Italy’s president told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can’t be solved by rewarding its aggression and peace can only come when Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are restored.
Sergio Mattarella said Italy, which now heads the G7 meetings, and many international partners have come to Ukraine’s defense to support the principle that solidarity must be given to nations attacked by acts that violate international law and the U.N. Charter.
“No state, no matter how powerful or how equipped it is with a menacing nuclear arsenal can think of violating principles, including the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of another country without facing sanctions,” he said.
Mattarella said the end of two world wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union had brought new hope to Europe, and that “Russia has taken on the great historic responsibility of having brought war back to the heart of the European continent.”
The Italian president stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t merely a regional conflict since Moscow wants to exercise global influence. Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security.
I don’t get it. Basically all of NATO supports Ukraine. Still, after two years there still seems to be a lack of shells and anti air, against a single country (Russia) with a GDP smaller than Italy. What’s going wrong?
Russia is all in. Europe is sending surpluses and old stuff, which is not much, because we have small militaries. The US has a fuckton of hardware but also sends very little because putler is balls deep in one of their two parties.
Russian economy all in versus Europe’s scraps plus a tiny bit of what the US has is approximately balanced.
I anticipate one of the long term effects of this will be to coalesce EU military spending into a force that is at least partially unified. The Nordic countries have already all signed a memorandum of understanding that will ultimately operationally unify their air forces. I will be surprised if this isn’t tried in other areas, by other subgroups of European countries. I’m low-key guessing that Poland is going to offer the Baltic states some sort of force-sharing agreement within the next few years, considering the gigantic fleet of brand new MBTs they’re procuring from the US and South Korea.
Putin is more willing to sacrifice his own people and leech every single resource in the country (which he basically controls, making him the ACTUAL richest man in the world) to support the war effort and there’s no war crime he won’t commit, with the possible exception of using nukes.
Plus, like Nazi Germany leading up to WWII, Russia has probably been fortifying their military much more than richer countries and Ukraine in the last few decades.
Or to put it in animal terms: Ukraine is a plucky terrier, the West is a German shepherd, and Russia is a rabid wolverine on steroids and bath salts.
Ukraine is not NATO, so helping them is not mandatory. European countries all have shit going on because of the last few crises, so as long as Russia is not at our actual border, we don’t care enough to commit 100% and deal with the damage that would do to our economies. We must tread lightly as we basically already are US vassals and we don’t want to give up more autonomy, and we don’t want to risk losing more influence than we already are to China. US has their own shit going on, and Turkey is now probably more aligned with Russia than with the rest of NATO.
So, essentially, no one cares enough to commit more. If NATO countries REALLY cared about Ukraine, the Russians would be out of the country already.
I was having a parallel Earth experience when I saw Italy didn’t have a far right representative blonde woman as a president. Turns out she was the prime minister.