If Ukraine is so awesome how is it that they spent since 2014 mobilizing for this with the help of NATO and still need half a trillion dollars of support in only a little over a year? I’m not saying the EU is any better, but some reality on their capability as a stand alone force needs to be realistically considered. They were unprepared for this conflict, as it appears was the entire rest of the world. And It’s apparent Russia, although ready to go the distance, was as well in the initial stages.
NATO power is mainly US , Europe mostly has tiny bonsai armies that are only formidable when all combined
Ukraine fields north of 700k men + 100billion in NATO arms assistance,its not even close to stand-alone capability when 96% of Ukraine's military expenditures are covered by foreign parties and all the supply and ISR is outsourced, but top European militaries have sub 200 tanks and about 100k soldiers
Ukrainian military budget is currently larger than any in Europe , and unlike Euro budgets that are mostly for paying wages ,Ukrainian is mostly procurement
Germany cca -220 tanks of which 180 might be operational, only 20 or so are modernized Leopard2 A7
The British Army has 227 Challenger 2 tanks – though many are not operational
French Army has 200 Leclerc tanks and 17 ARVs - not all are in an operational state
Ukraine had 900MBTs before any Nato supply, at least 500 MBTs have been supplied since from East European stocks
There is no single active tank production line in Europe, Leopard 2 hulls are hand built in Greece and assembled in Germany at a pace of 20-40 per year.
UVZ alone produces more tanks than all world tank factories combined.
People underestimate how heavy European armies divested from own stocks to supply Ukraine, some countries like Denmark gave 100% of their artillery. You hear only how Brandon signs new aid packages every week but most of the heavy gear is supplied from Eastern European stock and is now scavenged in Africa and even Pakistan
Till the start of Ukraine war 500 armored vehicles and MBT were cut up for scrap every year by a single German scraper.
Look at the budgets for whole of Nato , most of the budget is fixed for pay,benefits ,running cost , only tiny portion for procurment
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