Is there a pressure from weapons manufacturers, or more general militarist goals to expand the armed forces? Could be that wealthy donors have a lot invested in the ongoing exploitation of Ukraine's resources and/or reconstruction contracts too... Otherwise it does all seem incredibly counter-productive if not outright insane.

Between you, me, and the lamppost, I'd go for the insane notion .. delusional in other words, if you like. Many report that expanding armed forces in the US is *not* on the cards. I can't remember the figures but there is a serious shortage in terms of enlistment into US military. Most potential enlistment bods are unfit and are generally not interested (.. it seems, as I read it).

To my mind, whichever branch of the US gov't decides that someone needs to provide a permanent injection of funds into the budget for industrial arms expansion is also not on the cards. The investors are probably not interested, perhaps because they sense that project Ukraine is on the ropes. Capitalist economics I suppose.

Meanwhile, BlackRock is the main investor into Ukr, as I understand it .. they hoped to capture Donbass, way back, probably before 2014, where all the resources are i.e. mines/black earth/industrial capacity region. Not sure what they are after now unless they hope to get funded by EU in some way as the Ukr as an entity possibly disappears. They'll get zilch from the Russkies : ). Cents to the dollar and all that if they are lucky.