 |
| Silverfiddle Rant! |
Farmer got into quite a donnybrook with Constitutional Insurgent and Thought Criminal over who's to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I stayed out and watched, but today I'll throw some gasoline on the fire, and hopefully keep the fight going. I'll chime in with my two cents and invite you all to do so as well.
Russia is to Blame: Putin's invasion is a baldfaced rape of another nation.
What Contributed? Had western powers taken different actions over the past 30 years, could this have been avoided?
Nuance-Free Zone
My Predictions:
I predict the war will drag out, with a mumbly, lacunae-infested fizzle, status quo ante, with Russia still informally controlling the pace of events in the east, while Ukraine retains nominal sovereignty. Europeans will mouth sanctimonious platitudes while doing nothing.
Five years from now, Germany and Europe will be importing Russian gas and oil, and will be enjoying pre-war Nato spending levels.
First, a lot of nuance is being overlooked. We can acknowledge Russia is a bad actor while also acknowledging there is a logic to what they are doing, and they take actions based upon their national interests (twisted and misguided as they might be by our lights.)
We can agree Putin is a horrible person who hates the US and Europe and would destroy us if he could. Dismissing him at the same time (as many wishful thinkers in government and the press have done) is stupid and irresponsible.
NATO nations have taken the dumbest combination of actions possible since the wall fell:
* Western Leadership swallowed Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" hook, line and sinker and have been sleepwalking for the past 30 years, displaying a dangerous and naive cornucopia of malfeasance, ignorance, cupidity, stupidity, and pie-in-the-sky happythink.
* Europe made itself vulnerably dependent on Russian oil, gas and other natural resources, supposedly with the hope of bringing Russia into the family of nations that respects international norms. That failed. Due to Western diplomatic bumbling and wishful thinking? Or Russian intransigence?
If Europe saw this gambit failing, why did they continue sucking Vlad's gas pipe? Wishful thinking is what Europeans do best.
* NATO nations did the most ass-backwards thing: They talked crap and encouraged Ukraine to talk crap, while denying Ukraine NATO membership.
* We encouraged Georgia and Ukraine to get cocky with a very big and very dangerous neighbor, and the bear took a bite out of both of them while we stood by and watched. What the hell was our goal with those nations?
* Once again, we have taught dangerous and malignant regimes worldwide a very important lesson: If you have nukes, you have wide latitude to attack others.
* It is becoming clear that Ukraine became a very lucrative cash cow for well-connected westerners, with US government bureaucrats running business consulting and gatekeeping out of the US embassy in Kiev.
Pointing all this out does not mean I want Russia to win. I want Ukraine to kick their asses back to Moscow, while knowing that is damn near impossible.
Once again, we have a big mess on our hands that smarter people could have avoided or ameliorated. Pardon my dissent, but I expect a higher level of thinking from Western "leaders," especially the US foreign policy establishment.
My Predictions:
I predict the war will drag out, with a mumbly, lacunae-infested fizzle, status quo ante, with Russia still informally controlling the pace of events in the east, while Ukraine retains nominal sovereignty. Europeans will mouth sanctimonious platitudes while doing nothing.
Five years from now, Germany and Europe will be importing Russian gas and oil, and will be enjoying pre-war Nato spending levels.
More importantly, what say you?
I cannot think of a single instance during the time of my life (even going back to when I was still crapping my diapers) when U.S. diplomacy deserved an “atta-boy.” We always seem to select the very best of the positively worst foreign policy ideas, and we never (ever) seem to learn anything from these disasters. Under the “put yourself in their shoes” thinking queue, how did we react when the Soviet Union began placing missiles in Cuba? I honestly haven’t done much reading about this period, so I cannot say if Khrushchev was only trying to teach us a lesson, or if he actually thought it was a damn-good idea, but its result was a near disaster of epic proportions. What were WE thinking with Ukraine and Georgia? I can only shake my head. Idiots abound — and no one inside the beltway seems to have a clue ... emphasizing “no one.”
