue.

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