European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.

But the show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.

The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the draft statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.

    • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      But they finally got what they’ve wanted - NATO spending their agreed amount. Let’s see how it goes 🤷‍♂️

  • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Shore up aid how? With UK’s nonexistent SPGs (they sent basically their entire SPG fleet into Ukraine) and Poland’s SPG fleet that has already been gutted in half from SPG deliveries to Ukraine? Or Germany’s 1 trillion euro aid package proposal to Ukraine which nearly won the horrendous AFD party the election?

    • ilmagico@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Well they better figure it out real quick, now that they finally woke up. Better late than never.

      • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        No way dude! But with what industry though?

        In all seriousness, Russia was producing 20-30 T-90Ms per month (or 240-360 per year) in 2024 going off of monthly deliveries. The entirety of Europe cannot even match this. The only country I am aware of that can produce this many tanks per month is South Korea and China. This has likely increased since then but due to increased OPSEC, there have been no videos of batches of T-90Ms (or even T-72B3s) being delivered. But missile production has doubled since 2024 so I would not be surprised that tank production has also doubled to 40-60 per month (480-720 per year).

        I have been keeping track of T-90M deliveries for a while now:

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        It was always around 20-30 per month last year. This means Russia produces more tanks than the amount the entire German military has in a single year. And as I stated, this likely has doubled but it is impossible to verify as OPSEC means we have not seen any deliveries on video for half a year now. Europe can’t even produce their own ballistic missiles which have been a game changer in Ukraine as shown by the effectiveness of ATACMS and Iskander-M.

        Russia is producing more shells than the entirety of Europe combined who struggles to supply Ukraine with even a million shells (while Russia was producing 3 million per year in 2024).

        • NotLemming@lemm.ee
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          8 hours ago

          Noone cares for your Russian propaganda here. Go away. Quit your troll farm job and go do something better.

          • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            Yes because everything you disagree with is either propaganda or part of a troll farm. Don’t like my data? Find me better ones.

            Yawn

            How I love the standard NAFO reply of “muh propaganda!”

            • NotLemming@lemm.ee
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              8 hours ago

              I wouldn’t waste my time. That’s the only reason you’re here, to waste our time.

        • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          You must not have been paying attention much, because all the quantity Russia can produce is only managing to hold them in a stale mate.

          • NimdaQA@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Except most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine.

            The war in Ukraine is mostly fought with irregulars who are not given the best of equipment. Why waste good equipment on poorly trained irregulars?

            Russia had 170 BTGs fully composed of professional soldiers at the start of 2021 but only sent in 64-69 of them in 2022. Russian BTGs were also sent into Ukraine at half strength. This is similar to what happened during the war in Donbas with BTGs keeping half of their strength at home, again similar to War in Donbas.

            The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. There is a reason why losses for professionals are so low. Aside from these formations, there is also 51st GCAA and 3rd GCAA made up of former Donetsk and Luhansk units. There is also 3rd AC which is a irregular volunteer formation that was formed during the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov where Russian professionals withdrew under the cover of 3rd AC who was thrown into the meat grinder to stem the tide.

            Motorized Rifles: 6,457

            VDV: 3,257

            Naval Infantry: 1,305

            Tank Crew: 1,806

            Artillery: 851

            Special Forces: 736

            Engineering: 291

            Navy: 291

            VVS: 265

            Other: 957

            Total: 16,216

            Source: MediaZona

            For comparison:

            US losses from 2003-2005 mainly against insurgents: 5175

            Source: Defense Casualty Analysis System

            MediaZona also proves that the majority of losses now are volunteers from irregular volunteer formations. These are irregular volunteer formations by the way:

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            These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment not the federal government. This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:

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            They also rely heavily on donations:

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            Thankfully Chechnya has recently taken on the burden of training and equipping them (why you see them being shipped from Chechnya) as shown here:

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            Chechnya training and sending more batches of volunteers from across Russia to the SMO zone:

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  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    10 hours ago

    Trump is an asshole, and the US should absolutely be the leader in defending Ukraine given its stockpiles and technologies and the immediacy of the need.

    At the same time, Europe was able to fund some pretty nice social programs by minimizing defense spending over the last few decades. They could only do that with aggressors on their borders by relying far too heavily on the US.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      The US government spends more per total capita on healthcare than any country with nationalized healthcare, but in the US it covers less than a third of the population.

      The US spends more on defense than anyone but it keeps fucking things up all around the world to justify those spendings.

      The US can afford social programs, it decides not to, so give us all a fucking break.

    • makyo@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I keep hearing this but I’m a skeptic at heart. You wouldn’t happen to have some sources would you?

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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        5 hours ago

        More than likely possible depending on how they came up with valuations on old stock piles from the cold war. Depends on if you value them based on their original cost, or the modern cost to replace them.