‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending
‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending
Leaders endorse von der Leyen proposal but show of unity over Ukraine is marred by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
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.
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Shore up aid how? With UK’s nonexistent SPGs (they sent basically their entire SPG fleet into Ukraine) and Poland’s SPG fleet that has already been gutted in half from SPG deliveries to Ukraine? Or Germany’s 1 trillion euro aid package proposal to Ukraine which nearly won the horrendous AFD party the election?
I presume by... making things? with the 800 billion euros?
Outrageous. Pish-tosh! Argylbargle!
No way dude! But with what industry though?
In all seriousness, Russia was producing 20-30 T-90Ms per month (or 240-360 per year) in 2024 going off of monthly deliveries. The entirety of Europe cannot even match this. The only country I am aware of that can produce this many tanks per month is South Korea and China. This has likely increased since then but due to increased OPSEC, there have been no videos of batches of T-90Ms (or even T-72B3s) being delivered. But missile production has doubled since 2024 so I would not be surprised that tank production has also doubled to 40-60 per month (480-720 per year).
I have been keeping track of T-90M deliveries for a while now:
It was always around 20-30 per month last year. This means Russia produces more tanks than the amount the entire German military has in a single year. And as I stated, this likely has doubled but it is impossible to verify as OPSEC means we have not seen any deliveries on video for half a year now. Europe can't even produce their own ballistic missiles which have been a game changer in Ukraine as shown by the effectiveness of ATACMS and Iskander-M.
Russia is producing more shells than the entirety of Europe combined who struggles to supply Ukraine with even a million shells (while Russia was producing 3 million per year in 2024).
Noone cares for your Russian propaganda here. Go away. Quit your troll farm job and go do something better.
Yes because everything you disagree with is either propaganda or part of a troll farm. Don’t like my data? Find me better ones.
How I love the standard NAFO reply of “muh propaganda!”
Ahah, your "data" is a footage from Russian propaganda tv showing a tank driving on some field, or some people at a free concert listening to a guy singing badly. Me farting in your general direction is a better source of information.
The videos are deliveries, some of said videos are just tanks on trains.
Those are not all the links I have available, just too lazy right now. Might add more later.
I wouldn't waste my time. That's the only reason you're here, to waste our time.
Reddit links are ‘data’ now???
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Russia us on a wartime economy and struggling with 1 European country that is using a portion of peacetime stocks from the rest of Europe.
If Europe wants to take this seriously, Russia doesn't have a chance.
Russia does not have a wartime economy. They are only spending 6% of their GDP on their military which is comparable to the US or Poland in terms of percentage of GDP. EU has given up far more than just a portion. UK has supplied Ukraine with all of its SPGs. Poland supplied Ukraine with half of its SPGs. The US has supplied Ukraine with 15% of its entire ATACMS stockpile (a missile which is no longer produced and does not yet have a viable alternative due to PRSM still being in low-rate production) as of six months ago. The EU has given up a significant portion of their ammunition to Ukraine. The only thing they did not give is tanks because Ukraine already had a thousand tanks at the start of the war (half of which were modern) which is more tanks than the amount that France, Germany, and the UK have combined.
Most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine per my other comment.
6% is from the public sector. Russia is very much forcing the private sector to also produce and forcing them to take loans.
Which is still not a wartime economy. You are right that Russia is forcing the private sector to pick up the slack. Majority of military spending does not go into the Special Military Operation. The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment alongside crowdfunding campaigns and donations from organizations like the Popular Front.
This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:
Here are donations from the Popular Front:
Chechnya was probably affected the most by this war economically speaking as they have recently taken up the burden of training and equipping a large portion of volunteers:
So most of the federal government's military spending (which is still larger than the entirety of Europe's military spending combined when using PPP which is what really matters when talking about militaries) is actually not being used for the SMO but for a large-scale military buildup for future operations. This means regional governments are the ones footing the bill. But even so, they are not at a wartime footing. These regional governments outside of Chechnya are really only providing their soldiers with the bare essentials which really shows in Russia's performance in this war. Like instead of actual military vehicles, soldiers are recieving old bread loafs and other civilian vehicles.
You must not have been paying attention much, because all the quantity Russia can produce is only managing to hold them in a stale mate.
Except most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is mostly fought with irregulars who are not given the best of equipment. Why waste good equipment on poorly trained irregulars?
Russia had 170 BTGs fully composed of professional soldiers at the start of 2021 but only sent in 64-69 of them in 2022. Russian BTGs were also sent into Ukraine at half strength. This is similar to what happened during the war in Donbas with BTGs keeping half of their strength at home, again similar to War in Donbas.
The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. There is a reason why losses for professionals are so low. Aside from these formations, there is also 51st GCAA and 3rd GCAA made up of former Donetsk and Luhansk units. There is also 3rd AC which is a irregular volunteer formation that was formed during the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov where Russian professionals withdrew under the cover of 3rd AC who was thrown into the meat grinder to stem the tide.
Motorized Rifles: 6,457
VDV: 3,257
Naval Infantry: 1,305
Tank Crew: 1,806
Artillery: 851
Special Forces: 736
Engineering: 291
Navy: 291
VVS: 265
Other: 957
Total: 16,216
Source: MediaZona
For comparison:
US losses from 2003-2005 mainly against insurgents: 5175
Source: Defense Casualty Analysis System
MediaZona also proves that the majority of losses now are volunteers from irregular volunteer formations. These are irregular volunteer formations by the way:
These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment not the federal government. This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:
They also rely heavily on donations:
Thankfully Chechnya has recently taken on the burden of training and equipping them (why you see them being shipped from Chechnya) as shown here:
Chechnya training and sending more batches of volunteers from across Russia to the SMO zone:
Well they better figure it out real quick, now that they finally woke up. Better late than never.
