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Ukraine V

I thought Biden spoke very well in Poland yesterday looking every bit the elder statesman. Thank God for the US as Europe has played Putin badly and left itself dangerously exposed to his expansionist machinations.
 
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ks.234 said:
Fine words, but is the $500m promised enough?
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Drop in the ocean, i think total US aid over the last year is over GBP70Bn.

Some of that isn't over publicised as Biden is struggling to find a central line and upset as few as possible.

Spoke to a few Americans earlier in the month and they felt this is a job that has to be done; as in return Russia to the internationally agreed borders.

If it goes well we might have to spend the same again to rebuild Ukraine and possibly Russia if their politics allows.
 
dweezil said:
Drop in the ocean, i think total US aid over the last year is over GBP70Bn.

Some of that isn't over publicised as Biden is struggling to find a central line and upset as few as possible.

Spoke to a few Americans earlier in the month and they felt this is a job that has to be done; as in return Russia to the internationally agreed borders.

If it goes well we might have to spend the same again to rebuild Ukraine and possibly Russia if their politics allows.
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Fair point.

However, to your last point, it won’t the US that has to spend when it comes to rebuilding Ukraine, it will be Ukraine. If US economic policy follows its usual lines it will be looking for profit, not cost. The funding will come from IMF and World Bank loans with ‘conditionalities’ attached. Conditionalities like the usual demands to privatise, deregulate and cut public spending, which will only make ordinary people poorer, as such policies always do
 
dweezil said:
Drop in the ocean, i think total US aid over the last year is over GBP70Bn.
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About these aid sums, some of that aid isn't actually going to Ukraine.
What I mean is that if the US sends say 100.000 shells of artillery ammunition to Ukraine, it will be from their storage and they will send the oldest ammunition first. Then the replacement of that ammunition with new shells to top up the stocks is paid for by the aid budget.

But the value of shells nearing their best before date is not the same as the cost of buying new shells. So only a part of the earmarked money can be said to actually go to Ukraine.
The US also sends things like M113 APCs. They have a lot in storage, but they are so old, that they were not really expecting to ever use them in combat themselves anymore. What is the real value of vehicles like this? For these reasons, military aid is difficult to put a value on.

Also going forward it will make sense that each country gives what they are good at. There was recently some news about US 155mm shell production and how it was not enough to cover Ukraine's needs. But why would the US even need to provide bulk 155mm shells - they can send speciality ammunition. The EU already has much more artillery shell production capacity sitting around that the US. Even Australia's capacity is about the same as the US peacetime production volumes.

Also, the cost of producing shells in say the Czech republic is less than in the US because salaries are lower.

On the other hand there is a lot of aid given directly as money in order to prevent Ukraine from going bankrupt and there is a lot of humanitarian aid as well + in Europe the costs of welcoming Ukranian refugees. None of these factors are very easy to directly compare against each other.

There are also factors, like that the US will probably make the money spent on sending HIMARS back over time, because everyone else (not literally but you get the point) wants to buy HIMARS now too.

So I think the sums announced are rather meaningless in the end, especially if we want to use them to compare countries to each other, which is also of questionable value in the end.
But until now it has probably served to pressure countries giving aid into making sure they are doing their part.
 
Surely the point is that the US and the UK have more than enough arms to send to Ukraine to meet their requirements. The question is, why is it not happening?
 
ks.234 said:
Surely the point is that the US and the UK have more than enough arms to send to Ukraine to meet their requirements. The question is, why is it not happening?
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Political resistance, the fear of Russians or others getting hold of some high-tech to copy, the cost of replacement, Putin's ever appearing red lines etc.

I don't know about the UK, but the US is actually manufacturing more than they think they will ever need of some weapons just to keep up production and the know-how in case there is ever a war. But the best US stuff is also designed to operate by the US and that means supported by US logistics - which is not present in Ukraine.

Japan takes another route and builds everything small-scale but over very long delivery times (e.g. build 10 tanks per year over 20 years). This is not cost-effective but it will ensure the know-how and capacity to scale up is always there.

I suspect the UK like all European nations is focusing on getting the most bang for the buck, which means there isn't the capacity to just start building old models and their spare parts again. The designers have retired and the tooling is adapted for something else. There also isn't a huge stockpile of the latest stuff, because why would you overspend on defense like the US?

In Finland even the storage of old gear was considered too expensive and so 10-15 years ago we scrapped like 200 T-72s, a lot of 152mm and 130mm Soviet-era artillery, BMPs etc. Today that could all have been sent to Ukraine - but alas it was no longer available. Other countries have a lot of things in storage, but also didn't want to pay too much for it so they just left them in a warehouse and now they need restoration before use.

I doubt the UK or US or any other nation have the ammunition stores to supply Ukraine long-term. This is a classic mistake by every nation before every war ever - there is never enough ammunition because it gets old and if you have enough for a war, you have to throw away a lot during peacetime. The one exception was the USSR who built heaps and heaps of everything and those stockpiles are now being used (up) by Russia.
 
