Estonia considers itself a front-line state, a Nato member where its border guards stare across the Narva River at the Russian fortress of Ivangorod.
This tiny Baltic state, once a part of the Soviet Union, is convinced that once the fighting stops in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention to the Baltics, looking to bring countries like Estonia back under Moscow’s control.
To help stave off that possibility, Estonia’s government has poured money and weapons into Ukraine’s war effort, donating more than 1% of its GDP to Kyiv.
Edit: Here is a 2019 article outlining the billions in lethal aid provided to Ukraine before the 2022 invasion. My guess is that more or less all the anti tank and anti aircraft systems you saw being used in 2022 were provided by the west.
I think you are uninformed, friend. This is the equipment that was supplied to Ukraine in the first 4 months of the war. It’s nice to think that they are doing this all on their own, but it’s no truer now than it is when Russia talks about winning WWII. In both cases, it’s only true in the context of massive donations of arms from the west.
Ukraine had tiny amount of MANPADS and man portable anti tank weapons of it’s own. They used orders of magnitude more from the west than they had on their own. Yes, the West’s donations could have been more, but compared to what Ukraine had on their own, it dwarfed it in most areas where it mattered like air defense and anti tank weaponry, which is what turned the tides. Don’t confuse the standard media talking points about the west not doing enough with the reality that it’s still orders of magnitude more than Ukraine could do on their own, even if it is just the West’s old leftovers.
Granted, Russia would have had to fight against a long guerrilla war, but without support from the west, Ukraine would have been ground down over time. I mean even without the US support for just 6 months you started to see the tides turn. Momentum has a way of increasing over time given the same situation. Even for 6 months, all of NATO without the US wasn’t really able to achieve parity with Russia.
I hope this changes. In 3-4 years of grinding down Russia and building up production in Europe, it could. But it’s is dangerously delusional to think that NATO without the US is at all ready for this fight on their own at the present time. No serious expert in the subject that I’ve heard from believes this is the case. NATO’s abilities rest heavily on the US who accounts for 70% of the NATO defense spending. Without it, you are dealing with a bunch of small militaries, all subject to their individual political situations, many who are being taken over by far right parties sympathetic to Russia rather than Ukraine.