Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a fresh plea to NATO on Thursday for more weapons, including warplanes and tanks.
“You can give us 1 percent of all your planes, 1 percent of all your tanks, 1 percent. We cannot buy it. These supplies depend on NATO’s political decisions,” Zelensky told a NATO summit in Brussels via video link.
So far, the US and NATO have provided Ukraine with shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles since Russia invaded but have stopped short of handing over more advanced weapons like tanks and warplanes. Poland offered the US Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets that could be sent to Ukraine, but the plan was scrapped by the Pentagon over the risks of provoking Russia.
Zelensky also asked for multiple rocket launch systems, anti-warship systems, and air defense systems. A US official told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit that the US was working with its allies to provide Ukraine with anti-ship missiles without elaborating on what kind.
According to a document obtained by CNN, Ukraine has also asked for an increase in the supply of Javelin and Stinger missiles and wants 500 of each per day. The US and its allies have already poured thousands of Stingers and Javelins into Ukraine, which has been a boon for the companies that make the missiles.
According to the CNN report, by March 7, the US and its allies had already sent 17,000 anti-tank missiles and 2,000 anti-aircraft missiles into Ukraine. A Pentagon official said that the last of a $350 million weapons package Biden approved at the end of February arrived in Ukraine over the last few days, and the next two packages totaling $1 billion have already started to arrive.
The US and NATO are sending weapons into Ukraine via multiple land border crossings in Eastern Europe. While they’re not sending warplanes, the deliveries still risk provoking Russia, which has warned it considers arms deliveries entering Ukraine a legitimate target.
What is Zelensky’s net worth, and the net worth of the rest of the Ukraine’s leaders? Surely, in the absence of the largess of The West, they can pool their personal fortunes and buy the weapons they are asking for? How much are Zelensky and the Klitschko brothers worth, not even counting anyone else? Surely Zelensky’s bosom buddy Abramovich would be willing to liquidate his personal fortune and donate it all to the Ukraine’s defense?
Not as good as Putin’s and his billionaire Oligarchs.
Don’t pretend to be some sort of Latino. Your ignorance is breathtaking if you have not noticed over twenty years that Pres. Putin HATES those oligarchs. The USA∕UK loved them until now, but the robbing them of their money, plus the stealing of $300billion of Russian funds, show us the real “values” of the morally bankrupt Western “international community”.
Those oligarchs who wasn’t guilty of murders, theft and up to their neck in criminality (those went to England) was allowed to stay as long as they didn’t involve themselves in politics, in “Putin’s Russia”.
As for VVP himself, he is a deeply religious man who dedicated his life to make Russia strong again (and succeeded) he even divorced his wife for this full time job and the only free time the man has (a few days in the summer) is definitely not spent on a yacht or a castle (these are bs stories for godless western societies, easterners understand) no, these are spent on a monastery in the holy island of Vlaam in the Ladoga lake and fishing in Siberia.
Oh please. Should we call him St. Vlad?
Not at all. It’s just facts.
He became “deeply religious” when his KGB past didn’t serve him as well politically as having been a secret dissident would have.
Was CIA Director/President Bush a religious man?
Just like Putin.
I think Putin is more religious than Father Time Bush (or the boy) was/is.
I think all religious people are phony MF’s. But especially people in power.
That’s your opinion.
I suppose. God is a sadistic prick too.
Look, Russia doesn’t go to war for MIC or geopolitical reasons or indeed sadistic reasons like the US “just because they can”.
If not left alone, Russia REACTS to something. In this case to US pokings and provocations on its borders whether its US color revolutions trying to install hostile regimes on its borders which has been going on since the western gang rape on Yugoslavia (just because they could) or indeed training and arming Nazi’s against Russia with bio- weapons, race- specific viruses and possibly even nukes. What did you expect? It’s an existential threat.
It’s not Russia trying to exterminate Americans from Mexico by whatever devilish means, mind you. You need a specific sadistic mind for that.
Another reaction from Russia that Putin inherited was when the US and Saudi Barbaria poisoned Chechen youth with wahhabism for the same reason, trying to balkanize, split Russia and get their vast resources. Or everytime Europe has its “drang nach osten” moment when the amnesia from their last defeat kicks in. These things never ends but it’s always started by the west. Russia ends them.
I don’t know why you replied with all of that. I’ve said all along that I agree that Putin’s security concerns were/are legit. My comments were about making him out to be some kind of saintly type. He’s killed plenty in his lifetime and I don’t believe you get forgiven for that. And that was the basis of my second comment.
from god’s mouth to your ears ?
