On Monday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hosted a meeting of over 40 nations to discuss military aid for Ukraine and announced afterward that Denmark will be providing Kyiv with Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
“I’m especially grateful to Denmark, which announced today that it will provide a harpoon launcher and missiles to help Ukraine defend its coast,” Austin said at a joint press conference with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
Reuters reported last week that the US was looking for ways to get Harpoons and Naval Strike Missiles in Ukraine’s hands. The transfer of Harpoons marks an escalation in NATO military aid for Ukraine as the missiles have a range of about 300km, making Russian warships blockading the Ukrainian port of Odesa potential targets and widening the area where Kyiv can use Western-provided arms.
On Friday, a Ukrainian official said the US was preparing plans to destroy Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. “The US is preparing a plan to destroy the Black Sea Fleet … Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons are being discussed,” Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko wrote on Twitter. The Pentagon denied Gerashchenko’s characterization of the US push to get advanced anti-ship weapons in Ukraine’s hands, likely out of fear of provoking Moscow.
Austin said that about 20 countries pledged new military aid for Ukraine at Monday’s meeting, which was held in a new forum known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. “We also heard some very welcome announcements this morning about even more security assistance for Ukraine. That includes some 20 countries that announced new security assistance packages,” he said.
Austin said that Italy, Poland, Greece, and Norway will be sending Ukraine artillery systems and ammunition, and he thanked the Czech Republic for providing attack helicopters, tanks, and missile systems. Austin said other countries made commitments for new training programs for the Ukrainian military.
Does the USA believe that it has first strike strategic nuclear capability? Why else the continuous escalation?
Russia has a “dead hand” retaliatory response capability preprogrammed to strike all major US/Euro population centers. So “first strike” is neutralized. But Washington is confident in its tech advantage and is relishing the opportunity to “live fire” demo it: so it’s “Lets go, General, more gasoline on the fire, sir!”
Russia has, perhaps, 4,000+ nuclear tipped missiles. Suppose 1,000 is fired off? Could we shoot down 10%, 20%, 30%? Suppose every major port is taken out, every MAC Air Force base ( no means to supply our troops, etc) , along with oil refineries, valuable farm lands, major parts of our grid? How about the highway system? Ike provided that, not to make it easier for Americans to travel from here to there, but to facilitate the transport of weapons systems. I am not saying that could happen, but you never know fix that the brightest and best in D.C. would get us in.
There is no question that Russia can destroy the world. What exactly would the point of that be? Someone somewhere down the chain of nuclear command certainly knows that it is better to live in a shithole country with plenty of rubles and mistresses than to be dead for a dying mans vanity.
One can only hope. Better also hope the chain of command is well protected. The more of a shithole it becomes the less secure the nukes become.
Seems to me all Russia would have to do is EMP the agricultural production/transportation system and most Americans would starve, or be killed in the fight for food. And Russia actually has around 6000 warheads. I wouldn’t expect the US ABM system to intercept a significant percentage.
Interception of ICBM during vulnerable launch phase would blunt retaliation after a first strike. So, a first strike isn’t neutralized. Russian strategic nuclear doctrine does not include a dead hand response with the possible exception of submarine nuclear weappons.
I see. Thanks, …I guess.
Yeah. I know. My concern is based on psychopaths in DC being in an echo chamber. Sane people wouldn’t even consider murdering others in mass numbers. But we have seen exactly that in numerous occasions.
Yes, and as well the lemmings, in simple earnest trusting their souls to this cabal of manifestly murderous neocon devils. Hitler, at his height had only 30% of the Germans. Completely betrayed by “the progressive caucus”, even our own long accustomed fellow travelers punctiliously observe the required “illegal invasion” locution at the outset of any critique. And finally, we are left to find hope in the authoritative lucubration of the world’s greatest living war criminal.
Madness rules.
I guess Austin wants Russia to remove the rest of Ukraine’s coastline.
Russia is conducting a systematic land war with conventional weapons. Odessa is next on the list.
They are trying their best, they are progressing but the cost in troops per mile is too high. They will run out of soldiers before they get to Odessa.
I was only trying to make a point. But Ochakiv is only 20 miles from Odessa.
If NATO were to blow Russian war ships out of the Black Sea it would no longer be a proxy war. Russia will have to respond. How ? I don’t know. It may blow up all NATO ships in the Black Sea or beyond. Target the factories where these harpoon missiles are made. There are many other options that without doubt would lead to a hot (nuclear?) of war between Russia (supported by China?) and NATO.
