Then Red Dragon, how many additional Ukrainian lives do you expect to sacrifice going forward or put differently how many are you willing to sacrifice?
200,000 more?
What makes you think decision isn't primarily one that the Ukrainians get to make?
Then Red Dragon, how many additional Ukrainian lives do you expect to sacrifice going forward or put differently how many are you willing to sacrifice?
"If you don't understand how powerful this video is, you don't understand soldier morale, motivation, will to fight. This is gold."
â John Spencer @SpencerGuard
Kind of amazing to witness the utter collapse of the incompetent Russian army and its commanders. It's no longer a question of "if" they will lose... but how long they will be forced to hold on and how many more men will Putin sacrifice in pursuit of his folly. The Ukrainians now have more equipment at their disposal that they have been trained on. Seems the scales will be tipping very much in their favor.
The long-feared Russian bear has been exposed as the second best army fighting in Ukraine. Their reliance on a Soviet-era command structure, riddled with corruption, is their downfall, along with the many lies told to Putin.
Most surprising to me is how many prominent folks are still shouting Ukraine will lose, that the funding to Ukraine must cease (not our fight etc) - as they don't understand this fight isn't just some regional skirmish over a chunk of land.
From Sweden & Finland joining NATO, to the resilient backing of western govts, to European countries even leading past America, with their contributions of advanced weaponry, and ongoing training of Ukrainian forces on the new equipment, this is a critical fight of our lifetimes. Putin and his advisors couldn't (or wouldn't) see any of this coming.
Putin's Russia must be defeated so that a better Russia can emerge and rejoin the world community.
Kind of amazing to witness the utter collapse of the incompetent Russian army and its commanders. It's no longer a question of "if" they will lose... but how long they will be forced to hold on and how many more men will Putin sacrifice in pursuit of his folly. The Ukrainians now have more equipment at their disposal that they have been trained on. Seems the scales will be tipping very much in their favor.
The hypersonic weapons threat turned out to be a big nothingburger.
Time for Biden to come clean on Ukraine The leaks appear to show that officialsâ understanding of the war is at odds with their public statements, raising the specter of Vietnam.
It's not about coming clean w. anything, but about selling arms and profiting, I guess.
Time for Biden to come clean on Ukraine The leaks appear to show that officialsâ understanding of the war is at odds with their public statements, raising the specter of Vietnam.
TRADING WITH THE ENEMY Seymour Hersh Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?
The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayersâ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.
What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, âalthough there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.â
âZelenskyâs been buying discount diesel from the Russians,â one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. âAnd whoâs paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millionsâ on it.
Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally âcompeting,â I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. âI wouldnât be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,â an American expert on international trade told me.
The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie. The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelenskyâs greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because âhe was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.â
Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else. âThe ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they hadâdriving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,â the intelligence official told me. (...)
Probably pales in comparison to the billions Putin has singlehandedly plundered from Russia. Besides, I never knew you were so concerned about where US taxpayer money was being spent.
TRADING WITH THE ENEMY Seymour Hersh Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?
The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayersâ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.
What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, âalthough there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.â
âZelenskyâs been buying discount diesel from the Russians,â one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. âAnd whoâs paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millionsâ on it.
Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally âcompeting,â I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. âI wouldnât be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,â an American expert on international trade told me.
The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie. The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelenskyâs greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because âhe was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.â
Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else. âThe ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they hadâdriving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,â the intelligence official told me. (...)
ISIS-level terrorism, because the RU forces aren't interested in the rules of war.
And yet so many think Putin can/should be negotiated with. Anyone who has watched the vid clips of the RU TV talk show hosts calling for genocide in Ukraine knows better.
As for you.. I am fully aware you are trying to push my buttons, manically trying to throw anything at me to get some kind of savage response.
Sorry, not playing that game. Nor am I going to get into a pissing match with you about the relative benefits and crimes of the USA versus other great powers. Not into that game either.
For all I know you could have lost loved ones family to US aggression which is fuelling your vitriolic hatred of US foreign policy. So I am not going to get into that fight with you either.
But what I will stick up for, and this is something you fully gloss over, is the right of CEE nations to self-determination and the freedom to contract with whoever they wish for their collective defence. These countries have suffered enormously from both Nazi Germany and then later, and for much longer, under Soviet occupation.
More recently, the last year has also exposed massive collusion on the part of the German government with Russia, completely at odds with its direct neighbours to the east. It's almost as though the spirit behind the Ribbentrop/Molotov still lives on. Worse still, there has been a lot of sympathy from old left-wingers in Europe generally for Russia's imperialist aims, which has made CEE countries feel even more insecure and totally perplexed as to why Russia deserves any kind of sympathy at all.
This is the history you appear to be completely ignorant of, or at best, wilfully ignoring. If you want a very eloquent Polish voice on Twitter, it's hard to find a better one than this guy. But there are lots of other sources if you cared to look.
