As the US and its allies are escalating military aid to Ukraine, Russia warned Thursday that “pumping” weapons into the country threatens the security of the European continent.
“In itself, the tendency to pump weapons, including heavy weapons, to Ukraine and other countries are actions that threaten the security of the continent and provoke instability,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Since Russia invaded on February 24, the US has dumped billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine but has shown little concern about where the arms wind up. A source familiar with US intelligence told CNN that when the US weapons enter the country, Washington doesn’t know where they go, describing it as dropping into a “big black hole.”
The CNN report said that the Biden administration thinks the risk of the weapons winding up in the wrong hands is worth it. In previous years, Congress had tried to keep US military aid to Ukraine out of the hands of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, but that concern has waned.
Peskov’s warning came in response to comments from British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who said on Wednesday that Western countries should “double down” on pouring weapons into Ukraine, including by sending heavy equipment such as tanks and planes.
In a recent escalation of military aid, the US sent Howitzers and artillery rounds to Ukraine for the first time. The Pentagon said Wednesday that Ukrainian troops have more than half of the 90 Howitzers the US has pledged to send.
President Biden on Thursday asked Congress for a massive new $33 billion aid package for Ukraine, which includes $20.4 billion for military aid. In comments on the request, Biden said the new package “begins the transition to longer-term security assistance.”
Shaken By Reports Of Rape, Bosnian War Crimes Survivors Urge Ukrainian Women To Document Everything
Nusreta Sivac has spent decades recounting horrific episodes from a war that much of Europe has tried hard to forget.
She said she recognizes a tragically familiar pattern in reports from Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale military invasion eight weeks ago.
“It is a model copied there in Ukraine, the raping of women,” Sivac told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.
From their perspective as survivors of Balkan conflict synonymous with ethnic cleansing, genocide, and rape, she and other Bosnian women said the most important advice they could give Ukrainian women enduring the current war was to persevere and document crimes — and look ahead to a time when they, too, might get their day in court.
Oleksiy Danylyak, a deputy prosecutor in the southern Kherson region, told RFE/RL recently that his office opened more than 1,000 cases into alleged violations after Russian troops withdrew from occupied areas there, including murder, kidnapping, deportation or forcible relocation, torture, and sexual crimes.
Intercepted Russian statements from the battlefield have even incriminated troops in the suspected use of rape to terrorize Ukrainians and prosecute the war.
Does anybody in Biden’s Admin. have the capacity to think things, thoroughly through?…
Biden also asked Congress to pass a legislative package that would make it easier for his administration to impose consequences for the invasion on the Russian government and oligarchs. The White House proposal would streamline the process of seizing oligarchs’ assets and allow all profits from doing so to be used to help Ukraine.
While I do worry about precedent and all that stuff. The thought of stealing ( all legal like) the Russians $$ and using it to buy US weapons to give to the Ukrainians is just delicious. I bet they didn’t see that fucking coming.
Great idea. How many times can you do this? Just once.
Like the plan to give seized monies from Iran to 911 victims—no logical connection but US citizens cheer it on. Meanwhile all countries will start to avoid the US/UK banking systems on the off chance that their money will be stolen.
It will be hard to maintain USA as the financial hegemon when the only people depositing money in US institutions are US, UK Israel and a few other cargo-cult nations.
I did think the Iran thing was flat out theft.
Donna, the short answer is No.
NO they are too woke and drugged out. Besides obama is hiding in the wings and advising in the destruction of the America he hates.
Does anybody in the Kremlin have the capacity to think things through? Maybe some do but are afraid of breaking the news to Putin.
Russia can’t win a war against Ukraine on Ukrainian soil .
The scorched earth tactics Russia is using are uniting the entire Ukrainian people against the invaders, including many Russian speakers. Mariupol is a Russian speaking city where the people have seen their family members and neighbors killed, their homes and livelihoods destroyed, and their city leveled by Russian invaders.
Since the Vietnam war I have repeatedly seen mighty invading armies defeated by inferior forces defending their homeland. I thought Putin learned the lessons of Afghanistan and Vietnam. Apparently that history will be repeated again in Ukraine and Russia. Eventually people defending their homeland win, but sometimes it takes decades .
In the Biden Admin? No.
The Globalist Socialists think for them.
Biden and his Admin being able to think things through would be redundant and a bit of a nuisance.
Kremlin is beginning to realise that they can’t win this war, hence they are starting to complain.
I wonder how many generals Putin will arrest before he gives up his hopeless endeavour.
