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Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by robert_foss on Friday February 25, 2022 @08:49AM (#30467198)
Germany sent 5000 hats to Ukraine. It also prevented the export of actual military equipment to Ukraine from the baltics. And it shot down sanctions related to the SWIFT banking system.

With friends like Germany, who needs enemies.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by 7373737373 on Friday February 25, 2022 @08:52AM (#30467234)
They didn't even send the helmets, now they are citing logistical issues to be the reason for their lack of support. They are feigning incompetence to hide their unwillingness to actually do something
Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by 7373737373 on Friday February 25, 2022 @10:55AM (#30468596)
Edit: Now it seems they are actually underway
Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by RealityVoid on Friday February 25, 2022 @08:51AM (#30467222)
They must be scared of losing gas access. And they need gas more than Puțin needs money. That's why he allowed himself this gamble at this time. And it seems to be working.
Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by robert_foss on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:11AM (#30467459)
This is surely the cause. Germany has foot-gunned itself horrifically when they gutted their nuclear power generation. The idea was to replace it medium-term with natural gas.

Natural gas is also quite common in germany for building heating + cooking.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by PickledHotdog on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:40AM (#30467740)
Bingo.
Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by tablespoon on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:19AM (#30467534)
> With friends like Germany, who needs enemies.

Threaten to cut them off from SWIFT and kick them out of NATO. Their military is a joke, and they're clearly freeloading.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by ZeroGravitas on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:00AM (#30467341)
Maybe you should focus your ire on the leaders of the countries doing the invading? Taking the opportunity to attack one of the invaded nations allies for not doing enough seems unhelpful to the point of being counterproductive.
Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by ghettoCoder on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:06AM (#30467400)
I have never wanted the ability to downvote a comment more than I do after reading yours.
Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by robert_foss on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:08AM (#30467421)
Critiquing does very little against someone who has committed to invade a country. Rarely has it stopped a bullet, much less a tank. Russia has already accepted the cost of being criticized.

But for the record, Putin has shown himself to have little regard for anything besides ending up in the history books next to Stalin & Hitler.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by ZeroGravitas on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:21AM (#30467558)
And yet there's nothing you could think of to say that didn't equate Germany and Putin as Ukraine's enemies?

This is all very reminiscent of "Hillary is just as bad as Trump". Seems to be a common logical fallacy that you can't have something that is better than the alternative but still not good enough.

Instead people have to exaggerate to make the better one just as bad, which then has the implicit claim that the worse one is just the same as the better one in this metric.

Whatever Germany is doing or not doing, it seems unlikely to approach the same level as invading Ukraine and killing a whole bunch of people.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by robert_foss on Friday February 25, 2022 @10:21AM (#30468178)
I have not equated Germany with Russia. Don't strawman me.

I am however pointing out that Germany is delaying and holding back the response to a European country being invaded.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by ZeroGravitas on Friday February 25, 2022 @10:52AM (#30468566)
> With friends like Germany, who needs enemies.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these_who_n...

"An expression indicating that one's close associates prove more adversarial than one's opponents."

Probably just an unconscious idiom, but the use of the word "enemy" in context of an invasion seemed to be a bit too loaded a term.

Re:NATO leaves Black Sea exposed as Russia invades Ukraine by insickness on Friday February 25, 2022 @09:38AM (#30467723)
Europe and the US's energy dependence on Russia emboldened Putin to attack because now sanctions will harm us as much as they harm him. No, we're not the ones attacking Ukraine, but we are complicit.