Posted on 02/01/2024 4:32:43 PM PST by marcusmaximus
European Union leaders unanimously agreed on Thursday to extend 50 billion euros ($54 billion) in new aid to Ukraine, the chairman of the summit said, overcoming weeks of resistance from Hungary and winning praise from Kyiv.
Before the summit started, EU leaders piled pressure on Hungary to lift its block, telling Prime Minister Viktor Orban to pick sides in what several saw as an existential challenge posed by Russia's war in Ukraine, the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
"We have a deal. Unity," said European Council President Charles Michel in a post on X. "All 27 leaders agreed on an additional 50-billion-euro support package for Ukraine within the EU budget."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed the agreement, saying the aid would strengthen long-term economic and financial stability of his country as the war approaches its third year.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The good thing about this move is that it means that US politicians will be getting European money rather than US Taxpayer money.
Obviously it won’t affect the war, since there aren’t any weapons left to give Ukraine (other than the what comes out of our snail’s pace production levels).
One of history’s most massive scams.
Regular Baghdad Bob BS. That stuff would make Karine Jean Pierre blush. Spare me.
If “Orban is a socialist.”
USA-FRANCE is a AZOV national socialist
Well, he can always pull Hungary out of NATO and the EU if he doesn’t like it.
Hungary GDP is among the lowest in the EU. It’s the EU’s version of Belarus.
“Eliminating 50% of Russia war capacity in 2 years ...”
That would be a bargain, but that’s not what happened.
Russia is in the midst of a massive build. And they have fixed the stuff that didn’t work.
What the USA and NATO has “achieved” is running down their munitions inventory, while proving to Russia and China they have no industrial capacity to replace it.
And both of those are supplying Iran/Houthis with drones/missiles to burn up Western navy munitions supply.
Again, more unreplacable inventory being burning up.
Brilliant !
It's no secret.
Brussels threatens to hit Hungary's economy if Victor Orban vetoes Ukraine aid.
In a document drawn up by EU officials and seen by the Financial Times, Brussels has outlined a strategy to explicitly target Hungary’s economic weaknesses, imperil its currency and drive a collapse in investor confidence in a bid to hurt “jobs and growth” if Budapest refuses to lift its veto against the aid to Kyiv.
Orban is wise to pick his fights.
As the leader of a tiny, non-nuclear power, facing worldwide opposition, his options are limited.
Hungary is facing condemnation by Western Media, the EU, and the U.S. State Dept for its "racist" immigration policy, for its anti-LGBT domestic policy, and for being an explicitly Christian nation.
It's election integrity is imperiled by CIA operatives working with domestic leftists, and it may someday face a color revolution.
“Since there aren’t any weapons left....”
From the British House of Commons Report, January 24, 2024, here are some random entries. The full report can be found at researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk:
Denmark
As of January 2024, military support for Ukraine since February 2022 stands at €4.3 billion.84 An additional €2.9 billion (22 billion DKK) has also been allocated to military assistance for 2023 and 2024 through the Ukraine
Assistance Fund, which also administers humanitarian and economic aid.
At the end of November 2023, the Danish parliament agreed to allocate a further €3.1 billion to the fund for 2025-2027.86 Denmark also contributes to the International Fund for Ukraine. Denmark has provided both lethal and non-lethal military equipment, including anti-tank weapons, artillery systems, BMP-2 and modernised T-72 tanks and associated munitions, air defence missiles, ammunition, protective
equipment, bomb disposal robots, medical supplies and fuel.87 The latest package of assistance announced in December 2023 includes ammunition, drones and tanks.88
Denmark has also financed weapons procurement from third countries,89 and is a signatory to the Tallinn Pledge.
Alongside Germany and the Netherlands, in early 2023 Denmark established the Leo 1 A5 initiative, that has provided Ukraine with over 100 refurbished Leopard 1 A5 battle tanks, maintenance support and training.90 Together with
the Netherlands, Denmark will also provide 14 Leopard 2 tanks, which are expected to enter theatre in early 2024.91 In December 2023, the Danish government confirmed that it would also co-finance Sweden’s ongoing commitment to provide CV-90 light tanks, including ammunition, spare parts and maintenance. Denmark is also leading, alongside the US and the Netherlands, on the F-16 Air Force coalition (See Long-term capability coalitions). In August 2023, the
Danish Government confirmed that it would provide 19 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine. Those aircraft will be transferred to Ukraine over the next three years once pilot training is complete.
Finland
Finland joined NATO on 4 April 2023. Prior to this date Finland was providing extensive military assistance to Ukraine. Military assistance, to date, totals approximately €1.6 billion. Initially focused on non-lethal equipment such as protective gear and medical supplies, Finnish support has evolved to the provision of lethal aid.