ReplyDeleteWhat you say makes sense. I remember my father telling me during WWII that if it were not for the Brits the Americans would have lost a war. Keeping this in mind it makes sense that our diplomacy is the worst. We cannot even honor our own laws and respect each other but we want the world to listen to the wise advice of the USA. Sure. I do not think so. Not anymore at least.
DeleteThe above comment is from me Layla. I am not sure what is going on with google or blogger.
DeleteYou asked my opinion.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned the NATO fiasco.
Among everything else, I believe that is what provoked the minor incursion (oh yeah, there was that too) and thus the war.
It might not be right to first strike, but that doesn't make it not inevitable when someone else's sense of "right" is different then yours.
Yup. And that is what too many people assiduously refuse to understand.
DeleteWe MAYBE could have avoided all this had Zelensky given into Putin and said he'd stay out of NATO ....I thought that since the start. Today, I believe it can only be oligarchs from within Russia's circle who can stop this by getting HIM. At first, I thought they could arrest him and tell the world they didn't know he could have ever done anything like this...but now, there's so much damage now that even Russia couldn't pay to rebuild (as they should) so they'll remain silent, those oligarchs, two of whom have recently been suddenly killed.... Putin got to them first.
DeleteWe also "maybe" could have stayed out of this if the Ukraine hadn't decided to start to massively increase the shelling of the Donbass separatists beginning on Valentine's Day a week before Putin declared War.
DeleteA Gulf of Tonkin incident "resurrected" for the 21st century.
DeleteEvery day of shelling leading up to the invasion, Joe Biden's voice got an octave shriller as he screamed "manufactured pre-text".
Delete...and I think we all know how Democrats tend to "project".
DeleteI think you referenced something yesterday Farmer, about OSCE 'fingering' UKR increased shelling. Could you post the primary source for that? As OSCE doesn't appear to make attribution statements in their status reports. Thanks.
DeleteSure. Jacques Baud
DeleteHere's his bio: Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
DeleteThree points:
Delete1) Not a primary source
2) Not an OSCE report
3) I know exactly who Baud is, and who he works for.
Thank you for posting the source for your propaganda. It speaks volumes and tells me everything I need to know.
ссать на дезинформаци, comrade
Slava Ukraini
...and so we return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Delete...from the creators of "Putin is a madman" and "cui bene?, not us!"
DeleteDid you read the OSCE reports? What did they say? What did they NOT say? Are you that incurious?
DeleteI read the OSCE Status Reports regularly, at least while they were still being published. I have what I need here, thanks.
DeleteTverskaya may be wanting their money back, Comrade.
And who do they blame for the St Valentines Day artillery buildup and where were the majority of shells landing, Ukrainian territory or Donbass?
DeleteUS SecDef Austin: "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a news conference in Poland, following his secretive trip to Kyiv with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "It had already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability."
DeleteSure sounds like the US wants a fight, not Putin.
:P
DeleteThe US strategy is coming into focus: Regime change.
DeleteAnd why not? It's worked so well everywhere we've done it.
The chance that NATO would have admitted Ukraine in my lifetime, were always slim to none. Membership comes by unanimous consent, and France & Germany [among others] were adamantly opposed to Ukraine joining the club......for various reasons, but foremost, the ongoing Russian occupation of Donbas and Crimea.
ReplyDeleteSo, the NATO membership excuse for why Putin just had to invade a sovereign State [again], is a canard.
There is absolutely geo-political posturing at play, as there always is....but one man plainly stated his intentions for Russian expansion into the former Soviet 'republics', by either occupation or proxies, starting several years ago, for those who even paid attention.
And one man has become the preeminent salesman for NATO membership and unity, as a result.
Because God made the world easy to understand by making America responsible and to blame for everything that happens, I do have to strenuously point out that the 10th Amendment of our Constitution gives us the right to destroy other countries with a vote.
ReplyDelete...if said countries have a problem with that, they can take it up with our Bureau of Indian Affairs.
ReplyDeleteUKR can't 'defeat' Russian forces, in the conventional sense. A 'victory' will look like the pre-February status quo.....Russian occupation of Crimea and Donbass, this time with insignia'd forces instead pf the cheap facade of 'little green men'.
