Ukraine funding

In the past several weeks, Democrats and liberals have written letters to The Virginian-Pilot claiming that congressional Republicans and/or former President Donald Trump’s lack of support to fund weapons and ammo for Ukraine will result in a complete Russian takeover of the country, and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade other Eastern European countries. There is no evidence of that hyperbole.

Ukraine has never been part of the NATO alliance, which contributed to Putin’s ability to annex the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and invade eastern Ukraine in 2022.

U.S. officials estimated that about 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed so far, but on the recent second anniversary of the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated approximately 31,000 soldiers have been killed in combat-related deaths. Intelligence reports of Russian casualties might be similarly inflated (estimates are 300,000 killed and wounded), but those reports may never be confirmed. However, it is reported that Russia has lost more than 3,000 tanks in the past two years.

A non-NATO country has successfully inflicted significant losses to the Russian forces and weapons, so there is no evidence that Russia would be more successful invading a NATO country.

That is, given Ukraine’s resistance for two years, and paraphrasing Article 5 of the NATO alliance — an invasion of one is an invasion of all — why do Democrats believe Putin would steamroll into an Eastern European NATO country with any level of success given first the existence of Article 5, and second many NATO countries have superior weaponry than Ukraine and could very well repel the Russians on their own? There’s no proof, and it’s just more liberal grandstanding.