The Prigozhin- Shoigu spat is reaching its climax beautifully. Once a private businessman throws down the ‘treason’ gauntlet before the defence minister and chiefs of staff, it usually ends up in a terrible air accident or similar. Justice would be best served of course if that task was carried out by the Ukrainian army during one of his morale boosting visits to the front.
 
Chefren said:
Political resistance, the fear of Russians or others getting hold of some high-tech to copy, the cost of replacement, Putin's ever appearing red lines etc.

I don't know about the UK, but the US is actually manufacturing more than they think they will ever need of some weapons just to keep up production and the know-how in case there is ever a war. But the best US stuff is also designed to operate by the US and that means supported by US logistics - which is not present in Ukraine.

Japan takes another route and builds everything small-scale but over very long delivery times (e.g. build 10 tanks per year over 20 years). This is not cost-effective but it will ensure the know-how and capacity to scale up is always there.

I suspect the UK like all European nations is focusing on getting the most bang for the buck, which means there isn't the capacity to just start building old models and their spare parts again. The designers have retired and the tooling is adapted for something else. There also isn't a huge stockpile of the latest stuff, because why would you overspend on defense like the US?

In Finland even the storage of old gear was considered too expensive and so 10-15 years ago we scrapped like 200 T-72s, a lot of 152mm and 130mm Soviet-era artillery, BMPs etc. Today that could all have been sent to Ukraine - but alas it was no longer available. Other countries have a lot of things in storage, but also didn't want to pay too much for it so they just left them in a warehouse and now they need restoration before use.

I doubt the UK or US or any other nation have the ammunition stores to supply Ukraine long-term. This is a classic mistake by every nation before every war ever - there is never enough ammunition because it gets old and if you have enough for a war, you have to throw away a lot during peacetime. The one exception was the USSR who built heaps and heaps of everything and those stockpiles are now being used (up) by Russia.
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Informative post. Thanks
 
sideshowbob said:
At last, a prominent figure from the Labour left shows what internationalism means. Good on John McDonnell.

https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/02/21/the-ukrainian-question-for-socialists
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Internationalism and typical of Old Macdonald a complete lack of judgment.

The TU in Ukraine he apparently helped start was - "Opposed to Ukraine joining NATO" and he himself admits - "I remained sceptical that Putin would be so reckless as to risk launching a full scale invasion.Events on 24th February 2022 proved me ....wrong."

Thank God he never held high office as the electorate saw him off in 2019.
 
Spraggons Den said:
Internationalism and typical of Old Macdonald a complete lack of judgment.

The TU in Ukraine he apparently helped start was - "Opposed to Ukraine joining NATO" and he himself admits - "I remained sceptical that Putin would be so reckless as to risk launching a full scale invasion.Events on 24th February 2022 proved me ....wrong."

Thank God he never held high office as the electorate saw him off in 2019.
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In fairness to John Mc D., many, many people made that mistake. He is big enough to admit it and take his thoughts to a logical conclusion.
 
PsB said:
In fairness to John Mc D., many, many people made that mistake. He is big enough to admit it and take his thoughts to a logical conclusion.
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Exactly. His current position is a good one, and he admits he previously got it wrong. Good on him.
 
I am pleaded to see this intervention and look forward to him getting involved with a serious push for Unions and socialism at home. A bit tongue in cheek but I am surprised and disappointed that once Suck 'Ere made his absence of integrity and principles obvious to all, the left has appeared unable to mount a serious challenge.
 
sideshowbob said:
At last, a prominent figure from the Labour left shows what internationalism means
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I don't know about internationalism but I would have thought Ukraine is one subject area where it would be difficult to criticise Sir Kier unless of course you were from Stop the War, Corbin etc.

Starmer went to Kiev just last week to reassure Zelenskyy (from the Guardian) - to emphasise Labour’s commitment to backing action to arm the country against a renewed offensive by Russia.
 
Spraggons Den said:
I don't know about internationalism but I would have thought Ukraine is one subject area where it would be difficult to criticise Sir Kier unless of course you were from Stop the War, Corbin etc.

Starmer went to Kiev just last week to reassure Zelenskyy (from the Guardian) - to emphasise Labour’s commitment to backing action to arm the country against a renewed offensive by Russia.
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This has nothing to do with Starmer's position on Ukraine (and McDonnell makes no criticism of that in his piece anyway). It's just very nice to see a leading Labour leftist taking a good position on the war, because most of them (including Corbyn) have been dreadful, spouting meaningless inanities about peace whilst refusing to unambiguously recognise Ukraine's unconditional right to defend itself against aggression.
 
sideshowbob said:
This has nothing to do with Starmer's position on Ukraine (and McDonnell makes no criticism of that in his piece anyway). It's just very nice to see a leading Labour leftist taking a good position on the war, because most of them (including Corbyn) have been dreadful, spouting meaningless inanities about peace whilst refusing to unambiguously recognise Ukraine's unconditional right to defend itself against aggression.
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Fair enough. Quite a few on here think its the fault of:

1. James Baker

2. Tony Blair

3. Brexit

4. Primarks new owners

5. Centrist Dad
 
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