They cannot finance their mercenaries without our aid.
Roughly 2/3rds of all their military hardware at this point is supplied by others."
We must suppose that, given the economic disruptions in Ukraine caused by Vlad the Invader, Ukraine's normal government revenues are virtually nill.
Pre-war, 2021 Ukraine government spending ran around US $30 billion, or roughly 20% of their nominal GDP.
Since Vlad's invasion in 2022, the US and EU pledged a total of around $65 billion in financial aid, in addition to military hardware and humanitarian supplies.
Of that, 40% is from the USA.
As for military hardware supplied to Ukraine, if I understand correctly, the largest single supplier of military hardware to Ukraine is Vlad the Invader, whose orcs have abandoned more usable Russian equipment than Ukraine had to begin the war with.
Red6: "We are keeping this going, no differently than Iran, Syria, and some financiers in Saudi Arabia (even though they are an ally some rich folks there were paying for things in Iraq) kept that going."
A total of 45 countries, plus over 100 companies and NGOs have contributed aid to Ukraine:
Red6: "We are funding and arming the biggest mercenary army ever assembled in Ukraine.
Up until just recently we were talking about international banns on mercenaries and most the Western media was highly derogatory about them."
Ukraine is estimated to have around 10 million men of military age, of whom it's thought 1 million are currently serving.
One year ago, the number of foreign volunteers serving Ukraine's army was said to be around 20,000 and there have been no updates since.
The list of non-Russian militaries fighting for Russia against Ukraine is also quite long and includes:
- Wagner Group (from Old Soviet countries, Syria and Eastern Europe)
- Kadyrov's Chechens
- pro-Putin National Liberation Movement
- neo-Nazi Russian National Unity
- the National Bolshevik Other Russia party
- volunteers from Germany, Hungary and Serbia
- Serbian units within the pro-Russian forces include the International Brigade, Seventh Brigade, Serbian-Hussar Regiment, Ural Unit, First Slavic Unit, Batman Unit, Rezanj Unit[34] and the Jovan Šević Detachment.[35]
- Left-wing volunteers have gone to fight for the pro-Russian forces, accusing the Ukrainian government of being a "fascist state" and seeking to engage in an "anti-fascist struggle".
However, these leftist volunteers have co-operated with far-right groups in Donbas.[36]
Among the initial volunteers were members of the Communist Party of Ukraine, as well as some members of trade unions and labor organizations opposed to the new government that emerged after the Ukrainian Revolution. - A small number of Spanish socialists travelled to Ukraine to fight for the separatists, with some explaining they were "repaying the favour" to Russia for the USSR's support to Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.[25][43]
They were also enlisting in solidarity with those who died in the Unions House fire.[44][45]
Spanish fighters established the 'Carlos Palomino International Brigade', which fought under the flag of the Second Spanish Republic. - Far-right foreign fighters from Europe and to a lesser extent North America have fought alongside the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, including white nationalists, neo-Nazis, fascists and Christian extremists.
Motivations for these fighters have included the belief that they are fighting America and Western interests and that Vladimir Putin is a bulwark for traditional white European values who they must support against the decadent West. - One notable far-right group is the French organisation Continental Unity, which has been accused of recruiting far-right extremists across Europe to come and fight in Donbas. [25]
Other far-right groups include the Bulgarian nationalist Orthodox Dawn Battalion[52] and the Hungarian nationalist Legion of Saint Istvan.[53] - Finnish far-right and neo-Nazi groups have been recruited for the Donbas war by Johan Bäckman and Janus Putkonen who are aligned with the local pro-Russian party.[54][55][56][57]
- Following its 2022 offensive, US and Ukrainian intelligence have alleged that Russia has sought to hire and already deployed fighters from forces it supports in places such as Syria,[59] Libya[60] and the Central African Republic under the command of the Wagner Group private military forces.[61]
Fighters have reportedly included those from the pro-Syrian government National Defense Forces,[62] Central African Union of Peace[61] and the pro-Khalifa Haftar Libyan National Army.[63] - In January 2023, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that just under 2000 soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army, specifically the 25th Special Mission Forces Division, had been deployed to fight on behalf of Russia in Ukraine.
The SOHR had obtained a document allegedly from the Syrian Government, explaining the Syrian Army's budget and salaries affecting Syrian soldiers in Ukraine.[68]
Except by Russian embassies in friendly countries recruiting for Vlad the Invader, of course.
