The Senate on Wednesday night passed a bill that would revive the lend-lease program for Ukraine, which was used to give weapons to the Soviet Union, China, the UK, and other US allies during World War II.
The Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 passed in the Senate by voice vote. The legislation would give President Biden the authority to send more weapons to Ukraine with less red tape.
The legislation would allow the US to give weapons to Ukraine free of charge while requiring payment at a later date. According to a summary of the bill, it would temporarily waive “certain requirements related to the President’s authority to lend or lease defense articles if the defense articles are intended for Ukraine’s government and necessary to protect civilians in Ukraine from Russian military invasion.”
If passed through the House and signed by President Biden, the US could send weapons under the bill for however long the current conflict lasts. The summary says the waiver would be in effect until “the conflict beginning with Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 has ceased, and Russia has reduced its military force on Ukraine’s eastern border to the levels maintained prior to March 1, 2021.”
During World War II, the US sent its allies an enormous amount of military aid under the lend-lease program. According to the US Embassy in Russia, the program provided the Soviet Union with $11.3 billion in assistance, the equivalent of $180 billion in today’s currency, from 1941 to 1945.
The US has already provided a substantial amount of weapons to Ukraine and is delivering new weapons packages rapidly. Since Russia invaded on February 24, the Biden administration has pledged $1.7 billion in military aid for Kyiv. More is coming as NATO allies agreed Thursday to give Ukraine “new and heavier” military equipment.
Throwing guns at the problem
This exemplifies the primal foreign-policy addiction from which US regimes will never seek rehabilitation: paying to pick “winners” beyond US borders. The losers–invariably and unexceptionably–are American citizen taxpayers.
Draw it out. Make sure the Russians and Ukranians are killing each other.
Just wait until poverty stricken Kiev has to start repaying the billions back. This was a sore point between England and the US for decades after 1945.
No, they won’t have to pay for that.
Right. Just like Israel.
Lend Lease is repaid. Key words “Lend” “Lease”
Great. Now we can level the playing fields.
How about some lend lease to Yemen?
Level the playing field? That “playing field” is Ukrainian cities. And who exactly are “we”?
And they will be leveled.
Says Mr pro peace. But ok, they will be leveled by the russians but you will blame Azov, of course. So how is this good for peace and why are you so anti Ukraine, the very country invaded, attacked, and being destroyed.
You really are trying hard to put words in my mouth. I just stated a fact. The US pouring weapons into Ukraine is the reason the cities will be leveled you simpleton. I’m not anti-Ukraine or anti any country. I loathe all governments including Russia’s. And Russia’s issues should have been addressed but the US wanted to sacrifice Ukraine to destroy Russia. Destroying Ukraine along the way was never a concern. So, hope all you want for those weapons and that “level playing field” peace nick and don’t bitch to me when those cities are indeed leveled.
They’ll be leveled but Ukraine, the underdog, will end up on top.
“The legislation would allow the US to give weapons to Ukraine free of charge while requiring payment at a later date.’
Which would be April 15th of every year.
More theft from American taxpayers. Congress is out of control!
Washington will fight this war to the last Ukrainian life.
And all this will probably be captured or destroyed by Russia since they can’t transport it from the Polish border to units in combat.
Yes more targets for the hypersonic Kinzal!
I think Putin will use space lasers!
Or he might use dark magic…
Space lasers,hyper sonic missiles, anti satellites missiles to destroy communications, or any thing in his arsenal and ultimately nukes. Why not? He will not let the American thugs to get away with the wealth of his nation like Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and get himself killed like Qaddafi Saddam or Milosevic. Don’t have any pipe dream about grabbing his gold and other assets
Comrade, I think you have misunderstood the situation.
Do you see a scenario where American troops occupy Russia?
I don’t, especially since they have been adamant that American troops won’t even enter Ukraine. If they had, they war would already have been over.
“Don’t have any pipe dream about grabbing his gold and other assets”
I know Putin thinks that all Russia’s assets belong to him personally, but actually they don’t. They belong to the Russian people, it’s time to overthrow the oligarchs in the Kremlin!
It is who has misunderstood the situation. American or any other troops in Ukraine is not matter of relevance if Russia is strangulated by any other way which means economically or financially.You may sit in America with your troops expecting your financial shenanigans will let you steal the wealth and plunder Russia and murder Putin as you did with Qaddafi, Milosevic or Saddam.It is already stated by Russia any such step by you will be taken as an act of war.Don’t forget Russia is nuclear super power. Nuclear or any other power is to be employed as and when it is needed. Come to worst Russia will certainly use it to protect it . M A D it may be . Again it is Russia with world or no world
As I’ve stated, the people around Putin aren’t willing to sacrifice their families in a nuclear war, just because Putin lost a war he himself started.
