Re: OT: Ukraine

On 1/04/2025 4:10 am, Don Y wrote:

On 3/31/2025 3:16 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de> wrote:

Remember the Budapest Memorandum of Dec-5-1994 where Ukraine gave
up their nuclear weapons in exchange for safety guarantees from
US, RU and UK?
They had the 3rd largest arsenal on earth.
>
Foolish in retrospect.

>
That's where we went wrong, we should have nipped it in the bud.  We
still haven't learned.   The longer we leave it, the more expensive in
lives and materials it will be to push Putin's Russia back behind its
own borders.

 Politicians never want to "solve" problems -- because that is
difficult and means telling people (who put them in power)
things that those people likely won't want to hear.
 It's been so much easier for europe NOT to have to build up their
own defenses as that money can, instead, be spent on social programs,
generous "vacations", etc.

Europe has spent quite a lot on it's own defences. The US military-industrial complex would like it to spend more, preferably on buying American weapons from the US military-industrial complex.
<snip>
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney