(Reuters) - Ukrainian troops are suffering high losses because Western arms are arriving too slowly to equip the armed forces properly, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CNN in an interview aired on Sunday.
Russia has been gaining ground in parts of eastern Ukraine including around Pokrovsk. Capture of the transport hub could enable Moscow to open new lines of attack.
Zelenskiy said the situation in the east was “very tough”, adding that half of Ukraine’s brigades there were not equipped.
Some of it,such as the f-22, the US can’t legally sell or give to them by law. It’s literally against the law.
Also there is the cost of the rest of it. If the Ukraine government is paying for it then yes sell it, but some of it is not being paid for. Some of it is being GIVEN. That costs money from the US tax players. At some point that well runs dry. You can’t just keep giving and giving. It doesn’t work. So since this has gone on long enough maybe it’s time to end it.
As for Ukraine saying no troops. Let’s recap. If the Ukraine was paying for ALL of it then I’d say just keep selling equipment to them. Sooner or later one side or the other breaks. But some of it is not being paid for. The dollar amount is getting large of what congress has authorized so far. How long before our budget says wtf?! Sooner or later either we stop giving to save our economy or we send troops before we get to that point to end it faster.
Yes I know Ukraine is saying no troops but there is the other half that equation. Ukraine is going to have to make a tough call at some point, unless they figure out how to beat Russia before that point.
Money is a finite item, it is not infinite
Money is spent within the US and used to procure new stuff. At the same time the US sends their dated stockpiles to Ukraine. The US spends money maintaining stockpiles (keeping stuff operational is not free) and explosives have a shelf life, so once near expiration it needs to be either refurbished or disposed of and both cost money too.
Money is virtually endless in this aspect, as the amounts spent on this for help to Ukraine amounts to a small percentage.
The total spent is 177 billion since the start of the war, of which 107 billion is sent, the rest is used by the us military to cover the cost of the help (logistics, oversight etc.).
In the same period the US military had a budget of 817 billion a year… and we are in year… 3 so 60 per year out of 817 billion. And again the 107 billion is spent on buying replacement stuff from US defence contractors who employ US workers and pay US taxes. This is not as expensive as you think. The other 70 billion pays US military costs. So in essence it is an increase in us defense spending.
If your numbers are accurate, and it is just an increase in us defense spending at the end of the day, then I’m less concerned about it
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It was for what I explained above. This is money that is spent on top of the 817 billion us defense budget.
Yeah. Sadly i agree. It’s on top of. 35.3 trillion at this point in debt. We can’t keep going like this. It’s why I say I’m less concerned but not going to say I’m not concerned. It’s also why I say if we are going to keep spending then maybe we need to figure out if there is a way to end this thing faster. At some point the well of cash runs dry. What happens when we can’t spend more and Ukraine is sitting without weapons?
Yes the old weapons are going to Ukraine and we get new stuff, but as your numbers show it’s still spending more money at the end of the day.
It just comes down to how much of an increase and where that break even point is.
The US has been letting their mega corps and billionaires get off without paying proper taxes for decades. How many trillions did trump add to the deficit with his tax cut for the rich?
These issues are probably fixed by stopping with Reaganomic thinking. Taxing unrealized capital gains, disallowing stock buybacks and switching to a method of revenue based taxing as the profits just flow to tax havens and sit there.
Edit: also you know that the US military complex as a whole is just a gigantic social security program with extra steps, right?
I agree with everything that you said except taxing unrealized gains. That is dumb as hell.
I’m basically broke. But I have a few stocks that I own. If they go up , I should pay taxes even if they then go down? Which makes it even harder to get ahead. Exactly how is this a good idea?
Are we going to magically set the dollar amount to only include the ultra wealthy even though we all know they won’t pay anyway because they’ll make it appear on paper they didn’t make that much and only the middle class and poor people will pay? (Holy shit was that a run on sentence. Meh I’ll leave it).
But anyway yeah I’ll agree with the rest of it