Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

crissindahouse said:

PM of Italy: "not going as expected"

Also Italy:

https://app.23degrees.io/view/tAuBi41LxvWwKZex-bar-stacked-horizontal-figure-2_csv_final

I like how Italy does pretty much nothing to help and still expects to see better results. 

Meloni's government partners are, unlike herself, very much against supporting Ukraine (pretty much to the same level of Putin support instead as Orban does), and she had to put them in place more than once because of this. I'm very sure that her partners more than once blocked any support from Italy for Ukraine. To be fair though, Italy doesn't have very much suitable equipment for the Ukraine theatre; they have a big surplus of their Puma 4x4 and 6x6 APC which are getting phased out, but wheeled vehicles are not too useful in the mud of Ukraine. They could possibly send some Centauros or Ariete, but certainly also their Skyguard Aspide systems, as they're getting replaced by CAMM.

France could also do much more, their support so far has been pretty weak. While I can understand why they don't send any tanks (Leclerc is out of production with the tooling already dismantled, so no new ones can be build and no successor in sight), they could definitely send more VAB (they already had 510 of it's successor by end of 2022, and France only sent 60 VAB in summer of 2022). But more importantly, France could do a lot more in terms of artillery and air defense for Ukraine (Looks like France heard my thoughts and have pledged 30 Caesar SPGs to Ukraine in October).

Looking at the list, I was aghast that Ireland send less than Luxembourg. We have less than 1000 soldiers here in our "Army" in Luxembourg for Christ's sake, of course we can't send much, so sending less than that is truly pathetic. I mean, just compare the lists for Luxembourg and Ireland on Oryx's blog...