Well we did call the mass murderer, Joseph Stalin, our endearing Uncle Joe, putting him on a pedestal with our fictitious Uncle Sam.
good one! i am practicing my genuflect already
So deeply religious that he is now leveling cities and indiscriminately shelling civilians in Ukraine. But I know what you are going to say; that is Zelensky’s fault.
Surely you realize that the combined holdings of Russia’s ‘Top 100 Evil Oligarchs’ pale in comparison to the holdings of just three American ‘White Knights’: Musk, Bezos, and Gates. (And, I know, don’t call you Shirley).
An equally interesting observation is that the top Rich Guys™ in Russia are labeled ‘oligarchs’- which now seems to have odious connotations- while our own domestic Rich Guys™ are no more than ‘skilled entrepreneurs’ or ‘exceptional businessmen’.
… and how about ours? Bezos, Musk, Buffet, Icahn, Zuckerberg, … nso on? … oops, I forgot, ‘free market capitalism’, they’re (war) profiteering is sacrosanct. That’s what these wars are all about.
It won’t matter. Part of Russia’s plan is undoubtedly to eliminate all the Ukraine oligarchs. You can’t even begin to gain control of Ukraine and its corruption without doing so. Russia knows this.
Incoherent rantings from a cokehead sitting in a bunker in Kiev or even more likely, Poland.
Who cares? Russia don’t, they speak directly to his handlers in Washington. This is after all a US war against Russia from the ukraine, which btw in ancient Russian means “borderlands”….
Indeed.
Gleeful Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary under Obama, on March 17:
“We are engaged in a conflict here. It’s a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not.”
Panetta was one of the idiots who said Hunter’s laptop was Russian propaganda.
until I see it I will disbelieve it
he allegedly has a $30 million mansion in miami
Dear Zelensky, NO!
He would really turn his country into a pile of smoking rubble .. for us. What a selfless heroic patriot!
So the main demand from Russia is for country 404 NOT to join NATO, the enemy, and NATO has for years already been supplying/training/ encouraging Ukrainian “resistance” and hatred for Russia, now Ze wants even more NATO lethal provocation despite the fact even he must know that this would cause more deaths and destruction to “his people” whichever faction they are in this broken nation.
How does Zelensky expect to stay in office at this point? He’ll be gone because he did a 180 degrees on his election promise to follow the Minsk Agreement. Instead he let the Azov Battalion keep shelling Donbass after they flat-out refused to obey him.
Crimea and Donbass will never belong to Ukraine.
Ukraine will never be allowed into NATO.
So why is Zelensky stalling? Just agree to these two demands and the war is over immediately. But maybe Washington is urging him to keep going.
No maybes.
“Win” or “lose,” he’s probably out at the first convenient point.
But also at the first convenient point, Ukraine will be a de facto NATO state.
Do you think so, Tom? I think they are going to use Ukraine up and abandon the remains … unless perhaps it’s a small rump western state centered on old Galicia.
It all comes back to what their actual objectives are versus what they’re capable of, whether the two match, and whether there’s a gap between the capabilities and the understanding of the capabilities.
If Putin’s objectives are to secure the LPR, DPR, and a land route to Crimea, his forces are probably capable of doing that and making it stick. They might — maybe — even be able to add taking permanent possession of Odessa to that, but it would be a stretch.
If his objectives include the conquest and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, they’re not.
My assumption — against all the available evidence of the hubris of politicians in general and autocrats in particular — has been that Putin is reasonably sane and competent, in which case he knows what he can get and isn’t trying to get more than that (in which case the “attempt to take Kyiv,” etc. are just feints while he secures his real objectives.
But I could be wrong. He could be barking spiders insane, in which case he might end up not even getting those plausible objectives.
Either way, the formal end of hostilities will be followed within days if not hours by US boots on the ground in Ukraine and the construction of permanent installations, along with “security guarantees” nearly identical to those enjoyed by NATO member states.
I disagree (big surprise, I know.) Putin’s objective is to counter US missiles in Poland and Romania. While some idiots think he will directly attack them,, Russia is not interested in starting a war with NATO. What Russia will do is keep Ukraine intact, including the western oblasts who hate Russia, and install a pro-Russian government, much like Belarus, and then install strategic missiles in Ukraine and Belarus to counter the West’s missiles.
Your notion that once the war stops that NATO will move in is completely delusional.
