The US will allow its European partners to transfer F-16s to Kiev, according to the Washington Post. Earlier this week, the UK and Netherlands began forming a coalition to send the American-made fighter jets to Ukraine.
A person "familiar with the decision" told the Post that the White House informed its allies it would not block their plans to provide Kiev with F-16s. When Washington sells F-16s, the buyer must agree that the US government can block the planes from being transferred to a third country.
A senior administration official said the plan would include training "on fourth-generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s, to further strengthen and improve the capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force."
The official continued, "As the training takes place over the coming months, our coalition of countries participating in this effort will decide when to actually provide jets, how many we will provide, and who will provide them," adding, "This training will take place outside Ukraine at sites in Europe and will require months to complete."
According to the officials, training could begin during the coming weeks. Defense officials have previously estimated that Ukrainian pilots could learn how to fly the F-16 in as little as six to nine months. While Colin Kahl, a senior Department of Defense official, told Congress the process will take up to two years and $11 billion for Ukraine to successfully deploy the fighter jet.
The US and UK have already started training a limited number of Ukrainian pilots on Western aircraft.
In January, during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, Biden ruled out sending F-16s to Ukraine. Macron said Paris would only be open to transferring fighter jets to Ukraine if Kiev pledged not to carry out attacks on Russian soil.
In his many appeals for more advanced weapons from his Western partners, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pledged not to use the weapons to attack Russian territory. However, that pledge does not extend to the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014. Additionally, documents included in the Discord Leaks showed Zelensky was plotting to attack Russia, notwithstanding his many promises.
For several months, Zelensky has demanded F-16s. Biden appears to have changed his mind in the run-up to a Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, Japan. The Guardianreported that Washington’s sudden reversal shocked some allies. "Things are moving really fast in Japan. Faster even than we had dared hoped," one European diplomat said.
Zelensky, who will attend the summit, celebrated the news. "I welcome the historic decision of the United States and [Biden] to support an international fighter jet coalition." He tweeted, "This will greatly enhance our army in the sky. I count on discussing the practical implementation of this decision at the G7 summit in Hiroshima."
The plan to send F-16s to Ukraine marks another significant escalation in Western support for Kiev. When London began training Ukrainian pilots on fighter jets in February, the Kremlin issued a stern warning. “Russia will find a way to respond to any unfriendly steps taken by the British side,” adding, the "next round of escalation" will cause “bloodshed" for the "European continent and the entire world.”
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
What the US is likely to do is to provoke Russia into an escalation within Ukraine that looks a lot more like total war in an attempt to end this before more western advanced weaponry can have an impact on the battlefield.
The US could, of course, end this by cutting off weapons and mandating a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement of all outstanding issues. But we all know that peace is a contagion the US fears more than Covid.
What the US is likely to do is to provoke “Russia into an escalation within Ukraine that looks a lot more like total war in an attempt to end this before more western advanced weaponry can have an impact on the battlefield.”
If I had a nickel for every time i have heard this pro Russia line and its variants in this blog over the last 16 months…
“The US could, of course, end this by cutting off weapons…”
Pff pff (secret); do You know who could also end this war if it pulls the f out of Ukraine?
RUSSIA.
I mean, if you’re just SO TIRED of anti war voices, you could go hang out at any of the many hundreds of propaganda outlets who are playing your tune.
I would say you guys aren’t anti war, you seem remarkably OK with Russias invasion of Ukraine for instance. Much like movie sequels wars will stop when they cease being profitable. Russia needs to lose
John, you will never understand what people here are saying re Russia’s decision to carry out this operation – never.
The impact of a 30 year history of expanding a military organization to the Russian border is something you do not comprehend and you obviously cannot relate to, which is why you continue to beat that dead horse.
Hitler used the same rationale for invading Poland.
If Poland was rational they wouldn’t have been invaded.
They would just have given up on independence?
They would have given up Danzig… Easy come – easy go.
Yes like giving up Danzig would have been enough!
Maybe… Maybe not but it would have been the right thing to do.
For sure not, Hitler wanted direct access to Russia, so if you knew even a bit about history you would have known. Poland could at best have hoped for the same kind of peace that Czechoslovakia.
No – they would have RETURNED the Danzig Corridor to Germany.
Giving up the Danzig corridor would not have made permanent peace with Germany – Hitler needed access to the Russian border to satisfy his ‘drang nach osten’ – so that would not have solved ‘Polands’ problem.
How could they “return” something that had essentially been Polish for 900 years (that is, 850 years longer than Germany had existed)?
Same way Ukraine is returning Crimea
North American Terrorist Occupation used propaganda to invade and occupy Poland
Agree. The blueprint for this war can be found in the Wolfowitz Doctrine, drafted in 1992: https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2008-003-docs1-12.pdf
Bear, I must say that I admire Putin for coming to the rescue of his own beleaguered people in Eastern Ukrainazia, in fact I consider that he was remarkably restrained in taking so long to do so. 14000 dead Russian ethnics, both military and civilian, isn’t “nothing”.
What don’t SOME PEOPLE “get” that he is attempting to liberate his own from the Amerikkkan-led Regime of Ukrainazia?
I sorrowfully wish that some Middle Eastern nation would do the same for the Palestinians, but then, there are those “nonexistent” Zionist nukes. Perhaps Iran, in time…
“14000 dead Russian ethnics”
14,000 is the total dead, including Ukrainian regime (and separatist, and Russian regime) troops.
If Putin wanted to “come to their rescue,” he would presumably have done so before the death rates dropped to low double digits generally and low single digits among civilians per year. It’s like the fire department bragging that they saved the cast-iron door knob, sorry about the rest of the house.
What would you have done in his place, Thomas? Keep sitting on your hands and watching your brethren destroyed, including being burned alive?
I’m not sure what I would have done in his place, especially if, unlike him, I thought of them as my “brethren” rather than as a plausible excuse for doing what I wanted to do anyway.
But I’d probably not do what he did (burn them alive for another 15 months).
Suckered into the “Minsk Agreement”?
Presumably, he didn’t know about the “buying time to arm Ukraine” treachery then. The installed Ukrainian Regime’s comments about getting nukes just prior to the invasion didn’t help Ukraine either. Neither did Ukraine’s military build-up to “kill his own people” in Eastern Ukraine.
Nothing else was happening? Wasn’t there a massing of troops?
There were two massings of troops.
And then an invasion by one massing of troops on the claim that the other massing of troops might otherwise have done something.
As to which massing began first or got larger quicker, your guess may be as good as mine.
Indeed. But you don’t include that when you talk about how peaceful things were before Russia invaded. Kind of changes things. Even if Russia misread.
Death is death, Thomas.
He didn’t come to their rescue because he didn’t need to. Donbass was doing fine on it’s own, so fine in fact that they were able to wring out a settlement at Minsk that would have ended the conflict and preclude further hostility.
Obviously peace was not a priority for NATO or it’s puppet regime so now Russia has to do it the hard way… Gotta do what you gotta do.
“Donbass was doing fine on it’s own, so fine in fact that they were able to wring out a settlement at Minsk”
There were three parties to the Minsk Accord: The Ukrainain regime, the Russian regime, and the separatist regime. The last party was operating in cooperation with the second, not “on its own.”
No more so than Kiev was operating in cooperation with Germany and France.
The achievement of Donbass routing the Ukraine Army and bringing Kiev to the negotiating table belong’s entirely to the miners and farmers of Donbass.
Zelensky formally announced his intention to take back the Independent Republics. Ukraine spent 8 years building fortifications deep inside those Republics, had over 100,000 in the Donbas, and was threatening imminent invasion when Russia sent its own troops. (where they were welcomed by the separatists living there.)
I consider it dishonest to suggest that Russia invaded Donetsk and Luhansk, and to continue calling them Ukraine without mentioning that they haven’t been part of Ukraine since the civil war began. That’s like saying Georgia wasn’t part of the Confederacy when Sherman invaded.
“I consider it dishonest to suggest that Russia invaded Donetsk and Luhansk, and to continue calling them Ukraine without mentioning that they haven’t been part of Ukraine since the civil war began.”
It’s just propaganda. As far as they are concerned, the entire population in Ukraine wants to be slaves to Anglo-American empire. By spreading this narrative and, of course, silencing and censoring all opposition they can appear as ‘good guys’ fighting for freedom and democracy in Ukraine.
“Civil war? What civil war? Oh you mean civil war in Syria. There was no civil war in Ukraine.”
What are you talking about, johnny? Russia is losing. Your glorious Spring Offensive just got done offending Bakhmut and now moving to offend more cities. After you are done offending Lvov, you will move to offend Warsaw, Berlin, London and Washington.
Oh that’s a brilliant supposition: only people who support starting a world war over (completely recent and fabricated) outrage over Russia’s invasion can be anti-war.
Online debate gets tiresome because half the people are living completely subjective lives where facts and logic are contorted to fit ideology.
We’re all going to wind up dead because advertising got too effective and turned a critical mass of citizens into credulous mouth breathers.
NATO has already shared they plan to convert Ukraine over to Western weapons systems so wouldn’t this be a natural thing to do outside this war?
We supply them so why wouldn’t we eventually give them F16s to “protect” what is left of Ukraine after the war?
6 to 9 month’s isn’t a gamechanger and usually you can double government estimates so it will be a 1 year minimum before they get them and the war will be over by then hopefully
The actual estimate is that it would take as little as 4 months.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/basic-f-16-training-for-ukrainian-pilots-could-take-just-four-months
Given that training is already in the works it is not unlikely that the Ukrainians will have trained pilots by sometime in November. The amount of Ukraine left to protect will be the same or bigger if we go by the estimates of Russian capabilities (Prigozhin – and I should say here that his estimates on time to take Bakhmut at the start of this year was better than anyone else’s on the Russian side).
The main question is if the F16 is in any way a game changer by itself – it can better carry the HARM and may therefore be a serious contribution (if I have understood the limitations of arming a MIG29 with the HARM correct).
It may be better able to avoid Russian long distance missiles R37 (as used currently to fire at Ukrainian aircrafts outside their ability to respond), but it is far from certain, it will not be better equipped to shoot back though.
https://eurasiantimes.com/russian-su-35-uses-never-used-before-r37-m-air-to-air-missile/
“Four months for a very basic F-16 skill set is very close to the training schedule estimates that F-16 pilots provided to The War Zone for a feature published back in February. Exactly how relevant that minimal skill set would be over the battlefield is still a question that needs to be answered.”
