• @Linkerbaan
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      010 months ago

      Ukraine knew how to use it and has the expertise to support it

      Not necessarily. There’s a reason they needed training for those old tanks. Germany having to grab some random 60 year old civvies to give the training because it was all rotting away in warehouses exemplifies that nobody wanted to use that stuff anymore and we were glad to ditch it. There’s also plenty of old British and French tanks being used in Ukraine right now.

      You are right there is stuff that the Ukrainians had before. But that’s also the problem. We didn’t want that cold war stuff ourselves, we already upgraded from it.

      But when it comes to giving Ukraine our modern new equipment we got all stingy about it. It’s not just F16’s. No Reaper Drones, No modern tanks, even the anti air missiles are often old stuff. But we have new stuff! We just don’t want to give it to Ukraine because then “we have nothing to defend ourselves”.

      Only recently have we really committed to giving Ukraine some newer weapons. But it’s likely already too late now.

        • @Linkerbaan
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          10 months ago

          The patriot stuff is fine. But it took more than one year for Ukraine to get the first ones. Same with the M1A1 tanks

          Ukraine got some good weapons. I’m just saying that especially at the start of the war we were very much just dumping old garbage into Ukraine. If we didn’t do a bureaucratic stall for 1-2 years and didn’t allow Putin to get a war economy going but decisively sent modern weapons to Ukaine, Ukraine would have won by now. Russia did not have a good weapons arsenal at the start of the war.

          But we did not do that and turned the war into a stall fest. Just barely giving Ukraine enough equipment to hold out while bleeding manpower. Zelensky had to regularly go on trips around the world asking for some modern weaponry.

          And now we are finally getting them some new stuff but it’s getting real obvious that it’s just too little too late.

            • @Linkerbaan
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              10 months ago

              Can’t just hand someone an f16 and say happy hunting. Also Ukraine isn’t vetted for the technology. You act like they some trusted ally.

              Yeah that was the excuse we used to not give it to them in the past. So what has changed?

              Sure it takes training to use this equipment. But we did not start that training as soon as possible. We waited 1-2years and now then go “yeah actually you’re getting slammed maybe we can get you some F16s and Patriot missiles”.

              In any case it’s clearly too late now. Unless we start sending massive amounts of modern weaponry to Ukraine it’s basically GG and all that we’re doing now is throwing away more forcefully conscripted Ukrainian men as cannon fodder against Russia.

                • @Linkerbaan
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                  -110 months ago

                  That’s just the generic excuse politicians use. If we truly wanted it those weapons would be there in a heartbeat.

                  Just look how fast the paperwork for israel got done. Genocide Joe tapping his tiger team for that one.. Not for Ukraine as that article clearly states

                  We promised to “not let Ukraine fall”. Half assing it because “we thought they would have already lost” is the opposite of those words.

                  There are no excuses. We clearly did not do everything in our power for Ukraine which is why they are now losing.