The Russians didnāt have to go anywhere to destroy the Ukrainian army.
The Ukrainians came to be ground down in the Bakhmut āmeat grinder.ā
Sad, but thatās the choice Kiev made.
The truth is written on his face, as you say, and truth is not what he says.
It is written on his face.
Then this little nugget of admission by US DOD
I have done work with both Aegis and Blackwater, and they used to be the tip of the spear. That no longer appears to be the case.
Fascinating article
Blinken and his Demon
Ukraine fatigue.
People are getting tired of hearing about Ukraine all the time.
Austrian politicians walked out of the parliament when Zelensky was given the floor on video.
Xi grew tired of Macron talking about Ukraine.
Russia has always accepted Ukrainians, refugees or otherwise. When Russian strategically withdrew from the west bank of the Dnieper last September in Kherson Oblast, many (former) Ukrainians moved to Russia beyond its new territory.
Russia removed orphans from the Donbass to Russia for their own safety, what did the west and its media do? They accused Putin of ākidnappingā these children.
Even the Ukrainians whose first language is not Russian have no language problem in Russia. (Ukrainian and Russian languages are similar enough.)
Itās the Kiev regime that closed the borders with Russia and Belarus for Ukrainian citizens.
The Russian-speaking Ukrainians moving to Russia is natural in a way because the border between Ukraine and Russia was drawn arbitrarily. Millions of Russians have relatives in Ukraine, vice versa. If you open up a telephone book (which nowadays does not exist) in Russia, you will find many Ukrainian names. Thatās why Putin didnāt want to go the whole hog with a war with Ukraine in February 2022.
There are villages in the Russian Far East (north of Vladivostok) where Ukrainians moved with the entire village in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Famous writers Gogol (who wrote the novel the Nose) and Chekhov (The lady with the Dog) were Ukrainians, just to name a few.
Canada always had a substantial Ukrainian population. Col. MacGregor predicted that those Ukrainians who went to western Europe will never come back, but I beg to disagree.
Did you see this? I was thinking those dirty filthy ______s! I was watching Alan Dershowitz talk about Trump then say he is a liberal, and is for gay and trans rights, it made sense that he was on Epstein island. Why are most of them degenerates?
You can never trust Israel. They always stab you in the back.
Itās the Israeli (or Zionist) lobby that runs the current US administration, aka the Biden shit show.
Russia was not in a hurry to capture Bakhmut, because Russia could destroy the Ukrainian forces without going anywhere as Ukraine sent more and more troops to be ground down.
You know they are lying!
This Indonesian channel has an extensive coverage of an actual combat seen from above.
You could adjust the computer translation from Russia to English, but itās choppy.
The conversation is between Russian operators of a drone and soldiers on the ground, rife with four-letter words
At some point the bipartisan Washington consensus in favor of funding the Ukraine war has to tell the American people what weāre buying.
The trove of recently leaked intelligence documents related to the Ukraine war should prompt Americans to start asking tough questions about our involvement in that conflict, which one of the documents, a Feb. 23 overview of fighting in Ukraineās Donbas region, describes as a āgrinding campaign of attritionā that has reached a āstalemate.ā
U.S. taxpayers have poured nearly $80 billion into this war over the past 14 months. At what point are we allowed to ask whether a āstalemateā in a āgrinding campaign of attritionā is a good deal for Americans?
Above all, Americans should demand the bipartisan Washington consensus that supports indefinitely funding the war explain what our strategy is, define what the American interest is in it, and detail how they plan to achieve something beyond an interminable war of attrition that risks pulling us into direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. At the very least, the American people deserve more than inane platitudes from Antony Blinken about āUkrainian victoryā and āstanding united with Ukraine for as long as it takes,ā as if total Russian defeat and withdrawal is a realistic outcome.
The classified documents lend some urgency to these questions because they reveal, among other things, a severe shortage of air defense weapons in Ukraine ā so severe it could mean the difference between an ongoing stalemate or a Russian victory in the coming weeks or months. Without adequate air defenses, Russian warplanes will be able to bomb Ukrainian positions at will, which in turn might make Ukraineās planned spring offensive impossible. No wonder, then, that earlier this month the Biden administration pledged $2.6 billion to rush air defense systems to Ukraine.
What the documents also suggest, as if it hasnāt become obvious by now, is that the war has not been an unbroken chain of brilliant underdog battlefield victories for Ukraine and crushing defeats for Russia, as the corporate media and the Washington political establishment have led us to believe. It rather seems like chaotic and indecisive butchery on both sides, with weapons and cash pouring in not just from the U.S. but from all over the world sustaining a large-scale war of attrition with no end in sight. Behind the scenes, according to the leaked documents, U.S. officials are predicting only āmodest territorial gainsā from Ukraineās big spring counteroffensive, the recent surge of U.S. weapons and air defense systems notwithstanding.
One of the results of this slow, grinding warfare has been the rapid expenditure of munitions, at least on the Ukrainian side. U.S. weapons stockpiles are now badly depleted, and our defense industrial base is taxed to the point that we have been unable to deliver some $20 billion in promised military supplies to Taiwan. This of course raises the question of China, which the Biden administration, along with Republican leaders in Congress, refuse to talk about candidly in the context of the Ukraine war.
What is the plan if (and really, when) Beijing decides to invade Taiwan? No one seems to have an answer ā or even seems willing to acknowledge thereās a problem. Nor do our political leaders have an answer to the increasingly obvious reality that U.S. sponsorship of Ukraine is pushing Moscow into Beijingās arms and helping to accelerate a China-led coalition to challenge the U.S. dollar reserve currency status and usher in a truly multi-polar world.
Meanwhile, economic uncertainty prevails here at home, with inflation continuing to hit American families hard, U.S. banks failing, and talk of an impending recession setting markets on edge. As mentioned above, since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, American taxpayers have given Ukraine about $80 billion ā and counting. That includes nearly $50 billion in direct military assistance, many orders of magnitude more than we give even our closest allies like Israel, which got just $3.3 billion in military aid in 2020.
Setting aside the larger question of how this war will end (spoiler alert: itās almost certainly going to end with a negotiated political settlement), thereās the narrower question of what, exactly, the American taxpayer has been purchasing with all this largesse. The Ukrainian state is famously corrupt, which hasnāt changed under President Zelensky and indeed might be far worse now given the sheer volume of U.S. dollars washing through the country. Is Ukraine going to emerge from this as a functioning democracy allied with the West, a reliable partner and not a dangerous welfare case? Is there any reason so far to think that will be the case?
And why isnāt there any transparency about the aid and cash weāve sent? Weāre told by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby that, yes, there are indeed a small number of U.S. special forces operating inside Ukraine, but theyāre only there āto help us work on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine,ā and are not āfighting on the battlefield.ā Presumably, that should mean we have more clarity about where weapons and cash are going inside Ukraine. But if thatās the case, no one in Washington will talk about it.
From where the situation stands now, it seems like the U.S. taxpayer has unwittingly bought nothing more than a bloody stalemate in Ukraine, one that increasingly runs a very real risk of ending in a nuclear showdown. Absent a hard push from Washington for peace negotiations ā the one thing our leaders seem unwilling even to consider ā weāre left with bad options all around: escalation and inevitable U.S. involvement on the one hand, or total abandonment of Ukraine on the other.
The only real question, at this point, is how many more tens of billions will American taxpayers have to spend to find out how this ends?
The money also bought Zelensky nice homes in Florida, Riviera and other nice places. Iām sure his parents in Israel are benefitting as well.
This was pretty pathetic!!