Another of those “expedited” training courses. What could possibly go wrong?
The Ukrainians are already trained to fly in a combat zone what they need is to get used to the new equipment – the notion that the Ukrainians would send green pilots with no training is patently absurd. So the minimal skill set consists of knowing which buttons does what reading abbreviations and getting to know how the F16 handles different from a Mig.
What could possibly go wrong – that they still can get shot down by long range R37’s – nothing that they are not already experiencing, but with a slightly higher chance of evading.
I think when the initial assessments were made as to how much training would be needed, those things were taken into consideration. At least they should have been. So, when they say 18 months, they should already have considered the variables you mention. That should be part of their job. I find going from 18 months to 4 months concerning.
Sure but they have not – it simply does not take that long time to train to fly a new aircraft as ‘simple’ as the F16 – as the new estimates show. It is not as if the F16 is many generations ahead of the planes they were flying – which is also why they are not as much of a threat to the Russians.
The education continues but from start until you are let lose to fly it is two year in Denmark – that is from not knowing anything about flying to being a novice pilot. The Ukrainians basically needs to be type certified and to learn all the abbreviations on the buttons (actually better still to know by heart what each one does) – the flying bit they already know, so the estimate of 18 months is absurdly high.
“Sure but they have not – it simply does not take that long time to train to fly a new aircraft as ‘simple’ as the F16 – as the new estimates show. It is not as if the F16 is many generations ahead of the planes they were flying – which is also why they are not as much of a threat to the Russians.”
So, the assessments were made by people with less knowledge of the “simple” F-16 than you. Got it. After realizing their mistake, they did a face palm and asked themselves why they hadn’t contacted Micheal64 in the first place.
“The education continues but from start until you are let lose to fly it is two year in Denmark – that is from not knowing anything about flying to being a novice pilot. The Ukrainians basically needs to be type certified and to learn all the abbreviations on the buttons (actually better still to know by heart what each one does) – the flying bit they already know, so the estimate of 18 months is absurdly high.”
Same shit different words. Again, you know more than the people put in place to do the assessing.
If their assessment was 18 months and it takes only 24 to get a non pilot to fly a F16 then clearly they were not being honest – which is more likely than they knew less than I. This would not be the first time such ‘excuses’ to delay deliveries have been used – so perhaps look to the prior examples and put 2 and 2 together rather than assume that I’m an idiot.
Or more likely they were told at first to find a reason not to deliver and then later they were told to ditch that objection – the same excuse have been used for not delivering other equipment – which has later been delivered, or have you already forgotten that?
“If their assessment was 18 months and it takes only 24 to get a non pilot to fly a F16 then clearly they were not being honest – which is more likely than they knew less than I. This would not be the first time such ‘excuses’ to delay deliveries have been used – so perhaps look to the prior examples and put 2 and 2 together rather than assume that I’m an idiot.”
Yes, the assessments are high when it’s equipment that we really don’t want to send them, or ok other countries send them. But once the ok is given, the assessments go the opposite way and the “expediated” training gets mentioned. Now suddenly we’re down to 4 months. I can put 2 and 2 together and not come up with anything that resembles an honest evaluation. Once we want to send Ukraine something, the bullshit outpaces the truth.
Quite the proof is in the pudding – I think you know as-well as I that the Ukrainian pilots will not be engaged in dogfights – so the only question really is are they better equipped to avoid a small shower of R37’s in a F16 than in a MIG29 – and to what extend can the F16 serve as a better platform for the HARM.
Given that this is the likely limitations on its use I think 4 months is adequate or that there was/is no amount of training is likely to change the outcome.
Well, I can’t read the minds of those making the assessments so I can only assume they were giving them in the context of those planes being used to their full capability. Otherwise, I agree.
Mention me one Western expedited course that has gone wrong?
Sniper training, stinger and Javelin, radars, howitzers, planes, anti ship missiles, tanks, patriots?
Just one.
And how could you possibly even measure that? If someone fucks up, do they look at his training to see it was of the “expeditated” version? Any training that is expediated is going to be of a lesser quality. I first heard 18 months of training for the F-16s. Then it was down to 6 to 8 months. And now we’re down to 4.
Define Western expedited course? The expedited exit from Afghanistan?
Wow! More instruments of death! Good to see you cheerleading for the F16s, Michael!
Where do you get the idea that I’m cheer leading for the F16 – if you read what I actually write you would see that I’m actually suggesting that it won’t change much, it is old and it is not bringing much new to the conflict – it may be a better platform for the HARM but that’s about it.
The advantages it has over the Mig29 are mostly in areas which we have not seen much action. Do try to read what people actually write instead of assuming so much.
The clean up of Ukraine will most likely be over this summer. It seems like Eurasian Alliance has achieved all geostrategic objectives and attention will be shifted at cleaning up Pentagon filth in the Pacific.
All of your position rests upon a perspective that sees nothing wrong with US imperial aggression. NATO moved right to Russia’s border within 10 years after the end of the Cold War, and continues to press upon Russia even though there is no existential threat emanating from Moscow. You want from Russia what the US would never grant any nation if the situation were reversed.
A truly peaceful nation (which the US is not) would understand that you cannot enhance your security at the expense of another nation’s security. Only an aggressor empire casts that aside in its quest for hegemony.
None of that morally justifies Russia’s invasion-state to state war is a crime against humanity. Yet, justification is different than provocation, and US provocation has pushed the world into a very dangerous place. So by all means keep demanding that the US fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian, its only your humanity you are sacrificing.
Nonsense. He’s also increasingly likely sacrificing all of our lives.
Factually wrong the US did not invade or annex large parts of Cuba even though they caught the Russians in the process of stationing nuclear missiles in Cuba. All ‘we’ want from Russia is the same respect for the sovereign territory of their neighbors.
How is allowing Ukraine to be independent and sovereign decreasing the security of Russia – and if your argument is that Ukraine being in a defensive alliance is by increasing their armed forces then how was the build up of the Russian forces not enhancing Russia’s security at the expense of Ukraine’s?
Given that the current Russian debate is how many thousands of Ukrainians they will have to kill post war to end the notion of a Ukrainian nationality different from the Russian – i.e. ethnic cleansing, can you really argue that supporting the Ukrainians against that kind of Nazi logic is losing our humanity?
It is not as if we are forcing them to fight – they like the Afghans before them can put up much less resistance and have the fight over in much less time is they actually so prefer.
In the interests on conciseness I will focus on your contention that Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence is not threatening to Russia. Ukraine is not independent or sovereign, they are a wholly owned satrap of the US empire, and have been since the US supported coup in 2014.
The buildup of their defenses is in reality the expansion of an adversarial military alliance on Russia’s border, in an area they consider crucial to their sense of self and security. It has little to do with legitimate Ukrainian defense needs and everything to do with the US encircling Russia.
While it may be a truncation of Ukrainian sovereignty to insist upon neutrality, it is a fact of international relations (an enterprise immoral to its core) that small nations in shitty neighborhoods need to keep their head down and mind their own business. This could have worked well for Ukraine, as they could have been a Switzerland, or Finland after WWII, or Austria after the USSR withdrew from its occupation zone. It is the same status that a powerful nation like the US demands from Mexico, Canada, and in fact the whole western hemisphere via its Monroe Doctrine.
All of this is not about moral purity but simple harm reduction in the name of ending the slaughter of innocents and dialing down the risk of nuclear war.
Not even remotely true – there has been no US troops stationed in Ukraine to keep an unwilling population in control – hence the notion that Ukraine was not sovereign much like e.g. Denmark or Finland is just absurd.
The Ukrainians clearly had a need for a defensive alliance – Russia already proved that by annexing Crimea and by fermenting an insurrection in the Donbas – Putin has just decided to recognize the service of the Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine between 2014 and 2022 – and Igor Girkhin we have on tape admitting to getting the whole thing going:
Where is your evidence that the US has somehow against the will of the Ukrainian people turned Ukraine into a satrapy?
So the US should have a free hand to invade shitty neighborhoods – I could have sworn we were against that.
They could have been like Finland – unable to join EU or NATO i.e. live in poverty – they preferred not to – and that should be their sovereign right – why do you allow an economy the size of Italy’s to dictate what its neighbors can do. No one was or is proposing to station troops of nukes in Ukraine (even if it was to join NATO after this war).
No the US clearly does not demand this from its neighbors – Cuba did not have to align with the US and was not invaded when they as a consequence of the Bay of Pigs tried to station Russian nukes there – stationing the Nukes was prevented but no invasion.
No it is clearly you putting up one standard for the US and a different for the Russians. or to put it a different way – allowing the Russians to annex neighbors because might is right – is going to lead to far more wars and increase the risk of nuclear war dramatically as all nations with the ability to develop them will scramble to do so, as this is the only defense against aggressive neighbors.
Once again your imperial hypocrisy has blinded you. You don’t need troops on the ground to control a nation. The US is covering all military and normal budgetary expenses of Ukraine. They are getting mor aid than Puerto Rico after the hurricanes. Not to mention that the US controls all aspects of the war down to the intel and targeting assistance.
As for Crimea, it has been Russian since 1783. Your ignorance of the arbitrary nature of Khrushchev’s move of Crimea to Ukraine in the 50s is a result of too much US propaganda.
As for Finland, it grew steadily, if unspectacularly wealthier (much more than the Eastern bloc of the USSR) as a neutral nation. And most of all they were at peace.
Regarding Cuba, there was no need to invade. The threat of nuclear incineration was quite enough to get the Soviets to back off.
More propaganda is your claim that Russia is trying to annex Ukraine. They are simply trying to neutralize it, and protect the ethnic Russians in the Donbas. The lack of any resistance to Russian occupation in the Donbas or Crimea puts the lie to the notion that these areas are being subjugated.
I have offered one standard of behavior for ALL nations. I simply recognize that power politics is what is, not what should be. Which is why I have condemned Russia’s actions as criminal. The best course in a fallen world is to mitigate the worst instincts of imperialist apologists who think that the US should exercise global hegemony the existential risks be damned.
Suer but that was not the situation in 2014!!!
So you claim that Ukraine was a US satrapy in 2014 but your only evidence is what has happened after 2022.
it was not Russian between 1991 and 2014 – where it was part of a independent and sovereign Ukraine – did you forget those 23 years?
Sure falling behind other Scandinavian countries until after Glasnost and the increased freedom and still growing at a lower level until joining EU.
