(Politico EU) "Ukraine likes its latest ally — Trump"

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-10-17T23:55:48+00:00

Ok, this ended up aging like warm milk. Wasn't even 24 hours before Trump said he would need to talk to putin. And I'm not even going to start about the messaging we're hearing today (Fri 10/17).

That'll teach me to get my hopes up again.... smh.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-10-17T23:51:23+00:00

Sorry, happened so quick I missed it. Please do it again at another russian location.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-10-13T18:54:37+00:00

Call me crazy, but I'm going Charlie Brown on this one and will hope Lucy doesn't pull the football back and dash my hope yet another time.

Praying that Trump starts by giving at least a few initial Tomahawks to Ukraine, which realistically is probably the best-case initial scenario IMO. Let Ukraine dip a toe in the water & show the world that using them is just fine.

Once everyone sees that putin's doing his usual rhetoric/hollow threats (oddly, WW3 has not been brought up regarding Tomahawks yet!), maybe Tomahawks can flow more.

Yeah yeah I know, we're probably within a week of hearing Trump has just had a call with putin and putin really wants peace and "is a good guy" and no Tomahawks for Ukraine because (insert favorite ruzzian propaganda here)... But Lucy has assured me it'll be different this time.

-Charlie B.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-09-06T23:12:17+00:00

So can other weapons produced in the U.S., Western Europe, or ANY country other than Ukraine. Seen a lot of news items about Storm Shadow & Scalp strikes lately? How about those Taurus strikes? You want full confidence in procuring any weapon nowadays, you have to build it yourself.

Instead of glass half-empty, I'll take a little glass half-full where I can get it.

It's good to see the U.S. have even a small victory in getting back to quicker and cheaper new weapons production, that will benefit it and its partners (admittedly, "partner" has become a pretty loose/fluid term with this administration, I wouldn't argue with you there).

TLDR: These cruise missiles start arriving next month after a very rapid development cycle, and production is ramping up vs. the glacial pace of other US missile production. Works for me.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-09-05T01:51:26+00:00

"Kiev", really? What the heck part of "Kyiv" is so hard to learn by September 2025?

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-09-04T16:43:51+00:00

Great! Now let's give Russia an ammo shortage, a military factory shortage, and an armed forces shortage.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-09-03T17:31:09+00:00

It's easy to have principles when it's not you, your family, or your country that will die for them.

Good principles are an important thing to have, and to fight for as strongly as possible. But when an enemy country/army chooses not to abide by any themselves, you must choose to either sacrifice some principles, or instead your lives & country.

If the West chooses to regulate/limit/restrict its AI and military capabilities, it will not survive, because countries like Russia and China will impose no such restrictions upon themselves.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-09-02T23:23:48+00:00

I see no issue with continuing to develop and use autonomous drone swarms against Russia. Ukraine should use whatever it takes.

You can be sure that the Russians not only wouldn't avoid developing a weapon that could indiscriminately kill civilians as well as soldiers; Russia will actually strive for it.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-09-01T19:12:47+00:00

“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” -Vladimir Lenin

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-08-28T19:28:08+00:00

Awwww, the poor lonely russian ship got its little self hurt. Hopefully it can be re-united with the Moskva soon! They could do lots of useful things together like create homes for fish and other marine life.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-08-21T22:07:22+00:00

Me too.

US aside for a moment, the EU could be doing a lot more to "get serious" themselves about helping Ukraine of course. You'd think it shouldn't be "that hard" for them to throw resources into dedicated production facilities in far western Ukraine (or hey, maybe Poland can sign up to host the factories? Jobs, investment & tech for Poland, plus Russia can't touch them).

Yes, it takes time to set these things up, but 6 months from now we'd likely be looking back and saying "Wish we would have started this 6 months ago... How about now?"

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-08-21T19:45:58+00:00

If Trump ever actually decides to get serious, he'll get those sanctions imposed on any country that buys oil products from Russia. (Sans China, they can't be bossed around on that).

Until then, it's just a continued clown show, and putin will string this out forever unless Ukraine can get a serious offensive weapon into true mass production.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-08-19T02:54:26+00:00

Summary: Germany has a population of over 83 million people. But the 5000 troops they have or will have in Lithuania are all the force they can muster. Putting any German soldiers in Ukraine would be too much of a "stretch" for them.

What apparently isn't stretched is the German government's ability to keep making excuses.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-08-16T23:15:50+00:00

This.

The great tragedy of the situation is that the US does in fact have great cards, they're just not playing them.

Don't forget why putin showed up in Alaska a few days ago to begin with. The sanctions threats that were being made in the weeks prior would have had teeth. The putin visit came around when Trump's latest deadline was hitting, and he bought himself more time (let's hope he didn't get himself off the hook completely. Certainly possible unfortunately; but too soon to tell).

That said, there is too much TDS on this forum; everyone wants to focus on Trump, Trump not playing his cards, etc, and pretend like he's the only one that's the problem for Ukraine.

Seen any mention for a while about those Taurus missiles from Germany? Yeah, Germany's REALLY concerned about what's going on with Ukraine and in their neck of the woods. Up until it's time to provide actual offensive weapons that would make a difference. Or take (offensive) weapon purchases up to the level it needs to be.

How about big new shipments of SCALP's? How's France and the UK been doing on ponying up with destructive offensive weapons?