In comments on the request, Biden said the new package “begins the transition to longer-term security assistance.”
It’s really reassuring to see that the West is preparing to support Ukraine until the last Russki invader has been thrown out of the country, including Crimea.
Well, Putin certainly told NATO.
They won’t dare send weapons now just to be annoying jerks, no-sir-eee.
Didn’t the duly elected government of Ukraine ask for NATO assistance to repel a foreign invasion? Wasn’t there a government in the Middle East that made a similar request for foreign assistance when it was invaded by ISIS about seven years ago?
A couple, though Ukraine’s demands for open intervention are meant to legitimize the ratline interventions.
The American return to Iraq was pretexted by the IS/DAESH invasion, which the Shia Iraqi government was ill-prepared to counter. The US set all that up, fostering the IS presence and overseeing the quality of the new government, so deduct nobilty points.
Then there’s the Syrian government asking Russia for assistance against the DAESH invasion. Again DAESH was set up by the US, NATO, and GCC. Russia gets bonus points for restoring peace and order in only a few years despite direct and still ongoing Israeli, Turkish and US interventions to aid DAESH and plunge Syria into chaos.
Ukraine’s request for aid is a bit different in other ways too.
Although a victim of the Globalist Socialist Deep State, Kiev didn’t ask for help removing extremists without a state, but Russians, who are a nuclear armed state. Russians aren’t particularly extreme, but then Ukrainians under Russian fire can be forgiven a little subjectivism.
The DAESH that plagued the Middle East were a creature of the Globalist Deep State. The Banderian Azov neo-Nazis were also creatures of the Globalist Deep State. At this point the parallels with Ukraine diverge.
Rather than ask for NATO help against neo-Nazi extremists, the legitimate (but US/NATO colour-revolutioned) Kiev government incorporated neo-Nazi extremists into their military-security apparatus. This was part of an overall Globalist Socialist Deep campaign through the US and NATO to antagonize Russia.
Russia failed in the soft-power conflict, first because they thought they could coast on the hopeless status quo. Then, Russia couldn’t believe Ukraine nationalism was real.
Russian elites thought Ukraine was just something their Soviet ancestors made up to pacify the borderlands. Yet, the Soviet plan would never have worked unless Ukraine nationalism was real.
Ukrainian nationalism in 2014 was driven by a desire to end corruption, poverty, and an autocracy that enforced injustice. This positive nationalism was totally unacceptable to the NATO and Ukraine oligarchal political class.
Banderian extremists were the perfect poison. Nazi negative nationalism could nation-build in a hurry (like DAESH) while enhancing the power of a corrupt elite. Its just that negative nationalism needs to hate someone – but then again perfect; hate Russia.
Apart from longstanding Russian patronization, Euro Globalist Socialists also exploited a legit dispute between Kiev and Moscow, the Holodomor.
The Holodomor was part of a Soviet-wide famine caused by Stalin’s attack on the agrarian middle class. Yet as an agricultural powerhouse, Ukraine in the 1930s was well-positioned to ride out the famine. Even disrupted by forced colletivization, every village had individual gardens and smallholders to sustain their owners and immediate neighbors.
NKVD forces from Moscow made the famine worse in Ukraine by seizing these privately held food supplies. Likely to feed themselves and their cronies, not alleviate the greater Soviet famine, which raged on unabated. Only the Soviet political class and its enforcers remained fed. Hatred for ‘Moscow’ and the NKVD became entangled with hatred for Russians.
This is a sore point among Ukrainians that survived the paper-over whitewash everything campaigns of the Soviets. To quell ethnocentric unrest, the Soviets strove to erase memory of centuries of aggreived tit-for-tatting. Many old scores were successfully (forcebly) forgotten, and only the most hardcore ethnic haters were really upset with this.
However, the Holomodor really stood out as an atrocity in scope and scale, and too recent to just forget. When the Soviets created the Ukraine and tacked on Russian land to Ukraine, this may have been, in part, a quiet form of ‘reparations’. Also kind of backhanded, as Russia, the dominant Soviet player, really wasn’t losing anything. The Soviet Union was a Russian-dominated Empire.
Ukraine’s political elite today wants to keep its Soviet tack-ons like Crimea and the Donbass, but also on board with being Globalist Socialism’s weapon against Russia.
They aren’t stupid either; the people most responsible – US/NATO, are being demanded to pull their weight in blood as well as treasure.