Red6: "We are allowing our tax money to be used for Ukrainian IO operations which target Western audiences and our governments say nothing."
It's certainly true that US media & internet sites almost exclusively support Ukraine.
How many of those are being directly fed propaganda by the Ukrainian government is unknown.
A reasonable guess is that their support for Ukraine is to be found less in what facts they do report than in what they don't -- bad news about Ukrainian losses, mistakes, failures, defeats and low morale, if any.
Red6: "We have provided more money and more weapons to Ukraine than any other nations in history in terms of military aid in that short period of time.
We have pumped as much money into Ukraine, as we have in Israel since we started arming them under Kennedy (1960s)."
Ukraine is arguably Russia's greatest invasion since the Second World War, and the Western response has been, of necessity, correspondingly robust.
Inflation adjusted US aid to Israel since 1949 is circa $250 billion, considerably more than US aid to Ukraine since 2022.
Red6: "We have coerced nations into sanctioning Russia, yet they get their energy and food from Russia: Egypt, Pakistan, Sri Lanka"
There is a long list of countries who support Vlad the Invader directly or indirectly through abstentions or non-voting in the United Nations:
Red6: "We never after WWII found neo NAZI groups to be good or accepted them spreading their ideology before, but I guess the old saying “the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” really is true:"
The entire accusation of "Nazis" or "neo-Nazis" is utterly insane, especially considering that some such groups are supporting Vlad the Invader's orcs in Ukraine!!
Red6: "We (of course there is plausible deniability) likely blew up the Nordstream pipeline.
Blowing up a pipeline through which an ally gets a great share of their energy, that’s a first!"
Clearly, we (the USA) are the beneficiaries of that sabotage, and so naturally we're the prime suspects.
On the other hand, nobody knows for certain who did it, or who knew ahead of time about it, or who may have paid for whomever did the work.
The only one we can be almost certain didn't do it was Vlad the Invader.
Red6: "We saw Western media in some cases actually condoning and talking highly of blatant acts of terrorism, such as the killing of a pro-Russian blogger by a bomb in St Petersburg.
I guess terrorism is so bad, as long as it’s good terrorism, and we get to decide what that is."
I've never seen a single American support terrorism against journalists or bloggers.
I do seem to remember there was something a bit more complicated going on there -- the pro-Russian blogger was supporting one particular faction within Russia, opposed by a different faction?
Red6: "The ONLY difference is scale. We are supplying Ukraine with money, weapons, intel, training, logistics, and are willing to take things further regards sanctions and trying to hurt Russian gas and oil exports at an unprecedented scale.
Turn that spigot off, and the war would have been long over."
Maybe, maybe not.
By all reports, Ukrainians seemed determined to fight and win their independence from Vlad the Invader's orcs and allies.
Without significant worldwide aid, Ukrainians would likely be fighting a much more guerilla-style war from pockets of resistance around Ukraine and from friendly foreign countries.
The war would never be over, and will never be over, until all Russian forces are withdrawn from all of Ukraine.
Red6: "This is our war, Ukraine is merely supplying the bodies and in some cases these aren’t even Ukrainian but are coming from as far away as Columbia, Brazil..."
Nonsense!
It's Ukraine's War of Independence, equivalent to our Revolutionary War, and just as we received major military and financial aid from foreign countries, so is Ukraine today.
But France's aid to us did not make it "France's War", it was still our war to fight and win, or lose, just as today it's Ukraine's war to win or lose.
Red6: "Yes, this is a guerilla war, the only difference is that in this case the outside influence “us” is fueling this conflict in truly epic proportions, not with a few mortar rounds, IR barriers to be used in IEDs, NVGs, sniper rifles, newer RPGs, hand held GPS receivers, and a few Quds forces advising the belligerents like Sadr and his militia in Iraq... No, what we’re doing is HUGE!"
Relatively speaking, our aid to Ukraine is not as huge as was the Revolutionary War aid to us from France, Spain, the Netherlands and others.
It's also worth remembering that for over 100 years now, we've had no closer allies and friends than the Brits.
Indeed, the Brits today are on very good terms with (nearly?) all of their former colonies.
So independence does not necessarily mean permanent hostility.