Our carrier battle groups are vulnerable in the Easter Med!
It would be the Ukraine blowing the ships up. Nato countries are allowed to sell/give weapons to other countries if they want to.
Empty suit Lloyd j Austin the Turd wants to commit and act of war against Russia. Typical!
What doesn’t this moron understand about Russia. Russia is not some small tribal nation that America can use drones on to murder people with impunity.
It is not Afghanistan where Counter Insurgent operations can go on for two decades; while corrupt Republican and Democrat politicians skim money from appropriations.
Russia has ICBMs, nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines, functional hypersonic missiles, and advanced laser weapons. They are using conventional ground forces to take and hold territory in Ukraine and taking out supply caches and supply lines with conventionally armed hypersonic missiles.
If the Ukrainians or “advisors” use Harpoon missiles on the Black Sea fleet don’t be surprised if US and UK ship are targeted by a proxy country for attack, maybe Syria.
None of Russia’s allies can attack the US any more than Russia can.
Ukraine, is uniquely cultivated to wage proxy war.
Not even the Yemeni Houthi would want to take on that kind of heat.
Can’t attack the US? Do you work for the DoD or the State Department? What else do you think is impossible?
You must be an American or Canadian.
The point isn’t physical ability to do damage to US forces, but surviving a formal war with the USA.
Even China and Russia need access to the US market to thrive. US Russia sanctions and Russian counter-sanctions have not completely cut US trade with Russia.
Syria has all the legal right in the world to attack and remove US forces from Syria. They might even win the first round.
Then they are at war with the US and potentially NATO. Their allies have to consider that.
The US is the only country in the world that can unilaterally attack other nations without fear of full retaliation, which gives some of us an unrealistic view of how warfare works.
You make some good points but fear is a good thing to have. There’s a good quote by Churchill, as usual, about never being sure about the tides of war. Being sure you can’t be hit is a good way to make it happen. And we may shortly get to find out how good all those anti-ship missiles are.
You obviously never served in the US Navy at sea. Our ships cannot handle hypersonic missiles or a barrage of incoming missiles.
That’s not the point; no nation can handle U.S. retaliation which will go beyond a ship for a ship.
Syria would make perfect sense.
They owe one to Amerikkka.
“The Harpoon is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile developed and manufactured by McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing Defense, Space & Security)”
So, I assume Denmark got those Harpoons from the US. I remember Niki Haley doing a show and tell at the UN claiming that Iranian weaponry used by someone else still made Iran liable and deserving to be attacked. I’m sure Niki would feel the same way if a US made Harpoon missile is used on a Russian vessel. But regardless, this is just one more of those idiotic ways of playing chicken with Russia and hoping it isn’t enough to start WW3. As if you can put toothpaste back in the tube.
They are from Denmark, but I bet legally Denmark isn’t allowed to give them to other countries without getting US permission. You can see the strings if you squint hard enough.
“”Iranian weaponry used by someone else still makes Iran liable and deserving to be attacked.””
…….. niki haley
in other words; “do as i say not as i do”
….. uncle sam
The whole scenario is beyond ridiculous. It is Ukraine itself that is refusing to allow civilian cargo ships to leave harbor with their grain cargoes, in an attempt to blackmail the world with potential food shortages into coming and saving them. Further, there is nothing that “requires” grain exports to leave via the Black Sea, which is largely a road to nowhere (Black Sea, to the Bosporus, to the Med, to either Gibraltor or via the Suez Canal before it actually “gets” anywhere) – alternatively, the grain could be transported via rail into the EU and further distributed from there.
The Russian blockade of Black Sea ports is intended to prevent the shipment of arms from NATO countries on the Black Sea (Turkey, Romania) directly to Ukraine. The alternative will be to sink those ships at sea if NATO provides weapons that make the blockade untenable. That’s an escalation that should be avoided at all costs.
“It is Ukraine itself that is refusing to allow civilian cargo ships to leave harbor with their grain cargoes, in an attempt to blackmail the world with potential food shortages into coming and saving them.”
Sort of like it is Russia itself that is refusing to sell gas to the EU unless it’s paid in rubles, in an attempt to blackmail them with potential gas shortages into stopping its own blackmail.
The blackmail is a merry-go-round, not a one-way street.