The point being that the need to invade Ukraine is no greater.
No this would be you just being poorly informed Putin has already annexed 4 more oblasts – they protect the ethnic Russians in the Donbas by forcibly conscripting them and getting orders of magnitude more of then killed in this war than were killed in 2021 – and fyi there is plenty of resistance in the occupied areas.
I’m not proposing that there should be global US hegemony I’m only proposing that we cannot again start allowing wars of territorial conquest/annexation – if we do we are bound to see a lot more of it.
I know that we have seen the US allow e.g. Israel to get away with some territorial conquest, but allowing other nations to copy this is not the correct way to react. I.e. what you are proposing is not recognizing the world as it is but a wish to go back to how it was before the 1648 treaty of Westphalia.
Between 2014 and 2022 Ukraine was increasingly integrated with NATO, provided modern offensive weaponry and training. Angela Merkel, among others, has admitted that the Minsk accords were to provide time and cover for this integration and modernization to occur. All a part of integrating Ukraine into the US sphere-satrapy.
Crimea has all along remained ethnically, linguistically, and culturally Russian. There was no great need from Russia’s perspective to act until the US sponsored coup in 2014. It is clear that the populace of Crimea is satisfied under Russian rule.
You ignore what damaging economic policies Finland may have implemented to put them behind the other Scandinavian countries. Which underlies the point, they had control of their domestic policy.
Russia’s view toward Ukraine is different from the US and Cuba. It is contiguous to Russian territory with a deep history of interactions that makes the presence of an adversarial military alliance intolerable. This differs from US-Cuba, in that the US can tolerate a Castro regime, but would never tolerate offensive weapons placed there, and did not.
The extra territory that Russia has taken is a direct result of the escalation prompted by US support. They made it quite clear they would push the boundaries further out to provide a buffer zone. As for resistance in the Donbas, please cite a source (not Bellingcat if you please). I don’t think you are poorly informed about all this, you just choose to walk past it because it does not fit your narrative.
You keep blathering on about Russian annexation of all Ukraine, and further land grabs if they are not defeated, as if they want to resuscitate the Soviet Union or can run the table to the English Channel. They are simply trying to protect their near abroad not conquer the world. This is not 1984 and Ivan Drago was a fictional character. The only dominos that fall are the rhetorical ones when imperialist apologia is held up to the light of reason.
Your claim to one unified moral standard seems to always allow for the US to evade any adherence to civilized behavior-interesting that. We don’t need to return to 1648. Only to 1796 and Washington’s farewell address which charted a better path for the US and a safer one for the world.
So much so that they had not a single piece of NATO heavy equipment by 2022 – that sounds really threatening!
The Minsk accords were dead – it was not possible to get the parties to stick to them – as for the “All a part of integrating Ukraine into the US sphere-satrapy” I guess you are now part of the conspiracy adherents who claim that Germany is also a US satrapy and hence not sovereign.
The Ukrainians were not even remotely modernized and very far from aligned with NATO standards – they actually had no offensive alignment at all – so so much for the grand secret plan.
So clear that the Russians could not allow them a free choice but only the option between being part of Russia or have the status of what was it 1991 re imposed. Now I’m not claiming that they wanted to be Ukrainian just that this was an illegal annexation.
They had control of their policy except that they could not join NATO or EU before after glasnost (and more importantly the collapse of the Soviet Union) – that made foreign investments much more lucrative as the uncertainty was much reduced – the problem was not that the Finns were incompetent before 1985 and suddenly got competent in 1985 the problem was the Soviet influence over Finland.
This however is not how the Ukrainians see it and there is no one asking the Russians to accept offensive weapons in Ukraine – NATO has placed none in any of the NATO countries who have joined NATO since 1991.
The source for the resistance is the daily reports of sabotage and odd fires and explosions in these occupied territories – this actually stretches far into Russia – you can see the evidence in the smoke columns over the cities and infrastructure every day in the news – you really want me to link them all? Just asking because as many early sabotage actions they are far from all impressive but they are fairly many.
The Russian administrators in several areas have been assassinated – is this news, if so I can probably still dig up the articles – I only ask because you are likely going to dismiss most of these things as accidents (that is how the Russians initially dismissed them).
No I talk about other nations making similar land grabs not necessarily Russia.
No they are not the population of these oblasts were not majority Russian, that was only the case for Crimea.
No it does not, we should do what we can to limit the acts of the US – allowing the Russians to do something even worse (in the sense of what it will allow others to do copying Russia’s justification) simply is not the answer to the evil deeds of the US.
We do not need to do so, but if we allow Russia’s act of territorial conquest, especially under the guise of protecting its people in Ukraine then returning to the status pre 1648 is what we will be doing.
If you have some smart plan for how to curb the excesses of the US then we all be very happy to hear about it, allowing Russia to be as bad or worse (as it happens in this case) just seems like a non solution to the problem of excess US use of force.
Javelins, among other weaponry were introduced into Ukraine during the Obama-Trump years. If your claim is that NATO integration was not completed, I agree. That does not negate what the US was doing to facilitate such integration.
Anyway, upon entering NATO all nations eventually must meet enhanced military standards. This weaponry is and can be used offensively. In fact, the only time NATO has acted in concert is outside of NATO territory in an offensive capacity. Additionally, the expansion of NATO gives the US forward bases to place its weapons, and in some cases, it has done so, and these can only be considered offensive by Russia.
It is not a conspiracy theory to recognize NATO as client states of the US. It is delusional to suggest otherwise.
I am not saying that Crimea was legal under international law, only that it was inevitable after the US sponsored coup in 2014, and not really resisted by the populace since then.
The US could have avoided all this in the first place, by guaranteeing Ukrainian neutrality, and withholding support for Ukrainian military activity in the Donbas. But that would mean negotiating and acting as a nation among nations, not an imperial provocateur, continually seeking to encircle and weaken Russia.
I am not sure how to get the US to cease being a bloody empire, but one place to start is to push back against simps who all too readily buy into the propaganda about big, bad Russians and their desire for world conquest, while always finding ways to excuse aggressive US behavior.
Javelin – yes a clearly defensive weapon – your claim was for a transition to NATO weaponry – Javelin’s is the kind of weapon we can provide to non NATO troops as is/was the stinger before it – so not evidence of any real transition to a NATO stadard.
So far from complete that they had no NATO caliber guns, no NATO planes and no NATO tanks IFV’s or any other heavy NATO gear – so really only NATO integration to the extent that we had begun to get them to think in NATO ways and given them the kind of weapons we would have given the Mujahideens.
Yes there was however no chance that Ukraine would join NATO not while having a territorial dispute with Russia and not while Hungary had Victor Orban in power.
All weapons can be used offensively there was no chance of Ukraine joining NATO so to invade to prevent the potential future rearming of Ukraine with NATO weapons only achieved that Ukraine would get NATO weapons (whereas they were unlikely to get then otherwise and even if they could get them it would have been at a much slower pace).
The US has placed no offensive weapons on any of the countries that have joined NATO since 1991 – the simple reason being that it would make NATO less safe as the hypersonic missiles makes Russia less safe.
It is however conspiracy theory to believe that they are somehow less sovereign – or that this ‘client’ status extends much beyond being actual clients i.e. buyers of US equipment. There have been repeated trade conflicts between the US and Europe clearly showing that Europe does not meekly follow US dictate.
And the Crimean’s did not resist being under Ukrainian rule for the 22 years before that, and mind you the Ukrainians did not ask the Crimean’s to chose between loyalty to Ukraine or repatriation to Russia – the Russians did to Ukrainians in Crimea.
Given that we now know that the Russians not only fermented the insurrection in the Donbas but also had soldiers fighting there – you are here arguing that we should have left the Ukrainian majorities in Donetsk and Luhansk to be forcibly converted to Russians – moreover you are arguing that we should run away form our obligations according to the Budapest agreement – so for nuclear proliferation and for aggressive wars of territorial conquest – I hope you can see why some of us would be against this kind of policy, as it would lead to more wars as other nations would copy the Russian policies.
How about letting the people supposedly the victims of that US empire decide? It would make it very clear where the people actually felt they were being lorded over and where they felt they were being sold a fairly expensive protection.
The absence of any resistance in Ukraine, beyond 2014) to what you claim was a US coup, and I remind you that the only place where there was/is any resistance is in the areas where we have the Russians admitting they send soldiers and helped ferment what was dying protests into an insurrection, is very good evidence that the Ukrainians in general are not considering themselves to be a US satrapy.
BTW here you have evidence to support that the Russians are facing resistance even in occupied areas of Ukraine – and that they are not there to liberate anyone, the best part being that it is from the Russians themselves so pretty hard to claim that it is western propaganda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj8pWPl0V2w
There was no need to invade Cuba, after all there were statesmen with brains AND integrity. And look how the USA to this day treats and bullies Cuba.
The USA kicks the nations when they are down, they are sore losers, see Afghanistan and how they still kick the broken nation with sanctions, and Syria after the earth quake, Biden did not have it in his heart, if he has one, to lift sanctions at least for a few days.
Shame on all of us for such a head of state and his administration, not a shred of human decency.
There was no need to invade Ukraine – it wasn’t about to get nukes or join NATO.
You are close now. It was about regime change in Russia and the break up of the RF. Biden and Austin did say that.
That explains why NATO immediately move weapons and funding to Ukraine after the regime change, training Ukrainians to meet NATO standards, why NATO and Ukraine had military exercises in Ukraine, Ukraine becoming a DE FACTO NATO member state in order to invade Russia as soon as possible. 10 NATO exercises in Ukraine had been scheduled for 2022 per Army Times.
Ukraine became the staging battle ground to invade Russia, NATO moved closer to the Russian doorstep, Russia is protecting its border.
What does NATO protect???? Did Russia attack NATO, did the Ukrainians offer their nation for NATO to attack Russia from their soil? Yes, they did exactly that. Zelensky and his neo-Nazi gang sold their nation to the US for lots of money and they are still doing it, until the very last Ukrainian young man standing. We are dealing with very devious heads of state, evil people they are.
“10 NATO exercises in Ukraine had been scheduled for 2022 per Army Times.”
Worth repeating. The bait was going to continue.
How was the western powers going to achieve any of that by doing nothing much to support Ukraine before 2022, and even with support to Ukraine how would that cause regime change in Russia???
