World News

42515 readers

3579 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

463

‘Watershed moment’: EU leaders agree plan for huge rise in defence spending (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.

But the show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.

The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the draft statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Russia does not have a wartime economy. They are only spending 6% of their GDP on their military which is comparable to the US or Poland in terms of percentage of GDP. EU has given up far more than just a portion. UK has supplied Ukraine with all of its SPGs. Poland supplied Ukraine with half of its SPGs. The US has supplied Ukraine with 15% of its entire ATACMS stockpile (a missile which is no longer produced and does not yet have a viable alternative due to PRSM still being in low-rate production) as of six months ago. The EU has given up a significant portion of their ammunition to Ukraine. The only thing they did not give is tanks because Ukraine already had a thousand tanks at the start of the war (half of which were modern) which is more tanks than the amount that France, Germany, and the UK have combined.

Most of the Russian military is not in Ukraine per my other comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

6% is from the public sector. Russia is very much forcing the private sector to also produce and forcing them to take loans.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago

Which is still not a wartime economy. You are right that Russia is forcing the private sector to pick up the slack. Majority of military spending does not go into the Special Military Operation. The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment alongside crowdfunding campaigns and donations from organizations like the Popular Front.

This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:

Link

Here are donations from the Popular Front:

Link

Chechnya was probably affected the most by this war economically speaking as they have recently taken up the burden of training and equipping a large portion of volunteers:

Link

So most of the federal government's military spending (which is still larger than the entirety of Europe's military spending combined when using PPP which is what really matters when talking about militaries) is actually not being used for the SMO but for a large-scale military buildup for future operations. This means regional governments are the ones footing the bill. But even so, they are not at a wartime footing. These regional governments outside of Chechnya are really only providing their soldiers with the bare essentials which really shows in Russia's performance in this war. Like instead of actual military vehicles, soldiers are recieving old bread loafs and other civilian vehicles.