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0 pointsalephnerd1y ago0 comments

I agree that we in the US need to continue defending the Budapest Memorandum and helping Ukraine where possible.

That said, individual European nations have had over a decade to re-arm and further help Ukraine (even before the 2022 invasion), but it ended up primarily being US, UK, Canada, and Turkiye providing support and training for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

European states are starting to step up, but using Trump as a punching bag to distract from the very real issue of Central Europe's pigheaded lack of preparedness is foolish.

We are starting to see these changes now with Starmer and Macron's announcements, but plenty of individual European states are not viewing this crisis seriously enough, as Poland's Donald Tusk pointed out today [0]

[0] - https://tvn24.pl/polska/szczyt-w-paryzu-donald-tusk-przed-wy...

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rasz1y ago

Donald Tusk also said today there is no option of sending Polands army to Ukraine because "Polish army is for defending Poland borders", its like he forgot what happened in 1939 :|

alephnerdOP1y ago

Appears to be because of Kaliningrad Oblast and Belarus:

"Poland simply doesn’t have the additional capacity to send troops to Ukraine,” said a senior Polish official who spoke on condition of anonymity, noting the country has long borders with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Russia-allied Belarus, which need to be reinforced with Polish forces. “The French are far away so they can send soldiers to Ukraine; we’re close so we cannot.” [0]

The biggest hurdle that caused the current emergency talks to fail appears to be Germany and Scandinavia (as usual).

[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-leader-donald-trump-...

thecopy1y ago

Agreed

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