Great story, only NATO never provided Ukraine with offensive weapons to carry out any invasion – that is why it has taken so long to arm the Ukrainians now. So your conspiracy theory is not supported by any evidence on the ground – even if there was a looney plan like that what would have prevented the Russians from using their nukes to defend their country against an actual invasion – nothing you suppose here makes even a bit of sense.
Ukraine is further from Moscow and Sankt Petersburg than Estonia/Latvia – why go the round about way where the Russian rail system would complicate logistics – again your thinking only makes sense for those who know nothing about invasions – and again how would this prevent nuclear war thus making any forward position irrelevent?
NATO protects its members from attack/invasion – and has done so as long as it has existed. And for the record Ukraine was not going to become a member as long as it had a territorial dispute with Russia (Crimea and the Donbas) nor would NATO have moved offensive forces into Ukraine – NATO clearly as we can see now was not geared to invade even a country as small as Ukraine much less a country as large as Russia.
Do try to think just for a short while about the counter arguments to your conspiracy theories – they all fall at the very first test of their likely veracity – there simply is no evidence that neither NATO nor Ukraine was preparing for an all out conflict with Russia.
NOt about to get nukes but as soon as Ukraine completed the mop up of the freedom lovers in the East, and then stopped “killing his own people”, NATO membership was a certainty.
Ukraine had exactly zero chance of changing the status in the east the front had held for 8 years and as could be seen when the Russians tried to invade across those lines it took a Herkulian effort to get anywhere.
So no threat of the Ukrainians without any new heavy weapons breaking through in the Donbas, no chance of them joining NATO and as for killing his own people the loss of life in the Donbas was at an all timer low in 2021 so no urgency there either.
NATO membership requires all members to agree to it – Victor Orban if no one else would have stopped Ukraine dead – as long as they had a territorial conflict with the Russians they could not join either and several NATO countries would have pointed this out – are you suggesting that the Ukrainians would have recognize Russia as sovereign over Crimea and the Donbas – otherwise you can nix the threat of Ukraine joining NATO before the SMO in absence of the SMO.
What is morally unjustifiable is to stand idly by while your neighbors are being exterminated by psycho fascists.
Russia has a responsibility to intervene on behalf of the people in Donbass. After all it was their decision to allow Ukraine sovereignty over a people who were once Soviet/Russian citizens.
I do recall that Putin told the Russian people he regrets to use military action but it is his duty to protect the Russian people against invasions.
People with military knowledge and integrity have all reported that the Russians did all they could to keep civilian casualties as low as possible.
To Russians this is a defensive military action.
Putin protects Russia from invasion. Biden embraces the invasion of the U.S.
That’s the essential deference between the two.
Biden embraces the invasion of Russia BY the US?
By embraces the invasion of the US by a the Third World.
I have military knowledge and integrity and have not heard any reports of that kind except from pro russian pundits.
Putin had a lot of options and killing his Army to “save” a handful of civilians is a complete BS.
Putin invaded Ukraine for the land corridor to Crimea, more seaports, and grab grain , oil and natural gas rich lands for profit.
But their neighbors were not being exterminated – the losses of civilian life in the Donbas were down to just 36 people in the Russian controlled areas – the insurrection was fermented by the Russians and Russian soldiers helped keeping it alive for 8 years before they massively increased the loss of ethnic Russian lives by invading in 2022.
https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf
Why did Obama/Biden fund and organize the regime change in 2014? What was their interest, after Yanukovich, the elected president had already agreed to a new election.
Without the Nuland gang funding the riots and the blood bath of the regime change it would not have happened. Biden was involved, the Obama regime jumped in bed with the neo-Nazis. Biden knows all the details well.
The answer is that they did not, a regime change was already under the way when the US through its very undiplomatic ambassador expressed their preferences on who should lead the post regime change government.
If you payed close attention that transition government stayed in power for only about half a year and that in spite of a Russian annexation of Crimea and a Russian organized insurrection in the Donbas – even in spite of these things they managed to hold elections.
It was nothing, the parties in Ukraine enjoying US ‘approval’ agreed to Yanukovich’s proposal – only the people on the streets led by a guy (Volodymyr Parasyuk) we have not seen anywhere close to the levers of power did not, so Yanukovich fled.
Nuland was not funding the riots the US had been giving money to Ukraine for a very long while after 1991 and it was not being funneled into the opposition.
No they did not and the ultra nationalists on the Ukrainian side were losing power with every election in Ukraine after the Maidan – they lost their last seat in parliament in 2019.
You tend to make history fit your narrative. History is what it is, regardless of your wishes.
Care to point out where I have changed history to fit my narrative or too afraid that I can back up my version whereas you will fail to do so?
Obama admitted US involvement orchestrating the 2014 regime change in Ukraine.
Washington Was Behind Ukraine Coup: Obama admits that US “Brokered a Deal” in Support of “Regime Change [GR]
All Obama actually said was that the US had helped broker the deal that Yanukovych made with the opposition to hold early elections – this is very far from admitting that the US was orchestrating the 2014 regime change in Ukraine – it is only an indication that once under way the US tried to get the issue solved democratically – with an early election – an attempt that they got the people they supported to sign, but which failed to persuade some of the people that the US had no control over!
So no the US neither controlled the process nor did they orchestrate the Maidan – had this been the case and had the Ukrainians not in general been behind Yanukovych leaving office then there would have been far more protests in far more places.
Transcript of the actual CNN interview:
https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/02/01/pres-obama-on-fareed-zakaria-gps-cnn-exclusive/
If you want to see who actually admitted direct involvement and how such an admittance of ‘guilt’ looks then look no further than to the people the Russians involved in this:
Here’s another good reason to push back against the Zionist Zelensky.
Zelensky and NATO plan to transform post-war Ukraine into ‘a big Israel’ [Grayzone>
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/5/zelenskyy-says-wants-ukraine-to-become-a-big-israel
What kind of apartheid would they practice – Zelenskyy is himself of Russian ethnicity and there is absolutely no indication of any apartheid in his utterings – anyway, I’m not at all sure that Zelenskyy will stay in power much beyond any potential ‘winning’ of this war.
So what exactly is it that you think is a good reason to push back against Zelenskyy – that he does not envision a regime change in Russia and therefore expects to have to have the Ukrainians ready to repulse a second SMO or Russian interference actions?
Reading comprehension issues or just willfully ignorant?
When NATO was created Russia lay in ruins, the Russian people had suffered years of war Americans can’t imagine. NATO was created to prevent Russia to get back on its feet, and to prevent Germany and Russia to be neighbors with healthy economic connections.
That goal goes back to the Bismarck Germany before WWI, it was the justification to encircle Germany and the first WW. GB started it forming an alliance with Poland against Germany. The colonial empire was on a down spin.
“All of your position rests upon a perspective that sees nothing wrong with US imperial aggression”
Oh, excuse me. All of your positions see nothing wrong with Russia hence why i have to remind you and the pro russia team here that Russia is the number one belligerent in this war. Half the Russian Army is in Ukraine leveling cities.
My condemning of Russia in these comments and on my blog is unequivocal. You stand in error. I’m advocating peace, you are stumping for more war. That too is unequivocal.
It is realistic, and that happens to be in favor of Russia. An unconditional surrender is what Russia is being forced to fight for because war hungry Biden will not allow less, the Ukrainians are being made to fight until the last man standing, after that war hungry Biden will move on to continental Europe, demanding they will fight for US interests to the last man standing too, that is the goal of a long conflict with Russia, let other nations do the bleeding and dying and funding.
It is Biden’s war, managed by his neocon partners.
Actually, it’s on to Tawain after we’re done using Ukraine.
You are right, the EU and NATO are done for already. Biden and the neocons did their job.
let other nations do the bleeding and dying and funding.
Why not? It works so well for Israel.
Why would Russia pull ot only to have US Nukes on it border with a 4 minute flight time to Moscow ? . thats the reason Putin invaded to prevent that happening , the yanks didn`t like Russian Nukes in Cuba did they so why should Russia stand for them in Ukraine , read the book , how the West bought war to Ukraine .
No one from the west is goin to station nukes in Ukraine, if it was an objective then stationing them in Estonia and or Latvia would bring them closer to Moscow and Sankt Petersburg – so why bother with Ukraine?
The idea that this is a NATO ploy to get nukes closer to the Russians do not cope with even a minor fact check – and for the record, NATO has not stationed nukes in any of the countries that have joined since 1991 – as that would lower the security not increase it.
Or NATO could contract to its 1991 membership size and get the fuck off Russia’s borders.
Or Russia stays within its borders and stops taking land from neighbors.
I agree. So, let’s have NATO move back to their 1991 membership and promises not to move one inch eastward. This time they etch it in stone. In turn Russia moves back to their 1991 borders and gets a guarantee etched in stone about keeping their lease in Crimea for perpetuality.
To make enemies and lose hearts and minds, you don’t have to “take land”, you can just engineer coups and pay off the new leaders. It’s called economic, political, and military leverage. It helps if the new leaders’ communications are immediately compromised too.
And politicians with integrity would have prevented the war in the first place. Integer diplomacy would have prevented it by implementing the Minsk agreements. But that required government officials and diplomats with integrity which the USA and NATO puppet governments simply don’t have.
The USA/NATO leaderships are the true war criminals, all of them with maybe 2 or 3 exceptions.
The war criminals sit in Washington DC. Nuland/Biden and their accomplices are #1.
Well said, Lysistrata!
I’m not a fan of any support at all but if I was I’d be questioning the strategy of keeping Ukrainians just strong enough to keep the conflict going while only slowly giving them what they need. It’s like giving someone struggling enough to get through the next crisis but not enough to change their circumstances.
I think it took the US regime by surprise to learn that the Russian military had atrophied so much since 2008 that it couldn’t win a timely decisive victory in Ukraine. At that point, there were three options:
1) Stand back and remain hands-off while the Russians maybe ground out some kind of face-saving partial victory;
2) Go all-in and risk nuclear confrontation, the only kind of conflict in which Russia is anything approaching a “peer adversary” and in which the existence of humanity would be at stake; or
3) Throw enough goodies at Ukraine to let them do to the Russians what the Afghans did to the Russians and then the Americans — successfully resist until the invader gets tired of it and goes home, weakened even further.
I’d have preferred option #1 (actually, I’d have preferred non-intervention that never created the situation in the first place).
But I guess option #3 is preferable to option #2. And it has the added benefit that it drains the already declining US empire, too. Not as much as it drains the also already declining Russian empire, but at least some.