There will be no “rump state” and there will be no “negotiations” with Ukraine. Russia has presented surrender terms to Ukraine. Ukraine either accepts them or Russia will create them on the ground.
You might want to spend some time over at Moon of Alabama, where considerably more sophisticated discussion of the options is being conducted.
Not going to happen. Ukraine is going to become a compliant Russian ally. Or at least its government will.
Crimea and Donbas are separate issues. The population of Crimea is overwhelmingly Russian. It had never been part of Ukraine until after Stalin deported the Tatars. Following the 2014 coup the overwhelming majority of the people of Crimea wanted to be part of Russia. In the last census (2001) Donetsk and Luhansk were predominantly ethnic Ukrainian (about 58%) with a significant Russian minority (about 39%). Unlike Crimea, there is significant opposition to the Russian backed secession movement. Peace in the Donbas cannot be settled by force of arms. There needs to be negotiations and power sharing between the Russians and Ukranians and a plebisite supervised by neutral parties..
Militarily, Ukraine has lost. But Zelensky knows that the Nazis will kill him and his family the moment he shows any willingness to sue for peace, so he continues his “heroic resistance” kabuki.
When the Russians have thoroughly denazified the east, including Kiev … if Zelensky is still alive and under Russian protection, he will be able to negotiate what will effectively be terms of surrender.
He’s got the biggest mouth in the world.
West. with its “untightly” controlled corporate media is making a drug addict comedian into a hero.
Russian Trolls are now evolving here in Antiwar.com. Now they are creating multiple accounts so they don’t show their thousands and thousands of comments they post. We still know who you are.
You poor coot. You have all the MSM of the Empire of Lies but soon there will be exposure of some of them. Don’t worry.
Says the Russian Troll with over 4,000 comments here.
How many O’s are there? O O O. Whatever your answer may be, I can assure you it’s wrong.
When you look at how many comments someone has why do you assume they are all about Russia? He, unlike you, gives comments on a host of other issues as well. So you, who just showed up recently and ONLY comment on the Russia/Ukraine war, are the definition of “Troll”.
Hey, they’d love you over at kissNATOass.com.
One can always identify the trolls because they comment on one subject, and one subject only. “Don Julio” is one.
There are also a couple of them, Zionazis, who only comment when the subject of Palestine/Israhell is raised.
“There are also a couple of them, Zionazis, who only comment when the subject of Palestine/Israhell is raised.”
And a lot more of them, anti-Zionists, who only comment 1) when the subject of Palestine/Israel is raised, or 2) to try to raise it and connect it to any and every other topic brough up by someone else.
Our political establishment is pro Zionist, so the “other side of the issue” is raised by the anti-Zionists. Kinda like Anti-War.com is the opposite of the dominant warmonger media.
Right on, Thomas. That’s what I love about this website 😉
For me personally (an AI member for over thirty years), Zionism is the biggest injustice being committed in the world today. I guess you could say I’m a crusader for the Palestinian people, but that might be the wrong choice of wording.
everyone who disagrees with the involvement of countries OTHER than Russia or Ukraine gets branded a Russian trol
Go away.
And who might those be? And by “we”, who besides you?
Who’s “we?” You got a second personality trapped in that head?
Reviewing Julio’s (at the schoolyard) posts, indicate his overriding theme is that anyone he disagrees with is a Russian Troll.
None of this crap is going to make the slightest difference in the outcome: Russia wins. And by “win”, I mean defeat the US and NATO by putting up a “virtual Berlin Wall” of missiles around Europe that counter the US and NATO missiles.
None of Zelensky’s “requests” or “demands” are intended for any other purpose but to fool the stupid US public that Ukraine needs to be “defended” from the “evil Rooskies” (as Martyanov likes to joke.) None of this is going to happen. It’s all utterly irrelevant to the outcome.
This is so pathetic, I’m surprised anyone in NATO could keep a straight face. Seriously, 1% of tanks and aircraft promptly delivered to Ukraine and… what does he think will happen to it then? In case he hasn’t noticed or perhaps it has slipped his mind, but lately such deliveries have been met with a rain of deadly missiles. Amerika and its running dogs can throw as much armament at the problem as they like, but it will not get the job done.
The job is not worth doing and cannot be done.
Russia is destroying Ukraine military gear so what’s the point?
So, the usa, the west, nato, whatever is going to give ukarine weapons to kill russians and destroy russian hardware without harming a russian hair directly? Is that the recipe to save the world from ww3?
Now thats some crazy math.