Last Saturday, I attended the weekly protest outside the Russian Embassy by the Canberra/Queanbeyan Ukrainian community and their supporters, this week marking the fourth anniversary of Putin’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
It was good to see local MLA Shane Rattenbury and Senator David Pocock attend. Both of them spoke, as did I.
Despite being betrayed by Trump and the wavering interest of some countries, the Ukrainian armed forces, under their inspiring leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, fight on against overwhelming odds. So far, Russian casualties (killed, wounded and MIA) amount to about 1.2 million, and Ukrainian casualties are about 500,000, including civilians.
The US under Trump has pulled back its support and, while European countries remain very supportive vocally, they could still do much more. The EU needs not only to freeze Russian assets but to release them to Ukraine to help pay the ongoing costs of running the country. They seem too reluctant to do so. Why, I do not know. Putin only respects strength. At least most continental Western European countries are now in the process of significantly increasing defence spending.
Poland now spends 4.7 per cent of its GDP on defence (great effort!). France has also increased defence expenditure, but the standout country is Germany. Defence spending there has risen from about 1.25 per cent of GDP in 2017 to 2.5 per cent last year, and is projected to reach 3.5 per cent by 2029.
Germany aims to expand its armed forces to 500,000 personnel by 2030 and plans to spend more than 106 billion euros on defence by 2029, which is roughly A$175 billion. Significantly, Chancellor Merz has committed 9 billion euros a year to support Ukraine, about A$15 billion annually.
There is no reason why Germany, whose economy is roughly twice the size of Russia’s, could not match Russia on its own. It defeated Russia in WWI and came close in WWII. This time, however, German forces would be moving east not as conquerors but as defenders of freedom, which would mark a very different chapter in history.
I suggested to the crowd that Australia should do more and spend about $5 billion a year supporting Ukraine. So far, we have provided only $1.5 billion over the past four years, including around 200 Bushmaster armoured vehicles. Ukraine’s fight is our fight, after all.
The Ukrainian army loves our Bushmasters, and we have about 1,050 of them. We make them in Australia, and there is no reason why we can’t send 200 a year to Ukraine and replace them with new ones made in Australia. We could make much mileage by shipping them over on either or both of the LHD ships HMAS Adelaide and HMAS Canberra to Gdansk in Poland, and then drive them to Lviv in western Ukraine. Imagine the great publicity to be gained for Australia if a convoy of Bushmasters travelled through the streets and highways of eastern Poland bound for Lviv, proudly flying Australian, Polish and Ukrainian flags.
In the meantime, David Pocock said he will bring all this up in the Senate, and he will suggest, to start with, that we give Ukraine all the guns handed in during the latest buyback. They can actually be useful for Ukrainian civilians to shoot down Russian drones. Push the Bushmaster idea too, David!
Despite the unbelievably counterproductive attempts by Trump to get Ukraine to surrender strategic land it still holds in the Donbas to Russia, there will be no Sudetenland moments by the Ukrainian government, unlike in Munich in 1938, and the brave Ukrainians will fight on rather than surrender their land.
Ukraine needs all the support it can get, and I’d urge our local Canberra/Queanbeyan residents to help out in any way they can.
Slava Ukraini!