However, nuclear war is the likely result of any direct fight between NATO forces and Russia. The calls for intervention are being met with NATO troops (often newly retired) disguised as mercenaries and billions of dollars of arms shipments.
The long-term plan is years-long proxy war in the Ukraine. NATO is quite open with plans to transition arms aid from obsolete Soviet and NATO surplus to more cutting edge wares, already starting with surveillance and killer drones.
Now I would say initiating a land war in Europe is a pretty major threat as well. The arms pumping was a foreseeable consequence that the Russian zero dimensional checker players didn’t account for.
It’s Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya all over again. The far right Ukrainian paramilitary forces hate the decadent West and its values. They are into a holy war to achieve final victory of the white race against the semitic Untermenschen.
If Putin manages to route the Nazis from Eastern Ukraine, they’ll disperse to spread terror in Europe. The chickens always do come home to roost.
Putin doesn’t care about Nazis in Ukraine. Putin cares about NATO in Ukraine. States like Russia or the US fight wars for geopolitical reasons. The idealistic slogans are used to induce soldiers to risk death and to fool the public into believing that the war is worth the sacrifice.
Both sides use the fight against Nazi Germany for propagandistic aims in order to justify unjustifiable wars; however, considering that Bandera nationalists and neo-Nazi extremists are the driving force behind the Maidan Republic, Putin does care about the “Nazis” as the political force that turns Ukraine against Russia and ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
To Russia, Nato expansion is an existential threat. No question about that. However, even victory in Ukraine won’t remove the US missile systems from Romania and Poland.
The existential threat to the Russian revival was the expansion of NATO from 16 to 30 countries. Like Hitler, Putin is threatening world war to address the power imbalance. Even if Russia could win in Ukraine (and they can’t) pulling Ukraine back into Russian orbit would only marginally affect the European power shift to NATO. More wars would follow if Putin’s Russia is determined to reverse the tide of history which has set Russia as a power in decline.
Nazis in the Ukraine are a problem for people in the Ukraine. German Nazis were a global problem because Germany was a world power that could launch a world war.
As for de-Nazification, that has to be done by the Ukrainian people. To Russian chauvinists like Putin, there is no difference between genuine Nazism and Ukrainian nationalism. Russia is the former imperial power resented by Russian speaking Ukrainians as much as by Ukrainian speakers. The Russian invasion is rekindling historic resentments that only make the nationalists, including the Nazis, stronger.
As for the Russians in Ukraine, that is an internal problem. A cardinal principle that emerged after 50 million people died in WWII is that nations are defined by internationally recognized boundaries, not ethnic identity. That is because you can’t draw boundary lines that have all the Ukrainians on one side and all the Russians on the other side. Putin’s attempt to cast Russia as the state of all the Russian people is as dangerous as Hitler’s view of Germany as the state of all German people or Israel’s self-definition as the state of all Jewish people.
Putin’s stupid invasion is strengthening NATO with the addition of Sweden and Finland. It is also strengthening Ukrainian nationalism and right wing extremism. The war will also weaken Russia . In the long run, the Ukrainian resistance will wear down the Russian invaders.
The lies of Western war propaganda have grown so monstrous and desperate that the backlash from their exposure will dwarf the backlash from the lies about Saddam’s WMD. Get ready for turbo-charged populism that will sweep away democracy, freedom and your prosperity. Western lies are only matched by the economic and moral morass the West finds itself in. I don’t believe Putin intended it, but if he wanted to destroy the West, he could not have chosen no better moment.
Putin is not Hitler and today’s Western countries are not the allies against the Nazis. Politics is dynamic and not static. The victims of today may be the perpetrators of tomorrow and vice versa. The problem is unbridled US imperialism, not alleged Russian imperialism. But you know that. You are just repeat the Western narrative. Chamberlain didn’t even want to appease Hitler, he wanted to use the Nazis to fight the Bolshevists. In the end, they allied with the Bolshevists against the Nazis – same difference. To the Empire, it’s all the same as long as the wars don’t stop. Thus, there was no appeasement of Hitler, but Russia has appeased the West for more than 30 years. Ukraine 2022 marks the end of appeasement.
“Nazis in the Ukraine are a problem for people in the Ukraine. German Nazis were a global problem because Germany was a world power that could launch a world war.”
Nazis in Ukraine are a problem for the world because they have become a tool of US imperialism. In fact, the political dysfunction of Kyiv politics threatens peace in Europe and may very well lead to WWIII and a nuclear Armageddon. Compared to that, Nazi Germany was a walk in the park.
