Leaders endorse Ursula von der Leyen proposal as French president calls Vladimir Putin ‘an imperialist who seeks to rewrite history’

European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.

But the show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.

The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the draft statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Are you missing the part where Russia has to produce so many tanks because Ukrainians keep blowing them up?

    Ukraine has also had a lot of success with Storm Shadow missiles. I’ll let you google where those are made.

    And of course Ukraine on it’s own is now producing about 50% of the number of shells Russia produces. And there’s a lot of drones that Ukraine is producing, which have proven to be very effective against the Russian military.

    Russia will soon be broke from this war. It will take a decade for Russia to have the military strength to take on the EU and that can only begin when Russia ends it’s war with Ukraine. In that time the EU can build a strong force to counter Russia.

    The free world doesn’t need the US, and it certainly doesn’t need Russia.

    • NimdaQA@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      1 day ago
      1. Oryx states otherwise. Russia has only lost 127 T-90Ms despite producing 240-360 in 2023 and likely double that this year. Russia has only lost 789 T-72BA and T-72B3 tanks after three whole years of war despite having 2,650 of them at the start of the war with hundreds of older T-72Bs being taken out of storage and modernized to replace losses.
      2. Storm Shadow is not a ballistic missile but a cruise missile. Only 3,000 have been produced after 2 decades while Russia produces more than 500 Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles per year. And the Kh-101 is much longer range… Including other air-launched cruise missiles, Russia is producing around a thousand per year. Production has also been outpacing use.
      3. Ukraine has a wartime economy spending 30% of its GDP. Russia meanwhile is only spending 6% of its GDP on the military (comparable to US and Poland in terms of percentage of GDP.