Twenty one packages of military aid have been approved so far. Details have largely been withheld for security reasons, although recent packages of aid have included anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition. The Finnish government has revealed that six Leopard 2 mine clearing tanks have also been committed to Ukraine, along with training.
Finland is also deploying 20 personnel, until the end of 2023, to the training programme for Ukrainian personnel that is being hosted by the UK (Operation Interflex).
Germany
After initial reluctance to provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance, amid concerns that it would provoke Russia and hamper the diplomatic process,in late February 2022 the German Government announced an abrupt change of policy. In addition to allowing other EU countries, such as
the Netherlands and Estonia, to transfer German-origin lethal equipment, the government announced that it would itself supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.
That assistance has steadily increased, in terms of both quantity and the weaponry provided. Although occasionally beset by internal domestic arguments over the provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry (such as the Leopard 2 tank),Germany is now one of the largest donors of military
assistance, after the United States, having provided €7.4 billion of aid so far.
A doubling of funding in 2024
The total value of authorised funding for security capacity building in Ukraine over the next few years, which also includes replacing inventory sent to Ukraine from the stores of the German armed forces and Germany’s contributions to the European Peace Facility currently amounts to €10.5
billion.
However, in early November 2023 the German Defence Minister said that Germany would double its military aid to Ukraine in 2024 to €8 billion While that decision has been agreed in principle by the government, it must still be approved by the Bundestag at a time when Germany is facing a budget
crisis. Parliament’s Budget Committee approved the budget for 2024 at a meeting on 18 January, and Parliament is expected to make a final decision in early February.
Chancellor Scholz has also called on other EU nations to increase their support, suggesting that planned military assistance “by the majority of EU member states are by all means too small” in order to guarantee Ukraine’s security in the long term.
What equipment is being provided?
According to the German government equipment delivered or committed to Ukraine so far has included anti-tank weapons, autonomous surface vessels,air defence systems (Iris-T and Patriot), man-portable air defence systems(Stinger and Strela), Marder infantry fighting vehicles, Leopard 1134 and
Leopard 2 main battle tanks, MARS multiple rocket launchers,135 selfpropelled howitzers,136 bunker buster missiles, armoured vehicles, mobile ground surveillance radar, reconnaissance drones, mine clearance vehicles,
medical supplies, winter clothing, a field hospital, and over 47 million rounds of small arms ammunition.137 In January 2024, Germany also committed to the provision of six decommissioned multi-purpose military helicopters, the first equipment of this type to be donated to Ukraine by the German government.It is also leading the long term capability coalitions on ground based air defence (jointly with France) and armour, which was announced on 23 January.
Orban could walk away from the Evil West in a minute, except for the fact that his people would depose him. 1956 isn’t ancient history to them.
“Russia is in the midst of a massive build. And they have fixed the stuff that didn’t work.”
Their armaments proved to be second-rate in battle, and they are in a weaker position to produce high-quality replacements today than they were before sanctions went into place.
From Forbes, February 23, 2023:
Large quantities of inferior weaponry won’t carry the day for Putin.
We already knew that the Russian army—in a desperate effort to make good its losses in Ukraine—was pulling old T-72 tanks out of storage, adding 1970s-style optics and shipping them toward the front. Probably to get blown up.
Now it seems the Russians are giving their slightly-better T-80 tanks the same treatment. T-80s are starting to show up with the same outdated 1PN96MT-02 thermal gunner’s sights that could put “war-emergency” T-72s at a disadvantage in Ukraine.
Russia’s nearly yearlong wider war on Ukraine hasn’t been kind to the Russian armor corps. The Kremlin has lost around 1,600 tanks in Ukraine, including more than 500 that Russian troops abandoned—and which the Ukrainians then captured.
That’s three times as many tanks as the Ukrainian army has lost.
While it’s true that Russia has in storage some 10,000 old tanks—T-62s, T-72s and T-80s—many have been sitting outside, exposed to the elements and looters, for decades. Their rubber seals are brittle. Their electronics have corroded. Their optics are cloudy.
It’s not clear how many of the stored tanks are recoverable. It is clear that, when the Kremlin first dipped into its tank reserves last spring, it initially favored 1970s-vintage T-62s, which lack delicate subsystems and thus may have required less reconditioning than, say, a T-72 or T-80 from the late 1980s.
