Skua

To quote former NATO Secretary General George Robertson:

“Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And I said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

If a country's position is that other members don't matter, the whole idea of mutual defence is out the window

For anyone that isn't already familiar with this oxygen thief, he was the foremost leading figure in the Brexit campaign but also quietly made sure that his kids had German passports immediately after the referendum said yes to Brexit

I also don't have an account, I just hit the x button at the top right of the log in box and it worked fine

Edit: or alternatively, the PM is Per Hækkerup and the oilfield is Ekofisk

Both, based on IFW Kiel's numbers. Military aid was about even until the end of Biden's term, Europe generally provided a bit more non-military. The US sent a huge amount right at the end of Biden's term. Since then, the US has sent basically nothing and Europe has mostly covered the shortfall

Oryx technically does, but I don't know a way to sort the entries by date. I based that part of the comment on this Perun video, which has a comparison of Russian tank losses by groups of model (Russian, late Soviet, and early Soviet) across 2022, 2023, and 2024 at 7:28

That link you found looks significantly more in-depth though

That price includes a whole bunch of stuff besides the actual tank. To quote the Czech Ministry of Defence (machine-translated):

The purchase price of 44 tanks includes self-propelled and anti-mine protection systems, as well as integrated logistics support including spare parts, support management, documentation and training.

So basically it's 44 tanks plus a massive service and supply contract to keep the tanks running properly

According to Oryx, we've got visual confirmation of 25 tanks and 59 more armoured vehicles lost by Russia in July alone. The tanks are getting pretty shitty and old, yes, but they're definitely still out there because they are still getting blown up

Ukraine and Russia wouldn't both still be using every tank they can get their hands on if they weren't useful. There's also the very real possibility that someone figures out a reliable countermeasure to drones in the near future. Several countries have already deployed truck-mounted lasers that just need a decent power source to torch incoming drones for basically free, for example

The EU sanctions aren't meant to prevent anyone from buying Russian oil at all, but rather to limit how much Russia can profit from selling it. If Russia could be magically prevented from selling any oil it'd make prices enormously higher for everyone across the world and functionally cut off the poorest countries from being able to buy any. Assuming you could get this to happen, it's rapidly going to turn most of the world against the EU and have far wider-reaching consequences than just hurting the Russian economy. The plan instead is to force Russia to sell their oil for cheaper than they want to and make it more expensive for Russia to actually move the oil, ideally resulting in Russian oil staying on the market but cutting the actual money made substantially. If India buys it cheap, that actually works fine.

We in the rest of Europe really need to be backing Moldova. They're next in line if Russia gets its way with Ukraine and the Moldovans seem to know it

I appreciate the recommendation! Unfortunately the keyboard I've got is very old and does not have a MIDI output. I don't mind learning the old fashioned way though! It got me through the other instruments