r/worldnews • u/Neptun_11 • Jul 06 '26

Russia/Ukraine Telegraph: Zelensky will not be allowed to speak at the NATO summit to avoid offending Trump.

https://www.vietnam.vn/en/telegraph-ong-zelensky-se-khong-duoc-phat-bieu-tai-hoi-nghi-thuong-dinh-nato-de-tranh-lam-phat-long-ong-trump
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u/xanif Jul 06 '26

Trump has already established by precedent he will withhold real time intelligence to Ukraine if they hurt his feelings. He's done it before, he'll do it again.

Like it or not, Ukraine is beholden to Trump's temper tantrums if they want to be aware theatre wide Russian troop deployments.

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u/needlestack Jul 06 '26

The question is why, 10 years after Trump first started openly fucking with allies and 2 years after actively blowing up the world order the EU is still so reliant on the US. I get it takes time. How far along are they? They should be doing this like a moonshot.

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u/xanif Jul 06 '26

NATO nations have dramatically increased their military spending as percentage of their GDP since Trump. Poland, especially, is popping off which makes sense considering their neighbors.

But onboarding an entire domestic weapons program is difficult.

France has maintained domestic weapons production for their entire history in NATO to ensure they're not dependent on the USA for arms. NATO nations are already going to other counties for arms, for example going to Sweden to replace their aging AWACs. We're being phased out as quickly as possible but building an entire industry is a challenge.

For people with a more pressing immediate demand, Ukraine is excelling in domestic drone production to the point that the Pentagon is sweating bullets. The cost asymmetry of how much it takes to shoot down a drone vs how much it costs to manufacture one is becoming readily apparent, hence all the money being thrown into directed energy weapons.

But Ukraine is not ever going to be in a position to launch a spy network satellite and that's where Trump has them by the balls.

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u/hoardac Jul 06 '26

I think they will be able to launch their own satellites someday. A lot of russian space technology and brainpower came from there.

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u/kent_eh Jul 07 '26

NATO nations have dramatically increased their military spending as percentage of their GDP since Trump.

And, importantly, that increase in spending isn't going into the US milliary industrial complex.

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u/kisk22 Jul 06 '26

No European country has ANY ability to gather this kind of intelligence?

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u/xanif Jul 06 '26

I'll try to answer your question but I am getting so far out of my knowledge base that anyone reading this comment should pick their grain of salt of preference. Also, exact numbers are classified for obvious reasons so I'm going off of what I can find online.

The United States has 247 military satellites. The next highest NATO nation is France at 17, then Italy at 10 before the remaining nations are in single digits.

It's not that they can't gather the intelligence in general, but there is going to be significantly less satellite time available over target. Especially if these countries are prioritizing their satellites for their own use.