Which is not to say the 40-ton, four-person T-62 with its simple steel armor and 115-millimeter gun is a good tank. It’s not. There’s no evidence of any of the scores of T-62s that the Russian army shipped to southern Ukraine making any difference in last year’s brutal campaign in that region. And the Ukrainians captured enough T-62s to form their own battalion with the aging tanks.
The best thing anyone can say about the war-emergency T-62s is that they bought time for the Kremlin to restore surplus T-72s and T-80s. The latter tanks have better armor than the T-62 has, plus they’ve got 125-millimeter main guns and autoloaders that shrink their crews to three.
Clearly the optics were a problem with the stored T-72s and T-80s. After decades, the gunner’s sights needed replacing. But it’s evident that Russia is struggling to source modern optics.
Many of the emergency T-62s rolled into battle with analog 1PN96MT-02 thermal sights in the gunner’s position. To spot a 1PN96MT-02, look for a small, square window nearly flush with the top left of a tank’s turret.
The 1PN96MT-02 would’ve been state-of-the-art ... in the 1970s. It allows a skilled gunner to engage a target as far as two miles away. That’s just over the half the maximum range of the newer, digital Sonsa-U sight that equips the latest T-90 tanks, as well as a few upgraded T-80s and T-72s.
The problem with the Sosna-U is that it includes high-quality French components that Russian industry can’t seem to duplicate, and which Russia can’t legally import owing to sanctions France imposed after Russian troops invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
The Russian army seems to be saving most of its precious Sosna-Us for its best new T-90s. Yes, a few reconditioned, war-emergency T-80s and T-72s are getting the digital optics, too—but it seems many, perhaps most, of the long-stored tanks are getting much-less-capable 1PN96MT-02 optics, instead.
That’s a problem for Russian tankers. They’re trapped in a technological time-warp, traveling backward to the 1970s at the same time their foes—Ukrainian tankers—are re-equipping with Western tank models including the British Challenger 2, the German Leopard 2 and the American M-1.
If we continue along the path of Slow Joe and his cronies, we won’t have much of a choice of allies left. They are pi**ing everyone off. Saudis, UAE, and Egypt are all joining BRICS.
Yep, pretty much CLEANED OUT everything last year.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I say, the results on the ground CLEARLY show it.
Orban also promised Tucker Carlson an interview with Putin last summer. Tucker got suckered.
Plus 100!
“ Orban is weak. All bluster. Like Lukashenko.”
****************************************************
De Minimus has bad things to say about ANYONE WHO RESISTS the GLOBALISTS.
That’s a Regime media wishful think-piece from 2023 pre-Counter-Offensive.
By contrast. Here is the latest Estonian assessment, where they upped their assessment of Russian munitions production by “many times”.
“Martin Herem, the commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, said predictions that Russian forces would reach the limits of their resources haven’t come true. President Vladimir Putin’s military has the capacity to produce several million artillery shells a year, far outstripping European efforts, and can recruit hundreds of thousands of new troops, he said.”
Herem referenced an earlier estimate that Russia could produce a million artillery shells a year.
“A lot of people thought they couldn’t go beyond that — today, the facts tell us otherwise,” Herem said in an interview in Tallinn. “They can produce even more — many times more — ammunition.”
https://news.yahoo.com/nato-underestimating-russia-war-machine-135534512.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
By contrast, what we see from NATO is planned munitions production falling drastically below target.
“The Finnish government has revealed that six Leopard 2 mine clearing tanks have also been committed to Ukraine, along with training.”
Those ploughs were destroyed in the first day of the Counter-Offensive.
The EU produced 1/3 of planned artillery ammunition in 2023.
US wonder-weapons are being produced at half the contract rate - which is minuscule to begin with.
Some of us warned at the time that Western deindustrialization was a threat to national security. But ‘muh Capitalism free traders knew better.
And here we are.
VIDEO
€50 billion for Ukraine. Address of President
Office of the President of Ukraine
01.02.2024
6:47 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8kHAD4ywjo
Today the EU has made a long-awaited decision: €50 billion for Ukraine. A support program. A long-term program for four years. This means Ukrainians have financial guarantees for our social stability. The decision was adopted today at the meeting of the European Council – at the level of leaders. The Ukrainian team and our friends in the EU have been working quite thoroughly and actively for this decision – through various channels and at various levels.
Europe has demonstrated exactly the kind of unity that is needed. 27 countries – together. The EU institutions – in full cooperation. This is a clear signal to Moscow that Europe will withstand and that Europe will not be broken by any destructive waves that the Kremlin always comes up with. But at the same time, it is a clear signal across the Atlantic that Europe is taking on commitments. Security commitments. Strong commitments. We are waiting for America’s decisions.
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