What can we do to stop this?
100,000,000 people in the streets?
100,000,000 people in the streets?
Yeah, all undocumented immigrants.
I always get a little chuckle with your posts… Technically, we are ALL undocumented immigrants.
I’ve moved three times in my lifetime. All were different apartments in the same building.
I my dear lady, am indiginouse!
Of course you do, Donna. He is a radical Pro Russian here.
Notifications not working – [clearly ”they” intend to keep me in the dark…like a mushroom]
Yes – Where do we gain the skills to accomplish such a feat?
How does one become a confident public speaker? [I know practice practice practice]
Sleepy Disqus server is asleep again. That thing sleeps more than a rock.
Just wait a week or two, the US may suddenly realize it can’t afford to mail all it’s resources overseas. The bipartisan consensus of feeding the war may suddenly become a consensus of wanting to keep eating and not knowing how that will happen.
America sent Ukraine $76.8 billion in aid during the first year of the war.
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
Whereas the US federal budget for 2022 was $6.2 trillion dollars.
Hell…the deficit alone was over $1.3 trillion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_federal_budget
That means the money the US sent Ukraine represented less than 1/80’th of the US federal budget.
Plus, the US spends over 11 times that amount on their defense, alone.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-backs-record-858-billion-defense-bill-voting-continues-2022-12-16/
I think it EXTREMELY unlikely that this aid is going to cause even the slightest hardship to Americans.
For the record – I do NOT agree with the US aiding Ukraine.
This same tired crap is used so often it makes me want to vomit. So, $76 billion couldn’t be used on some infrastructure programs? Or how about the $4 billion we send to Israel? Could any state in the US use that money? The “measly” $5oo million of free weapons recently proposed being sent to Tawain would be a welcomed addition to thousands upon thousands of communities right here in the US. It doesn’t matter whether this aid will cause the “slightest(additional) hardship” to Americans, but it does matter whether this aid could ALLIVIATE the hardship of literally millions of Americans and help rebuild their infrastructure.
First you infer that this aid will bankrupt America and cause it’s citizens to starve.
And when I proved that statement as factually erroneous.
You move the goalposts and come back with ‘that money can be better spent’.
Of course it can be better spent. I would guess at least 60% of the entire US budget could be ‘better spent’.
Just the U.S. military budget alone is ELEVEN TIMES the size of the aid?
Why are you not complaining at LEAST as much about that? If you are SO concerned about the Ukrainian aid being wasted (which it is).
For the record – I am FULLY against US military aid to ANY nation.
First you infer that this aid will bankrupt America and cause it’s citizens to starve.
And when I proved that statement as factually erroneous.
You move the goalposts and come back with ‘that money can be better spent’.
Of course it can be better spent. I would guess at least 60% of the entire US budget could be ‘better spent’.
Just the U.S. military budget alone is ELEVEN TIMES the size of the aid?
Why are you not complaining at LEAST as much about that? If you are SO concerned about the Ukrainian aid being wasted (which it is).
For the record – I am FULLY against US military aid to ANY nation.
76 billion dollars here and there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. Get your wheelbarrows full of cash ready to buy your next loaf of bread. Troy’s analysis makes it sound like we’re already there.
Uhhhh….yeah.
☮
I didn’t infer any such thing. You are the one that brought up percentages. And you haven’t been here very long if you don’t think that I think the military budget is grossly overfunded or I haven’t bitched about it incessantly. My comment was about people like you bringing up how small of a percentage some expenditure is compared to the overall budget and using that to make it sound like they aren’t worth complaining about. I responded to THAT.
Of COURSE you inferred those things.
Here was your post:
‘Just wait a week or two, the US may suddenly realize it can’t afford to mail all it’s resources overseas. The bipartisan consensus of feeding the war may suddenly become a consensus of wanting to keep eating and not knowing how that will happen.’
First you DIRECTLY STATED that America cannot afford to fund Ukraine. Right there…DUH.
Then you inferred that Americans will starve if they do not stop funding the war.
Yes or no…did your above quoted post infer that America CANNOT afford to financially afford to fund Ukraine AND that doing so could infer food shortages to Americans?
And if you say ANYTHING but ‘yes’?
Then you are uneducated and/or stupid and/or galactically arrogant and not worth my time.
I mean…if you do not even know and take responsibility for what you post? You are a COMPLETE waste of time on here. Except to the other anti-American/pro-Russian trolls who seem to spew forth low-IQ bile and nonsense all over this place like it’s a bodily function.
FTR (again) I am against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine proper and I am against America giving military aid to ANYONE.
You f*cking dumb a$$. That wasn’t MY post, it was nhmakingwaves. So NOW tell me how uneducated and stupid I am and how I am a complete waste of time. MY point was those small percentages of our overall budget still would go a long way in communities right here in the US. So go f*ck yourself.
1) You are 100% right. I assumed the post was from you.
My mistake and I sincerely apologize for it.
2) Calm down, please.
It’s just a chat forum for pity’s sake.
It’s obvious that I just (lazily) assumed it was you.
3) You typed ‘aid could ALLIVIATE the hardship of literally millions of Americans and help rebuild their infrastructure’
Okay. So where is your post that complains about how the money Russia is wasting on this stupid war could go towards helping Russian people?
Who have a FAR lower standard of living than the average American does?
Either link to that post.
Or your ‘concern’ for Americans seems fake.
Why in the fuck would I care about how Russia is spending their money? That doesn’t have anything to do about what I said. You really twisted yourself into a pretzel trying to pretend there is any connection. My concern for Americans seems fake otherwise? Jesus man, you can’t be fucking serious.
So what have we learned about you here?
1) that you devalue human beings if they are not Americans.
Xenophobia at best.
Flat out prejudice at worst.
So noted.
You admit – in essence – that you don’t care how the war is hurting Russians financially.
Which we know is HUGE since their economy has gone into financial depression thanks to the war.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-growth-annual
Nor do you care how the money Russia is wasting on this STUPID war could be better spent on poor Russians. No, you seem to ONLY care how money spent on this war could help Americans.
Yet, the money America sends to Ukraine (which I do NOT agree with, btw) is less than 1/80th of their federal budget. And thus, is not hurting the lives of Americans to any meaningful extent.
Now me?
I value ALL human being’s equally.
The poorer a person is? The more concerned I am for their financial well being. Regardless of their nationality.
2) we know your sense of perspective is for excrement.
You are blathering on about how the $76 billion in Ukrainian aid could be better spent (which it could).
Yet, you COMPLETELY ignore the fact that the US military budget is over TEN TIMES larger than that. And that money is INCREDIBLY wasted.
Not to mention the trillions of dollars in this year’s budget alone that could be better spent.
No…you are flipping out over less than 1.25% of the US budget.
You clearly are either a child. Or an adult with a poor sense of proportion.
Conclusions?
You have proven that you devalue human life based on nationality.
Which is flat out disgusting (though – sadly – all too common. Especially amongst low IQ people).
And you have a poor sense of proportion.
Just as I thought.
You are a person not worthy of much respect, imo.
Thus, we are done here.
I will read no more of your replies on this particular subject. As I would consider the time spent doing so better utilized on more meaningful tasks – like passing gas.
Have a nice day.
☮
Wow. You’re almost comical you’re so god damn obtuse.
Example:
Me: ” And you haven’t been here very long if you don’t think that I think the military budget is grossly overfunded or I haven’t bitched about it incessantly.”
You: “Yet, you COMPLETELY ignore the fact that the US military budget is over TEN TIMES larger than that. And that money is INCREDIBLY wasted.”
So, in essence, you are a fucking idiot.
The peace negotiations could be started any day but what about “mandating a ceasefire”, hardly it is possible. A ceasefire without taking under control the territories of those 4 former Ukrainian oblasts which last September, according to Russian Constitution, became parts of Russian, means to freeze the conflict and it would be very bizarre if Kremlin agrees to that. Expect that Ukrainian-NATO forces will abandon those territories without fighting is also unrealistic. So, the fighting will carry on until one side is defeated.
This needless loss of human life can be stopped by simply exterminating the parasites in US and England. Cleaning up that filth could end pretty much all wars.
You may call it filth or any other names but the oligarchy system is well established in The West. The west-European civilization started as oligarchy. Catholic Church was created by Latin oligarchs. In 17 century North Europe liberated itself from Vatican domination. At the top of Protestantism were also oligarchs and not all of them were Christians. UK parliament from the beginning was a political body of representatives of the financial elite of UK. This system worked not so bad and hardly one can expect it to be replaced quick by something else. People would not support the revolutionary changes.
It is a system that works on human blood. Human exploitation and human sacrifice. It doesn’t need to be replaced. It needs to be destroyed.
Destroyed, and what you have instead? People are living not so bad. They can’t live the same as in China or in Iran, it is a different civilization. The problem is how to make the world safer. We can’t achieve anything positive by creating a mess in a nuclear power state.
I don’t understand your question.
Perhaps you didn’t understand my comment?
You say the political system, in other words, the state, should be destroyed. So the question is: what we have instead of it? And where is the guarantee that people, after the destruction of the system, will live better?
If you destroy the system that exploit and murder people, don’t you think that the people will live better?
That depends on if you can replace it with something better. All to often it’s worse.. A hell of a lot worse.
Exploitation and murder happen everywhere. I can only say for sure that the life in western Europe in 1990 was better than in eastern Europe. That’s why millions of people at the time moved from East Europe to West Europe. People are moving across Mexica-USA border northward, not southward. People know where the life is better. Bolsheviks also talked a lot about the exploitation but when they got the power, the life for the working people became worse than it was in capitalist Russia.
That’s just anglosaxon propaganda. After Stalin cleaned up USSR with purges and won the war against nazi Germany, living standards in USSR and allied countries were the best in the world. And that is considering that USSR was rebuilt after the war without any aid from former “allies”. Stalin decisively proved economic viability of Marxist-Socialist system. The iron wall was built to keep parasites out of USSR and allied states. That is why there is so much hysterical propaganda about Stalin and Bolsheviks. The Marxist-Socialist system is superior to parasitical-capitalist.
But both are authoritarian.
And how exactly can America ‘mandate a ceasefire’ if Russia does not want a ceasefire?
First, if the US cuts off weapons it’s over, Ukraine will need to cut a deal. Second, for Russia’s part, they have been giving voice to a desire for negotiations since before the Chinese put forth their plan. A negotiation would need to recognize Russian interests in the status of ethnic Russians in the Donbas, as well as no NATO membership for Ukraine.