They will simply remove him and then have him arrested.
You can count on that.
Wait a minute.Who says Putin lost the war?For him the action is going as he has planed.Again i say your being carried off by your freeee MSMs
So having your army parked like a long caravan north of Kyiv for a month, taking heavy casualties, and then retreating without actually taking Kyiv, was his plan?
Give me a break!
Both you and I know it was a humiliating defeat, he wanted desperately to capture Kyiv and install a puppet regime.
Wake up, Thomas.
Haha, you are so funny.
Haven’t you seen what a total cluster f*ck the Russian operation has been?
This is a war for hearts and minds so learning from WW2, the Russians could be allowing Ukraine to put up a “good fight” so when Russia decides the war is over, many Ukrainians will accept that.
Look at Iraq, US reached Baghdad in a few weeks but then spent years having to pacify it. Same with Afghanistan.
The Nazis in western Ukraine might want to fight on but they could be allowed their own agrarian state.
The only problem here is that the incompetent Russian army fails to take Kyiv, just a few miles from the border. Embarrassing.
The push on Kiev was a feint to draw Ukrainian forces from the East. It worked, and now Ukraine is playing catch-up trying to reposition while the Russians are forming up for an advance that will be the end of the Ukrainian military.
So the Russian army is so weak it has to try to feint the Ukrainians?
And spending 6 weeks doing so?
Well, I guess we will know the answer sometime in 2023 when the Russians are finally ready to attack…
“Washington will fight this war to the last Ukrainian life.”
And down to the last American taxpayer.
Yes , you are correct. Kleptocrats will use this situation to steal $Billions from American taxpayers without their knowledge because the citizens are sheep.
As a commie I seriously doubt you pay that much in taxes…
I’ll bet I pay more than you do!
I’m sure you do, as I’m not a Yankee like you.
You probably don’t pay any taxes anyway…
If it ever comes to a point where we have defeated the world of “monsters”, the complex will turn violently against their own.
Renenbering the glory days of WWII. Fantasy of old people, and their brats nor knowing how to make an honest buck.
US was the world’s creditor — today, the biggest debtor. The money nowdays are just given generously and stuck on the giant slate.
How will this be paid off? You know, one if these days wevwill be controlling the globe. Our ship will come in. And the world will be our plantation!
Somebody, tell the Fed to crank out a few more trillion.
The admission by the Pentagon, U.S. media, etc., that the U.S. has employed a “strategy” of outright lying and making up fake intelligence to ‘combat Russia’ is not news to me.
They also admitted that most of the intelligence surrounding the conflict, such as the infamous ‘China is providing Russia with equipment’ was complete ‘malarky’ The “Empire of Hate and Lies.” will kill us all.
As the CNN descends into the depths of the worst propaganda — are there any adults left to counter the toxic effect of daily drumbeat of insanity?
Russians bombed train station in — Krematorsk!
In Russian held territory, populated by Russian speaking population — and place where refugees are received from war zones. Really?
Russians left areas — and insured that Ukrainian forces find photo-ops of dead civilians.
Russians are targeting maternity hospital in Mariupol, a predominantly Russian city — “defended” by Azov battalions?
After Russia notified Turkey of Azov placing mines into Black Sea, using its navy to detect them, now Zelenski claims Russia is placing mines! Turkey disabled some
drifting into Bosphorus.
Dozen of foreign cargo ships kept forcibly in Odessa as large juicy targets — so they can claim Russia bombed them! Even though those ships communicated to their agents that Ukrainians told them to stay — or else they will shoot at them.
Now, Russians brought radioactive material!
US populace better wake up. We are dealing with a desperare criminal minds — people in power hating their iwn population. There is no limit to attricities they would not stoop to.
We are crazy to indukge them. Let us ask hard questions— what Ukrainians they actually represent and care about? Their Ukraine is Galicia, the product of endless feuding of Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, Romania. And their tortured history, including forced Catholization of some parts — is now imposed on tge unwiling majority of the country, Christian Orthodox!
Zelenski has lost his mind — claims that those Banderites were the paragons of tolerance! He — and Israel — are conveniently forgetting the murders of Jewish population.
Daily the outrageous inventions are growing louder and more crazy — with no American institutions trying to introduce caution, question the maddness.
And now, with the arrogance of mad scientists, Zelenski is reversing the peace negotiation gains — going backwards! Why not — the entire West, having bought the line, has no way back but to support whatever outrage they committ! We better watch out.
Who will take care of that mess? The entirely split country, with the madness descending unabridged,
Russia knows now that goodwill moves, like relaxing encurclement of Kyiv.
