Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The Chinese? That's a tad far fetched. They'd have no direct geopolitical interest and no matter who gets the lion's share of the rebuilding period they'll be using a lot of Chinese made equipment anyway, so they'll make bank regardless. They'll likely make more if Russia didn'tb win. That's what happens when you're the biggest manufacturing nation on Earth. A lesson the Americans unlearned just to line a minority's pockets. The US is making a play for post war investment with outfits like Blackrock already putting their oar in.

The EU contrary to the EU phobe types isn't a European government and it needs to reach consensus among its members and that takes much more time, but for the vast majority of members that consensus has been remarkably quick in coming and strongly been for Ukraine. Germany dragged her heels for all sorts of reasons, but are still prro Ukraine. The only nays have been our two homegrown gobshítes and Hungary.

As for Russia being a direct military threat to the EU and Western Europe, only Russian propaganda outfits actually believe that stuff. Or pretend to. They can't even take Ukraine, never mind a country like Poland. Belarus has been Russia's lapdog since the Wall fell, wih Russian troops in country for as long and bugger all happened to Europe or the EU.

Russia's tactics alright. That said and as an aside the vid wouldn't reflect reality. The Greeks would take horrific losses, but facing overwhelming numbers like that modern troops would be swamped pretty quickly. THey'd run out of ammo in short order and even if they had inexhausible supplies their guns would overheat and fail laying down that level of fire. Plus an actual anceint army would be laying down their own fire with archers. An historical example might be found in the Zulu wars. Though Rourke's Drift gets the movies and accolades, the Battle of Isandlwana where the Zulus swamped the British positions and defeated them doesn't.

I'd say it's much more to do with basic economics JM. Westerners simply live better lives with more stuff and more control over their personal destinies. It would have little enough to do with being progressive. The further east in Europe one goes the less "right on" and more "right wing" the culture tends to be, or at least centre right. Russia is not alone in this. Western "liberal, multicultural, LGBT etc" politics and culture isn't a great seller. QV Poland on those subjects.

Re: China

They already had massive investments in Ukraine including what rumoured to be 5% of land (tho hilariously enough that might be in Russian occupied parts now causing big issues), it also suits their construction industry which can built massive amounts of infrastructure cheaply and quickly, something unfortunately US nor European companies are capable, you can bet the Chinese will be at the top of the queue to rebuild

The Chinese have "massive investments" pretty much everywhere. No matter who wins or loses they'll make bank. If the Russians win or keep a chunk of Ukraine the Chinese will make bank directly, if Ukraine wins they'll make it indirectly. Directly would be more of an issue with a Ukrainian win because the US and the EU would try to curtail their involvement.

while Europe be tying itself up in circles with racist arguments about Ukraine not comprehending that the country and its people have changed

What "racist arguments" are these?

Only earlier in thread you made a big deal about Russia being dismissed to easily, yet you are doing just that now. They dont have to "win" to set europe back a few decades or even centuries

Set Europe back decades, even centuries? I'd bloody love to know what you've been smoking to come out with utter nonsense like that. And from day one I've been saying Russia's a busted flush, economically, geopolitically, demographically and as we've seen militarily too. The EU does need to tool up and minimise the threat of them. It certainly needs to look into and root out any Russian money compromised European poliitcians/businessmen. Not looking at Germany... The EU also needs to ramp up its own resources and manufacturing to head off any future compromises like Russian gas. Or American for that matter.

EU is doing alot, but IMHO it could be doing a heck of a lot more (tho I realise EU hands are tied by treaties), same goes for NATO

1) IMHO militarily the EU simply doesn't have the capacity to send more big kit like tanks, without massively depleting their own stocks. If they even have them. One big reason why the Germans have dragged their heels. Russia had the edge there and the EU dropped the ball in the post Cold War world. I'd be willing to bet if Russia had invaded Germany and there were no NATO involved they'd have folded like an origami competition. They certainly wouldn't have put up the fight Ukraine has. At the same time we don't need to go down the route of being a proxy buffer between the US and Russia either. They both naturally enough have tendencies to be two cheeks of the same arse when it comes to their interests.

2) NATO are wary of losing control of any escalation that leads to a wider and more dangerous conflict. And they're right IMHO. They've demonstrated this wariness a couple of times. The missile that killed two in Poland and the apparent overflight of a Russian missile a couple of weeks back. The US through Biden spelled it out that no way would they putting men on the ground as that would be in his words "World War Three". They strongly seem to want to keep it local and contained to Ukraine.

It wasn't particularly "janky", it was more about Western paranoia about the airframe that had amped up its capabilities based on imagination about what it might be able to do. The Soviets of course were happy for us to do so. Its "jankiness" was also overblown. Yes it didn't use titanium to a great degree and was mostly a nickel steel alloy, but this made it easier and quicker to build and its avionic suite was far more robust against EMP than most western platforms.

Its evolution/replacement the Mig 31 is a very capable airframe. It was the first fighter anywhere to have a phased array radar and passive scanning. It has full look down/shoot down capabilities and data links that could vector other Mig 31s and even other Russian fighters in the area to targets a couple of hundred kilometres away(the first system to do so). It was partially designed to take out NATO low flying cruise missiles, but that makes it very effective against enemy fighters too. It's also very fast and high flying and robust. It can't dogfight to save its life, but these days with missile systems designed to take out targets far over the horizon dogfights are more for Hollywood. It can loiter at high altitude and speed outside of Ukrainian AA defences while targeting Ukrainian aircraft hundreds of kilometres away inside Ukraine. Now it rarely gets direct shootdowns, because tracking from the Ukrainian side spots the missiles en route, but it does get "mission kills" because they force the Ukrainians to get out of the area. And of course because of its speed it's the go to platform to launch Russia's Kinzhal "hypersonic" missile. If they have any more than a couple of prototypes.

Forget the Flankers et al, or Russia's half finished fifth gen, but not really, fighters, IMHO the most capable airframe and platform in the Russian arsenal is the upgraded and redesigned from the "janky" MiG 25, the MiG 31.