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🚀 Well, this seems like a bad sign. Politico ran a gloomy story yesterday headlined, “NATO should be ready for ‘bad news’ from Ukraine, Stoltenberg warns.” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who is probably still mad about getting a girl’s name, tried to put a good spin on his dark warning. The sub-headline explained, “‘We have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times,’ NATO chief says in ARD interview.”
But … Do we though? Especially, and this is the sticky bit, and it was fun while it lasted, of course, but do we really ‘have to support Ukraine’ in the bad times? Why? Why do we have to support Ukraine in the bad times?
It’s not like we got married or anything.
Whether or not bad times are coming, bad news for Ukraine has already arrived. Politico’s article unenthusiastically noted that, over the weekend, Russia increased the size of its army — again — this time by 170,000 more soldiers, bringing its estimated total military to over 2.3 million service members. Meanwhile, visible on a clear day from Siberia, Ukraine’s rich uncle Daddy Warbucks is not expanding his army. Uncle Sam faces critical recruiting problems, has a porous border arguably even worse than Ukraine’s, and by all accounts has snapped its wallet closed and jammed it back down the old trouser pocket.
In other words, it’s all bad news. Quibble if you like, but the weekend’s headlines can hardly be called good news. ...
And, behold this exquisitely-painful sentence that WaPo editors must have anguished over leaving in its article (or maybe dutifully added per instructions by their government handlers, either way):
Haha! Reached a stalemate! How many billions did it cost to achieve this “stalemate”? And, how times have changed. Back in the day, if I’d written a sentence like that, I would have been kidnapped from the law firm’s parking lot and woken up with a headache and a face tattoo branding me a “Putin-lover!” Maybe Ukraine needs to get itself some new “senior military officials” who don’t love Putin.
Ukraine, despite what you think - is now one of the most experienced and most heavily armed militaries in Europe and are going to continue killing tens of thousands of foolish Russians
if we do not aid Ukraine now, Russia will conquer Ukraine and then move on to conquering eastern Europe,
which will mean US Military would get involved.
If the briefing was classified, how did Tucker know the details?
imply that the SecDef will send American troops to Ukraine merely because aid was denied. Too easy to debunk,
The news IS bad! Our morons in charge have no “plan B.” Their one and only plan is another 100 billion in round dollars — don’t ask how they calculated that — with no actual military battle plan to win the war or whatever the goal is. Vindman’s tweet was a deep-state hostage demand. In other words, cough up the cash, or Ukraine dies.
Allow me to explain his offer using an imaginary conversation between Congress and the generals on the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
CONGRESS: Boys, the news is bad. We are 33 trillion in debt. We need you to come up with a less expensive way to help Ukraine survive its war with Russia.
GENERALS: You people don’t know war. We’re the experts. How do you expect us to win a Proxy War without shooting cash at the enemy inside depleted uranium shells? It’s impossible! No plan B!
CONGRESS: Nobody wants Putin to win, but we do have some nine-inch, bright-red Jimmy Choo stiletto pumps we can give you. How about that?
GENERALS: Give us the pumps and we’ll think about it.
Malaysia Today ran a story yesterday headlined, “Ukraine aid also creates growth, jobs at home, says Blinken.“ Looking especially haggard and worn-out, and almost fully-grey now, owlish Secretary of State and master propagandist Antony Blinken assured press conference reporters yesterday that, “if you look at the investments that we’ve made in Ukraine’s defense to deal with this aggression, 90% of the security assistance we’ve provided has actually been spent here in the US with our manufacturers.”
The serial prevaricator stressed that Ukraine aid has “produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy.” He didn’t cite any statistics. But don’t ask questions. You see, it’s win-win.
This is the kind of robotic, anti-human, tone-deaf argument that is often caused by chronic Adderall consumption. 600,000 dead Ukrainians were unavailable to comment on how 90% of the laundered aid money actually helps the U.S. economy. Twelve million displaced Ukrainians also did not return any requests for comment by the time of publication.
HeadSet says
imply that the SecDef will send American troops to Ukraine merely because aid was denied. Too easy to debunk,
Not really.
? That "readers context " did debunk that implication "the SecDef will send American troops to Ukraine merely because aid was denied."
I think the chance of Russia invading Europe after winning in Ukraine is zero. The reason Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine is that Puti does not want a NATO naval base at Sevastopol. and Odessa.
I think at worse what the Russians will do is Finlandize Eastern Europe.
I heard a Soviet general speak about "Finlandization." He said it was odd that the West describes Finland that way when Finland is the only country that militarily defeated the USSR. The general said that Soviet tanks had visited many European capitals and even Peking, but never have Soviet tanks visited Helsinki even though the Soviets lost a million men trying to conquer Finland.
Ep. 47 Gonzalo Lira is an American citizen who’s been tortured in a Ukrainian prison since July, for the crime of criticizing Zelensky. Biden officials approve of this, because they’d like to apply the same standard here. The media agree. Here’s a statement from Gonzalo Lira’s father.
