Earlier this year, in a highly controversial move, the Pentagon sent troops to Western Ukraine to begin training national guardsmen working for the nation’s Interior Ministry. The move was opposed by some in the region because it began amid a ceasefire in the Ukrainian civil war, a ceasefire the US is seen in opposition to.
Now, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges is reporting that the Pentagon is considering a dramatic escalation of that training, expanding it to cover not just the interior ministry, but Ukraine’s special forces and potentially the entire army. He said the expansion wouldn’t necessarily include US arms being sent to the country, but didn’t appear to rule it out, either.
Hodges did, however, emphasize millions of dollars in US military aid already provided, non-lethal aid like armored vehicles and body armor, while claiming the Russians have “gone after” the radar provided to Ukraine’s military because it’s been such a change on the ground.
All of this comes, again, in the middle of a ceasefire that is more or less holding, and while the Pentagon is keen to blame “Russians” for everything going on in Ukraine’s east, there really isn’t a lot going on there right now to begin with. The narrative of an ongoing war seems to be pushed by the US primarily to justify further intervention in the region.
Yeah, that'll really help bring peace to the area…
…if only that were the plan.
We spent yrs training the Iraqi Afghanistan and south Vietnam armies only to watch them surrender and donate the weapons we gave them to the other side . We must be training them to lose
Classic American mistake! Iraqis, Afghans and Vietnamese are not Europeans, so American attempts to get them to fight for European-style causes just seems nonsense to them. Ukrainians (and, indeed, Russians) are Europeans and are thus imbued with European ideas about patriotism, nationalism, sovereignty etc. The US has been arming Europeans through NATO since 1949. Nobody surrendered. Nobody "donated" their weapons to anybody. That's because the "cause" made sense to them, just as Ukraine's "cause" makes sense to Ukrainians and, indeed, to most Europeans.
The logical consequence of Putin's refusal to negotiate. He's just using the ceasefire to stall and the US is countering him by using it to bring the Ukrainian military up to NATO standards. There's no sign that Putin wants peace and, indeed, he seems to trying to goad NATO into a war before it's ready, suggesting that he sees war as inevitable but doesn't want to be blamed for starting it and believes he will lose it once NATO has everything in place. In essence, Putin is still in the corner he painted himself into when he annexed Crimea: either he capitulates or he starts WWII, and within the second option, either he loses or he goes nuclear and then loses. No wonder he's dithering! But the longer he dithers, the more he makes capitulation inevitable.
Behind the scenes, power worshiper Ash Carter is chomping at the bit to train and arm N@zi militias.