ReplyDeleteWhile Russia likely didn't anticipate the abjectly mediocre performance of it's armed forces, they likely also didn't anticipate the growing string of suspicious fires and explosions amongst MoD facilities, railroads and oil depots within it's own borders. Too bad, so sad.
Mediocre performance? You think those Russian columns were REALLY heading for Kyiv? You think that Jackson would sit on his hands in the Shanondoah Valley while Lee and the Army of Northern VA just defended Richmond or do you think he'd do his best to pin down the Union Army in WV and as territorial broad a manner possible?
DeleteMediocre performance my ass.
-FJ
Look at a map. Putin can now build a superhighway to his ports in Crimea.
DeleteYep. Mediocre performance. RUSFOR general staff should be rightly sacked.
DeleteIs that what US "Intelligence" is telling you? The same guys who insisted that Trump was Putin's puppet?
DeletePerhaps they merely over-estimated RUSFOR capabilities. It wouldn't be the first "missile gap" they missed.
DeleteI think FJ plays at Devil's Advocate to make the Devil look stoopid. It's like that movie Pee Wee's Big Adventure, except in place of Pee Wee wrecking his bike and claiming "I meant to do that," it's Vladimir Putin losing 13,000+ soldiers and dozens of flag officers in a bid to siege a steel mill.
Delete@TC, +1
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteRussia could have just bombed the steel mill, but for the AZOVs hostage human shields.
DeleteRussia hasn't even taken it's gloves off. It doesn't need to.
DeleteVictory is measured in sq ft of territory occupied. And as of today, Ukraine has gained an inch.
Deleteerratum - "hasn't" for "has" above.
Delete-FJ
...and the Donbass'Luhansk region has some nice new "natural borders" that won't require trenches to defend. They've secured their flanks.
Delete-FJ
If the usual 1:3 killed to wounded ratio holds, that's 13k Russian soldiers killed, 39,000k wounded, or 42k casualties for Russia... Ukraine has put nearly 30% of Russia's invasion force in bodybags and / or hospital beds. Proportionately, the US was in Vietnam for 20 years and never had a casualty rate even half that high.
DeleteRuSsIa Is WiNnInG... Something, but not a war.
Here's the latest map. So just where are the Ukrainians "winning", Mr. McNamara?
Delete-FJ
39k wounded*
DeleteDid the Azov Battalion Commanders show you the ears they took, too?
Delete-FJ
The worst thing about war statistics are their highly inflationary nature.
DeleteThat's a cute map, FJ. With ~100k Russian troops in country now, how many square miles is each soldier "controlling?" 😂
Delete...especially when your losing.
DeleteThe one they're in, beamish.
Delete-FJ
The Ukrainians launched two R360 Neptune missiles into the Russian Black Sea flagship and sank it from a "Russian controlled area."
DeleteFrom a big truck.
In broad daylight.
Good for them, beamish. But you should ask yourself, what are the Ukrainians going to do when the rest of that fleet shows up off Odessa and begins shelling the port?
DeleteThat they haven't show's their very specific and limited aims in Ukraine.
Delete-FJ
Last I looked, Russia had two subs and four corvettes headed out of Sevastapol
Delete:P
Delete-FJ
Ok.
Delete"What are the Ukrainians going to do when the rest of that fleet shows up off Odessa and begins shelling the port?"
Well, hmm. The only ship Russia had in the Black Sea with a capable anti-missile defense system got sank by missiles, so it really depends on how many ships Russia sends to Odessa before we can estimate how many Ukrainian Neptune and British Harpoon missiles will be used on each ship. It's unlikely Ukraine will run out of anti-ship missiles before Russia runs out of ships in the Black Sea.
That they haven't show's their very specific and limited aims in Ukraine.
DeleteInteresting choice of words. What's the retainer fee from the Tverskaya Street gang these days, Comrade?
I presume that you'll be preaching about the 'oppression' of the poor Transnistrian Soviet soon, no?
That they haven't show's their very specific and limited aims in Ukraine.
