One of my first comments in this thread was that I don't trust European leaders. And it was mostly Germany and France. For a while it looked like I might have misjudged them, especially Germany, but no. So frustrating.

Ukraine needs all the support and they need it now ffs

Unfortunately we don’t have much to give. Decades of budget cuts means we don’t have tanks for example. None. We sold them all. I believe the only one in our entire country is the one in the Military Museum.

⚡️ Ukrainian military regains control of Marinka, Donetsk Oblast.

According to the General Staff, Ukraine launched a counter-offensive and drove out Russian troops from the city, which is less than 10 km west of Donetsk.

Marinka was last controlled by Ukraine in mid-March.

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 19, 2022

Would be something if Ukraine can impose that kind of threat on the major occupied cities at the present time. Horlivka is the other major city in the Dontesk Oblast under Russian occupation but right on the frontline.

Sucks that Scholz blocks the support with heavier weaponry and I hope he will get even more backlash for it but it also sucks how most other EU countries just hide behind Germany and act as If they can't do anything on their own.

Every country could do much more. Just hiding behind a few bigger countries and letting those get all the blame doesn't change that.

As If countries like Portugal, Spain, Belgium or whatever wouldn't have anything...that's just a lie. Even a few howitzers or tanks from every smaller country would help a little

The argument I hate the most here in Germany is how modern weaponry would take too long to learn. It might be a problem but there are surely some in Ukraine who could have learned in two damn months how to use a Panzerhaubitze 2 or Leopard 2...

To be fair, he's not wrong on this one.

The Leopard 1 is old and seriously outdated, even the T72 is much more modern and powerful; the gun cannot penetrate modern tank armor and the armor is barely enough to withstand autocannon fire. Military History Visualized made a great video about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYZfvi0Ab78

Nonetheless, outdated equipment is still better than no equipment, and against vehicles other than tanks, it should do great. But even then, it would take many weeks to get them combat-ready, since they were standing around for at least 2 decades now. To say nothing about adequate troop training.

Olaf Scholz is in line of his SPD predecessors of not wanting to demonize Russia, feeling an immense guilt over what Nazi Germany did in the Soviet Union, having killed over 20 Million people there, most of them civilians.

However, the Greens and the Liberals don't have this guilt feeling (or at least not nearly to the same degree), which is why his coalition partners are highly in favor of sending more and heavy material to Ukraine. I hope they can push him to send those weapons to Ukraine, every bit can help.

For Belgium, that is actually accurate. They have ordered new material to finally replace all their old Cold War equipment, but none of the new stuff has arrived yet. Out of all the vehicles types, only one armored is not going to get fully replaced, and that one is currently undergoing modernization, while only 5 unarmored are slated to stay in service. In other words, they are waiting for new materiel before they could send out the ones they have in use right now. And out of the ~1700 vehicles ordered to replace the old ones, they got exactly zero so far.

They also only have few artillery and anti-tank pieces. The only thing Belgium could actually send would be FN rifles, but those wouldn't be compatible with Ukraine's WP handgun ammo, making logistics much more difficult an not really worth it for Ukraine.

So no, they actually have nothing to spare and also no old equipment in storage that they could send now.

Portugal and especially Spain don't have that excuse, though. Spain has over 500 old M113 of which they could send a couple to Ukraine in particular.

And people wonder why the US always keeps a strong military. Well, since WW2 that reason is because of Russia.

And China as well.

And as much as the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam wars were criticized, it’s also acknowledged that the US military has a huge advantage over Russia and especially China in terms of modern warfighting experience. 

I swear Russian stupidity account for more "help" than even some of NATO country.