Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[shavenferret]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Ryuu96 said:

We're at the stage where Trump even refuses to sell weapons to Ukraine, despite them saying they would be willing to buy the weapons, I thought Trump liked money? I suppose his love of Putin outweighs his love of money. They told us that this was about not giving Ukraine handouts, they told us Ukraine can't "keep taking money off Americans" but when Zelenskyy outright says he will be willing to buy the military equipment with Ukraine's own funds, Trump says no, he isn't allowed, so all the excuses they used prior were obvious bullshit.

Trump has fully turned on Zelenskyy: "He's always looking to purchase missiles. Listen, when you start a war, you gotta know you can win a war. You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 14 April 2025 at 16:56

Well, looks like European rearmement will accelerate even more to make up for the American shortfall.

In the meantime, Ukraine will have one serious shortage, and that's Patriot missiles.

France and Italy developed the Aster missile family that is equal if not better than Patriot in it's terrestrial SAMP/T form (there's also a differently named naval version), but those are in very short supply, both the launchers and the rockets. Ukraine only has one (potentially 2, Italy announced the future shipment of a second system in June 2024 but no news of it's delivery in the meantime) system, which absolutely won't be enough to protect Ukrainian skies from any long-range missiles and aircraft.

MDBA and Thalès in France and Italy need to seriously step up their production to get enough launchers and missiles for Ukraine and then the rest of Europe later down the line

I read this the other day and you just jogged my memory of reading the article. But, Ukraine is developing its own missile defense, and it should be "ok", but not great. Ukraine may be fielding this next year sometime.

https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/ukraine_develops_strategic_air_defense_system_invites_eu_to_join_the_effort-14184.html