I came to live in Germany in 1987 despite great resistance from friends and family back home. At the time, I thought Germany is probably the least likely of any country on Earth to fall prey to fascism, at least not again so quickly. I still think that and am heartened by some great thinkers here and the silent majority, who remain pretty decent when it comes down to it. But my respect for the country has taken a great knock after seeing the country's purposefully sluggish response to the invasion of Ukraine, the whole scandal surrounding Nordstream and the general sentiment in all German-speaking countries - and also Hungary - that exhibits some kind of understanding or even tolerance for Russian ambitions. Maybe it is the echo of days of empire past. Whatever it is, I don't share it.
So my problem with all those on the left who support Russian aims and ambitions (and you appear to be one) is their absolute disconnect between the basic ideals of socialism (some kind of distribution of wealth, equal opportunity, an intact welfare net and yes universality and the death of nationalism) and the reality of modern Russia. Modern Russia is not a socialist state in any form whatsoever. It has morphed into a corrupt mafia-style kleptocracy that has resorted to rabid nationalism and is destroying everything that was ever good about Russia. (Synder's address before the US Security Council was pretty spot on. The people doing the biggest damage to Russia are its current leaders).
So, this is not a fight between capitalism and communism, no matter how much that old mantra might be hard-wired into your brain. It is a fight by an old imperial power that has lost out in the competition with modern open democracies. Its economy is smaller than that of South Korea for God's sake. It is a failed state and its leaders are in denial, to the extent that they are happy to drive their country to the wall before accepting the need for change.
And tbh, the USA is not playing a leading role in this fight, no matter how much you would like to blame them for everything. For sure, the USA is going to pursue its own agenda and has massive resources, but Washington is not where the action is here. Nope, it is in the Baltic/CEE region, which is evolving before our eyes into a major force for freedom and open democracy.
History evolves. It's about time you got up to speed with the changes.
Slava Ukraine
Super post. Nice to learn about the awakening in the Baltic/CEE region. Thanks.
As for you.. I am fully aware you are trying to push my buttons, manically trying to throw anything at me to get some kind of savage response.
Sorry, not playing that game. Nor am I going to get into a pissing match with you about the relative benefits and crimes of the USA versus other great powers. Not into that game either.
For all I know you could have lost loved ones family to US aggression which is fuelling your vitriolic hatred of US foreign policy. So I am not going to get into that fight with you either.
But what I will stick up for, and this is something you fully gloss over, is the right of CEE nations to self-determination and the freedom to contract with whoever they wish for their collective defence. These countries have suffered enormously from both Nazi Germany and then later, and for much longer, under Soviet occupation.
More recently, the last year has also exposed massive collusion on the part of the German government with Russia, completely at odds with its direct neighbours to the east. It's almost as though the spirit behind the Ribbentrop/Molotov still lives on. Worse still, there has been a lot of sympathy from old left-wingers in Europe generally for Russia's imperialist aims, which has made CEE countries feel even more insecure and totally perplexed as to why Russia deserves any kind of sympathy at all.
This is the history you appear to be completely ignorant of, or at best, wilfully ignoring. If you want a very eloquent Polish voice on Twitter, it's hard to find a better one than this guy. But there are lots of other sources if you cared to look.
I came to live in Germany in 1987 despite great resistance from friends and family back home. At the time, I thought Germany is probably the least likely of any country on Earth to fall prey to fascism, at least not again so quickly. I still think that and am heartened by some great thinkers here and the silent majority, who remain pretty decent when it comes down to it. But my respect for the country has taken a great knock after seeing the country's purposefully sluggish response to the invasion of Ukraine, the whole scandal surrounding Nordstream and the general sentiment in all German-speaking countries - and also Hungary - that exhibits some kind of understanding or even tolerance for Russian ambitions. Maybe it is the echo of days of empire past. Whatever it is, I don't share it.
So my problem with all those on the left who support Russian aims and ambitions (and you appear to be one) is their absolute disconnect between the basic ideals of socialism (some kind of distribution of wealth, equal opportunity, an intact welfare net and yes universality and the death of nationalism) and the reality of modern Russia. Modern Russia is not a socialist state in any form whatsoever. It has morphed into a corrupt mafia-style kleptocracy that has resorted to rabid nationalism and is destroying everything that was ever good about Russia. (Synder's address before the US Security Council was pretty spot on. The people doing the biggest damage to Russia are its current leaders).
So, this is not a fight between capitalism and communism, no matter how much that old mantra might be hard-wired into your brain. It is a fight by an old imperial power that has lost out in the competition with modern open democracies. Its economy is smaller than that of South Korea for God's sake. It is a failed state and its leaders are in denial, to the extent that they are happy to drive their country to the wall before accepting the need for change.
And tbh, the USA is not playing a leading role in this fight, no matter how much you would like to blame them for everything. For sure, the USA is going to pursue its own agenda and has massive resources, but Washington is not where the action is here. Nope, it is in the Baltic/CEE region, which is evolving before our eyes into a major force for freedom and open democracy.
History evolves. It's about time you got up to speed with the changes.