No, not even close. Russia’s demand for payment in rubles was precipitated by US/EU sanctions on Russia’s use of the western banking system; so that action is hardly “blackmail”; if the west is going to initiate economic warfare, then Russia is going to respond in kind. Ukraine’s actions are far more insidious, because it is unnecessary – the grain can go out, and Ukraine can get paid, it just doesn’t want to. In fact, better for them NOT to ship grain, because they would just have to use the money to pay for the “aid” they will instead get for free, and shame on us for allowing them to manipulate us so badly.
Yes. The US/EU tried to blackmail Russia with sanctions (including seizing/freezing dollar and euro balances).
So Russia returned blackmail for blackmail by demanding payment for gas in rubles.
While you’re right that “the west” initiated economic warfare with Russia, that initiation happened more than a century ago (immediately following the October Revolution), and picking any particular point subsequent to that as “initiation” is simply denying that it’s a long-term merry-go-round.
I’m not sure what your point is; you compared Ukraine intentionally with-holding grain exports to neutral nations in order to extort aid, to Russia responding to economic warfare initiated by the west in kind; they are not remotely the same thing.
Russia’s response to western sanctions is not “blackmail”; if Russia is to be excluded from the western banking system, then those nations doing the excluding can hardly expect Russia to accept their currency.
Curious. How do you figure that demanding payment in currency that can be used constitutes “blackmail”? It was actually a refusal to being blackmailed.
You’re an ass. You realize the West STOLE all Russia’s dollar and euro currency. I guess you think Russia should provide gas for free!
On the contrary. I thought it was right and just that the Russian regime told the EU regimes “well, OK, if you’re going to freeze/seize our dollar and euro balances, you pay in rubles or you don’t get gas.”
In fact, I thought the Russian regime was over-generous and that they should have just hit the shutoff valves immediately and entirely.
That doesn’t change the fact that this is long-term tit-for-tat stuff, not some situation where it makes sense to spin the bottle and pretend whatever it ends up pointing at is the starting point.
Well, I think we probably agree that it’s the long term tit for tat stuff that is in the end get us all vaporized…
And WHOSE fault is that, Thomas? 🙄
The list is too long to even get far into, but Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, and Vladimir Ulyanov are reasonable starting points.
I gotta agree that that’s a start..
This is flat out nuts!
One has to ask: why this request for a peace plan now? IT IS TO CONTAIN RUSSIA. Russia will win handsomely in Ukraine.
Everyone desperately wants it to end, because the fear is that Russia will not stop. NATO is being decisively beaten in Europe.
There is no way Ukraine can prevent Russia from carrying out their objectives – creation of a secure land bridge from Crimea to the Donbas, and full control of the entire Donbas region. This is already 90% accomplished. Everyone with a brain should realize this; the demands that the fighting continue are coming from people who directly benefit from it (arms manufacturers, their paid toadies in Congress, the US military, and US media) and Ukrainian politicians who are siphoning off a huge amount of the money. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people are dying needlessly for a war that is already lost. Recall Rundstedt’s advice to the German General Staff in 1944 – “Make peace, you imbeciles!”
Yea. My sources say that Ukraine is trying to send, Reserves and Home Guard types to the East. And they don’t want to fight.
In 2015 they tried to send their standing army east and they kept defecting, surrendering.
No one in the MSM will report accurately on this; but there ARE accounts coming through of pressed conscripts surrendering in platoon strength to the Russians, of the “foreign volunteers” being compelled by threats of violence to go to the front – all signs that the ukrainian military is unraveling. They only have so many neo-nazis to go around, and with the surrender of the Azov regiment in Mariupol, they lost a big chunk of them.
I have mentioned this previously: the Uke army brings to mind the conscription of old men and little boys by the Confederacy in the waning days of the US Civil War.
Agreed. And, at least in the case of the Confederacy, those old men and boys had a country background, so could live in the field and shoot a rifle. The Uke conscripts are being matched with heterogenous foreign equipment, of wildly mismatched ages and logistical requirements, with no training on any of it; and are going to be committed to “counteroffensives” against what will be an entrenched Russian army holding defensive positions in the territory they have already taken. It looks like a recipe for disaster.
No little boys; teens but no little boys.
Teens ARE little boys.
Little boys being led to their deaths.
Teens are big boys.
Russia should gift Iran hi-tech anti-ship missiles.
that would be a hilarious conundrum for uncle sam
As a non-aligned, non-nuclear power nonetheless under NATO control, Ukraine can do whatever it’s Europhiles want.
Even brag about being a NATO triggerman under the US hand, and express Russophobia with unbelievable lack of restraint.
This is proxy war at a level not often seen.
