Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was careful not to emphasize that the eastern Ukraine war has been in a state of ceasefire for two weeks, or that he had already pushed a measure through parliament on autonomy that was likely to effectively end the rebellion.
Instead, addressing US Congress today, the Ukrainian president pushed for a massive provision of US weapons to fight a war against Russia, insisting that the future of NATO depends on Ukraine defeating Russia.
The US is providing “non-lethal” aid to this point to Ukraine, though Poroshenko complained that “one cannot win a war with blankets” and wants the US to step up arms shipments as well.
Poroshenko’s push for war with Russia appears to settle on the question of the Crimean Peninsula, which seceded from Ukraine after the ouster of the Yanukovych government by protesters, and gained accession into the Russian Federation shortly thereafter.
The protesters’ ouster of the Yanukovych government, and the interim government’s crackdown on ethnic Russians, also sparked the unrest in eastern Ukraine which led to the rebellion, though the eventual agreement to roll back the ban on Russian language and grant the region increased autonomy appears to have resolved that.
Poroshenko, and indeed other officials in the new Ukrainian government, have wildly varied their rhetoric in recent days, talking up peace and concessions when addressing eastern Ukraine, promising a great war to wipe them out when talking to hawkish ultranationalists in the west, and presenting a nigh-apocalyptic vision of a war on Russia when addressing potential donors.
The reality is that Ukraine’s poorly paid, poorly trained military, with its arsenal of the best arms the Soviet Union had to offer in the 1960s, is simply not prepared to fight its much larger neighbor, Russia, at any rate, and even a wholesale provision of modern arms by the US isn’t going to magically transform Ukraine’s ground forces into a real threat to Russia, either in Crimea or on the eastern border.
this should go over big in Kiev where they have cut off gas for hot water to save gas good work petro, and put a tie on, you are not cool
"…wholesale provision of modern arms by the US isn’t going to magically transform Ukraine’s ground forces into a real threat to Russia…"
Well, duh?!?!? That's not what they want to do with the western arms. They're not stupid enough to actually attack Russia. They want the US and NATO to do the actual fighting while they stockpile the shipments of new, modern weapons so that when the dust settles, they can waltz in and lay claim – as well as lower the hammer on the Russian-leaning people in the eastern oblasts without worrying about Russian interference.
Off course NATO feature depends on arming every European nation to where they have no place to keep them. That's the plan set fourth by USG, they paid to Neo fascism in Kiev $5 billion dollars to militarize Ukraine, the policy of Barack Hussein Obama is about Islamization or militarization of nations in regarding to war plan with Russia.
Just when you think the US's reputation can't get any lower.
Poroshenko's trip paid for by the weapons mafia.
Biden is saying "Nice try, Petro, downing Flight MH17. Yea, you were supposed to get Putin's plane, but we blamed the whole thing on him, so it all worked out."
Biden was thanking Poroshenko for one being a slave to Washington D.C. and two for allowing his son Hunter Biden to be on the board of Burisma Oil and Drilling Holdings Company in Ukraine.
The EUkrainians are going to need blankets long before they'll run out of arms and ammunition. A Kalashikov is a very dangerous way to keep warm. 'Porko' might stay warm this winter, most Ukrainians won't.