Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted his European allies Thursday for what he portrayed as the continent’s slow, fragmented and inadequate response to Russia’s invasion nearly four years ago and its continued international aggression.
Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zelenskyy listed a litany of grievances and criticisms of Europe that he said have left Ukraine at the mercy of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid an ongoing U.S. push for a peace settlement.
Zelensky isn’t wrong, but even peacekeeping missions are extremely politically unpopular in Western Europe right now.
The French left is basically saying “it’s not our issue, we shouldn’t get involved”. The far right say the same. The incumbents are barely hanging on to their remaining political capital
This is why I’m not bullish on the notion of a collective European defense. I’m sure it will happen, but how hamstrung will it be with politics?
I’m not bullish on a collective European defence because Europe thinks it’s a spending and rearmament problem, when in fact it’s a logistics and coordination one.
You have a battalion in Spain that you’d need to deploy to Latvia. How do you airlift? Which country has airlifting capabilities, etc.
Very true. People think American military hegemony is about fancy tech and nukes. Really it’s about being able to firehose materiel at an enemy until our populace feels bad about it.
Unless Mélenchon changed his tuned again, last I heard, he was only against loans. Helping, yes, but no strings attached.
I don’t know about Mélenchon but years after the fact I still read a lot of similar slander on the Swedish left. They literally were just in disagreement about how weapons exports should be made possible without breaking existing Swedish legislation, and the issue was addressed in 24 hours, but people still bring up that incident as “the Swedish far left blocked help for Ukraine”.
Wasn’t aware of this, fair then