What this is about is that the EU and US are desperate to get the ukranian wheat and grain harvest out amid the expected food shortages. Not that they care so much about the ukranians anymore, Nazi’s, ukies, or Russian speaking (they all spoke Russian and unofficially still does, before 2014), no not at all. They want to take the food out of their mouths and the export for themselves.
Nato and its ukie Nazi army keep insisting that there’s a blockade going on in the ukraine. Russia said that there is no blockade for civil ships. Russia will let them pass. It is the zelensky Nazi regime that are keeping the ships and their crews hostage in the only port they still control, Odessa, and not only that, they have mined the sea with old WW2 but still very lethal soviet mines, some have turned up in the bosporous strait. Merchant ships in liberated ports are free to go and they have recieved all the necessary assistance from the Russian and Donetsk authorities to do so.
US won’t give the Nazi’s any anti ship missiles directly but there’s always reliable boot lickers and prostitutes like Poland and Denmark. And when they do, these missiles apart from ending up in the notorious ukie black market, will inevitably with our without Russian assistance end up with the Hezbollah, the Houtis, Iraqi resistance you name it. The list is long and Russia would probably not hesitate to donate some of their own. The hangover from handing out MANPADS willy nilly is yet to come that is for certain (these weapons developed in the 70’s had little to no effect on the war but civilian airliners can’t fend them off). If you want boats to blow up as well, go ahead. Russia don’t need surface ships to secure the waters closer to shore, they have plenty of potent subs to do that.
The Ukrainian ports have been mined by Kiev.
The Russians know that.
NATI knows that too. It’s Kiev that’s blockading the ports not the Allies (DPR, LPR, and RF)
That’s what i said (meant anyway) yes and Russia has de-mined all liberated ports except Odessa and obviously those
Mines out in the sea floating down with the current, as it goes, to Turkey passing Nato members Bulgaria and Romania on the way. A self goal of any…
So denmark is on the hunt to kill russians and property? Golly, i hope they make a nice profit! Viking harpoons to the sea for russian blubber!
“Sen. Cruz, Gen. Milley, Zelensky Say Ukraine Is Vital to National Security”. This is what happens in a proxy war, they are lying to themselves. They are seting the stage for the next time they will ask for money. Break through the propaganda. Never forget the 319,000 Afgham troops that disappeared as the military had been lying for years, if not, decades.
And what missiles will go to Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua?
What new weapons will flow to Iran? To Syria?
There are two sides to restraint, and two sides to lack of it.
As for destroying the Black Sea fleet and raising the blockade, that is an act of war by NATO.
I doubt NATO will do as Zelinsky hopes and says.
If it does, it would mean much wider war. The USN and a lot more ships at sea would suffer in any general war at sea.
There is no blockade its NATO BS. What is limiting civil shipping in the Black Sea is that Ukraine placed naval mines. The 40 billion to Ukraine is nothing more than a NATO grift. Institutionalised, Endemic Corruption or what i call Fascism.
Indeed. The EU is a Fascist superstate. NATO is bellicose, aggressive and expansive military alliance. And the USA’s foreign policy is run by lying, thieving war criminals.
Ukraine to Get Harpoon Anti-Ship Missiles from Denmark
really, where did denmark get them. never mind we can all guess.
usa was having a sale on em’.
Washington ships 6 Harpoons while Russia drops 500,000 155 mm artillery shell on Donbass front lines daily.
Imagine if Russia decided to create it’s own proxy war against the USA by supplying weapons to ANTIFA and BLM and some others.
Mardasee, I rather like that idea!
There are huge advances by Russia all along the Donbas front, primary and secondary defences have been breached. NATOnazis in full retreat or surrender (evacuation) in many places. Most retreat routes are under RF fire control or covered by air.
Here is a warning to Europe. In 3 months Russia has routed 100,000 heavily armed and trained NATO troops in heavy fortifications. I predict a massive defeat to NATO in Europe and war crimes tribunals where all the Western leaders are tried for crimes against humanity.
Then why, after 90 days of hard fighting, does Russia only control the easternmost 1/8th of Ukraine, right outside its border? Source
Also: the ruble has more than recovered, and Moscow’s trade surplus to hit record highs in the coming months. NATOnazi’s war is failing on all fronts.
Hilarious article by Caitlin Johnstone, in which she envisions the following scenarios.
Zelensky hosting SNL
Zelensky portraying himself in an action movie co-starring the Rock
Zelensky presenting his own line of clothing and breakfast cereal
People flocking to a new religion called Zelenskyism
!!!