US better watch out — it is not Russians digging “trenches” around Chirnobyl — Zelenski crazies are. But why? Trying to dig down into soil where fallout is more cincentrated. What for? To create another “Russia did it show”?
This is getting dangerous. For all of us.
CNN has about 750,000 viewers. Thats less than a mid tier blogger these days. Independent Media (Antiwar.com) has orders of magnitude more influence among the broad population versus old media 🙂
Antiwar.com independent media? Doubt it. It is selective “independence”
Agreed that Antiwar is not perfect and is less independent than its scrappy days 20 years ago. Just wanted to point out that regimist Media had a tiny viewership versus independent media these days – another example Zerohedge had something like 35,000,000 page view a month. Geez, even a quirky niche media site like Vineyard of the Saker gets 10,000,000 views a month.
We tend to give too much credence to regimist Media, should be ignored or laughed at these days.
Here is the ugly truth nobody wants to openly admit: the Empire of Hate and Lies is attempting to genocide Russia and the Empire of Hate and Lies is ALREADY genociding the people of the Ukraine. Their crime of course being they are ethnic Russians.
Angel Dzhambazki is a Bulgarian Nazi Memeber of the European Parliament (MEP) who was fined for giving a Nazi salute inside the European Parliament has again stormed out of the European parliament and again gave the Nazi salute.
On what planet can the EU allow Nazi’s to be included in their parliament? The EU is an undemocratic criminal organisation that needs to be disbanded and the leaders sent to the Hague to answer for their many many crimes against humanity.
The big news today is that those evil Russkies have fired a Tochka-U missile with a cluster warhead at the city of Kramatorsk, killing scores of innocent civilians. Minor problem: Russia does not have Tochka-U missiles, which are 30 year old Soviet missiles which have been far surpassed by modern Russian missiles. Guess who does have a stockpile of these missiles? Thats right Ukraine…….Ukraine fired a Tochka-U missile into a civilian population that killed dozens so they could blame it on Russia.
Russia did not have the old-model Buk which allegedly shot down MH-17 either, which did not stop the “Empire of Hate and Lies” to instantly blame the shooting down on Russia.
Russia has long liquidated their chemical weapons stores, unlike the US or the UK, but who cares about that when hating Russia and Russians is all which really matters?
On the Tochka-U at Kramatorsk: the serial number is in the series already known to have been in Ukrainian service. Flight path indicates it came from the southwest of Kramatorsk, from Ukrainian-held territory. Also, how does it benefit Russia to lob missiles at civilians when they’re already under the microscope for the Bucha incident? But it GREATLY benefits the Ukrainians if they did it and can successfully pin it on the Russians. As with everything going on, QUI BONO? Who benefits?
The whole point about Lend-Lease was that the recipient had to pay for the military assistance.
Does Ukraine have any money left. Nah, it’s all been stolen by Ukraine’s politicians and their mates among the Ukrainian oligarchs – a thing unlike Russia where they’ve all been pensioned off.
Perhaps $57 billion gone in less than eight years.
and 10% goes right back to the big guy 🙂
Lend lease is a debt trap ask the Brits or the Russians .
The US went into WWII with a debt/GDP ratio of 38%. By the time it had ended, debt had reached 121%. It took almost 40 years for debts to come down to 40% again.
Following Trump’s tax cuts and the Pandemic spending, US debt today is at an all-time high of 127%. Weapons for Ukraine are only going to set the US back by a few billions; however, a depreciation of the petrodollar together with economic war involving Russia and much of the rest of the world could lead to a global economic depression and stagflation. US debt is so high that an asymmetric shock could push the economy over the brink.
Good luck with the next election, Joe!
And just how do Biden and Co. expect the Ukraine to pay its bills under this revamped ‘Lend-Lease’ program? Kiev is already being hounded by international banks and independent financiers for loan payments, and it appears Zelensky is going to find his country in default in short order. L-L is a bad deal for the US: we’re going to send a lot of hardware we’ll NEVER see a return on. EVER.
And just how do Biden and Co. expect the Ukraine to pay its bills under this revamped ‘Lend-Lease’ program? Kiev is already being hounded by international banks and independent financiers for loan payments, and it appears Zelensky is going to find his country in default in short order. L-L is a bad deal for the US: we’re going to send a lot of hardware we’ll NEVER see a return on. EVER.
Have no illusion. Russia will not surrender.It will be world with Russia or no world. Also it will not be a uni[polar world.Again have no illusion,dollar will be worth only the paper it is printed.
Will you struggle to keep on living without Putin and with a weakened Russian state?
Better start getting used to that thought…
DC has always acted like a street gang- whether they’re right or wrong the fights must go on. Facts and truth don’t even enter the equation!