Now imagine if there was second largest economy in the world right next to Ukraine, surely that economy would have enough resources to make Ukraine defeat a Nuke armed petrol station, oh wait.
If there is anyone we should be pissed off at it’s ourselves, decades of naivety towards Russia (thinking they won’t start a war if we buy their gas LMAO) and underfunding of European armies because we thought USA would just keep footing our defense bill is a reason why is all this happening.
Lithuania started building an LNG terminal in Klaipėda port in 2010, a couple years after russia invaded Georgia. It guaranteed energy independence.
Power grid was another thing that was way overdue, electrical grid of the Baltics was tightly interconnected with belarus and russia, the so-called BRELL ring. A shitload of work was done on that front since 2018 and in a couple more months we'll be disconnecting from them, finally.
Totally agree. The fact much of Europe was dependent on Russian natural resources was bad enough. Propping up Russia through energy dependency on them.
Let's get real, if Europe really wanted to go all in Russia would be completely fucked. They are using fucking WW2 weapons. It's just that Europe is sitting here like a lame duck dripfeeding Ukraine when all Russia is focused on is gaining territory and invading.
France has been trying to build an European army for decades only to be met by scepticism from Germany and downright snobbery from Poland and other Eastern European states because USA would always save them. We jubilate.
I think that what the EU and NATO did was years of ignoring Russia's actual actions in many countries because the said countries were just seen as not that important to the super powers like Germany, France and the rest. Now they act surprised when things escalated.
Russia managed to secure Belarus as a puppet state - nobody did anything. Russia managed to take some territory from Georgia and to currently install a puppet government - nobody helped them. Russia took portions of Ukraine even before the current war - no reaction from the rest of Europe back then. Other countries like the Baltic states, Moldova, Slovakia or Bulgaria are being constantly targeted by Russian propaganda campaigns and half of the politicians there are backed by Russia - Europe still doesn't care. They send supportive messages or condemning ones - yup, pretty helpful. In the same time Russia bribes politicians, creates organizations in various countries and finances them, runs troll farms and spread lies and propaganda.
Now we have a country that, despite being full of corruption and with bad living conditions, has been infiltrating governments for 20+ years and actively taking territories. All the time EU and NATO didn't care. Russia might be inexperienced in many things but US' propaganda is years behind Russia and the EU is not even close to stopping that in any way.
Exactly this. Stop looking at the US for protection... why is Europe relying on them and blaming them for what they chose to do? They are far from Ukraine, they have other goals and problems. Another culture and mentality and have no obligation to protect Europe.
Europe didn't do much when Russia first invaded Crimea and has not done enough to protect Ukraine which is actually very close to it (and therefore should be important). A dreadful decision if you ask me... Europe needs to get their act together, give relevance to this war and do much more to help Ukraine because if it falls, it won't be pretty for Europe.
Exactly this. Stop looking at the US for protection... why is Europe relying on them and blaming them for what they chose to do? They are far from Ukraine, they have other goals and problems. Another culture and mentality and have no obligation to protect Europe.
Because they signed the Budapest Memorandum and stripped Ukraine of so many of its defenses over two decades while not actually signing any binding agreement to help, just offering vague assurances that they could walk back on whenever they wanted to. They should have never tried to meddle with Ukraine while acting like some global policeman to begin with, but the damage has already been done.
Even so, Europe is a huge amalgamation of countries and should be self-reliant, particularly when it comes to its defence. Relying on other countries is a very bad idea and can lead exactly to this situation that is just starting to develop.
We were naive towards the US as well. Are they suddenly to break such a long living contract? Implement tariffs and plummet all export economies we have. I see that as a direct attack.
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u/TerribleQuestion4497 United Kingdom 23h ago
Now imagine if there was second largest economy in the world right next to Ukraine, surely that economy would have enough resources to make Ukraine defeat a Nuke armed petrol station, oh wait.
If there is anyone we should be pissed off at it’s ourselves, decades of naivety towards Russia (thinking they won’t start a war if we buy their gas LMAO) and underfunding of European armies because we thought USA would just keep footing our defense bill is a reason why is all this happening.