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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Those are not different things, "willing to defend" is just the prerequisite of "actually be able to defend". Look at Ukraine, how weak they were and how good they defended themselves. Look at Iran, how resilient they are despite decades of sanctions and their shitty regime.

When things start moving people can move mountains, suddenly the unemployment goes to %0 like it happened with Russia, market forces get dominated by state forces, moats like network effect or IP go to the trash.

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Ukraine is essentially acting as a human shield for the EU right now. My friends in the SBU/ National Guard are terrified, even though they haven’t even seen combat yet. They’re stationed in a city that’s essentially 50% Russian. Even a civilian could shoot them in the back.

Ukrainians don't act as a human shield for EU, if they wanted to be part of Russia they could have joined them(like Crimea and Donbas tbf, but since there wouldn't be claims on the Ukrainian territory anymore it wouldn't be a war).

EU doesn't force anyone to fight for them, it enables those countries that are not part of Russia, don't want to be part of Russia and are willing to fight Russian aggression to eventually be independent countries and member of EU.

May I ask from which country you are, you are talking of position that implies that Ukrainians don't have agency. It's a Russian talking point(that is "Ukrainians couldn't have chosen to join NATO and EU by themselves since they don't have agency, EU tricked them or NATO forced them to fight Russia, therefore Russia isn't the agressor but the defender here against the EU/NATO aggression").

What does free will have to do with it? I know a lot of Ukrainians, and many of them are disappointed in the EU’s support. Let me say it again: I have friends who are fighting, and they often blame the EU for the lack of support—there aren’t enough people, you see. It’s a meat grinder; they need more equipment and automated systems! Just imagine how hard it must be for them right now, with Russian FPV-drones flying all over the city.

I don't think your friends are being reasonable, why would they think that EU should send manpower to fight Ukraine's war? I agree that EU should do more but EU also doesn't even have army. EU is currently doing things that it isn't even build to do, if eventually EU becomes a superstate then they can help more substantially but unfortunately EU isn't there yet.

People expect EU to do much more that EU can do by design, EU is bunch of sovereign states that coordinate and only some of those states have considerable military power but even those countries politics wouldn't allow much. AFD is pro-Russian party that is the most popular political power in Germany which means EU doesn't have the power and Germany is divided and this goes for almost all countries. Just recently in Bulgaria(which sent substential military help to Ukraine in early days of the war) the pro-Russian political power won in a landslide and today they announced that they cut all the support for Ukraine(they will keep selling though).

EU isn't the thing many people believe it is.

No one is saying that the EU should send troops, but you need to understand that your security depends directly on all the aid you provide to Ukraine. Specifically, on the people who are dying and holding Russia back with their very lives! If they stop doing so, Ukraine will lose territory, and once it loses enough of it, Estonia, for example, will be next. And by then, you and I might even be fighting against the Russians.

I agree with you, Ukraine is essential for the European security and EU should do whatever they can to make Ukraine win but unfortunately EU isn't as integrated as USA yet, countries are still nationalistic entities and EU still needs huge reforms.

The American betrayal(as it is perceived) may push EU into becoming that but it's not there. At it's current form EU does the most it can.

Oh ... well the EU is not actually giving Ukraine much money at all. They are loaning money to them. The reward for Ukrainians' services and lives will be a century of paying back loans to the EU. Still better than being part of Russia, I guess, but.

Why "free will" is critical, is because before Russia attacked, the Ukrainian government had the sense to not in a million years accept such a terrible deal from the EU. As to how free that will really is when constantly under fire with Europe refusing to help it (despite things like the Budapest memorandum) ... is not being discussed.

This has caused a number of EU countries, like Poland and Finland, to decide that a nuclear program to get working ICBMs is a lot cheaper than counting on EU and US goodwill when they're attacked.

Ukraine is also doing a "Chinese-style" nuclear program. The idea is to get every component of ICBMs working. Ukraine, for historical reasons, needs uranium enrichment (it's either that or rebuilding two dozen nuclear reactors). So Ukraine is getting into China's/Japan's position right before they got nukes. Ukraine also has engineers that have actually designed working nuclear bombs. Meaning they're getting to the point that they "don't have nukes, BUT ..."

With the unspoken part being that they're getting to the point where they can have 100 working ICBMs ready to launch by next month.

So we'll have the Ukrainian government, armed with nukes, and a huge involuntary and very unfair war debt to the EU.

Should be interesting negotiations.

But the free will part is critical because without the "free will under pressure" Ukraine would never make itself so incredibly indebted to the EU. And we'll get to see nuclear interest-rate negotations!

I think we need you to provide the numbers about what you consider "very unfair war debt" to the EU.

The 90B€ loan is just the latest mechanism for financial aid, there have been a lot of equipment transfers/donations from member-states, direct financial support for purchase of equipment, countries like Germany and Sweden even changed national laws to allow direct financial support (donations) to Ukraine.

The vast majority of the financial support for Ukraine has been donations, I'm not sure why you think otherwise so sharing the hard data you have could be a good start.

> EU is not actually giving Ukraine much money at all

You are confusing the latest 90B loan with all the other help. Also EU found a way to go around the vetoes by individual countries sending Ukraine help under EU coordination. The grants vs loans is more like 65 to 35 as a ratio.

Also lots of other half truths and unfair commentary, whatever...

Which country are you from?

> Look at Ukraine, how weak they were and how good they defended themselves.

How can you type such nonsense? Look at 2014 Crimean annexation - thats "how good they defended themselves" without western training and billions in weapon aid. After four years they have million plus dead but "this is fine" for the west.

There was no fight in Crimea, Russians rented a base there and one day decided not to extend the rental agreement and that they own Crimea now. Most of the Ukrainian soldiers switched sides and joined Russia and it was over without a bullet fired.

So US may decide that they now own Germany because they have the Ramstein Air base but I don't think it will go as smoothly.

There are old videos from the time on Youtube, check it out.

[citation needed] - if I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain..., the only source that says that there are more than 1 million killed and wounded (!) Ukrainian soldiers is the Russian Ministry of Defense, which I wouldn't consider very trustworthy...

Fair. I stand corrected. First casualty of war is always the truth so both sides will lie.

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