[jonkoops]

It is a war we must fight now, and must continue to fight. It is a war against oppression, against autocrats squishing their population for servitude. If nobody steps up to protect Democratic values, and the freedom of the people for self-governance, it is a slippery slope to hell.

[carlosjobim]

What are you doing here then? Shouldn't you be in the trenches or in a factory making artillery rounds?

Or who is "we"?

[ben_w]

Not op, but:

Paying taxes to fund an army.

The EU isn't doing any direct fighting in the Russian-Ukranian war, we are however donating and selling things, and being a refuge for those who quite understandably fled in fear of their lives.

Nobody's actually violated our sovreignty yet, we have no casus belli to go to war. But as the phrase the bullet cartridge is named after goes: Si vis pacem, para bellum.

[lurk2]

Ukraine accepts foreign volunteers.

[rjzzleep]

If you really needed to fight, what you would have done was build a couple nuclear power plants, build some factories using Russian resources that they were giving you cheap, churn out some weapons and THEN go for war. What it did instead was watch the US blow up it's pipeline, harakiri its own nuclear power reactors, rent mobile Norwegian LNG terminals and make itself completely dependent on American weapons and Energy.

This is all preformative nonsense of EU elites that despise the European public and call Trump daddy to continue riding the Eurocrat gravy train. It's actually good for Europe that this mess is coming to an end. But the price was way too high and unnecessary.

[lurk2]

> If nobody steps up to protect Democratic values, and the freedom of the people for self-governance, it is a slippery slope to hell. reply

Ukraine hasn’t had an election in 7 years.

[ajam1507]

Not holding elections during a war does not mean you aren't a democracy.

[lurk2]

Yes it does.

[Anamon]

No, it doesn't.

Ukrainians have been repeatedly polled and the majority don't want to hold elections in wartime. That's democratic.

Holding an election while a foreign aggressor is occupying part of your territory and terrorising its population, enabling them to suppress and manipulate their votes: that's undemocratic.