It appears the idea is to fund this using frozen Russian funds in EU. Zelenskyy and Kristersson (Swedish PM) both made a point of saying they are travelling to Brussels tonight to attempt to make this happen. (I watched the press conference stream from Saab/Linköping. It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF6PUxSPEKU)
Good: the Gripen is a fantastic plane and I'm happy that Saab is making sales of this platform. If it were not for the economic terrorism/influence of the US then Saab would be selling a lot more of these planes to countries who are currently being forced into buying the F-35.
Bad: this is likely to cause an escalation in tensions in the Ukraine-Russia situation.
Russia has nowhere to escalate, it can only start dropping nukes, but that will piss off China and India. Not because they would be so worried about Ukrainians, but because Russia would degrade nuclear weapons from strategic asset into a tactical weapons on level of Iskander.
And Russian war industry very much stands on Chinese dual use imports. Without them, their capacity to produce drones would be non existent - Shaheds are using parts from China, fiber spools are coming from China....
> this is likely to cause an escalation in tensions in the Ukraine-Russia situation.
?
These countries are at full war. The only NBCs the Russians aren't using is their nuclear and biological arsenal. They are using their chemical weapons.
I had not heard that. What chemical weapons are they using?
As for "they are at war, what do you mean 'escalations'" I'm referring to western countries, including the US, giving Ukraine the ability to make deep strikes into Russia that could provoke Russia in declaring officially what has been the de facto case for a while: it's not fighting Ukraine, it's fighting NATO and NATO is striking through the Ukrainians but Russia has not yet struck back at NATO.
Forgive me for hoping that we might be able to find peace and avoid the deaths of hundreds of millions of people by not ratcheting things up in Ukraine more than it already is.
The "peace" word in this context is not really what it seems like. The "peace" movement in our countries is often of full of at least former Soviet and Russian funding. Essentially tankies. I think you can imagine their goals.
I'm a US military veteran and nobody is paying me to speak one way or another about any of this. I just see the minimization and avoidance of war as preferrable to bullets flying and people dying. Yes, that is happening now in a limited context (Ukraine and Russia) but and I hope that comes to an end before it spills over to a full and formal NATO vs. Russia (and China?) engagement.
What we are handling now is the snowball started by GWB with the Iraq invasion. He basically said that it is fine for superpowers to invade countries with non preferable leaders. (Unless they have nuclear weapons)
The difference in sentiment is basically whether the snowball is too big to stop, or if this is our last chance to stop it.
One-sided avoidance of war can be counterproductive and make everything worse. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Ukraine since 2022 because the response to the initial invasion in 2014 focused too much on avoiding confrontation, which was taken as a sign of weakness to exploit.
Up until the day of the invasion in February 2022, something as simple as deploying US airborne forces to Kyiv for exercises could have prevented the war. Biden chose to avoid confrontation, and here we are now, in the fourth year of the war.
I'll ignore the first point but I have to concede that I'm helping Ukraine kill Russians by virtue of paying taxes to the US Govt which has been supplying billions of dollars of weapons to use against Russians in the war. My concern is that we're going to get paid back in kind with interest and am a little surprised it hasn't happened yet... and am hopeful it can be avoided.
Not only that but Russia is constantly violating NATO airspace, flying drones over our airports, sabotaging things and getting caught for spying. Talk to Russia about escalation.
It appears the idea is to fund this using frozen Russian funds in EU. Zelenskyy and Kristersson (Swedish PM) both made a point of saying they are travelling to Brussels tonight to attempt to make this happen. (I watched the press conference stream from Saab/Linköping. It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF6PUxSPEKU)
Good: the Gripen is a fantastic plane and I'm happy that Saab is making sales of this platform. If it were not for the economic terrorism/influence of the US then Saab would be selling a lot more of these planes to countries who are currently being forced into buying the F-35.
Bad: this is likely to cause an escalation in tensions in the Ukraine-Russia situation.
It is only reasonable that Ukraine also plans for a future without war (as a sovereign state).
And they will need an air force.
And it seems natural that they seek alternatives from buying airplanes from the Moscow state.
And even if they wanted to buy airplanes from the Kremlin, they may very well refuse to sell.
Russia has nowhere to escalate, it can only start dropping nukes, but that will piss off China and India. Not because they would be so worried about Ukrainians, but because Russia would degrade nuclear weapons from strategic asset into a tactical weapons on level of Iskander.
And Russian war industry very much stands on Chinese dual use imports. Without them, their capacity to produce drones would be non existent - Shaheds are using parts from China, fiber spools are coming from China....
> Bad: this is likely to cause an escalation in tensions in the Ukraine-Russia situation.
As a Swede I can tell you my country will support Ukraine until victory. Russia can stop the escalation be getting the hell out of Ukraine.
> this is likely to cause an escalation in tensions in the Ukraine-Russia situation.
?
These countries are at full war. The only NBCs the Russians aren't using is their nuclear and biological arsenal. They are using their chemical weapons.
I had not heard that. What chemical weapons are they using?
As for "they are at war, what do you mean 'escalations'" I'm referring to western countries, including the US, giving Ukraine the ability to make deep strikes into Russia that could provoke Russia in declaring officially what has been the de facto case for a while: it's not fighting Ukraine, it's fighting NATO and NATO is striking through the Ukrainians but Russia has not yet struck back at NATO.
Forgive me for hoping that we might be able to find peace and avoid the deaths of hundreds of millions of people by not ratcheting things up in Ukraine more than it already is.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_des...
The "peace" word in this context is not really what it seems like. The "peace" movement in our countries is often of full of at least former Soviet and Russian funding. Essentially tankies. I think you can imagine their goals.
I'm a US military veteran and nobody is paying me to speak one way or another about any of this. I just see the minimization and avoidance of war as preferrable to bullets flying and people dying. Yes, that is happening now in a limited context (Ukraine and Russia) but and I hope that comes to an end before it spills over to a full and formal NATO vs. Russia (and China?) engagement.
What we are handling now is the snowball started by GWB with the Iraq invasion. He basically said that it is fine for superpowers to invade countries with non preferable leaders. (Unless they have nuclear weapons)
The difference in sentiment is basically whether the snowball is too big to stop, or if this is our last chance to stop it.
One-sided avoidance of war can be counterproductive and make everything worse. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Ukraine since 2022 because the response to the initial invasion in 2014 focused too much on avoiding confrontation, which was taken as a sign of weakness to exploit.
Up until the day of the invasion in February 2022, something as simple as deploying US airborne forces to Kyiv for exercises could have prevented the war. Biden chose to avoid confrontation, and here we are now, in the fourth year of the war.
You are what is commonly known as "a useful idiot".
You're naive and you're helping Russia kill more innocent people every day.
I'll ignore the first point but I have to concede that I'm helping Ukraine kill Russians by virtue of paying taxes to the US Govt which has been supplying billions of dollars of weapons to use against Russians in the war. My concern is that we're going to get paid back in kind with interest and am a little surprised it hasn't happened yet... and am hopeful it can be avoided.
Not only that but Russia is constantly violating NATO airspace, flying drones over our airports, sabotaging things and getting caught for spying. Talk to Russia about escalation.
Check the map in today's update:
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...