DeleteBe careful with that sunshine and lollipop talk. Putin has purged GRU officers with better news.
Putin is the Anti-Stalin. He purges his officers for winning s war in the Ukraine. 😂
DeleteI wonder if NATO's command and control grognards are still getting satellite surveillance imaging and signals intelligence on targets to the Ukrainian military faster than Russia can get orders to its troops.
DeleteEr, I mean oh no not the King's pawn to E4 opening... do we force a 4 Knights game or mutilate them with the Sicilian Defense? (What does it matter, Russians can't play chess worth a shit anyway...)
Question for beamish... how many drones did it take to saturate the Moskva's ASM defense system?
DeleteNever mind. The "alternate theory" sounds pretty solid. 180 degree coverage for it's main air defense radar.
DeleteWhoever planned the attack knew what he was doing.
DeleteThis doesn't sound quite so rosy for Ukraine. So why would Ukrainian commanders begin to feel "more desperate" if they were winning, beamish? Sounds kinda "hedgy"...
Delete-FJ
Ukraine only has to "not lose."
DeleteRussia's been trying to crack them for nearly 8 years. Ukraine has been "not losing" for quite a while.
And as long as Russian forces are surrounded by hostiles to the left, right, forward, backward, and even up above in orbital space watching every move and directing traffic, they're going to continue to "not win."
Lincoln purged a lot of command staff too....
Delete....Just to catch a bullet watching a British play make fun of his country. Didn't his main military commander become President in a low-participation election after that?
Delete:P
DeleteTC stated "I think FJ plays at Devil's Advocate to make the Devil look stoopid."
DeleteInteresting viewpoint TC... because here's how -FJ explains his blogging style, in his own words...
"Blogging has always been something to keep me busy and entertained whilst I’m supposed to be working. I’ve [sic] consider myself a 'troll’s troll'. My blogs have always been 'bait and switch zones' for luring Left wing trolls off of sites that I enjoy, like AoW’s. I try and suck them over to one of my blogs and detain them there and 'entertain' them so that they aren’t trolling others and ruining their blogs. I could care less about mine."
It's an interesting style, that when coupled with his penchant for multiple 1 or 2 sentence comments, explains a lot.
If we'd had better devil's advocates and more tolerance for dissent post 9/11, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of US military would still be alive and we would not be trillions poorer.
DeleteThose are accidents, similar to the spontaneous sinking of the Moskva. For their safety, Putin should move these facilities east of the Ural Mountains.
ReplyDeletePutin will get everything he wants and wanted, and the United States will pour billions and billions of borrowed US tax dollars into a never ending sinkhole of wasted taxpayer dollars propping up corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs.
ReplyDelete-FJ
Remember UNWRA which started in 1948? Add Ukraine to the never-ending world welfare spigot.
DeleteNot the first of many wasted welfare checks to come.
Delete-FJ
$4 billion? That's barely 1% of the total annual revenue of the US defense contractor industry. Not exactly a get rich quick scheme on their part. No where near what these defense contractors spent on marketing.
Delete:P
Delete-FJ
Maybe those defense contractors should switch to producing fertilizers instead of explosives, beamish.
Delete-FJ
The Ukraine's NAZIfied "AZOV Battalions have been kicked 100 km back from the Sea of Azov.... never to return.
Delete-FJ
So it's a win-win for Europe.
DeletePutin tries to grasp fourth generation warfare on the fly
DeleteWe have to remember that Western Europe largely sees Eastern Europe as noisy and inconvenient neighbors. Has anyone considered that Europe looks to those Eastern European nations as their buffer zone between them and Russia?
ReplyDeleteNoisy and inconvenient? I dunno... aside from anti-immigration sentiment, I'm not aware of any particular ill-will. It is a point of national pride that Britain entered the war to defend Poland (and a point of national amnesia that we negotiated its post-war fate with Stalin). Since the fall of the USSR, the general vibe we get from eastern Europe is one of progress and optimism. That's not to overlook certain countries and events that have bucked that trend, but in general we feel like they want to be more like us, and however inaccurate that impression might be, we are flattered and comforted.
