Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/9207267
"At this year’s [security] conference, western leaders acknowledged the reality of a long war more clearly than they did last year, but most are still failing to communicate a sense of existential threat to their own societies. Nor are they taking the urgent actions needed to save Ukraine from more battlefield defeats such as its recent withdrawal from Avdiivka.
There are notable exceptions. Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister […] has long been one. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, is urgent, direct, and matches deeds to words. […]
Then there’s Petr Pavel, the former Nato general who is now the Czech president. He told us that, working with the Danes and others, the Czechs have identified on world markets 500,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition and another 300,000 rounds of 122mm calibre that could be bought and sent to the hard-pressed Ukrainian forces in the next few weeks. That would enable the Ukrainians to hold the line, Pavel explained, until increased western defence industry supplies come through later this year.
It would also give time for the US House of Representatives to overcome its shameful Trumpian blockage and vote for further military funding for Ukraine. (The most grotesque moment of the conference came when the Republican senator Pete Ricketts compared Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to the “invasion” of illegal immigrants from Mexico.)"
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Yulia Navalnaya came on stage even before the news of the death of her husband, Alexei Navalny, had been fully confirmed, to call for Vladimir Putin to be brought to justice – and to remind us that there is still another Russia, fighting the tyrant.
But stepping outside the conference venue in the Bayerischer Hof hotel, I found weekend crowds enjoying the unseasonal sunshine in nice cafes and bars, shopping in luxurious boutiques or booking a winter break to some attractive holiday destination.
As the US fatefully hesitates, this requires Europe’s big boys – Germany and France above all – to step into the breach, rapidly buying that ammunition the Czechs have found; acting fast, unbureaucratically and at scale; and explaining to their publics why it’s vital that they do.
His grand rhetoric about the rearmament of our European sovereignty and a “war economy” is not matched by the scale and speed of actual French support for Ukraine.
Since I was highly critical of his “Scholzing” in respect of arming Ukraine a year ago, I want to acknowledge a big change that has happened over the past 12 months.
I will never forget talking to friends in Kyiv last summer who told me how reassured they felt at night when they heard the distinctive, deep boom-boom of the German Gepard air-defence gun.
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