This should be an easy lift for a “peaceful” US, as no one has given a coherent reason why NATO keeps expanding 30 years after the demise of the Warsaw Pact.
If one looks clear eyed at who is provoking whom, then one can see a path forward for Russian willingness to negotiate.
Well thanks.
But you said that America could ‘mandate a ceasefire’.
Sure, they could cut off weapons deliveries. And that would (assuming NATO follows suit) be it for Ukraine.
But Russia has demanded to keep Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-lavrov-conditions-peace-talks-zelensky-1770088
Are you suggesting that America should stop sending arms and force Ukraine to accept losing ALL those oblasts?
Because that seems the only long term ceasefire they could mandate.
A negotiated settlement will mean a change in border for Ukraine, one of a multitude in the last several hundred years. The idea of national borders being sacrosanct forever is BS. The only reason the US wants to keep the borders as they were in 1991 is that it serves their imperial drive to weaken Russia.
The time may be past to offer the Donbas an independent status, something the US could have facilitated if their desire was something other than weakening Russia. However, a UN overseen plebiscite might still be possible. In any event it is highly likely the Donbas would vote to stay more closely aligned with Russia given the ethnic makeup and the electoral history of support for pro-Russian candidates.
Is any of this perfect, of course not. It has the advantages of respecting local sentiment, ending the bloodshed, and reducing the risk of nuclear holocaust. Outside of US imperial circles those are considered good things.
All I am talking about is you said that America could ‘mandate a ceasefire’.
And I am saying that America has no such power. Outside of cutting of arms shipments.
Lavrov himself stated (in essence) that the four oblasts I listed above now belong to Russia. And they will not give them up.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-lavrov-conditions-peace-talks-zelensky-1770088
So unless America accepts this position?
And forces Kiev to accept it as well?
Both of which seem INCREDIBLY unlikely.
America is not in a position to ‘mandate a ceasefire’.
Indeed, I am arguing for just such a cutoff-Now! There is no “victory” for Ukraine short of direct US/NATO involvement, which means war between two nuclear armed powers. All over a piece of land that means nothing to the US, has nothing to do with legitimate US defense requirements, yet, means as much to Russia as Mexican control by the Soviets would to the US.
The rational and moral thing to do is to negotiate a deal, stop the slaughter of innocents and dial down the risk of nuclear holocaust. If that means moving borders, so be it. There is nothing sacrosanct about borders, as even Ukraine’s have changed greatly in the 240 years since Russia took Crimea from the Ottomans, who took it from the Byzantines, who took it …well you see the point.
The need is for people to act like human beings and end this monstrous bloodletting. Especially a bloodletting on behalf of a corrupt authoritarian regime like Ukraine, second in corruption only to Russia itself.
And for the record, I don’t give a godddamn whether it is likely that the US will agree to this. It is past time when the US empire is dismantled in the name of peace. We need to put what pressure we can upon that empire to at least get the shit down to shoe level. As a German once said, there I stand, I can do no other.
You shouldn’t take anything written in silly propaganda rags like Noiseweak at face value.
Russia didn’t demand. Russia liberated the regions from imperial occupation, held referendums and people voted to join Russian Federation. The concerns or complaints of parasites removed from these territories are completely irrelevant.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5df0dbb08a61932e9279f4e5fa48e1d4f344a23642b76b1f9e82a4a4e50a3232.jpg
At first I thought this said: Stop Resisting your Libation… 😉
😂
LOL yeah
That Anglo-American “democracy” in France 🙂
From Fallujah?
You obviously did not read the article I linked to.
‘”It is obvious that Kyiv is not ready for dialogue,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti.
“Putting forward all sorts of ideas and ‘formulas of peace,’ Zelensky cherishes the illusion of achieving, with the help of the West, the withdrawal of our troops from the Russian territory of Donbas, Crimea, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson region, the payment of reparations by Russia, and the surrender of international tribunals and the like.”
“Of course, we will not talk to anyone on such conditions,” Lavrov added.’
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-lavrov-conditions-peace-talks-zelensky-1770088
These demands I listed above were from Lavrov’s own mouth.
Those ARE the Russian demands.
So even your crappy propaganda rag doesn’t say ‘demands’? Where did you get ‘demands’?
If the NATO member states were nations with sovereign governments they could stop it, but they are not they are puppet regimes like all the regime change governments controlled by the USA globally. The heads of states are Biden/Nuland hand-puppets. Sovereign governments would have told the USA to go to hell a long time ago.
The CIA hand in hand with the state department and NGOs did silent regime changes by rigging elections, and control of the MSM and corrupt politicians. What other explanation is there?
All the NATO nations are committing treason against their own countries. If they did it in the USA they would be sitting on death row already.
For the life of me I can not believe that well informed voters would have elected the scum now in charge of their f*****up governments.
Scholz and the ample coalition could not be possible under normal circumstances. It is just too insane to be true.
I am a senior and never in all my life did I see TREASON like that.
We don’t dare talk openly about it, how could all that happen in Europe? They blew up the pipelines and no-one even talks or investigates how it happened, the free press is silent or provides implausible excuses.
I don’t understand why people are freaking out over this. It’s an old jet that is inferior to old SU27. Russian will shoot down a few, make great videos of pilots ejecting, rats in Washington will have a red face, Pentagon cowards will crap their panties, propaganda machine will be screaming ‘unfair’ and we all will have a good laugh.
Because it’s stupid, not going to help outside of Biden’s photo ops, and going to increase tensions and provoke a response from Russia.
Did anything so far provoked a response from Russia? It’s like they are dead in Kremlin.
It’s about the money. They are getting the outcome they planned. Legitimizing the purpose of funding our military industrial complex, keeping NATO in tact and getting an alliance with other economic powers in a forever war to keep the cash cow alive. They don’t want peace, because it’s not profitable and shrinks their power base.
What’s the alternative? Will a world dominated by Russia and China lead to a better life for Americans? I say, riddle yourself that question before becoming a pawn and mouth piece for Chinese and Russian interests. Were just pawns in the game. We got 2 choices on which team we join. Otherwise, we are just noise.
Some hours ago Wagner celebrated with champagne the capture of Bakhmut.
Yes, it’s Artemovsk now. I have no idea where this ‘Bakhmut’ tag came from. It isn’t even a Slavic word.
Bakhmut is the historical name of the town. First it was a fortress at the river Bakhmut. Bolsheviks renamed it to Artemovsk.
Now, as many volunteers and not volunteers are fighting against neo-Nazism under Red Flag, they think it is appropriate to rename it back to Artemovsk, though, of course, I think, it is wrong. To be fair, Bolshevism was much worse for Russia than Nazism. However, Bolshevism is in the past and Nazims is here. So, communists, Christians, Muslims and many others are united against Nazism and against Satanism which is standing behind it.
It wasn’t called Bakhmut before the revolution. The region or something was called that. The town and the city was always called Artemovsk.
Bolsheviks appropriately renamed Petrograd to Leningrad. And of course I disagree with you completely on Bolsheviks. They did great job at cleaning up early USSR and thanks to them the entire hemisphere had 40 years of peace and prosperity after WWII. Only in the 90s the filth that Bolsheviks exterminated started to seep back in.
The town was named Artemovsk in honor of famous Bolshevik Sergeev (Сергеев). His party name was Artem (Артём). The town was renamed in 1920th.
Do you have a source for that?
You can see on the map that town Bakhmut is located at Bakhmutka river. Also it is not difficult to find the biography of Bolshevik Sergeev. The town was renamed in his honor the same as many other towns in Russia were renamed at that time: Sverdlovsk, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Kuybyshev, Ordzhonikidze etc.
Yes, you’re right. It’s a Crimean Tatar name. No idea why it was kept by Ivan Grozniy. City was founded in 1571
At time of Ivan Grozny, those areas were dominated by Crimean Tatars. On old maps those areas are named as Minor Tartary.
There was a lot of different kinds of disinformation about those times. The fact is: both Tatar and Arab languages were used in central Russia until 17 century. There is a book written by Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin in 15 century. He uses fluently both Russian and Arab, and yet he lived almost all his life in Tver town (upper Volga) . Arab in 15-16 centuries was the main international language in Europe and Asia. So, Nikitin needed no interpreter when he travelled to India and back. Everyone at the time talked Arab.
Yeah right now there is some disinfo about Khazars but propaganda about Rus being Christian at that time isn’t new. Dictator Pete Romanov forced Russia to adapt Christianity.
Peter Romanov continued the reformation of Christianity which was initiated in time of Alexey Romanov (his father). The truth is that Russia was a Christian state from the beginning. When Romanovs got the power, they reformed the religion and political system according to the western standards. Not quite successfully but they did what they could. The goal of the reformation was the creation of a privileged class. The reformation contradicted to the spirit of Christianity. That’s why it was never accepted by Christian communities. Old believes were persecuted until the end of the rule of Romanovs.
Yeah this is common misinformation. There are also similar silly stories from compromised academia about Slavic writing system.
Rus was not Christian before traitorous dictator Pete Romanov was installed. Slavic calendar and Slavic measurement systems were used. Dictator Romanov forced the changes greatly harming Slavic civilization and promoting Christian monotheism and “western” barbarians.
Peace has always been bad for MICIMATT complex profits.
a senior Department of Defense official, told Congress the process will take up to two years and $11 billion for Ukraine to successfully deploy the fighter jet
of course ‘somebody’ has already figured out how long it will take to make as much money as possible
MIC is actively working those calculations
It seems the Ukrainians can work a lot faster and a lot cheaper than Lockheed can.
As if that matters. The price tag won’t change. If anything, it will surpass $11 billion. How fast and cheap the Ukrainians work has nothing to do with that.
Are the Deep$hitstate operatives flooding this discussion space by $hitting in their own diapers? The page is taking a long time to refresh. With all the MSM space out there, they prefer to crowd us out right here? I’m also baffled as they seem to have taken a real liking to Thomas K? I always liked him but he’s starting to sound exactly like my Polish neighbor on Russia. Hate, my friend, deep and unchecked hate is how you start wars. We’re building the hate, while dumbing down/demonizing Russia and China. If we don’t realize that is actually facilitating WWIII, then I’m sorry to say it, I think we’re done as a species.
In what way do I “sound like your Polish neighbor on Russia?”
