A lack of cohesion comes into it too I would think.
I don't think there's a lack of money - after all, the EU has just pledged more:
euro-sd.com
I don't think there's a lack of money - after all, the EU has just pledged more:
EU agrees $5.5bn boost for military aid to Ukraine
The move provides a welcome boost for Kyiv as US support wavers and its outgunned forces struggle to hold back Russia.www.aljazeera.com
the problem is that they don't have the hardware or (as yet) the manufacturing capacity to make the hardware Rheinmetall has just broken ground on a new facility for making artillery shells:
Rheinmetall breaks ground on new factory designed to make Germany self-sufficient in artillery ammunition - European Security & Defence
Rheinmetall is building a new factory at its Unterlüß site in Lower Saxony, further enhancing Germany’s self-reliance in ammunition production.
so actual product is still some years away. On the other hand, the USA has plentiful stocks (it helps that you're more or less perpetually at war with someone). I'm sure they can be purchased, and it doesn't even reguire any US funding. I think @Bart is correct - in a reversal of the New Testament saying, the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak.
Well, I think that with political will, there's plenty of opportunities to ramp up production of basic munitions and such.
Is there any significance in the fact that they were the 6 original members of the EEC?
Well spotted.
I doubt that, we had and probably still have large quantities of our own numpties in the sticks.
In almost every democracy you are disqualified from becoming an MP when you have got criminal records but even if you were active communist responsible for throwing people to a prison for no reason, stealing from citizens or you were in charge of communist's secret service killing people you are still good enough to become MEP. That's mad.
Like always Russians want peace but bloody West Countries are against.
...there was a deal on the table that would have ended the war but that the Ukrainians walked away from it because of a combination of pressure from their Western patrons and Kyiv’s own hubristic assumptions about Russian military weakness...
They are saying that US was against having Ukraine in NATO when as early as 2008 United States, Canada, Poland, Romania, the Czechs and the Baltic States, strongly supported Ukraine and Georgia becoming NATO action plan members; however, they were strongly opposed by Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium.
NATO: No MAP For Georgia Or Ukraine, But Alliance Vows Membership
www.rferl.org
Instead of that Germans started their Nord Stream project weakening position of Ukraine
https://carnegieeurope.eu/2022/01/26/why-germany-is-undermining-nato-unity-on-russia-pub-86279
There is a long story about collaboration Ukraine in NATO and they have received security assurances in 1994 from the United States, Russia and Britain in a exchange for removing nuclear weapons from Ukraine area what was declared again by Russia and the United States in 2009 confirming that the security assurances made in the 1994 would still be valid after 2009. Like you can see it didn't last long as in 2014 Russia took over Crimea.
The Trilateral Process: The United States, Ukraine, Russia and Nuclear Weapons | Brookings
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine had the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. When Ukrainian-Russian negotiations on removing these weapons from Ukraine appeared to break down in September 1993, the U.S. government engaged in a trilateral process with Ukraine...
www.brookings.edu
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