The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread

[StevoJH]

I don't think Russia planned an invasion and a war, it planned a SMO; like the bunch of traitors who planned a coup d'etat in Spain in 1936. It was just as good as the US after-the-Iraq-war planning.

Russia invaded the land of a Sovereign nation. It doesn't matter whether it was with 10 men with a dog and bottles of vodka, or 150,000+ troops in a horribly planned traffic jam stretching 50+km up the highway between Kyiv and Belarus.

In both cases they are an invasion, and in both cases cases they are an act of war.

Russia can call it whatever they want, in terms of international law and centuries of precedent, it is a war.

 

[deyhere]

Oh, you’re right. Really good point. US Lend-Lease to the USSR averaged about 1.4% of US GDP per year. Total US aid allocated to Ukraine averaged about 0.11% per year over 2022–2025. So the US devoted roughly 13 times as much of it's economy per year supporting the USSR as it did to Ukraine.

Unless, of course, part of your fairy tale is that sending less support somehow makes it more you fighting instead of the actual army.

Any other convenient definitions or arbitrary lines you’d like to add? I’m curious what you’ll come up with next.

this doesn't paint the real picture. while US lend lease to USSR were loans which USSR had to pay back, Ukraine mostly receive grants and direct transfers. US provided goods and materials worth $11.3 billion (equivalent to about $200 billion today) to the Soviets, so far the US has given Ukraine $131 billion and the EU has given Ukraine 231 billion Euros mostly for free.

the US didn't send men to man Soviet air defence systems or act as missile early warning to USSR. the US didn't plan any of the soviet offensive and defensive strategies against the Germans. the US role in lend lease was strictly supply of goods and material.

NATO is actively fighting Russia. who's manning the air defence systems and specialise equipment used in missile interception and drone, missile strikes into Russia? starlink? training air defence operators to be effective is not an easy task. who is planning offensive after offensive with up to date satellite data? does Ukraine operate any satellites? if you are providing target acquisition from satellites, then your fully involved in the war. put that together with sanctions, economic blockade, asset confiscation and seizure of oil tankers on the high sea, then you will come to the reality that this is a NATO war.

you will wake up from your fairy tale when there's no more money to send to Ukraine and you abandon Ukraine to the mercy of Russia like you always do to your puppets when they have exhausted their relevance

 

[swerve]

this doesn't paint the real picture. while US lend lease to USSR were loans which USSR had to pay back, Ukraine mostly receive grants and direct transfers. US provided goods and materials worth $11.3 billion (equivalent to about $200 billion today) to the Soviets, so far the US has given Ukraine $131 billion and the EU has given Ukraine 231 billion Euros mostly for free.

Most of the lend-lease aid to the USSR from the USA was never paid back. Anything used up or destroyed during the war was written off, e.g. about 9500 fighter & 3400 bomber aircraft, & a huge number of trucks. The USSR was only expected to pay for the stuff it kept after the war. In practice, it didn't pay back anything near the full value. It paid $48 million in 1972-74, & Russia paid $674 million between 1990 & 2006. That's less than 2% of the cost, allowing for inflation.

The UK never asked for payment for the many ships & their crews lost while delivering aid, e.g. almost 3000 Hurricanes & over 5000 tanks. RAF pilots flew Hurricanes to defend Murmansk from the Luftwaffe in 1941, until Soviet pilots & mechanics were trained on the Hurricane. UK & Commonwealth military aid was supplied free of charge. Civil aid was charged for, 40% in gold (the USSR sent some gold to the UK by ship in 1942, but it was sunk by a u-boat), the rest covered by a British government credit which AFAIK the USSR wasn't asked to repay.

So no, US aid to the USSR wasn't "loans which USSR had to pay back". Most of it was written off at the end of the war, & most of the rest was written off later.