Rules:
Be civil. Disagreements happen, that does not give you the right to personally insult each other.
No racism or bigotry.
Posts from sources that aren't known to be incredibly biased for either side of the spectrum are preferred. If this is not an option, you may post from whatever source you have as long as it is relevant to this community.
Post titles should be the same as the article title.
No spam, self-promotion, or trolling.
Instance-wide rules always apply.
I mean they fought in Afghanistan alongside US and joint forces despite not being in NATO. It's not like a sudden change in military posture.
But now they put a ring on it.
They're the Belle of the ball!
They've increased defense spending by something like 40%
It ain't nothing.
I wonder why
A large increase in percentage, but I imagine it's not particularly high in absolute numbers given that we spend a quite small fraction of our taxes on defense.
I googled. Nearing 1% of GDP in 2018. 2.1% of GDP in 2024. Roughly $11.5 billion. Not nothing for a small country. Russia's at 60 billion, but has more than ten times as many people.
What's Russia's percentage of GDP, though?
IRC that 60 billion is 4%. But those are 2022 numbers.
Obviously they're spending far more now.
Also, given they've had been preparing for the war in Ukraine for a while, I suspect they were lying about their true defense spending in 2022 also, but lying about it to avoid raising any alarms.
The US spends 3.7% but unlike the US Sweden doesn't maintain military bases across the globe or need the capability to fight China in Taiwan.
NOW Ukraine finally gets some Gripens, right?
If I remember right, they've had a handful of Ukrainians training on them for awhile, and it'll probably be a lot harder to muck up shipments of Sweden's in-house fighter jet that they have unilateral authority to give.
Would be a nice notch of national prestige for the Swedes, having Swedish-made jets getting to Ukraine first.
I’d really love to know who had what on Orban to cause him to change his tune so radically.
Im hungarian, the goal of orban was to get more gripens (swedes didnt wanted to give more, as they dont approve orban's autocratic, kleptocratic, putin puppet system), and to fight back because of the negative opinions of swedes towards his sick corrupt system, mostly for orban's fans, who like this "renegade" behavior, while they are live like slaves, and never were renegades, just in words, they always salute to their masters. These fans are like trump's: lowlife, uneducated, factory workers, or jobless, who dont know any foreign language, dont see the world, they are angry for others who live better than them, and the most of them felt the commie system before 1989 very comfortable, and they want it back, except of tagged as commies, so the marketing says the opposite.
Great thanks. So is he still popular with the rightwing scum? Or has he chilled out a bit?
He is popular, with the so called "rightwing" scum. He is doing the commie (dont mix with real communists) politics but wrapped in nationalist box that these "rightwing"-s want, and they are very active, as they are old nostalgic pensioners, or jobless middle age people, who have time.
I cite hungarian a philosophic-politic-social analyst, Róbert Puzsér: "the majority of hungarians didn't wanted democracy and capitalism az 1989, they just wanted nationalist communism, instead of internationalism communism."
In former eastern block many people like this, see Fico in slovakia, who is the same nationalist commie. But very similar happens in USA, with trump.
The orbanist propaganda intentionally mixing LGBT people with pedophiles, to create an enemy for their idiotic voters Few weeks ago it turned out, that the president Katalin Novák pardoned a convicted pedophile helper one year ago who tried to hide pedophile crimes of the director few years ago in a governmental orphanage. The president, and some orban puppets resigned because of this, and its clear that both the pedophile helper and the pedophile director were orban's close friends, but the "rightists" just doesnt care about this. Just like few years before when the hungarian secret service transported the hungarian ambassador from Peru, before the peruvian police arrived, because the ambassador had 19000 pedophile photos on his GOVERNENT laptop!
Fun fact, in hungary the president have just formal rights, like giving pardons, and signing laws, which he/she can reject and send back for refinement ONCE, next time he/she MUST sign it. But since orban have 2/3 majority (~50% of votes on elections), and the parlaiment elects the presidents, all of the presidents are orbans puppets, we call them "orban's pen".
Meanwhile the "nationalist" orban government sells everything to chinese, and ruskies, or to any multinational company that participate in corruption (nearly all).
Thank you! I think I refer to them as ‘rightwing’ because the MAGA lot in the US love him for his autocratic ways.
Sweden had Gripen fighter jets he wanted to buy.
God bless the greatest alliance mankind has ever seen!
I have a friend in the Swedish military and I'm happy that our countries are (soon to be) allies too.
Technically unrelated but: Canada should send Ukraine (almost) all our tanks. We should retain only enough to train Canadians and Ukrainians.
I would keep some tanks pending US elections this year 🤠