Simple the US is out due to Trump being elected and Biden not being able to escalate in a meaningful way in the coming months.

Europe is trying to figure out what Trump plans to do about Ukraine and is probably setting something up to keep Ukraine capable of fighting.

Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. From Wikipedia:

In 2022, she stated that NATO and the Biden administration not taking the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO off the table may be one of the factors provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[291][292] She also argued against economic sanctions on Russia on the basis that Americans would suffer from higher oil and gas prices.[291] Gabbard stated that “the Washington power elite” is trying to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan.[293] In March 2022, she said media freedom in Russia is “not so different” from that in the United States. PolitiFact described her claim as false, noting that in Russia the government represses independent media and free speech, including imprisoning critics of the invasion of Ukraine.[294] In February 2024, Trump met with Gabbard, who has been an outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine, to discuss the future of US foreign policy in case of his re-election.[295]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard#Ukraine_and_Russia

The interest rates have massive impacts. 20% more business bancrupcies, 57% drop in new mortages for new construction and well the government has issues getting loans right now. The Russian government bond index is hitting all time lows.

In other words Russia is facing a massive housing crisis, while its economy collapses, they have high inflation, the government is running out of money and they are fighting a war.

Because Trump wants to end the war, but the US is not the country to make the call. Ukraine still has a strong military and arms industry itself and many European countries and the EU have the money and arms industry to keep Ukraine in the fight. In fact we saw that when the Republicans blocked aid to Ukraine for months. Today it is even worse for Russia as both Ukraines and the EUs arms industry have grown.

Russia on the other hand has been hit by sanctions for years, which make no mistake have hit the Russian economy hard. We are talking high inflation, problems finding money for the government, gas sales having collapsed, a somewhat likely housing crisis, defaults of lots of companies in Russia, coal industry collapsing, private bancrupcy rising fast and a lot more bad stuff. The Soviet era weapon stockpiles are running low and Russia has increasing problems finding new recruits.

Ukraine can keep the fight going for quite some time, without US help. That might be long enough to bring down Russia. The key word being might, as it depends on a lot of factors, most notably European support, but also the oil price and a lot of other factors.

Looking at this taking land has two main advantages for Putin. First of all it lowers European support for the war, as they might believe that Ukraine is going to loose, hence pushing for peace and secondly in a peace deal it gives him leverage.

Thanks that was very funny.

The point was more that there are not many strategic targets, which Taurus could hit inside Russia, which can not be hit by a cheaper Ukrainian made drone due to air defence. So if Germany would send thousands of them, it would still not make that much of a difference. The main value is that Russia has to move assets further back.

Russia trying to take as much land as it can, before Trump tries to force a peace deal. This is also to make the Europeans consider sending more aid.

Taurus would be used more or less like Storm Shadow against high value strategic targets. The big difference is that Germany would have to default to allow its use on targets inside Russia, since activly being part of the targeting might very well be unconstitutional. So what could be expected are a bunch of Russian jets, ammunition stockpiles and maybe the Kerch Bridge being blown up. Ukrainian drones are not stealthy, so they are much easier to intercept or to warn against. Hence something like Taurus can make a difference.

So it is usefull, but it is not going to change the war fundamentally.

Honestly Merz does a lot of shit, but he is for pro Ukranian action, which is relativly unpopular. The issue is more, that he has never been in government and a lot of his other ideas are horrible.

Also the CDU is in parts very pro Russia. Kretschmer comes to mind.

If they do not send more and that is the real issue.

Thanks to the Trump victory and German coalition breaking, the heavy attacks will continue until next year, to wear down Ukraine.

Hopefully the EU takes over. It has a lot more economic strength then NATO. Also the UK is strong as well, but that can be managed. Turkey does its own things anyway and I would not trust them. Norway and Iceland are not that important. Canada is going to go with the US anyway. The advantage is easier common funding for projects, due to the EU having more direct access to money. There are also a lot of the basics in the works already.

The EU has to start to replace NATO. That at least means some shared assets like maybe ballistic missile defense, AWACS and similar assets. Combined procurement would also be a great idea. Something like ESA, but with some common EU funding as well.

Any decent EU military needs a common EU foreign policy. Both of those need treaty changes. Also Macron says a lot about Europe, but when he got the opportunity for action tends to fall short. France was in a great position to lead on Ukraine aid, but did not perform that amazingly.

EDIT: EU ammo purchases for Ukraine have been launched and some EU military organizational work as well, such as EU missions in Mali, the Red Sea and some other places. Also some good cooperation such as Germany and Netherlands integrating their armies.

Usually those artist did get some recognition during their life, but never got into the main stream. That changed due to the main stream changing and the people who did like the art showing it again. That is actually rather easy to do with something like the Fediverse. It just requires a download option. Especially when everybody is aware, that the content will be deleted, that would be a decent option.

Also a lot of content on social media in general is very short term. Stuff like politcal discussions are fairly useless after a few months in most cases. So that can be deleted without much care and again, if somebody wants to preserve it, they easily can just download it.

The US spends 3.4% of GDP in defence. Israel is at 5.3%. Also the US only spends a bit more then 3x what China spends and well US products are more expensive. So the US can probably fund its military for quite some time, without too many problems and right wingers love to do it, to bomb the shit out of people.

Putin is afraid to force people into service too often. When he mobilized a lot of Russian men left the country, to avoid the draft. So he instead pays a massive sign up bonus to get men into combat. However the economy has worker shortages already, unemployment is nearly gone, massive emigration due to migrants and young Russians trying to avoid the draft, lack of new migrants coming to Russia and low birth rates for decades mean that wages go up everywhere. So sign up bonuses are high. That is two years of the average Russian salary already.

So in a way he is forced to pay. The alternative might hurt the economy even worse.

First of all 40 times longer

There is always a bit of unemployment, due to people switching jobs.

Sign up bonuses are hitting above $30k right now, with pretty good pay and death bonus. Everybody willing to join the war, even for money probably sign up. So they have to force people, which leads to men fleeing the country.

Russia has been a country growing due to migrants. However due to the war propaganda being more and more far right, that means the government has to act on it. So they crack down on migrants, while lacking workers.

Russia has massive financial problems right now, while secondary sanctions hit foreign trade. That means more workers are needed, as Russia can no longer buy as many foreign goods.

However looking at casualties is a good metric to see, how much danger Russia will be in the future. Together with migration problems, this is very likely shrinking their future population by 10% or more, compared to never having launched the full scale invasion.

No worries the Russian government is already solving the butter situation. They just started importing butter from the UAE.

https://www.interfax.ru/russia/989968

Prune602 unfortunatly on Twitter writes up on the Russian economy on a regular bases. Here is a pretty decent thread on inflation: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1841884096655720630.html