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‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Russia does not have a wartime economy. They are only spending 6% of their GDP on their military which is comparable to the US or Poland in terms of percentage of GDP. EU has given up far more than just a portion. UK has supplied Ukraine with all of its SPGs. Poland supplied Ukraine with half of its SPGs. The US has supplied Ukraine with 15% of its entire ATACMS stockpile (a missile which is no longer produced and does not yet have a viable alternative due to PRSM still being in low-rate production) as of six months ago. The EU has given up a significant portion of their ammunition to Ukraine. The only thing they did not give is tanks because Ukraine already had a thousand tanks at the start of the war (half of which were modern) which is more tanks than the amount that France, Germany, and the UK have combined.

Most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine per my other comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

6% is from the public sector. Russia is very much forcing the private sector to also produce and forcing them to take loans.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

Which is still not a wartime economy. You are right that Russia is forcing the private sector to pick up the slack. Majority of military spending does not go into the Special Military Operation. The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment alongside crowdfunding campaigns and donations from organizations like the Popular Front.

This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:

Link

Here are donations from the Popular Front:

Link

Chechnya was probably affected the most by this war economically speaking as they have recently taken up the burden of training and equipping a large portion of volunteers:

Link

So most of the federal government's military spending (which is still larger than the entirety of Europe's military spending combined when using PPP which is what really matters when talking about militaries) is actually not being used for the SMO but for a large-scale military buildup for future operations. This means regional governments are the ones footing the bill. But even so, they are not at a wartime footing. These regional governments outside of Chechnya are really only providing their soldiers with the bare essentials which really shows in Russia's performance in this war. Like instead of actual military vehicles, soldiers are recieving old bread loafs and other civilian vehicles.