The EU has to start to replace NATO. That at least means some shared assets like maybe ballistic missile defense, AWACS and similar assets. Combined procurement would also be a great idea. Something like ESA, but with some common EU funding as well.
Any decent EU military needs a common EU foreign policy. Both of those need treaty changes. Also Macron says a lot about Europe, but when he got the opportunity for action tends to fall short. France was in a great position to lead on Ukraine aid, but did not perform that amazingly.
EDIT: EU ammo purchases for Ukraine have been launched and some EU military organizational work as well, such as EU missions in Mali, the Red Sea and some other places. Also some good cooperation such as Germany and Netherlands integrating their armies.
Usually those artist did get some recognition during their life, but never got into the main stream. That changed due to the main stream changing and the people who did like the art showing it again. That is actually rather easy to do with something like the Fediverse. It just requires a download option. Especially when everybody is aware, that the content will be deleted, that would be a decent option.
Also a lot of content on social media in general is very short term. Stuff like politcal discussions are fairly useless after a few months in most cases. So that can be deleted without much care and again, if somebody wants to preserve it, they easily can just download it.
Putin is afraid to force people into service too often. When he mobilized a lot of Russian men left the country, to avoid the draft. So he instead pays a massive sign up bonus to get men into combat. However the economy has worker shortages already, unemployment is nearly gone, massive emigration due to migrants and young Russians trying to avoid the draft, lack of new migrants coming to Russia and low birth rates for decades mean that wages go up everywhere. So sign up bonuses are high. That is two years of the average Russian salary already.
So in a way he is forced to pay. The alternative might hurt the economy even worse.
First of all 40 times longer
There is always a bit of unemployment, due to people switching jobs.
Sign up bonuses are hitting above $30k right now, with pretty good pay and death bonus. Everybody willing to join the war, even for money probably sign up. So they have to force people, which leads to men fleeing the country.
Russia has been a country growing due to migrants. However due to the war propaganda being more and more far right, that means the government has to act on it. So they crack down on migrants, while lacking workers.
Russia has massive financial problems right now, while secondary sanctions hit foreign trade. That means more workers are needed, as Russia can no longer buy as many foreign goods.
However looking at casualties is a good metric to see, how much danger Russia will be in the future. Together with migration problems, this is very likely shrinking their future population by 10% or more, compared to never having launched the full scale invasion.
No worries the Russian government is already solving the butter situation. They just started importing butter from the UAE.
Prune602 unfortunatly on Twitter writes up on the Russian economy on a regular bases. Here is a pretty decent thread on inflation: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1841884096655720630.html
Russia has 29.57million men between 20-50. So 700k are 2.37% casulties of that group. That is using Russian demographic statistics, which are probably wrong, due to people leaving Russia on mass.
That they will be used as standard infantry. If they would be guards or non combat they would get worse gear. As specialized soldiers, they would get tanks, artillery or whatever. Also it is Russian gear and not North Korean.
In other words they will be used for human wave attacks.
When the war started pretty much every European military placed some massive orders. So new production mostly did not go to Ukraine. But a lot of weapons are domestic and built in a large quantity. Also not everything from the stockpiles was send to Ukraine. That is just too risky.
So long enough to scale up production and use the EUs large economy.
Europe has quite a bit in place to defend itself without the US. Something like a million soldiers with some pretty good equipment and training. There are issues, but the EU could defend itself fairly well without the US. It is just that having the most powerfull military behind you makes things a lot easier. The problem is that this makes things easier and the US has a massive intresst in looking strong(Taiwan for example).
US presidential election
Sort of, but Switzerland is not going to sell you spare parts, ammunition and so forth when you are at war.
Also Switzerland as a neutral country can choose to supply weapons to both sites.
This is not a tank, but an anti aircraft system design to shoot down drones, missiles and sometimes other aircraft. The Russians claim it to be the best in the world.
Tank losses this month are higher then most months of 2023. That picked up a lot in October of 2023, which was the peak and then started to slowly drop. So this can just mean massive human wave attacks.
This is a war of attrition. Since about two years neither site has really taken anything really important. The key metric for that type of war is at which point the losses of men and material can not be meet anymore. Obviously Western aid is crucial for Ukraine, but so is Russia’s economy for Russia.
At this point breaking Russia’s economy is probably Ukraine’s most likely path to victory. We already saw Russian fighters march against Moscow after all.
It is probably both. Worse equipment and a lot of attacks before the US presidential election. If Trump wins, then Putin wants to be in as strong of a negotiating position as possible. Ukraine is probably very happy to let Russia take the losses and give them a bit of land for that.
The only reason this matters, is to put more pressure on those countries. After the invitation the next step is the all members must sign the Accession Protocol, which when all have signed would make Ukraine a member. Since those seven countries do not want Ukraine to become a NATO member right now, since that would mean war with Russia, they do not agree on sending the invitation to not be insulted by Ukraine all day long for not ratifying the Accession Protocol. This way it is all rumors and I gurantee you there are more then seven NATO members not wanting a war with Russia.
Really common sense and to be expected right now.
Thanks to the Trump victory and German coalition breaking, the heavy attacks will continue until next year, to wear down Ukraine.