Your concept of a "trickle" is interesting. The US has contributed nearly as much to Ukraine as every other country combined. (As of September, that was about $92 billion from the US versus about $112 billion from all other countries).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, it does add up to a lot, but it always came in just enough to keep Russia at bay. Also the permissions around where and how which weapons could be used.
When Russia invaded, Putin had no idea how corrupt, weak and inefficient his forces were.
This trickle allowed Russia enough time to turn around much of that, getting us to the point where they are now severely threatening Ukraine. If the military aid was more decisive, Russia could have been defeated early on, and the total spend could have been less than where it is now.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As I mentioned to the other commenter, all countries proceeded with discretion. We also didn't realize how bad of shape Russia's infrastructure was in, so that demanded a slow approach to try and prevent a nuclear retaliation. Now we know that's not going to happen, thus lifting the restrictions on attacking within Russian territory.

It's funny how the opinion on the US's role in this war over the last two years has gone from "WTF are we doing risking a nuclear war with Russia" to today where folks seem to be saying "why didn't we stomp Russia from the very beginning?". The answer in both cases was obvious, I don't know why anyone has forgotten the reason for that initial caution.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I do understand those arguments, and the US has been a true ally to Ukraine - much more than the Europeans who generally didn't spend as much as they should have, and sometimes added additional layers of caution (Olaf Scholz in particular).

But if you take a "don't criticize us" attitude, you won't be open to any lessons that might be learned. The lesson I hope the West, Europe in particular, would learn is that timidity and weakness invites aggression from someone like Putin.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don’t forget that not all aid and support is publicly shared , especially from countries that are within firing range of Putin. It’s actually amazing what we do hear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I know Poland in particular has covertly (and often just quietly) gifted Ukraine quite a number of things. Including tanks and aircraft before anyone else had. It was real confusing for me when Germany was holding off on providing tanks because they didn't want to be the leader/first, meanwhile Poland had been providing tanks to Ukraine for awhile already.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I dunno, I feel like there's a distinction between being timid and being cautious. Yeah we all wish things could have ramped up much faster and knocked Putin back to his bunker like a coward, but if we had misjudged his readiness then there might not be a Ukraine left today. We know better now, and I think Russia's disastrous ICBM testing gave everyone a good idea of what to expect. And the fact that they're not turning to North Korea of all places for support? Yeah it's not looking good for Russia's military.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Most of that money was wasted on domestic corruption.

Essentially Us cleared its stock piles of what they had and dod was severally overcharged on these purchases because stock pile was no in demand.

So Ukraine was getting 1 item for price of 3.

Deliveries were delayed, stuff that was needed was not provided.

Also arbitrary restrictions lifted two years too late.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You do realize no country is going to give up their best military secrets? And the pricing is likely true of every contributing country.

The restrictions were in no way arbitrary. This whole thing has been a game of chicken with Putin. Would you rather that other countries immediately escalated to scare Putin into launching his nukes? Frankly I'm happy it hasn't come to that, and with multiple countries now giving the go-ahead to launch attacks inside of Russian territory, maybe the Russian people will start questioning the motivations behind this war that Putin started.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You do realize no country is going to give up their best military secrets?

WTF are you talking about? Ukraine needed artillery shells and missles. Planes. None of this shit is "secret"

The restrictions were in no way arbitrary

Biden doing it now clearly shows that they were.

You are not providing a rebuttal to my thesis here but merely execusing poor performance with corruption is normal and Putin got nukes lol

Aka US didn't care for Ukraine to win, the goal is to weakem Russia so US provided just enough aid to Ukraine to do this while Ukraine lost initiative so it is now forced to negotiate on US terms.

None of this is to excuse EU behavior as it is their war and we keep 40k troops in Germany alone to defend it against Russia lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, and they were given artillery shells. They were also initially given short-range missiles to limit the range of attacks so Russia couldn't claim we were arming Ukraine for an all-out attack on Russia. And then as more information came in about the state of Russia's military, better missiles were supplied.

The whole point of this was to prevent provoking Russia into a full nuclear launch. It's only been two years, did you seriously forget the concerns with the US getting involved at all? Russia claimed to have the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, and there wasn't much solid information to contradict that claim. It sounds to me like you think everyone should have risked a global nuclear meltdown against a small man who acted like he was the toughest kid on the block, rather than playing it safe in case he really did have all those nukes ready to launch. Sure, NOW we know better, but in February of 2022 there was still a reason to believe he had the capacity, and we certainly know Putin is mad enough to have pulled the trigger.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You keep repeating these talking points like a broken record.

Biden admin policy was either a failure or intentionally idiotic.

Sullivan fuckef up. Cope.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

Talking points... Sure. As if I'm some kind of mouth piece for the current administration. God forbid somebody should have individual common sense opinions about the things that are happening in the world. Maybe come back when you've grown up enough to actually understand the diplomatic necessity of what I'm talking about, because it seems like your whole viewpoint is "throw caution to the wind and burn down the world".