“As for de-Nazification, that has to be done by the Ukrainian people. To Russian chauvinists like Putin, there is no difference between genuine Nazism and Ukrainian nationalism.”
US interference and not any Russian intervention has awakened the Nazi specter in Ukraine. The Bandera nationalism of Kyiv empowers the neo-Nazis by encouraging race hatred and violence with impunity. Thus, the former is the precondition for the latter. Once Russian regions have been liberated from the Nazis, the people will be able to live freely.
“As for the Russians in Ukraine, that is an internal problem. A cardinal principle that emerged after 50 million people died in WWII is that nations are defined by internationally recognized boundaries, not ethnic identity. That is because you can’t draw boundary lines that have all the Ukrainians on one side and all the Russians on the other side. Putin’s attempt to cast Russia as the state of all the Russian people is as dangerous as Hitler’s view of Germany as the state of all German people or Israel’s self-definition as the state of all Jewish people.”
There is so much wrong with what your write. For starters, the Russian Federation is a multi-ethnic state. On the contrary, it is the Bandera fascists that have determined the political destiny of the Maidan Republic who aim for an ethnically “clean” Ukrainian state by ethnically cleansing ethnic Russians with a terror campaign of race hatred from the Odessa massacre to the bombing of the Donbas.
I don’t have the ambition to disillusion you of Western lies. They are too deep seated. Just know that acting on false assumptions will lead to erroneous decisions like the failed Western military interventions in the ME.
The US is good at starting wars, but doesn’t know to end them, or doesn’t want to end them because the empire lives by divide et impera. Contrary to Western claims that Putin would end up in another Afghan-style quagmire with his intervention in Syria, the relatively modest Russian mission put an end to the civil war that the UK/US have fomented since 2008 or earlier. Putin’s success has gained Russia influence even in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Russia has already won in Ukraine. Western propaganda has the sole purpose of feeding the meat grinder of war. The West will lose the economic war. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Like the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the action creates conflict. The form of the conflict varies with circumstances, including the utter destruction of Laos and Cambodia in that case. But it is necessarily going to cause intense violent conflict.
Didn’t the duly elected government of Ukraine request NATO assistance to repel a foreign invasion? And didn’t the government in Syria make a similar request about eight years ago?
Biden is weakening America’s military by taking weapons and other supplies from the American National Guard and Active military and giving them to Ukraine to be destroyed by Russian missiles.
At lease with each missile strike Russia takes out another part of the Ukrainian army. It’s almost like baiting a rat trap.
“Biden is weakening America’s military”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. America has lots of problems, and weakening its military by 80-90% would go a long way toward solving some of them.
You will be singing a different tune if the American military cannot keep America safe from attack.
No, I won’t.
For one thing, that’s already the case. No military can keep America safe from attack. If someone wants to attack America, they will.
For another, it’s irrelevant. No military is NEEDED to keep America safe from being e.g. conquered/occupied.
A small military that would make attacking America a costly proposition that would cause prospective attackers to think twice might be justifiable, if the state itself was justifiable (it isn’t, but we’re obviously going to be suffering it at least a while longer).
The purpose of the military as it actually exists is to funnel corporate welfare to “defense” contractors and serve as a workfare “jobs program” to keep some poor youth from being troublesome and to subsidize the educations of some middle class youth. But to justify those things, a few Americans and lots of foreigners have to be killed every now and again.
Do you really believe the US needs to spend almost a trillion dollars a year for defense?
Some commentators on this site think Putin’s war is glorious. Twelve days ago Critical Thinker even opined that Russia would be justified in launching a nuclear first strike over its grievances about Ukraine. Other commentators assume that the thousands of Ukrainians killed by the invaders are all Nazis and celebrate the wanton slaughter like it is a video game.
The sadistic sickness spreading on these comment pages is truly disgusting and frightening. It is easy to see how Putin descended from master statesman to mass murderer. It is tragic that so many good people are still following him to the Dark Side.
“Some commentators on this site think Putin’s war is glorious.”
Yep. It’s kind of depressing.
I’ve always generally expected that most people, even most “antiwar” people, do have some war they’d at least grudgingly endorse as necessary. I just didn’t expect the level of “Ukraine is a tease; it shouldn’t have worn that outfit if it didn’t want my fine, upstanding, certainly not habitually drunk son to f*ck it” excuse-making for what is a pretty standard power play by a pretty standard thug regime.
My position is, Putin’s military intervention into Ukraine is legal but morally dubious.