DeleteIt's very hard to pour cold water over eg. Ukraine's apparent desire to westernise. We genuinely think that's a good direction for any country to go down, so it would feel highly cynical to discourage it.
Also, while the west's handling of Putin has been flawed in many ways, particularly where it intersects with corruption in the British government (can't speak for the other countries...), I cannot condemn the investment of effort and hope in the early part of his presidency. Hindsight is all very well, but the best hope for the post-cold-war world was for Russia to come in from the cold and enter cordial partnership with the west. It didn't work out like that, but we were correct to try IMO.
As in, source of cheap labour?
DeleteUsed to be called Polish plumbers back in the day. I doubt that that is still a thing now, but yes. Look, most Western European nations don't like each other, just from my own experience of living over there. I know for sure that the power elites who run Germany couldn't give two craps about the Baltics or most of the states to the east.
DeleteI can't speak for the view from Britain, but I can't imagine it's a whole lot different. Maybe you can disabuse me of that notion
Moreso, probably. We are a parochial, island nation. Even when we ran vast tracts of it, we've been indifferent to the world beyond our immediate neighbourhood.
DeleteThank you for the honest assessment. I know I sound like I come down hard on Europeans, but I absolutely love Germany, and I love the whole concept of what the British call little englanders. You find little parochial versions of that all over Europe. That's what makes it so charming, but it can also make them very maddening as well.
Delete:-( instead of wasting time crafting this blog post, I should have just said round two, go!
ReplyDeleteOh, you wanted comments on your comments...
DeleteI'll do more of that later. All I'm saying is that barring a Cold War Thinking epistemological rupture over at the Pentagon, with the IC, and @ DoS, we are destined for WWIII with Russia. The post WWII global corporatist world order is finished, kaput, non-functional. It's time to shift to the new paradigm, the one DJT tried, but failed, to get you to see starting in 2017... but instead, you stuck him in the OLD paradigm and fitted him a Russian!
This is no longer Newton's Universe or Einstein's Universe. We need to integrate Quantum Physics into the Standard Model. It cannot be done WITHOUT an epistemological break!
Delete-FJ
Progress is not a straight line. It must break, take a step back, and then move forward again. Such is the "Archeology of Knowledge" (Michelle Foucault).
DeleteNATO was the West's COLD WAR MODEL.
Delete...and MAD will be its' result.
DeleteHey, I gave you my prediction. I was even able to do that all in one comment.....
Delete@SF - An interesting read if you hadn't seen it:
DeleteOperation Z: The Death Throes of an Imperial Delusion
https://tinyurl.com/bdhdbn59
Russia loved DJT because he no longer believed in the COLD WAR NATO MODEL. His was an AMERICA FIRST MODEL. And that model takes the boot off Russia's throat and allows him, for the very first time, to NORMALIZE relations with the West... something NATO is designed to prevent from happening.
DeleteStop making Putin pay for Lenin's mistakes!
Delete...and STOP allowing the corporate globalists to wall off the Eastern European market from Russian competition using an OBSOLETE SECURITY TREATY.
DeleteMake them write a new EURO-RUS:TA "commercial" treaty
Delete...but only AFTER America withdraws from NATO, lest Europe attempt to cow Russia into a bad trade deal using NATO as their "mercantilist" leverage (like the British did with their Gunboats everywhere and Perry did with his in Japan).
DeleteTrade reciprocity cannot occur when one party holds a gun to the head of the other.
DeleteWhich is why even Republican corporate globalist neocons LOVE defense spending. It gives them private leverage at the US taxpayers public expense.
DeleteYou know what they say, "Make the public pay the expenses, but privatize the profits".
DeleteSays the guy commenting on the commercial lines of DARPAnet and finding his way by GPS.
DeleteStop making Putin pay for Lenin's mistakes!
Let's take it back to the Northern War. Make Putin pay for Peter the Great's mistakes. Does Sweden want St. Petersburg back?
Pretty sure it wasn't the Byzantine Empire that gave Ukraine to Russia, either.
Maybe Putin will give Oklahoma back to the Indians.