You seem to be linking that to “hate,” but I have precisely zero “hate” for “Russia.”
Russia is a geographical region which I have no moral opinion of, and a very loosely connected set of ethnic/historical/political connections which I find interesting and very mixed. While I have a moral opinion of the regime currently exploiting those ethnic/historical/political connections to try to justify its fiasco in Ukraine, that opinion is precisely the same opinion as I hold on all other regimes, including that of the US: Regimes are overgrown street gangs which should be liquidated.
I don’t agree with you about Thomas K. He’s consistently antiwar. Hard to find fault with that. And if you notice he says the same shit about all regimes. Including the Biden regime.
No he isn’t. He defends US interests like a good soldier.
But he tries …
I don’t give a tinker’s damn about “US interests.”
My position — that the US should never have pulled off a coup in Ukraine and should not be materially supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia now — happens to coincide with “US interests” of the basic “America First” template, but my reasons are different.
The main problem people like you seem to have with my position isn’t the position itself, but simply that I don’t twist myself into an historical, political, and moral pretzel trying to pretend the Russian regime is any better than the US regime in order to arrive at it.
A friendly edit, “He defends US” exceptionalism. We all defend US interests as well as all human interests–but not Neocon interests. No exceptionalism. No right to meddle in other countries.
The only respect in which I consider the US regime “exceptional” is in the degree of its hubris.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c75fbf4d2912158b0e30a33b0afe9f2bd92cb1b47a9bb0c2ebe9446db9e6bb93.jpg
Knapp is an interventionist? Seriously?
I didn’t say he was an “interventionist.” I said, “He defends US exceptionalism.” My humble opinion is there are many well meaning people on the spectrum–not totally committed interventionalists. They may not be as outraged toward our own warmongering as what they label “warmongering” by others. But you already know I’m not particularly smart. So I hope we can respectfully disagree.
“For some Americans, particularly recent neo-conservatives, intoxicated with power and righteousness, American exceptionalism is a green light, a legitimizing rationale, and an all-purpose excuse for ignoring international law and world public opinion, for invading other countries and imposing governments […] For others, American exceptionalism is code for the liberal internationalist aspiration for a world made free and peaceful not through the assertion of unchecked American power and influence, but rather through the erection of a system of international law and organization that protects domestic liberty by moderating international anarchy.” From: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/two-sides-of-american-exceptionalism-by-joseph-s–nye-2018-09
I think anyone who “defends US exceptionalism” has to be an interventionist. How couldn’t they be? That’s our whole game. So, no, Knapp is neither. He’s more anti-war than %99.9999 of the people here. And I think you’re smart and we’re good. We don’t agree on climate change either. So, no big deal my man.
Thanks, Wars. I still love you (LOL). Here’s a new article from Ray M: https://raymcgovern.com/2023/05/22/did-putin-have-other-options-on-ukraine/. I wonder if antiwar will publish it.
Good article.
Where’s Red Douglas? I haven’t seen his shares lately. I hope he’s okay. Growing old is not for wussies.
He had said he was thinking about not commenting here anymore. He must have meant it. I enjoyed his insight.
Me too. That’s disappointing. I hope he changes his mind.
I was wondering about that myself.
I did some Googling of articles on which he commented, intending to grab his Disqus profile link and see if he’s still posting elsewhere.
I can’t seem to find any comments by him — not even the ones which previously existed. I wonder if his Disqus account has been completely deleted, by himself or by Disqus?
US exceptionalism is not exactly interventionism. Some well meaning people may exist on the spectrum of exceptionalism, where their feeling of moral superiority justifies their more intense outrage toward what they perceive as “warmongering” by other nations–not as much as when it’s their own. How do I know? I used to be one of those people before reading Justin Raimondo in the nineties. So, I respectfully disagree.
You’re out of your mind.
I need to retract a whole bunch of posts. My initial assessment about that moonwalker character was correct. He is an idiot and adolescent Tommy doesn’t try anything. Trolling and warmongering is all he does.
6 to 9 months?
I wonder if they will be talking by then and if it will be a “show of strength” to help at that time to place Ukraine in a “better” position as they negotiate?
NATO seems to have plans to convert Ukrainian’s weapons systems to be compatible so it would be natural to do this even if the “special operation” is in a tentative “peace ” while the Chinese get people talking to each other.
I believe that the Pentagon has never been keen on sending the F16 into the Russo-Ukrainian war. If one more-or-less undamaged F16 falls into the hands of the Russians, all sophisticated technology will become instantly worthless.
Whatever we give the Ukrainians will not have the latest whizz-bang stuff. The usual route for leaking our technology is to Israel where it is reverse engineered and then sold on to China.
Do you have a cite for the Israeli-China connection?
I’d bet they already know what’s there.
You seem to have missed that the US has become a helpless non producing banker with soft hands. The US is a shadow technologically and spiritually barren compared to Russia, China, Iran, and Mexico.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!
The F-16 has been in production for nearly half a century and is in current or former use by 25 countries. Including, among others, Israel (which has a reputation for selling any US tech it gets its hands on to the Chinese for reverse-engineering/copying), and Russia-friendly Venezuela, which had F-16s well into Hugo Chavez’s reign.
Depleted Uranium worked out so well that they are doubling down. After the munitions dump in Khmelnytskyi was hit a cloud of gamma radiation has blown to Poland. Now thats ironic.
The F-16s will just be hit on the ground or shot down in the air by S300, S400 and S500 missile defense systems. The Patriots are worthless, 2 billion worthless rubbish.
The Russian Winter Campaign is coming to an end, its objective was to take Bahkmut, The Russian Summer campaign will begin soon with the objective of kramatorsk, Slovyansk and Kostyantynivka.
In that case why are you worried about this?
Well, intelligent people regard the risk of nuclear war as something to be concerned about – especially when our side is dominated by believers in proxy war and the provocations which lead to them.
Added: and if you are unaware that proxy wars are our specialty, I can give you the standard list encompassing the past 65 years.
Hey….. It’s only a 5 or 10% chance of ending civilization as we know it, right? Well worth the risk, right?
Only complete psychos think like the above. And we are ruled by such types.
Well, intelligent people regard the risk of nuclear war as something to be concerned about – especially when our side is dominated by believers in proxy war and the provocations which lead to them.
Added: and if you are unaware that proxy wars are our specialty, I can give you the standard list encompassing the past 65 years.
Of course Russians minded the wind direction when they destroyed the ammunition depot in Khmelnitsky.
“When you finally get your war; don’t send second string checker players against chess masters.”
That’s what the last president of Iran recommended to ignorance fueled US arrogance confronting Iran.
Pretty stupid to store those munitions with tons of other explosive bombs and missiles. It wasn’t just the depleted uranium rounds that blew up.
Early last year the senile idiot President of the USA stated that giving Ukrainian offensive weapons such as fighter jets is World War 3.
Now they are pouring fuel on that fire, we’d be lucking to see 2024 from this point. Once NATO and Russia engage in combat it’ll be quick. The world will be shrouded in soot and smoke, freezing temperatures and high amounts of radiation.
The F-16 began it’s operational IOC career in 1977. It is like a nice little sports car from the 1970s. Although any jets still in America (ANG or Reserve) will be upgraded; most likely any F-16 delivered to Ukraine will be old export models from Europe.
Most likely these F-16s will be from Holland, which received it’s F-16s starting in 1979 and took their final delivery in 1992.
“In March of 1980, the Netherlands announced plans (finally approved by the Dutch Parliament in December 1983) to buy an additional 111 aircraft (97 F-16A’s and 14 F-16B’s). This brought the total F-16 inventory to 213 aircraft, 177 A models and 36 B models. The last F-16 rolled off the line at Fokker’s Schiphol plant on February 27th, 1992.”
The F-16 provided to Ukraine will be old tech cannon fodder as tehy are no match for the S300, S400, BUK or any other Russian SAM system deployed in Russia’s netcentric SAM network.
Did I mention that the Russian Air Force deploys generation 5 jet with Beyond Visual Range BVR missiles that can reach out and touch another jet at 70 to 150 Km?
Just like Nazi Germany hoping for wonder weapons or “Wunderwaffen” to defeat the allies in 1944: Ukraine keeps wishing for the next wonder weapon to save their bacon. Perhaps Zelensky should ask for submarines and nuclear weapons also.
There is one sure way to fix the problem and it is called diplomacy and negotiations. If Ukraine had negotiated 15 months ago 300,000 Ukrainians would still be alive and most of their territory would still be in Ukrainian hands.
How crazy is it for Zelensky and the insane Ukrainian politicians to allow their young men; now younger and older men, to be used as cannon fodder by Western nations in a proxy war of attrition?
They are probably a bit better than the equipment the Ukrainians have right now. They are unlikely the equal of what the Russians are flying. So not exactly a game changer but every little bit helps. The potential catch with the F16 is it can’t operate from austere fields the Soviet gear can.
Just a simple question, John: how many dead Ukrainians would you regard as a satisfactory price for freedom and democracy in Ukraine?
50,000? 100,000? 200,000? 300,000?
Give me a number…
Only the Ukrainians can answer that question. Same as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Algeria or Palestine. To be clear national resistance movements fight for self determination, not necessarily for “freedom and democracy” It is up to the Ukrainian people to determine whether they resist or surrender or how long they resist.
The Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are fighting for self determination with the help of Russia.
Over 15,000 of these Ukrainians were murdered by the government of Ukraine prior to Russia’s help and liberation.
Crimea voted to join Russia as did the people of Eastern Ukraine.
No the total loss of civilians is far lower:
https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf
And note that this is deaths on both sides of the Russian fermented and supported insurrection.
Isn’t that the same UN that facilitated the destruction of Libya you’re using as a “credible” source? The same UN that is controlled by US money?
All international organizations having been present on the ground have arrived at basically the same results: https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/f/b/469734.pdf
If you throw out all sources that disagrees with your narrative then what’s the point of debating anything – your claim is just that the Russians are right – no evidence needed to support it.
Suspected propaganda by Ukraine.
Not much critical thinking there – the reports are from the OSCE and UN.
Yep propaganda from an CIA shill and an American mouth piece. When you grow up you might be less impressed with alphabet soup organizations run by American mobsters like Clinton, obama, and Biden.
Neither the UN nor the OSCE is run by the US – that is conspiracy nonsense!
