This thread is about military technology and weapons Ukraine is receiving to counter Russia's extraordinary buildup of more than 80 battalion tactical groups and well over 100.000 soldiers on their very border.
This, in the context of Russia's earlier invasions and continued occupation of territories, Putin's contention that Ukraine "is not a real nation", etc., is a destructive action in itself. More comprehensive modes of deterrence should follow whether or not this immediate level of raising the cost of a continued overt physical invasion has indeed been successful or not.
No matter what happens in the following hours, days, months, years, decades or centuries this escalation by Putin has shown that the effort of supporting Ukraine in their development of a believable defensive force should continue in a measured fashion. Independent and democratic nations should, indeed, be free to choose their affiliations and be prepared to act on that principle - together. They should decouple from strategically dangerous codependencies with totalitarian leaders with renewed determination and urgency. Putin's regime and/or Russia (concurrently, or more likely thereafter) are also entirely entitled and welcome to try and become an attractive and constructive, instead of a coercive and destructive, influence on Ukraine and their other neighbors instead of being surrounded by self-inflicted ceasefires and simmering popular revolts against Putin-affiliated autocrats.
A couple of tanks being loaded on trains in front of cameras counts for absolutely nothing whatsoever; NATO's general secretary has stated that there has been no meaningful change in the situation as of yet. A buildup years in the planning and months in the making just doesn't vanish in an afternoon. Indeed, the editor in chief of one of Russia's openly functioning state propaganda arms (RT, Margarita Simonyan) has already crowed that "the same trains that are carrying tanks away can just as soon bring them back" (I'm paraphrasing here) - sour grapes, perhaps, but entirely in line with current Russian doctrine on a total continuous societal conflict being ramped up when possible and expedient, then ramped down when otherwise necessary.
Ukraine has been openly under attack from Putin's regime since 2014 and 15.000 of her citizens have already died, many more wounded, displaced and terrorized as a direct result of that. Some "nothing", indeed.