DeleteThe US Intelligence Community is trapped in a Cold War mentality...
ReplyDeleteThe MIIC absolutely need a cold war, with plenty of enemies. Otherwise, how do you plan, and how does the weapons industry know what to manufacture and sell to the government.
DeleteSilver... who's to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we even have to ask this question shows how far down the rabbit hole we've dropped.
This is the Bush Doctrine of Preemptive Military Action on steroids. And it's as full of BS now, as it was then. The country that attacks, for whatever reason, is the country responsible for the attack or invasion.
No, Dave, it shows the groupthink panic that has gripped us. I have to say that up front so I'm not dogpiled, called Ivan (a great uncle from the old country I never met, ironically enough), and screamed at by people labeling me a Putin Puppet, pro-Russia, etc
DeleteOur public discourse is a nuthouse.
Do you not appreciate the vast amount of time and resources it takes for a CIA black ops team to infiltrate a trailer park, abduct someone, brainwash them into believing extraterrestrials travelled thousands of light-years to give them a prostate exam with a tig welder, and exfiltrate without leaving a trace? Our guys have that routine down to under three hours. America's control of the world down to the smallest detail took decades of hard work, and I'm tired of people badmouthing it.
DeleteFunny, but am I the only one who doesn't remember Ukraine's open declaration to the world and Russia in March of 2021 that they were going to re-conquer the Crimea and began massing troops on the border? Gee, I wonder then why Russia also started massing troops...
Delete-FJ
This developed seemed to "shock" the US Intelligence world.
Delete-FJ
Looks like Sleepy Joe wrote some "bad checks" to Ukraine...
Deletefrom Gloabl Security.Org
On 11 March 2021, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated the Ukrainian government had approved "the Strategy for Deoccupation & Reintegration of Crimea, a historic document needed since 2014. The signal is crystal clear: we don’t just call on the world to help us return Crimea, Ukraine makes own dedicated & systemic efforts under Zelenskyy’s leadership..."
According to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, by 16 March 2021 the command of the RF Armed Forces was provoking increased tensions in the temporarily occupied territory in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Thus, the units and parts of the first and second army corps of the operational group of the Russian occupation forces were brought to the highest degree of combat readiness. The personnel of the enemy were withdrawn from vacations, the persons who were in medical institutions were sent to the places of service ahead of schedule, and ammunition was replenished by the advanced units. At the same time, rumors were spreading among the occupiers and the local population about the possibility of hostilities with their possible escalation into a full-scale military conflict during the March 17-18 events in Crimea on the anniversary of the occupation of the peninsula by Russian top state and military leaders.
The conflicting sides blamed the aggravation of the situation on each other. Russian President Vladimir Putin held a video conference with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on March 30. In particular, he expressed concern that Kiev had destabilized the situation in Donbass.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia on 01 April 2021 of whipping up tensions as NATO voiced concern about what it said was a Russian military build-up near eastern Ukraine. Unverified social media footage has suggested Russia has been moving large quantities of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other equipment to regions that border Ukraine, as well as to Crimea. Ukrainian and US officials reported Russian troop movement in these regions, near territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. But David Ignatius at the Washington Post reported Pentagon officials saw the Russian deployments (reportedly some 4000 troops) as “evidence of a training operation, rather than preparations for an invasion” of Ukraine. The Russian military deployments appeared out of cycle for exercises, and were not regular troop rotations.
United States President Joe Biden used a first official phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 02 April 2021 to offer staunch support in Ukraine’s standoff over Russian forces near its border. The conversation came after Western nations and transatlantic military alliance NATO voiced concern over Russian troop movements near the eastern Donbass region. Russia said that an escalation in Donbass could “destroy” Ukraine and warned against any NATO deployment.
On 02 April 2021, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying that it had received guarantees of American support after a telephone call with Washington’s top military official, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austen. “The US Secretary of Defense stressed that in the event of an escalation of Russian aggression, the United States will not leave Ukraine alone,” the Ministry said.
...and now Sleepy Joe is writing bad checks funding the entire Ukrainian government.
Delete