But Europe is not at war. It is Ukraine that is. But they need help with equipment, and balancing their budget. This is what they are asking for, nothing else.
Much fewer than 500k soldiers are needed for training Ukrainians.
Europe certainly has the means to support Ukraine financially, if the political will is there.
But it’s incapable of providing alternatives to Starlink, Patriot or ATACMs. Especially not at the scale required to make a difference in Ukraine. The withdrawal of these systems would be disastrous for Ukraine.
Especially if the US opens Starlink for Russia but closes it for Ukraine.
ATAMCs could be somewhat mitigated with heavily increased medium range drone production.
The game of shooting down everything Russia sends was always a losing game. At some point you have to start addressing the source of the attacks - i.e. strike hard at the Russian infrastructure.
Europe produces alternatives to Patriot (Aster). And ATACMS are not crucial in any way, these days it is Ukrainian produced long range drones that do the most damage behind the lines.
Ukraine cannot win without manpower from either the EU or the US. That's the reality on the ground. No amount of equipment/weapons (conventional) is going to change that.
According to the Austrian military, there’s currently about 800k Ukrainian soldiers up against 700k Russian soldiers.
Because a substantial number of Ukrainian soldiers need to be present across the Belorussian border and elsewhere in the country, the Russians have a meaningful manpower advantage on the frontlines.
Remember Ukraine doesn't need to take Moscow to win. Russia is burning resources hard to keep the initiative and achieve Putin's war goals. All Ukraine needs to do is continue to bleed the Russian army and wait until Russia has a hard economic crunch.
But Europe is not at war. It is Ukraine that is. But they need help with equipment, and balancing their budget. This is what they are asking for, nothing else.
Much fewer than 500k soldiers are needed for training Ukrainians.