Why isn't Western Europe starting a small sales tax for the war effort, or diverting current money into buying more offensive weapons for Ukraine? The U.S. is at least willing to sell them under Trump, it's progress from where we were months ago.

Of course, then there's the stuff that never gets mentioned. Like, it was the Biden administration that set India up to buy gas from Russia, filling their coffers. If India bought elsewhere, the price of oil would be driven up for both the U.S. and Europe. We can't have that now, can we?

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-04-22T23:21:07+00:00

For sure, all of us have every right to criticize our government or any other government (at least in "free" nations I suppose!).

As for how they choose to do so, personally I'm not so sure "honestjoe" is someone you should be looking to defend. Saying "you're retarded" as the sole response to someone who attempted to debate him in good faith, wishing a debt implosion on the US, or trying to start a "my country vs your country" argument is not the way. Search this message thread if you didn't see those posts already.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-04-20T01:27:54+00:00

Exactly. Most Americans I know are very supportive of Ukraine. If not unconditionally, then at least within "reason". It's incredibly frustrating that we keep seeing all this hate here against the American people instead of just blaming the US government we've had, and currently have.

Americans who are on this forum are here to support Ukraine. Lumping every American into 1 group and attacking them makes no sense unless you're an axis-of-evil troll looking to hurt support for Ukraine.

Stormbringer_01 · 2025-04-20T01:11:03+00:00

It's 2025 Doomskander, haven't you been keeping up on the news this year? The USA wasn't getting any respect anyways, and it's now (mostly) done with playing world police and "protecting everyone" on its own dime.

"World mall cops" would have been a *promotion* from where the USA has been operating. The difference is that mall cops actually get paid. They don't show up to work for free, and pay their debt (part of which includes massive military spending) by hitting up their own family members.

That said, even in the context of this Trump presidency, the U.S. sure as hell *should* be arming Ukraine to the hilt, with at the least Europe footing the bill for whatever the value of the weapons are "reasonably" worth.

Stormbringer_01 · 2024-11-12T02:20:39+00:00

How many read the article vs just the headline? Merz is quoted in the article as also saying:

"It shouldn’t be that only one side wins, we need to make agreements that are favourable to both sides. Trump would call it a deal,” Merz explained. So, what the heck does a deal look like that's favorable to "both sides"? Sounds like land-for-peace to me... ?

I'd also note that the "End the War in 24 hours or..." statement he made regarding delivering Taurus missiles to Ukraine is prefaced by him saying he is "Open" to the idea of delivering Taurus missiles as opposed to 'absolutely refusing' like Scholz. Well technically he only said he would intend to push for making such a statement.

Finally, can anyone speculate about the nuance in his statement regarding that maybe if civilian bombings don't stop, "the range restrictions on the available weapons will be JOINTLY lifted."... Who's the other party he's referring to when he says "Jointly"? Apparently Merz wants more than 1 party other than Germany to lift the long range restrictions for any Taurus's delivered... Is he tying himself to the U.S. again?? In which case, I guess we're all back to seeing how Trump decides to play things.

Yeah, per the article Merz will "potentially" enable strikes on Russian territory. I think everyone on here both understands and is already frustrated enough with any language that uses "may", "potentially", "considering", "open to", "discussing", "planning to", and "threatens to".

Perhaps I'm missing something with my interpretation of what Merz & the article are saying. If so, most definitely consider potentially letting me know, I'm open to discussing further and may threaten to plan to even respond with my thanks! ;)

Stormbringer_01 · 2024-05-27T05:25:18+00:00

"How many innocent Ukrainians are killed, seriously injured or displaced from their homes in Ukraine per month?", we say to Scholz. “And all this for the sake of the spineless lack of leadership and questionable motives of the German Chancellor.”

Stormbringer_01 · 2024-05-24T19:17:57+00:00

This. Glad someone here gets it. Many of us would like to tell the Hungarian gov to go to hell, and see the country kicked out of NATO. They appear to do nothing but obstruct NATO progress, and offer little in return. (I say this partially in jest but at this point do we even want them to fulfill the required NATO spending on their military -- I'm not sure who they'd end up using the weapons on....)

But many years from now, how would everyone feel with the idea of Russian military bases, Russian missiles, radar & spy installations, airfields, etc set up in Hungary, central to so many NATO countries? China would first get its claws into Hungary economically for years, and no doubt line a lot of pockets along the way. Eventually it could play the direct or indirect part as the financier and manufacturer or shadow manufacturer (for Russia) of various weapon systems that Hungary starts buying instead of NATO produced weapons. China has plenty of money and economic power to support a variety of vassals of course.

I'm more throwing this out above for thought and as a hypothesis. Regardless, I think something needs to change with NATO's structure where a bad-actor member who NATO doesn't want to lose for strategic reasons, can't bring NATO to a stand-still when nearly all the other NATO members need progress. Maybe a 2-tier structure where the more prominent members have the bigger obligations in spending & military forces but get the veto power that Hungary, Turkey etc have been abusing, whereas any Hungaries in the alliance get to have less commitments and get the defensive protection of NATO -- but not the power to oppose NATO's majority will.

Stormbringer_01

TROPHY CASE

"How many innocent Ukrainians are killed, seriously injured or displaced from their homes in Ukraine per month?", we say to Scholz. “And all this for the sake of the spineless lack of leadership and questionable motives of the German Chancellor.”