Ukraine’s ceasefire with eastern rebels has been holding for quite some time, and even President Poroshenko now says it’s “real.” That would ruin Ukraine’s anti-Russia rhetoric if it holds, and Ukrainian policy is being drawn up to see it doesn’t.
The defense ministry today laid out plans to double the size of Ukraine’s military budget to $3.2 billion, and intends to conscript some 40,000 men into the military to fight against the eastern rebels.
All of this is in spite of a ceasefire that is holding in the east, and officials claiming to have plans to settle the conflict peacefully. Instead, they’re looking to blow up their budget on war spending.
What’s unclear is where Ukraine will actually get the additional $1.5 billion to spend on its war, as the nation is perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy and courting Western bailouts. Though NATO members have been eager to use the Ukraine war as an excuse to escalate their own military spending, it’s hard to imagine they’ll be willing to bankroll Ukraine’s war so directly.
No doubt, these conscripts will be trained to take aim at the Archduke.
They prefer to spent money on war instead of peace.
Operation Omidyar goes into the next phase, with Glenn Greenwald's silent consent
No need to be so coy, Mr. Ditz. We know very well where the money will come from, the same place Vicky Nuland found $5 billion to finance a coup against Ukraine's elected leaders: US taxpayers. The Pentagon has a slush fund – for Overseas Contingency Operations – of $63 billion that can be used for just this kind of "contingency."
Where will Ukraine get $1.5B? That's easy. The IMF. There always plenty of money for wars. That's where the profits are. Just like here.
Ceasefires are by definition temporary. Ukraine is clearly not going to allow Putin's merceneries to establish a fake "rebel state" in the enclaves they hold and, most probably, use it as a springboard to grab more territory. Never forget that Crimea with no land access is a white elephant. Putin has little choice but to grab the four provinces astride the Kharkov – Sebastopol railway, plus Donetsk and Lugansk, which lie between the line and the Russian border. Ultimately, therefore, war seems inevitable. The Ukrainians are lucid enough to see that they have nothing to lose and, like the Poles (whom they so greatly resemble) in 1939, they intend to go down with their heads high. If the neocons stop trying to protect Putin, so much the better, but only seven years after Hitler and Stalin split Poland between them, Hitler was dead and his regime utterly destroyed. Ozymandias!
I believe two times zero is still zero… so if Ukraine has no money for war, then they have to be sponsored by the US/EU which is a proxy declaration of war … I guess John Insane McCain and Vicki (I hate all Russians) Nuland will finally get what they started in February of 2014
That billion will come from the Ukie oligarchs who stole it from former state businesses in the first place, plus a line of credit from the CIA. If they try to goad Russia, and Putin stomps the Ukraine to smithereens, which Western news outlet will call it "Russian belligerence" first?
Truly weird, ahistorical stuff, with a lot of wishful thinking, from M. Kenny. "Only 7 years after Hitler and Stalin split Poland…" Those 7 years included the greatest war in history, in which Stalin's men destroyed Hitler. The fossilized neo-Hitlerites of western Ukraine, drugged out on uber-nazi romantic bullshit, are mere cannon fodder to be used for Western strategic ends. They are utterly expendable, as was shown in the summer's disastrous (for them) offensive against Donbass. If they try it again, they will be mauled again. And what's this about the neocons trying to protect Putin? Give us a break, that is seriously loony.