The EU and UK have plunged deep into Ukraine's financial quagmire, doubling down on a risky strategy. Both are betting on a Ukrainian triumph over Russia (max stupidity), hoping potential war reparations could offset a looming financial crisis. The European Court of Auditors has sounded the alarm as EU aid to Ukraine surged to €33.7 billion in 2023. A new €33 billion loan facility through 2027 adds to the fiscal tightrope walk. As these Western powers push their chips to the center, the question looms: Are they setting themselves up for a windfall, or a catastrophic bust?
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If Russia loses, I doubt there would be enough wealth to extract and come out ahead. This seems more like warmongering for the sake of distracting from domestic problems.
IMO this will be a great deal. And: they will crush Russia into dozens of states
Russia also played a stupid and dangerous game... I think their interest rate is at 19%? Sounds unsustainable...
Seems like a stretch to go from pushing Russia back to 2020 borders, to breaking Russia up without getting nuked.
Blink twice if you're under duress.
Did Hitler stop at Poland?
If Russia wins then it will not stop at Ukraine.
This is a proxy war between USA and China.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/russia-and-china-unveil-a-pact-against-america-and-the-west
No Western leader can even say what a Ukraine victory looks like. I guess Game Theory would suggest that they shouldn't say what their bottom line is, even if they know it internally. Still, as a citizen it is incredibly frustrating.
To me, Ukraine should be happy to just take a truce that doesn't involve total disarmament and becoming a Russian puppet state.
Agree. A truce is where Ukraine should be. And from there, work out that the precarious geographic situation means negotiating with neighbours. Plural. This might be a reasonable response and a mature POV.
A western leader with a spine could at least admit to draining a nations future wealth and life already, reach for an accord and not finance each other's demise.
But we all know this.
Disagree.
You do not seem to comprehend what is at stake here or even the concept of what war is.
China via its proxy dependency Russia, is challenging the current world order.
A western leader who accommodates war criminals, bullys and military despots, like Putin, is not a good leader and is only sowing the seeds of further conflict and erosion of liberal western democratic values and rule of law.
To disagree is healthy. That's what I learned about life and communism. It's not really life. That said, what do you think is the current world order that is being challenged?
A challenge to the current world order is not one of any considerable merit. Is not honorable and doesn't have any systemic improvement. But the current world order is hegemonic and the challenging power will replace that with another hegemony. No such thing as peaceful ascendance. Just power that abhors vaccums.
Tell me, where is the good leader? Genuinely curious.
As for the 'liberal' values and rule of law. I see less difference between political systems day by day.
You make good points - the current US led global hegemony is FAR from perfect- it is built upon centuries of global imperialism that has trashed almost all other than European christian cultures.
But, in the current context IMO the west with its huge flaws and hypocrisies is still arguably better than China and Iran and Russia and N.Korea who are currently challenging it.
Am open to persuasion on this point but from what I can see Putins Russia in particular is a very nasty piece of work. There is no freedom of speech - opponents are murdered...it is a police state and rife with corruption and oligarchs...not freedom of speech or markets which the west at least partially though far from perfectly, achieves.
The nature of life is that organisms and groups of organisms will fight for supremacy and access to resources.
As for where are the good leaders- IMO we get the leaders we deserve- the cynical attitude of Libertarians to politics and government may not help in this- IMO we are all part of the government- I make my own contribution and many others do as well- democracy is fragile and fails when too few people are prepared to contribute- the corrption of our democracies has occurred with corporate sponsors coming to own our governments- we need to rise up and fight and remove these rentseeking corporate parasites- Bitcoin is a great tool in that difficult struggle.
I agree. Sometimes it's hard to say to what extent. Mostly, I can say I've seen evidence with most of what you said. For example, if I was to assess N.Korean current state of fairs, I have little first hand knowledge, having not seen it with my own eyes.
But largely I agree.
Perhaps if the west's gullible psychopathic liars, as there might be some exceptions (evidenced by the populist opposition to currect insane US, UK and EU policies and the fact that leaders of the east are not all saint by a large margin) presented a better model, proxy wars would not be such a freqent occurance.
That's just to bring balance to the shite governance models of East and West.
Putin is not an existential threat to the west!
No but he is Xis proxy war bitch and he is one useful and significant prong of a deliberate and serious challenge to US/western hegemony.
Ukraine is open to a ceasefire but they rely on NATO for aid including money and post reconstruction
Better than a armed US puppet state with a ongoing civil war and no elections.
Its not max stupidity is ukraine promises them more that what russia does.
Promises are maximal stupid if you know they are impossible.
And a promise is nothing worth if you are lying.
8years of militarising ukraine while playing peace talks is something russia will never forget.
The trust towards the western world is nearly zero.
You trust Putin???
You shouldn't trust any member of the parasitic caste. Never
How do you define 'the parasite caste'?
Anyone who isn't contributing to a society of free voluntary exchange of goods or services but is stealing economic energy from the productive class by force
You consider all politicians as doing that?
Do You know even one of the so called 'representatives of the people' that's working, serving for free and actively reducing the state bureaucracy? That's what I would expect from a useful part-time parasite to serve its people and not to govern and educate them
These loans are a joke. Ukraine can't repay any loans lol
I only wonder how the people are very silent to all of this. Have they accepted the Modern Democratic Slavery there?
I've listened that they have already given away some €30 billion to Ukrraine in 2024 and they have some plans to give something like €20 B more in this year itself.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/9/eu-members-approve-38bn-loan-for-ukraine-backed-by-russian-assets
Is this another installment or some other fund?
Most of Europe caved in to Hitler-
Some of Europe has learned from that.