How about the self determination of the people of the Donbas? They clearly didn’t want to be ruled by the neo-Nazi dominated Kiev regime. Neither do they want to be ruled by cartel dominated Washington DC.
A better question is how many Russians and Ukrainians have to die before Russia gets a leadership wise enough to realize that this is a war Russia can’t win.
You claim Russia cannot win what ir is already clearly winning. The US wants war with Russia, China, and Iran, with increasingly belligerent threats thrown in against Mexico.
US elite capitalists are pushing ww3 and the world is slowly uniting against its bankrupt military adventurism for profit.
The opposition to the US and its policies needs to louder and more powerful pretty damn quick
This is a war Russia can’t lose. At least if losing means all Ukrainian territory must be returned. That will never happen. Crimea will be part of Russia henceforth.
There is a reason why Russians call it a special military op. It isn’t a war for them. It’s clean up op.
It’s a war for the parasites, operation for the veterinarian and liberation for the cat.
“There is a reason why Russians call it a special military op.”
Yes, there is — up to ten years in prison for calling it a war is a powerful incentive.
How long Assange have been locked up in prison?
Sometimes your comments make my ass tired.
Good analogy, Ivan.
If Russia doesn’t win it, no one will win it.
Alternately, Bear, all of humanity when those clouds begin mushrooming…
Bring on the targets; I mean the F-16s.
PENTAGON started Choking on the Fact that the Russian Su-35 became World’s Most Resultative Fighter
Submarines will be hard to smuggle over the Polish border.
He is a fu—-g politician. What else can anyone expect? he still is a comedian
“Biden To Green-Light Allies Transferring F-16s to Ukraine” That’s funny. Not because it’s another concrete step toward ending all human life. That’s not funny. What’s funny is everyone or really anyone waiting for this fool to green-light or red-light anything. (Sarcasm alert)
In our oh-so-sacred democracy, how come we never get to vote on foreign policy?
Because if we had honest Democratic elections our rulers would be picking up trash and garbage which is what they deserve.
They are trash and garbage. I feel sorry for sanitation workers.
Hi Wendell:
Nobody “rules” in a democracy and if we have crossed such a threshold, it is time for pitch forks and garbage cans (and people) to be out on the streets in mass.
In our democracy, power is suppose to be shared.
Seems like terrific targets for S-400 system. Who is gonna fly them?
That is not important, MSM will give it a little spin to answer your question.
I wonder how much longer it will take Zelensky to sell the last standing Ukrainian soldier to Biden, the butcher, to be slaughtered?
At the very least 4+ years the Ukrainian losses even if we take the Russian MoD figures are lower than those suffered by France during WWI – so absolutely no reason that they should not last as long.
When this American / British instigated war ends the Ukrainians will be struck dumb when they get the bill which they cannot pay so will have to hand their country over to the American Corporations and become slaves .
Even if this was true, and it is not, then it would be far better to be a US slave than to be ethnically cleansed by the Russians.
Do you mean like the enslavement of Blacks imported from Africa to labor in the cotton fields or wiping out the Native Americans and killing all the Buffalo?
No I mean the kind of slavery that people here believe that the people of England and France were exposed to after WWI and WWII, when they were in a situation much similar to the one Ukraine supposedly will be at the end of this war (if they are not taken by Russia).
If you had read the comment that I am replying to you would have known this.
Mikey is not in touch with reality. He lives within anglosaxon propaganda system where Russians ethnically cleansed all 90+ republics within Russian Federation, Africans migrated to America seeking better life and Cherokee Nation is a US state.
I don’t think so. When Russians are done cleaning up Ukraine, all that imperial filth, their “laws” and “contracts” will be null and void. That is why they are freaking out.
It will be interesting seeing the creative ways Russia will down these F16s or destroy before it’s taken off.
Anyone that says this is bridge too far, I think U.S /NATO crossed it a long time ago.
So Zelenski went to the Arab League and lectured them on the Occupation. Thank god we had an Israeli there to tell Arabs how to fight against oppression.
*Cough Palestine Cough*
So he supports the liberation of Palestine and the Golan Heights right? He supports kicking the US out of Syria right? Can he read the room at all?
Volodimor Ziolenski was just reading from a script written by fine folks in Washington and London. Carling him a puppet is an insult to puppets. He is a cardboard cutout for the cameras.
They “won’t work” just like the 7 delivered tanks that are ruining Prigozhin’s flanks in Bakhmut right now. Lol.
But it doesn’t matter, the Russian MOD will soon announce these F-16s are already destroyed.
Take for example the MOD’s main clown who last week announced to have destroyed 5 Patriot Systems when Ukraine only has 2.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76eb8dbd4288841f2a3e8e38d2e5c4ff8188429528404cc6a0ac3b66826c71a3.jpg
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/russia-says-it-destroyed-5-launchers-radar-of-us-patriot-missile-defense-system-in-ukraine/2900064#
Nice self-portrait there.
Ukraine has no logistical capabitlities to maintain these aircraft, and F16s need VERY nice runways to operate. These will be blown up on the tarmac before they can be used, and those that don’t are cannon fodder for Russian air-defenses. Just more NATO equipment down the drain, and another bonanza for General Dynamics which will get more orders as the “West” re-arms for its next self-destructing war of choice.
Inserting the F-16s into this conflict reminds me of when I decide to speak. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” –Abraham Lincoln
Russia has been very measured and deliberate in its use of arms in Ukraine because it is aware of the danger of escalation to nuclear catastrophe.
The US is now adding F-16 jets to the mix. They won’t win in dogfights but they can provide a high-altitude platform for missile launches. This is a very significant escalation.
The US & NATO have painted themselves into a corner and are using more paint to get out. As if this were a cartoon and they could paint an exit door on the wall and go through it.
Exactly, Clever Dog! But, I’m not surprised one bit. This is another necessary step for us to understand that we’re not “exceptional.” The destruction of the Patriot battery in Kiev should be widely visible to us as a turning point–not because it happened, but because of how easily it happened. Watch the video clip. It seemed like we were the ones fighting with shovels–not the dumb Russians. “Exceptionalism” is a hard infliction to cure once it takes hold. I’m afraid, nothing would cure us until we see with our own eyes that our interceptors are failing to stop the Russian and Chinese nuclear missiles heading our way. Some of us may take longer. (Serious sarcasm inflicted)
The so called destroyed patriot is back on full mission capable status but if you want to repeat BS, go ahead.
And destroying a patriot is not a turning point, destroying hypersonic missiles with patriots is the real turning point.
But you can go ahead and spin the story.
Very well said CD, very well said.
Why did the US start this war?
Blame it on the Black Sea and its “critical geostrategic importance.”
. . .from the Pentagon–
U.S. Official Looks to Deter Russia in Black Sea Region
So of course this war has nothing to do with US national security, rather it is to defend US ‘national interests,’ in this case the Black Sea which connects Europe and Asia.. .It’s of “critical geostrategic importance.”
This isn’t a joke and it looks like it is getting to the point where we might actually go to war over Ukraine…
Why some European countries transferring F16’s a plane from the 1970’ties – how is that suddenly going to make the Russians prefer death over facing some old planes over Ukraine?
People like Biden and Nuland and all the other neocons have big egos, they want to hurry up and get ready to attack China in Taiwan.
Good morning Donna Same old Shit,it never gets old.
Where are the airfields to take off from and land? There are none. Just another PR stunt!
Bahkmut is dead, long live Artyomovsk. And on the anniversary of Mariupol’s liberation from NATO.
After 224 days of fighting, the city of Bahkmut came under 100% Russian control. The Banderites (reference to Stepan Bandera a notorious WW2 criminal) lost tens of thousands of servicemen. A huge number of foreign fighters died in the grinder.
And so it goes, keep pushing the fake Russian narrative and this is what you get. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/05/no_author/russia-hoax-coup-increased-chance-of-nuclear-war/
Don’t shoot the messenger for detailing the air order of battle.
Zelensky went begging at the G7 meeting in Japan this week. Any objections to Europeans providing their older F-16s to Ukraine were dismissed.
Before you sign up to be a mercenary in Ukraine flying a 30 year old F-16 perhaps a little research into the competition would be in order.
I personally would put the F-18 Super Hornet F-22, F-35, or the F-15 up against the Su-27 and Su-35 as good adversaries. As for 30 year old European export F-16s I don’t think so. Even with upgrades; the runways and environment demands a more rugged aircraft.
The su-27 and Su-35 are two airframes with the Su-57 and MiG-35 also fielding long range hypersonic air to air missiles.
Some specification:
Why is Su-35 the best?
Airframe and Engines
This also allows the Su-35 to achieve very high angles-of-attack—in other words, the plane can be moving in one direction while its nose is pointed in another. A high angle of attack allows an aircraft to more easily train its weapons on an evading target and execute tight maneuvers.
What are the weaknesses of the Su-35?
‘In addition to already poor performance, Irbis-E is vulnerable to jamming by modern EW suites owing to a smaller bandwidth, which you can tell from inferior SAR resolution. Combined with substantially short-ranged missiles put Su-35 at a significant disadvantage in BVR combat.
The latest upgrades have improved on Irbis-E radar deficiencies.
Which is better F-16 or Su-35?
A twin-engine, single-seat aircraft, it is described as “Russia’s signature heavy fighter bomber” by the RAND Corporation think tank. While the F-16 can reach Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, Russian sources say the Su-35 has a maximum speed of Mach 2.25.
What missiles does the Su-35 carry?
The Su-35 can carry up to eight R-27 missiles simultaneously, which retain an impressive 130km range allowing it to out range many of the Western and Chinese fighters.
What is the range of Su-35 air to air missile?
Its robust capabilities allowed it to engage targets from up to 130 miles.
PENTAGON started Choking on the Fact that the Russian Su-35 became World’s Most Resultative Fighter
Su-35 receives the farthest hypersonic air-to-air missile R-37M
The Russians already have air superiority and they will just shoot down the new planes before the new pilots learn evasive actions.
So far, “air superiority” in this conflict seems to be highly variable depending on whose air defenses the airspace in question happens to be over.
We’re probably watching the end of manned fixed-wing aircraft as a major military factor. Sturdy air defenses make cheap drone swarms the affordable option versus expensive jets. I doubt the F-16s will prove to be of much use.
Well they do make for good PR in this most economically/financially/propaganda/news-cycle oriented war.
Why would the airspace of any country besides the Ukraine be in question?
Putin has been very clear that invading Russia’s airspace would invite nuclear retaliation.