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Comment by imwillofficial | Hacker News Reader

I come to a different conclusion. As this situation has unfolded, we’ve seen waffling on important issues, such as Germany helping the Ukraine at all, blown promises, such as the planes that never got to the Ukraine, and weapons support that is too little too late.

I see the same Europe as always. Conflicted in direction, visionless in strategy, and slow in implementation.

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Well, the war is merely a week old. The changes that happened aince are profound. And the EU did deliver thousands of AA and Anti-tank missiles. Sure, loads of those are basically Cold War surplus. But deliver they did, figuring out deliveries of weapons that cannot be packed on a truck is different, just look at the length the US had to ge before lend lease was passed to get planes cross the Canadian border.

I don't think I can remember such a unified Europe in my adult life.

EDIT: NATO dod sends tons of help before, mostly money. It's fair to assume that money wasn't spend on new smartphones for everyone.

> NATO dod sends tons of help before, mostly money. It's fair to assume that money wasn't spend on new smartphones for everyone.

With a lot of Western (mostly NATO/EU members, not all via NATO or EU) money and training, Ukraine has, IIRC, doubled the size of and significantly modernized it's military since the Russian invasion began in 2014.

President Biden has been sounding the alarm for a month, "Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine". Literally none of the EU nor NATO members did much until they literally started driving the tanks in. Russia was trying to convince the world they were simply doing military exercises near the Russia/Ukraine border and most of the EU actually believed it!

> President Biden has been sounding the alarm for a month

The White House has been doing that for, at least, approximately 3 months; it's been since early December (maybe even earlier). Here’s the Dec. 7 Press Briefing where it is the main issue:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

> Literally none of the EU nor NATO members did much until they literally started driving the tanks in.

That's very much not true, which is why they were able to do quite a lot right away when the invasion happened despite all the diplomatic efforts to dissuade it.

You really think that? Not even in the background, while readying for the inevitable? It wasn't public or covered by the news, sure. But NATO and the EU did prepare. Just just not openly, because that could have pissed of Putin, and there might still have been the chance to prevent this war.

While we also, additionally use the media frenzy to quietly either bury other topics or do implement laws that would otherwise create a big outcry.

Like throwing money at energy companies to keep nuclear power plants running longer while already having thrown money at them for over a decade for closing down these plants.

I am all for becoming more energy independent. But this is just something I can't wrap my mind around.

Although I agree that weapons support could have been done earlier, you must concede that the western response has been an order of magnitude larger than what happened in 2014. A simple look at the value of the Ruble can confirm this.

As opposed to US and especially UK sanctions which were mild at best?

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