America Provoked and Fed This War
What I want to address today is the burden of guilt that the United States bears for this pointless tragedy.
First, Washington arrogantly blew off a long series of Russian warnings — escalating warnings, year after year — that Russia would go to war if we continued to try to pull Ukraine into the orbit of Western militaries and defense contractors. The Russians objected to the idea of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); and more specifically, they objected to ongoing U.S. covert and overt involvement in Ukraine’s frequent political crises, and in its civil war in the Donbas.
(Is it surprising that Russia objects to NATO, a hostile military alliance, scheming and skulking on its doorstep? Decades ago, when Cuba joined in an anti-American alliance with the Soviet Union, we were so infuriated at the idea of a nuclear-armed power sneaking around on our doorstep that we took the world to the brink of annihilation.) ...
The final year before the Russian invasion was one of escalating, tense diplomacy — a time when the Russians repeatedly asked for the U.S. and NATO to stop our CIA covert ops and other provocations and get out of Ukraine — or to at least negotiate about that situation — and Washington repeatedly brushed them off.
And when Russia finally did invade?
At that point, we rubbed our hands together gleefully, and poured exponentially more weapons and money into the conflict. The war metastasized to a far greater size and scale. Congress spent more on this new war in Ukraine than it did on roads and bridges for America. U.S. war profits soared. Soon, we were treated to surreally instructive scenes like that of the U.S. President speaking from a podium at a munitions factory in Alabama, surrounded on stage not by fellow human beings, but by missiles all standing at attention in place of people. ...
And now that the war is approaching an inevitable turning point — to continue with a strained analogy, now that the silverback gorilla has beat the 10-year-old senseless — the war-profiteering sales pitch is more cynical than ever.
The White House can no longer convincingly claim it’s helping Ukrainians when it demands another $60 billion “for the war.” So, it’s switched to claiming it’s helping Arizonians and Pennsylvanians:
... They’ve also adopted the shrillest of scare tactics. President Joe Biden this week, berating Congress for not supporting his latest request for billions more for Ukraine, raised the specter that this disgusting new American weakness would lead to “something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.” In a classified briefing to Congresspeople, Biden’s defense secretary echoed that, reportedly demanding they vote more money for the Ukraine war effort or “we’ll send your uncles, cousins and sons to fight Russia.”
We Forced Ukraine to Tear Up a Signed Peace Agreement
Which brings us to the second great, damning charge against Washington: Mere days into the war, there was already a grave danger: the possible outbreak of peace. Such a development would have derailed the defense contractor gravy train. It would have also dashed the lunatic dreams of men like Raytheon board member-turned Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that we could use this moment — this wonderfully convenient Ukraine war — to “weaken Russia.” ...
Washington’s schemers leapt into action, and actively sabotaged this promising peace agreement.
That’s right. Beltway insiders overruled the Russians and the Ukrainians, and sent them both back to work on our war. ...
Hundreds of Thousands Dead, It’s the ‘Best Money We’ve Ever Spent!’
That the White House stepped in to torpedo peace talks for its own ghoulish ends has been attested to now by everyone from top Ukrainian officials and U.S. foreign policy scholars to a former German chancellor and a former Israeli prime minister.
“The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed,” said former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, in an interview with the newspaper Berliner Zeitung. Schroder participated in mediating the peace talks. He says, “My impression is that nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington.” ...
Half a million young Slavic men — Russian and Ukrainian — have been killed or maimed.
Millions of families have become refugees.
Our government saw this tragedy coming and welcomed it.
What I want to address today is the burden of guilt that the United States bears for this pointless tragedy.
Zelensky is on the road to feel out the power of his blackmail currency and establish flight paths out of Ukraine. I hope he winds up someplace where they serially fleece the shit out of him and his plunder, or do a Trotsky on him. Slow burn or fast burn, as long as it's a burn.
It'd be fun to get a McAfee dump and a Zelensky dump all at the same time. It wouldn't be good gamesmanship on timing and slow release, but it would definitely be fun to hear the echoes of panic from the Pentagon to the Swiss Alps.
A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, a source familiar with the intelligence said on Tuesday.
The report also assessed that Moscow's losses in personnel and armored vehicles to Ukraine's military have set back Russia’s military modernization by 18 years, the source said.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russian defense ministry and Kremlin officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The source said the recently declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 with 360,000 personnel.
Since then, the report found, 315,000 Russian troops, or about 87% of the total with which it started the war, have been killed or injured, the source said.
The source said those losses are the reason Russia has been forced to loosen recruitment standards and draft convicts and older civilians to deploy in Ukraine.
"The scale of losses has forced Russia to take extraordinary measures to sustain its ability to fight. Russia declared a partial mobilization of 300,000 personnel in late 2022, and has relaxed standards to allow recruitment of convicts and older civilians," the assessment said, according to the source.
The Russian army has been left with 1,300 armored vehicles on the battlefield and is having to bolster those forces with T62 tanks produced in the 1970s, the source said.
Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Daniel Wallis
A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops,
RWSGFY says
A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops,
US intelligence also said the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.
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