[downvoteme1]

Well if Ukraine did not have the American made weapons, they would have folded in less than a month. The United States has spent close to 100B in aid for Ukraine in the last 6 months and other amounts of money by the EU as aid. All told it is about 5-10x Russia’s yearly military budget.

All in all, Russia is a very weak country with less than 1.5T GDP. As a result, any infusion of huge sum on money by external actors will tilt the balance in the favor of the party that gets the money .

[wahern]

> As a result, any infusion of huge sum on money by external actors will tilt the balance in the favor of the party that gets the money.

Counterpoint: Afghanistan. Money and matériel are surprisingly ineffective without the people and institutions capable of leveraging them.

[mcv]

Exactly. The reason it's worth it to send those weapons, is because Ukrainians themselves are so eager to fight for their country. That is the massive difference between Ukraine on one hand, and Afghanistan and Iraq on the other; Ukrainians know exactly what they're fighting for, and what they're fighting against. I don't think it's possible to break their fighting spirit.

All that spin about NATO fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian is wrong. It's the Ukrainians themselves who want to fight for their country, with or without outside help. The outside help just makes it easier, but they would have fought either way.

[foverzar]

Why imply that Ukrainians motivation somehow excludes NATO from the equation?

NATO provides intelligence, training, counsel and supplies. You can't just pretend it's not involved and that at some point this war didn't become Russia's proxy war with NATO.

[mcv]

Russia may see it as a proxy war, but Ukrainians don't. To them, it's entirely about the future and freedom of Ukraine.

You've got to understand that while the current generation of Ukrainians grew up in relative freedom, their parents and grandparents grew up in the Soviet Union. And now with Putin trying to subjugate Ukraine, they fear that their children may grow up in a similar situation, and possibly worse, with all the Russian talk of genocide.

So that's why they're fighting so hard. They're fighting for their lives, their freedom, and that of their children and grandchildren. That's an incredibly powerful motivator, and I'm absolutely convinced that they'd fight just as hard without foreign support. But that support does give them a better fighting chance, enabling them to fight Russia on equal footing, instead of relying mostly on partisan/guerilla warfare, which is actually what NATO expected to happen.

With or without support, I don't think this is a war that Russia could possibly win; there's just too much at stake for Ukraine, and not enough for Russia. People are generally eager to fight for their own lives and freedom, but not to subjugate others. Especially not a brother nation, as Ukrainians and Russians used to see each other before this.

[foverzar]

IMO, these bitter-sweet kind of "freedom fighting" narratives just too rarely represent real life, and the iceberg of this conflict is surely huge.

There is too much "nothing happened at Tienanmen Square" kind of stuff for "long-sought freedom" kind of scenarios to be believable.

[mcv]

I don't deny that it's rare, but this is a pretty clear and blatant case of it.

That the people of China don't fight for freedom like this is a completely different issue, though maybe not as different as the reason Russian don't. For Ukraine, the situation is quite different, though: they have tasted freedom for 30 years, and there's a clear external party who undeniably wants to take it away from them. Can't get much clearer than that.

[supergirl]

it's silly to compare Ukraine with Afghanistan. Ukraine was an important part of USSR. so they were once the nr. 2 super power in the world. morale helps but it's far from the deciding factor. they were preparing for some time, it's easier to defend, they get huge help from tens of countries. Russia went it too weak. they assembled a force equal in size to Ukraine but you need much more if you're the attacker.

[riku_iki]

I think you are heavily making things up. US heavy weapons started arriving like 3 months from when invasion started, US aid is very far from 100B.

[dprice1]

I was curious about these competing claims, so I googled for the answer.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/317337...

Dated Sept. 28, 2022

"In total, the United States has now committed approximately $16.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021. Since 2014, the United States has committed approximately $19 billion in security assistance to Ukraine more than $16.2 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24."

I'm not sure that all of the money/material has yet reached Ukraine. But that is what is said to be committed.

[nosuchthing]

Most of the weapons given to Ukraine have been lost and unaccounted for.

CBS published this report on the missing weapons stolen by corrupt groups operating within Ukraine. Shortly afterwards they were forced to amend a statement that someone is trying to track the newer shipments, without explaining any sort of actual plan for accountability.

War is racketeering. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzxbS8eUKc

[_kbh_]

This story was retracted by CBS because it turned out to be hugely misleading and is no where near the truth about the situation today. Trying to pass it off as such is at best misleading and at worst actively malicious.

But even going down that path of thinking, it’s amazing Ukraine has decimated the Russian armed forces with only a fraction of the weapons they were supplied with!. /s.

[nosuchthing]

The story was not retracted by CBS, they only removed a quote.

You seem motivated to hide corruption lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_mafia

[qaq]

This is the funniest angle that Russian propoganda stopped pushing like a month ago because they realized how bad it makes their army look.

[_kbh_]

I’m motivated to refute Russian propaganda. Something you seem motivated to spread. The quote was the only part that talked any solid numbers about aid to Ukraine, so how can you even make and analysis.

You also never mentioned the quote is from the very start of the war and how the situation of supplies is very different now.

[qaq]

Also important to remember a portion of funds is being allocated to "trade up" soviet equipment in NATO countries to modern US variants. E.g. US gives modern US tanks to say Poland and Poland gives soviet tanks to Ukraine. Also some equipment has limited shelf life so if not used it would have being replaced in the next few years anyway.

[justsomehnguy]

Yeah, yah, these were just chronoported to Feb 28: https://www.militaryimages.net/threads/ukrainian-military.59...